GREETINGS FROM AIRSHIP GLITZVILLE!
The splendiferous exciting adventures and inane ramblings of KT Glitz and his beautiful wife Toni Glitz. There will also be garbage talked about music, movies and Star Wars, a LOT of Star Wars!
If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning!
Never forget your dreams, they are the hopes of the future!
I'd just like to say a great big HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to my amazing, gorgeous and beautiful wife!
I took the day off today so that we could just spend some quality time together. It was lovely just doing nothing by being around each other. The love is strong :)
Although it might not seem very romantic we also both managed to grab a nap each LOL :)
Here's a round up of a few more bits and pieces of Star Wars related news
Following on from the passing of Kenny Baker last year it has now been confirmed that Jimmy Vee will now be the man inside the suit from The Last Jedi and beyond. On taking the role Jimmy says,
“It’s been an absolute pleasure to have worked alongside the legendary Kenny Baker. Kenny was a fantastic actor and taught me all the ‘tricks’ on how he brought R2-D2 to life which I will continue to portray in his honour. I’m so excited to be a part of the Star Wars universe and can’t wait for everyone to see what we’ve been working so hard on for the last year.”
Daisey Ridley appeared at the BAFTA awards and was was asked for information on The Last Jedi. Always one to play with the press she said that Rey will star in it!
John Williams won his 23rd Grammy for ‘Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media’ for The Force Awakens. Another well deserved accolade as I think it's a great soundtrack.
Williams is already scoring The Last Jedi ready for it's release at the end of the year. I only hope that Michael Giacchino gets something next year for the fantastic work that he did on Rogue One.
The droids of Star Wars have now been given a Friends intro mashup resulting in this rather fine video:
I've never been a fan of novelty education and even the inclusion of a Star Wars course leaves me thinking this is not a great idea.
Apparently the University Of Glasgow are looking to run a course called Star Wars and Philosophy: Destiny, Justice and the Metaphysics of the Force. The course will be led by a life long Star Wars fan and philosophy teacher named John Donaldson. Dr. Donaldson said that the purpose of the course is to introduce concepts of free will and moral responsibility by exploring the deeper meanings of George Lucas' Star Wars franchise and believes it's a way of making philosophy more accessible."
Toni and I did some major decluttering in the bedroom today hitting our wardrobes big style. Lots of stuff will be upcycled, lots of things will be looking for new homes on eBay and now we have well organised clothes and much less of them :)
We checked out the first episode of a brand new Marvel TV show called Legion. I won't share anything about it on here as I think it's good to go in blind like we did. The first episode was brilliant and the show should be a real hit.
Marvel have just released this little teaser for the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War film. This will see many of the heroes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe meet in one film. We'll have Avengers, Guardians Of The Galaxy and Spider-Man plus many others I expect.
Marvel are continuing to put out great content, I really hope that can maintain these high standards.
Today turned into another on of those delightful lazy Saturdays. We woke up, watched the snow and had plans but instead had breakfast and then jut chilled out.
The evening was spent watching another of Netflix's excellent Original series. A Series of Unfortunate Events recounts the tragic tale of the Baudelaire orphans -- Violet, Klaus, and Sunny – whose evil guardian Count Olaf will stop at nothing to get his hands on their inheritance. The siblings must outsmart Olaf at every turn, foiling his many devious plans and disguises, in order to discover clues to their parents’ mysterious death.
It's not a show that you have to think about but it is most enjoyable. Neil Patrick Harris puts in a great performance as the many faces of Count Olaf. Another big thumbs up to Netflix for delivering another good Netflix Original series:
Well it's been a busy old week and I crashed out fairly early much to the amusement of everyone around me. After a quick nap I came round and it was time for our intrepid adventurers to set off again on another hunt in Kingdom Death: Monster. Tonight we started off by taking on The Butcher.
Sam had warned us that this one was likely to be a tough challenge from watching play throughs on Youtube. Tonight though the dice were in our favour and we dispatched our foe with relative ease and NO casualties either.
One trip back to base later we then headed out on another hunt to take on a White Lion, this time at level two. I guess we were overly confident following our meeting with The Butcher. We should have known better! It wasn't long before we were taking casualties and three of the four in our party were dead. It really went down to the wire in the end with my character finally claiming the victory one turn before I was likely to also meet my maker! Phew!
Toni has been busy beavering away in create mode for GlitzKraft and has come up with a couple of great ideas. First up is a wonderful Toadstool house that could be used as a door stop or just as a nice decorative piece.
She has also created these lovely sun and moon wall hangings:
First bit of news is that Phoebe Waller-Bridge in talks to get a key role in the upcoming Han Solo movie. Rumour has it that this will be a CGI based character like K-2SO or Chewbacca.
In other Han Solo news Danny Glover met up with Billy Dee Williams for lunch and talked about playing Lando! Danny Glover could do far worse than speaking to the original Lando to help him develop his new role as the young Lando.
Here's the latest episode of The Star Wars show where they discuss the new Marvel Comics crossover story, Star Wars Celebration and more stuff from the set of Rogue One. There's also a guest appearance from Against Me's Laura Jane Grace.
...and speaking of the comics crossover. This will run with a one shot and then continue in the Star Wars and Doctor Aphra comics.
In one of those 'if only' moments, we had Marvel's Dareveil actress Rosario Dawson state that she would love to play a live action version of Ahsoka Tano. This would be so cool to see Ahsoka transition from the animated to live action.
Disney Parks have announced that they are targetting 2019 for the opening of their new Star Wars Land. Here's their PR:
Our new Star Wars-themed lands at Disneyland park and Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be opening in 2019! Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger just made the announcement many of you have been so anxious to hear during today’s Walt Disney Company Q1 FY17 Earnings call.
As we’ve shared, the Star Wars-themed lands are the largest-ever, single-themed land expansions at Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts. At each location, guests will be transported to a never-before-seen planet – a remote trading port and one of the last stops before wild space – where Star Wars characters and their stories come to life. Check out some of our earlier images, including a glimpse at one of the signature attractions which lets you take the controls of the Millennium Falcon!
There will be more exciting updates to share in the future as work progresses on each of these galactic lands. Keep checking the Disney Parks Blog for the latest.
Disney Parks weren't really high on my 'must do' list but I'd change that view once they've got this Star Wars Land stuff live :)
The question that a lot of people are asking at the moment is when we are likely to see a trailer or behind the scenes video for Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. I've expecting this PR machine to start turning around the time of Star Wars Celebration which is April 13th - 16th. In the meantime here's a few stills:
Tonight Sam, Zoe and I played another 'year' of Kingdom Death: Monster. We had a good hunt taking on the Screaming Antelope and this time round we had no casualties with every party member making it back to base alive.
The game just gets more and more enjoyable as it goes on. Everything just seems to work when you play it with little need to consult the rulebook for clarification. Dice rolls proved a bit of an issue in tonight's session which mean that taking down the Screaming Antelope took far longer than we were comfortable with but thankfully it didn't decimate our numbers before we could kill it off.
Netflix have released some trailers for some of their new and returning shows to whet the appetite.
The latest show in the Marvel universe is Iron First in another Netflix exclusive. This will introduce to the final hero of the upcoming The Defenders series. I wasn't too sure about this one but the trailer has certainly got me interested and if it's up there with Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Luke Cage then we'll have another winner on our hands. Two trailers have now been released:
I am going to cheat on this next one. It has been announced that The OA has been renewed for a second season. The first one was excellent so I can't wait to see where they take things next. There is no teaser for this one so here's the trailer for the first season :)
Netflix have excelled themselves with the Netflix Original shows and they've upped the ante for 2017 with lots more to come. Here's a brief flip through some of those titles.
So, today we opted for breakfast from Richard's. I decided to not have bacon or bread. Breakfast was just as good as it usually is but I didn't have bacon or bread. This felt good.
Toni and I did have some plans for various bits of tidying up and decluttering but they were suspended in favour of chilling out and listening to very loud music to annoy the neighbours LOL.
Tonight the dinner that I made myself contained NO meat. It was a crunchy salad which was joined by oven roasted potato, sweet potato, parsnip and mushrooms. Today has been sponsored by NO meat and I feel great. Apparently that's a thing now, who knew? LOL
In other news the bold adventurers set out on another hunt in Kingdom Death: Monster and returned to camp with only casualty this time but we did repeat the Fuzzy Groin challenge again!
Things went critical at work first thing this morning and we were at DEFCON one for most of the day. I spent the day working with the Tech Support guys trying to do some root cause analysis and then to try and get things back up and running again.
The day was quite stressful but I took the initiative to keep things under control and got senior management to delegate decision making to me so that we could just get on with things. It all took longer than it should have but that was down to a lack of escalation at the start and some misinformation along the way but we soon worked out our course of action and had everything running smoothly again.
I'm starting to remember how much I love doing all that elbow deep troubleshooting and problem solving stuff so it was good to be back doing it again.
Well today was a VERY interesting one. Over time we've had some problems building up due to senior management ignoring our advice, guidance and warnings in favour of playing politics. I don't do politics, I just want to get things done.
As we finally started to go critical today there was an emergency conference call to discuss the way forward. Things started off with the usual political bull from the CEO of our division which just annoyed me so I let him have it big style. Both barrels of THE TRUTH. No politics just cold hard facts. It was somewhat cathartic. My point was made and we then resumed the business of finding a way to fix our problems. Hate to say we told you so LOL
My boss commented afterwards that my rant was going to entertain him for weeks or months (he's a political type and isn't used to people standing up to those that the top). It was all good though as I've had further discussions with said CEO without the need for ranting :) We are now moving on with plans and everyone is happy with how we are progressing.
Tonight we cracked out Sam's new pride and joy, a game called Kingdom Death: Monster. He's been banging on about it for age and finally managed to get hold of a copy.
It's a very clever game with some great mechanics and is full of humour. This little bugger was a challenge to kill off.
We have you surrounded!
You know I mentioned humour before? Well Sam defeated the lion and here's how and what he received as a reward.
Both Zoe and I loved playing it and we'll be continuing our quest in an ongoing campaign!
Despite claims from National Rail that everything was good with the lines today I decided to play it safe and work from home rather than risk another journey of disappointment. I figured I'd let it all get back to normal properly today and then all will be good tomorrow. Thankfully it was a nice easy working day so I started and finished on time.
The evening was spent catching up with last nights WWE Royal Rumble.
This was a pretty good show. Charlotte retained her RAW Women's Championship against Bayley in a match she probably should have lost. Kevin Owens put on a blistering WWE Universal Championship title defence against Roman Reigns with both men taking some crazy bumps. Comedy was provided by Chris Jericho who was locked in a shark cage above the ring to prevent him interfering. Ironically Braun Strowman appeared and decimated Reigns allowing Owens to get an easy pin.
Neville finally got what he believed he deserved by defeating Rich Swann for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. Sadly the Cruiserweight division and their 205 Live show don't get the recognition they deserve as there is some great talent among these guys.
Match of the night for me was AJ Styles v John Cena for the WWE Championship. AJ is one of my favourites in the WWE at the moment and he never turns in a bad performance. In this match he made John Cena raise his game several notches allowing them both to really shine. Sadly Cena won the match and took the belt from Styles but he had to work hard for it.
The Royal Rumble match was an entertaining affair with lots of fun moments. It was nice to see The Undertaker back again but he seems to be working injured which made him less effective than usual. We had expected Roman Reigns to walk away the victor when he ended up being the 30th entrant so it was a pleasant surprise to see Randy Orton walk away the victor.
It was another day for chilling. Chilling is good given the hellish week that I've had.
We watched the latest episode of Taboo (see Thursday's blog on my views on that) and burned through the first four episodes of the silliness that is Legends Of Tomorrow.
A weekend of doing bugger all and relaxing was much needed. Let's see what next week has in store. Bring it on!
As I had an early night last night I ended up waking up pretty refreshed today. It was a novelty to actually get up at a reasonable time and start doing stuff. Well there had been a plan but that kind of went by the wayside LOL.
I did manage to get a whole load of my eBay sales all packaged up and ready to send though. As a little treat we all had breakfast from Richard's today. Toni had been avoiding it of late but decided to indulge and thankfully had no adverse reactions.Toni had to pop out briefly to see to a poorly Jade to make sure that she was OK and when she returned we decided to suspend all plans in favour of chilling out.
We did a massive binge of Backstrom. The series got better and better and had a brilliant finale. We were gutted to find out that sadly it had been cancelled and so that single series is all there is. Such a shame that another series that we thought was great has being the victim of TV company executives.
We finished the night off watch NXT TakeOver: San Antonio. This was another excellent WWE show were the talent that aren't on the main roster showed that they are far more entertaining than those that sit at the top of the company. Contender match was the Fatal Four Way for the Women's Championship with Asuka seeing off Billie Kay, Peyton Royce and Nikki Cross. Asuka rightfully retained her title but it was a shame that there was more focus on the push that Billie Kay and Peyton Royce are getting as opposed to Nikki Cross who I think is the better wrestle of the three.
The real highlight though was Shinsuke Nakamura versus Bobby Roode for the NXT Championship. This was a real corker of a match with both guys pulling all the stops. I was gutted that Nakamura lost his title so soon after winning it back from Samoa Joe but I am sure we'll get to see a series between him and Roode and that he'll get it back again soon.
It was another early start today and it's really starting to be hard work. On the plus side I had a breakfast date with Andre (my old boss) which made a nice deviation from the norm. Delicious food, a hot drink, and good conversation actually made the day far more bearable than it should have been. I'd really like him to be my boss again ;)
Sam really brightened my day up though when he sent me this wonderful Star Wars image! It really made me smile and the rest of the day was much better after that.
Our travel back was slightly improved because Sam was feeling ill and was sent home early which meant we could grab a much earlier train from Victoria. For the first time since Monday we actually got home at our usual time.
Getting up early and all the additional travel was really draining and wiped me out so I ended up going to bed much too soon for a Friday night LOL.
I really hope they get everything fixed up over the weekend so that the trains are back to normal.
It was announced last night that New Eltham station would be closed until the end of the week. This meant that Sam and I would be continuing our nightmare journeys. We decided to leave half an hour earlier with a view to getting a jump on the crowds. This did prove to be successful going in but our return journey was still via Victoria and so we were doing much longer days that we liked.
Toni and I stared watching the new BBC series Taboo tonight.
It's a brilliant show, quite dark but carries some humour too. Adventurer James Keziah Delaney (played by Tom Hardy), long believed to be dead, returns home to London from Africa in 1814 in order to inherit his late father's shipping empire. All is not what it seems, however, as Delaney encounters numerous enemies intent on making his life back in the United Kingdom very difficult. Focused on building a shipping empire to rival the imperious East India Company, Delaney's other wish to seek vengeance for his father's death means conspiracy, betrayal and bloodshed are also in the cards. As he works to accomplish that, Delaney must also navigate increasingly complex territories in order to avoid his own death sentence.
Hardy is excellent in his role as Delaney and the supporting cast is made up of faces old and new. The casting in general is superb and everyone fits perfectly with the excellent script. The costumes and set are also really well executed and the recreated old London town is great.
If you haven't come across it yet then here's a trailer. The series is on BBC iPlayer if you want to indulge.
Sadly our prayers hadn't been answered as we headed to work today with the news that Sidcup station would be closed and so we had to go to Eltham once again. Additional travel is not what you need to add to a stressful working week! The boards were looking like this again:
To compound matters with the Lewisham derailment yesterday we also had a train problem at Kidbrooke.
We had hoped that getting back home would be easier but everything was shot to shit at Cannon Street so we decided to hop on the Circle Line and get the train from Victoria back to Eltham. This journey was easier and at least we got a seat on the train. It might have been easier but we also got home much later than usual.
In more positive news Toni had a great day today. She will be working as temporary cover for Wicca Moon and did her training day today and everything went fabulously well :)
