Hivemind Times Issue #78

Welcome To The Hivemind Times!

Wow what a day it is here on earth. This is Graydon and this is The Hivemind Times. 

If you are a Patreon or Youtube member you know the big old surprise as of today…the rest of you will know come Monday. What a time to be alive and scared of the future. 

Dropped that ol Candy Bracket on your bean heads this week as well as a main channel video that is fresh coming out later today. How did it age? It had its most votes ever for the episode coming this Sunday. Overall I’m just so happy to have you all as such a cool and creative community we are very blessed over here at HQ. 

Rozey is back this week to update you on his newest “movie review”. I got some fire jazz fusion tucked in here. More food knowledge. More poetry. More life lol.

Whatever - you get the point, have fun this weekend. 

- Graydon

WEEKLY PLAYLIST

Special Tyreek Bugbee playlist for my freaks and weirdos and cool kids.

MOVIE REVIEW

Hello Hivemind readers. I first and foremost would like to offer my “sincerest apologies”  for my absence recently. But I'm back in full force, ready to take on such a hard task, reviewing movies. I was going to review a war movie but I thought you guys couldn’t handle it. Anyways….

Today's focus will be on a timeless classic, a movie that will be talked about for maybe the next hundred years. One that has brought many to tears, even myself included.

Grown Ups (2010) is about five guys who were best friends as kids and basketball teammates. When their old coach dies, they reunite for his funeral and end up spending Fourth of July weekend together at a lake house in New England, the same place they used to hang out growing up. Naturally, it turns into a lot of shenanigans and other stupid stuff.

The movie opens with a flashback to 1978, when they win their middle school basketball championship. Their coach meant a lot to them, so his death decades later is what brings them back together. What starts as a quick reunion turns into a full holiday weekend with their wives and kids, which is where most of the chaos comes from.

Right away, you see how different their adult lives are. Lenny is rich and successful but kind of disconnected from his family. Eric is insecure and still chasing his old glory days. Kurt feels overshadowed at home. Marcus refuses to grow up at all. Rob has reinvented himself in a weird, overly spiritual way. When they are together though, they immediately fall back into being teenagers, making dumb bets, insulting each other and turning everything into a competition.

Throughout the weekend there are a bunch of ridiculous set pieces: the rope swing scene in the woods where Eric, played by Kevin James, crushes a baby bird under his enormous body, the water park trip where they run into their old rivals, late night skinny dipping, and constant trash talk that almost always escalates into something physical. There is also tension between the families, with wives getting annoyed, kids fighting, and old insecurities bubbling up.

One of the bigger themes is the difference between how they grew up and how their kids are growing up. Lenny's family, especially, are a bunch of LA pricks, used to private schools and a pretty cushy lifestyle. Being at the lake house strips all that away, no big distractions, just the good old outdoors. The guys slowly realize their kids do not really know how to just be kids the way they did.

There is also the ongoing rivalry with the team they beat in 1978. That builds up to a rematch basketball game on the Fourth of July. The game is messy and overly competitive, with everyone taking it way too seriously, but it becomes a symbolic moment. They are trying to prove they still have it, even though they are older, slower, and out of shape. In the end it is less about winning and more about letting go of ego.

By the time the fireworks go off, the guys have softened a little. They are still immature, still loud, still kind of ridiculous, but they start paying more attention to their kids and to each other. Under all the crude jokes and slapstick, the movie is really about friendship, aging, and figuring out that growing up does not mean you have to lose the part of yourself that knows how to have fun.

This is actually one of my favorite movies for some reason. Writing this review was hard because this movie also sucks, but I really do love it and I think it is a masterpiece.

Odessa and I were snowed in these last few days, and New York had turned into a sparkling, frozen wonderland. While everyone else was panicking over closed subways, slippery sidewalks, and snowdrifts taller than cars, we were having the absolute best time ever. Our apartment smelled like warm cookies and hot chocolate. We ate way too much popcorn, watched at least twenty movies, and somehow managed to end up wrapped in the same blanket so many times. I am the one who suggested we watch Grown Ups by the way, so I will take the blame.

Eventually the snow slowed enough that we decided to venture outside. The city was silent under a thick white sheet, the kind that makes everything feel magical and impossibly soft. We trudged through the snow toward Prospect Park, hand in hand, leaving tiny footprints that would be swallowed up by the next flurry. Every time we slipped or stumbled a little, she laughed and grabbed my arm, and I could not stop grinning at how effortlessly happy she made everything feel.

When we stopped in the middle of the park, the snow still swirling around us, she leaned over to kiss me. Her nose bumped mine, icy and impossibly cute, and I had to laugh because it felt so cold but also so perfect. She giggled, pressing her mittened hand to my cheek, and I swore the world could freeze over a hundred more times and I would not care as long as we were like this, lost in this snow wasteland just with each other.

I could not stop staring at her. Snowflakes landed on her hair, melting in tiny glittering drops, and her eyelashes caught little crystals of ice. When she laughed, it sounded like bells, echoing softly in the quiet streets, like those old churches in Europe, how beautiful they ring. At one point some kids started launching snowballs at us and hit her shoulder, and she squealed, shoving me gently but laughing the whole time, and I just laughed too because I could not resist her.

When we finally trudged back to the apartment, cheeks flushed from the cold and laughter, we decided it was time for something warm and messy, homemade pizza. We spread out the dough on the counter, flour dusting everything, and she tried to toss it in the air only for it to flop onto the counter with a soft thud. I laughed so hard I dropped the sauce, and she started screaming with laughter because now there was sauce everywhere. She smeared a little on my nose. I wiped it off with my finger and kissed her, and somehow that made the sauce taste even better.

We piled on cheese, pepperoni, and way too many toppings, stealing kisses and laughter in between. When the pizzas finally came out of the oven, we carried them over to the table, snow dusted mittens forgotten, and took our first bite. She grinned at me with that warm, soft look that always makes my heart skip, and I realized snowstorms, cold noses, sticky fingers, burnt cookies, overcooked pizza did not matter. Being with her made it feel like the world outside had melted away, and it was just us, laughter, kisses, and perfect little messy moments.

Here we were in New York, completely, impossibly, ridiculously in love. I’m so glad this life has found me. 

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful weekend - I’m sure I will!

- Rozey

WHAT IS THE BEST REPTILE?

ALBUM RECS

Fusion heads get up.

- Graydon

POEM OF THE WEEK

Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun--
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky--
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

MERCH