Knee-jerk review: "Project Hail Mary"

1. It's really, really good.  A sure-fire audience pleaser with lots of humor and suspense and sci-fi spacewalk action.
2. But is it a cinematic masterpiece?  Eh.  Some fans may be overstating things just a little.
3. On the other hand, some of the moviegoers criticizing the movie come across as weirdly bitter and sullen nitpickers.
4. The music is pleasantly quirky at times, lending a goofy charm to a fairly serious situation.
5. We knew we knew Carl from somewhere.  Wasn't until later we realized he's the pastry chef on "The Bear."
6. Ryan Gosling really has it, doesn't he?
7. Honestly, it's probably hard for us to be completely objective since we read the book a couple of years ago.  It was pretty amazing.  The story has more than one pretty great plot twists.  So for us, watching the movie in a way was a lot of waiting for the next narrative moment from the book to happen.  (What must it have been like for Ms. Cheese Fry to experience all of that for the first time?  For the record, she loved the movie.)
8. Rocky is great, of course, as you may have heard.
9. It's probably a little cringey for the savior of the world to be a rumpled middle school science teacher with a wiseass personality, but that's part of what makes the movie great.  A nobody without faith in himself who rises to the occasion.
10. Any good writer just wants to put their characters in impossible situation where there is no good choice.
11. The flashback structure is cliche, but cliches are cliches because they work.
12. Incredible that they kept the ending.
13. Everyone's surely familiar with 2015's The Martian (which kind of is a masterpiece), another adaptation of a science-heavy Andy Weir novel.  Weir also wrote a sci-fi suspense thriller set on a moon base called Artemis which is really good.

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Doctors from "The Pitt" Ranked in Order of Who We'd Prefer as Our Doctor

If you haven't already heard, HBO's "The Pitt" is peak television, a fantastic 2020s update of NBC's late, great "ER" but with more gore and an appropriate workplace sprinkling of four-letter words.  This is the sort of perfectly polished show that's clicking on all cylinders - the writing, the directing, the acting, the production design.  It's like alchemy the way everything comes together.

Our question: if you ended up in the emergency room, which doctor from "The Pitt" would you most like to see whip open that curtain with a laptop in hand?

1. Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) - The perfect mix of sincere empathy and seasoned "seen it all"
2. Dr. Michael Robinavich (Noah Wyle) - Always grumpy, but the guy cannot be stumped; he's the big boss for a reason
3. Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) - Full disclosure: Cheese Fry crush bias
4. Dr. Jack Abbott (Shawn Hatosy) - Medical rock star; bro spends his free time riding along with the SWAT team; additional points for being a grizzled war veteran
5. Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) - Yes, she came in season two hot and heavy, ruffling feathers with her patient passports and AI nonsense, but admit it: she's way underrated
6. Dr. Melissa King (Taylor Dearden) - Quirky, yes, but pretty sharp; she seems detail-oriented to a fault, which seems important in an ER
7. Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) - Solid, but falls in our rankings here due to the whole recovering addict stuff
8. Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) - Close second to Dr. McKay when it comes to caring and bedside manner, but he's still pretty green; he's going to make some big misses
9. Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) - Horrible attitude, chip on her shoulder, hard pass

Honorable mention goes to bad-ass charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), who's probably the most competent, unflappable person in the whole day ER shift at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

Not ranked, for obvious reasons: med students Victoria Javadi and James Ogilvie.  They're a mess.

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12 Observations from a 14-Year-Old's Club Soccer Game

1. Portable camp chairs are everything.  Some city soccer fields provide aluminum bleachers, but it's never guaranteed.  You can go with the basic Walmart model with four legs and two arms - the cup holders will cost more - or upgrade to the high-end "look at me!" models with pneumatic piston rockers and/or built-in adjustable shade awnings.
2. There's always the one parent who's way too aggressive with the cheering, whether it's arguing with the ref ("Call it both ways!"), criticizing his kid's play ("Come on, move to the ball!"), or demanding cut-throat intensity even if your team is blowing out the opponent ("Keep the pressure up!").
3. You really cannot tell how good a team will be just by looking at them warm up.  Scrawny kids who look like pushovers can be crazy fast and agile, tall girls that look formidable can be clueless on offense.
4. Don't ask us to explain the offsides rule.
5. Soccer weather can be extreme.  We've watched just as many games on freezing cold mornings wrapped in multiple layers as we have on broiling hot summer afternoons with our chairs strategically positioned in the slender shadow of a field light pole.
6. Right or wrong, if a parent can speak Spanish we will assume they know way more about soccer than we do.
7. Thankfully, youth soccer doesn't entertain that ridiculous "extra minutes" nonsense.
8. Good luck parking on tournament days.  If it's not mud fields, it's mud fields with gravel.  The trick is to show up during the "shift change" when the earlier block of games is ending thereby allowing you to stalk the folks shuffling out to their cars carrying armfuls of camp chairs or dragging those game-day wagons.
9. Surprisingly, many of these giant soccer complexes just didn't have enough money in their budgets to create signage.  And so you're creeping along in your car squinting through binoculars like GI Joe on a secret mission trying to read the tiny, faded 8-1/2 x 11 sized metal signs that are cable-tied to the goals facing the wrong direction.  "Is that a 3 or a 4?" "If that's a 6, where the hell is 7?"
10. Parents, stick to your side of the field.  Look for your kids' bench and place your chairs opposite that bench.  And leave a nice 10-yard buffer zone at midfield.  It's not that hard.  We don't want to hear your cheering for your kids or complaining about ours.
11. It's always a weird "Twilight Zone" moment when you realize there's a player on the other team with the same name as your kid.
12. Inevitably, you will believe with absolutely certainty that the refs are making more calls against you than the other team.  Guess what?  The parents on the other side feel exactly the same.

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