Monday Morning Movie Review: The Odyssey (2026)

Well, long after the brouhaha has passed, I’m finally doing it: writing my review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026). Dr. Wife and I saw it back on Saturday, 25 July 2026, in inglorious 2D (as opposed to glorious 3D or IMAX). Overall, we enjoyed it.

Before diving into the film itself, let me address the meta-narrative/-commentary around the film: the woke casting. Yes, Ellen Page (now going by “Elliott”) appears playing a Greek soldier. If you were going to cast a woman-pretending-she’s-a-man as a male Greek soldier, Ellen Page was about as benign as you could get. The role is a young man who is drafted, essentially, when he’s still a little boy, so he’s kind of gangly and weak, even after ten years at war. Ellen is dispatched in the first few minutes of the film, and only appears again as a shade from the Underworld, her figures so obscured by mud and her voice so obscured by scary audio effects that, at long last, she can actually pass as a man.

It’s the same for the other controversial casting decisions: Lupita Nyong’o as Helen (and Helen’s sister) and Zendaya as Athena. As much as I loved the “Helen of Detroit” memes and thought it was kind of ridiculous to cast the incredibly black (but still beautiful, just not “Helen of Troy” beautiful) Nyong’o as a flaxen-haired Grecian super beauty, she appears only fleetingly in the flick. Zendaya’s casting is, perhaps, the most egregious, primarily because, well, she plays herself the entire time—making one or two facial expressions while wordlessly staring at Odysseus. At least here it makes sense, because (MINOR SPOILER ALERT) she’s basically a representation of his trauma over the atrocities he committed at Troy, so looking like a pouty bullfrog is a bit more excusable.

None of that is to endorse this casting—there were many superior choices to portray “the face that launched a thousand ships”—but to note these roles are fairly minor. Remember, Helen is the catalyst for The Iliad, which details the origins of the Trojan War; The Odyssey focuses on Odysseus’s long voyage home after the war. Matt Damon was convincing as Odysseus, and Anne Hathaway was exquisite as Penelope, Odysseus’s besieged but loyal wife.

One more note on the casting: the one time the diversity casting made me LOL was when the Indian actor portraying Odysseus’s lieutenant exclaimed, proudly, “We are Greeks!” It was so incongruous, it made me laugh. That is, perhaps, a commentary on the pitfalls of “woke” and/or DIE casting: there is a thing that it is to be “Greek”—or “Indian,” or “English,” etc.—and we all know, even if we don’t want to admit it, that a guy from the Indian subcontinent is not Greek (although I’m sure some wags would point to Alexander the Great’s conquests of the far western edges of India, or note the common Indo-European ancestry, etc., but let’s not get carried away with autistry here).

But I digress. What about the actual movie?

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Lazy Sunday CDIII: Bird Feeder Follies

Our bird feeder has been a source of much amusement and joy. It’s also yielded some fun YouTube content!

This Sunday, here’s a look back at some recent posts featuring our fine-feathered friends (and Nugget and a lizard):

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Chaplaincy

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This school year I began a new role at my school. My official title is “Chaplain and Chapel Coordinator,” which sounds both lofty and bureaucratic. Fortunately, it is neither.

My basic job is to organize the weekly Chapel services, which are Thursday mornings at our school. Initially, I thought I’d be delivering a short devotional or sermonette every Thursday, as our school chaplains have done traditionally. However, right before school began, the new headmaster told me he would like me to invite in members of our community to speak to the students; the Associate Head of School also requested that I invite students to perform music for some services.

Those were both fantastic ideas, and I was beginning to understand why “Chapel Coordinator” was part of my title: beyond merely giving a weekly devotional, I would be coordinating with multiple people from within and without the school.

With that mandate, I set about coordinating chapels for the first semester; at this point, I essentially have everyone scheduled through September; most of October; and most of November. I’m holding off on the two December dates, as those fall around the time of the annual Christmas Musical and the Christmas Concert, and I’m not sure what impact those will have on Chapel services just yet.

Today I though I’d give readers a glimpse into my new role: what I am planning, how it’s going so far, and what I hope to see unfold (lots of salvations, of course).

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Phone it in Friday CXLIII: YouTube Roundup CCIII: The Lizard Who Thinks He’s a Bird

Our little ten-dollar bird feeder has been a real blessing. We get to see all sorts of cardinals, finches, and wrens. Because our sunroom windows are tinted, we can get really close to the window to observe the birds.

What I wasn’t expecting was to find a lizard—probably an anole—hanging out in our bird feeder one day last week! And what’s remarkable is that the little guy has popped up on the feeder a few times since then.

Swoosh!

What’s it like when a lizard thinks it’s a bird? Do lizards pursue alternative lifestyles? Or is this lizard just beating the heat with some free food?

Let’s watch, shall we?

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TBT^256: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer

Months ago I soft-pitched the idea for a piece to Feigned Flight Magazine about the Mongols, specifically related to a question their editor and founder, Michael, posed: did the Mongols really contribute anything enduring to civilization? And, no, we’re not talking about yurts or horseback riding equipment or techniques; rather, did they contribute anything that left an indelible imprint beyond a handful of technological innovations?

The historical record seems to indicate that, while the Mongols certainly had a significant impact—destroying some insane percentage of the world’s population, along with countless cities and towns—they never seemed to develop a culture of their own that would come to dominate other cultures. Instead—as is often the case with nomadic steppe peoples—they adopted the cultures of their conquered peoples.

Certainly, something similar could be said of the Romans—they largely adopted Greek culture as their own—but even before their conquest of Greece, the Romans had a highly sophisticated religion, government, etc. It seems that the Mongols had a world-historic figure in the form of Genghis Khan—and that’s it. His empire barely lasted a century beyond his death. Perhaps his most impactful descendant, Kublai Khan, is more noteworthy for how quickly he abandoned the life of the steppe for the soft silks of Chinese civilization (although it is said that he maintained a patch of Mongol grass and dirt on his palace grounds so he would stay tied to his homeland).

I don’t want to write off the Mongols entirely, but my (admittedly very) preliminary research seems to indicate that any “contributions” they made were really detriments to human development and flourishing. “Spreading the bubonic plague” isn’t exactly a “contribution,” more of an unfortunate side effect of hordes of horsemen thundering across Eurasia, leaving a bloody trail as they went.

If the Mongols accomplished anything, it’s that their swath of destruction brought about the fanciful “Pax Mongolica,” or “Mongol Peace,” a period from roughly 1250-1350 AD in which there was relative stability on the central Asian steppe. That peace allowed trade to flow relatively unmolested along the Silk Road (although the accounts of Marco Polo and others make it clear that it was still a very violent place). As I told my students in World History, though, it was “the peace of the graveyard”—it’s easy to pacify a wild land when there’s no one left alive to challenge you!

It is interesting to ponder, though: perhaps the real “contribution” of nomadic peoples like the Mongols is that they cause settled agriculturalists to better defend themselves. It also seems that the absorption of nomads into settled society injects some steppe vigor into established civilizations: the barbarians are uncouth, but they’re alive. Also, for all the independence of the Mongols and other steppe tribes, they had a codependent relationship with settled civilizations: the former depended on the latter for supplies via trading or raiding. It is interesting to consider, too, that once having tasted the fruits of civilization, many nomads opted for that life over the rough-hewn existence of the plains.

All interesting points to consider and mull over—and hopefully turn into a more structured essay!

With that, here is 28 August 2025’s “TBT^16: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer“:

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Midweek Koi Pond Update VI: The Summer Doldrums

It’s been awhile since I wrote an update about our koi pond; the last time was mid-May of this year, when the pond was brimming with life. Temperatures were warm enough for the koi to come up regularly for feedings, and they were hungry—I was feeding them two or three times a day. The rosy red minnows also experienced a population boom, as dozens of the little guys and girls were hatching in the pond.

Fast forward to today (Dr. Wife’s birthday, by the way!), and the pond is in a bit of a doldrums. I suspect that the heat has driven the koi to the cooler, deeper waters, but even the minnows, which often stayed near the surface, have been more muted, even at feeding time. I’ve reduced feedings to once a day, and occasionally once every other day, but still have not seen much activity.

Dr. Wife was growing concerned, especially as I didn’t feed the fish for two days before her family paid a recent visit. I was hoping they’d be hankering for some Kaytee Koi’s Choice, but no dice—other than a brief splash from Sunny, the pond was quiet (the various water bugs and dragonflies, though, were quite active, enjoying sips of pond water). I proposed donning my swimming trunks and taking a dip in the green waters so I could feel around for the fish; she wisely countered that I should probably just get the net and skim through the pond.

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New Music Tuesday XXI: “Deep Chorale”

Yesterday morning I had a little bit of free time and a little bit of staff paper, so I jotted out a little chorale. I decided to write one in the bass clef, which I don’t usually do, and while I followed some of my own “rules” for these chorales, I also took quite a few liberties with them.

I imported the WAV of the finished product into Audacity, where I applied a “Medium Room” reverb filter; a “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect (one of my favorites); and a “Firm Bass” master effect. The result is this enigmatic, low-end-heavy chorale.

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Belated SubscribeStar Saturday: Casey Anthony vs. Lindsay Clancy

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The latest controversy to rock the Internet is a legitimately terrifying one: a mother slew all of her children in what appears to be a premeditated, carefully calculated manner, meticulously planned to concoct an insanity plea; and tens of thousands of women, if not more, are applauding her as some kind of hero for mental health advocacy.

It’s a horrifying example of how evil becomes so mundane, we risk celebrating it as some kind of positive good. It’s also an indication of how easily manipulable women are when a viewpoint—even an objectively evil and lethal one—gains enough consensus to be “popular.” Women are actively identifying with a woman who committed cold-blooded infanticide because “raising kids is hard.”

The bandwagoning of a certain group of women in favor of Lindsay Clancy got me thinking about the Casey Anthony case from over a decade ago. I remember the outcry in response to that case of infanticide was completely different. Most women abhorred Casey Anthony. I still remember when the verdict was announced. I was in the office, one of two men in what was otherwise an overwhelmingly white female office. Every single one of them lost it when Anthony was found “not guilty” of the core charges (but found guilty of some lesser chargers involving misleading the police). “How could she be found ‘not guilty’! She so clearly killed her child!” was the paraphrased howl of outrage.

At the time, I reasoned that women were so fascinated with the Casey Anthony case because it made them feel good about their mothering abilities. The thought process that simmered just below the surface seemed to be, “well, I may have made some mistakes, but I didn’t kill my kid, so I’m a Really Good Mom.” That the jury determined the prosecution could not prove Anthony’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt seemed not to matter at all—these ladies knew Anthony was guilty, evidence be damned. It was one of my first real glimpses into the hive mind of a certain segment of the female population.

Now we find women having a completely opposite reaction to Lindsay Clancy, who has admitted to slaying her children. Whereas the prosecution in the Anthony case relied on all manner of dubious forensic “evidence” to pursue a conviction (which, it seems, is why it ultimately failed), all of the grizzly facts are confirmed in the Clancy case. It’s not a question of whether she did kill her three young children—she did, and she admits it—it’s a question of her sanity at the time.

That’s one key difference between the cases. What intrigues me, though, is that women were so willing to send Anthony to the chair, but are celebrating Clancy. The former might have killed her child, but the State of Florida couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and women were furious. The latter did kill her children, and women are lauding her as a feminist icon. Have things changed so much after a decade-plus of wokery that women love infanticide?

Well, leaving abortion aside—perhaps the most devilish evidence of the self-destructive nature of modern women—I would propose another theory, one I have not seen discussed elsewhere: women hated Anthony because she was poor white trash; they defend Clancy because she’s an upper-middle class white professional. It’s a matter of class identity for them. It felt good for those same upwardly mobile women to dunk on the trailer park girl from Orlando—“she’s not one of us!”

But Clancy is one of them. She represents the apex of the “AWFL,” the Affluence White Female Liberal: a nurse living an affluent lifestyle with extensive medical and psychiatric support, as well as a doctor husband, who still wasn’t content. Indeed, she was so discontent, she murdered her own children—and, somehow, it’s her husband’s fault.

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Tattoos

My succulent paid subs—you have a belated edition of SubscribeStar Saturday coming your way imminently (coming 10 AM EST today, Monday, 24 August 2026). In the meantime, here’s a quick musing for the plebes. —TPP

I’m just old enough to remember a time when tattoos were taboo and trashy. The only people that had tattoos were the following:

  • Military veterans who had seen real combat
  • Motorcycle gang members
  • Tramps (remember the early 2000s “tramp stamp” lower back tattoo?)
  • Really rough lower-class types and/or people who were trying to emulate that style

Only the first two are acceptable. If you were at Iwo Jima, yeah, you’ve earned a tattoo of an angry fish or whatever. I remember in college (the early 2000s) the third—the “tramp stamp”—became more common among some women, but it was something that instantly marked a woman as having poor taste and impulse control. The male equivalent was that “tribal armband” thing.

Otherwise, tattoos were basically a form of self-medication for various forms of mental illness, like smoking cigarettes. Often, the overlap between the two—tattoos and tobacco consumption—were very high.

Now, everyone has them (well, not me). People reportedly get “addicted” to getting them (a common refrain I’ve heard from tattoo aficionados is that, once you get one, you want another).

I suspect their ubiquity now is indicative of our society’s general inability to think beyond immediate here and now. That used only be the purview of the fourth type on that list—those poor souls who are so diminished intellectually or developmentally or socially that they never learned—or were incapable of learning—impulse control. Now, it seems as those a vanishingly small number of people can think long-term.

Surely social media plays a role—as it always does—in both popularizing tattoos (“everyone” has one, so I should, too!) and in reducing our overall long-term planning abilities. Do I really want a tattoo of a flower that represents my deceased grandmother on my boob when I’m seventy? I don’t think people think it through.

I also suspect tattoos are a reflection of society’s increased nihilism. If everything is meaningless, then why bother with Beauty? Let’s just make ourselves and everything else ugly (ironically, I think some people get tattoos in an attempt to overcome their physical deficiencies; it’s rare—or used to be rare—for a gorgeous person to be covered in tattoos, but I’ve seen plenty of amorphous land whales with the physique of the Pokémon Ditto covered in tats and sporting bright blue hair). As always, nihilism is a blight on all things Pure and Good and True—and Beautiful.

To be clear, get your tattoo; it’s no skin (no pun intended) off my lower back. But I’ll judge you. You shouldn’t care about that, but if you do, it proves to me that you’re only getting the tattoo because you’re seeking external validation, so much so that some chubby raconteur on the Internet is getting a rise out of you.

God Gave you beautiful skin (ladies, listen up in particular). Don’t sully it with a spinning wheel that’s a metaphor for time or how your Mimi used to sew you a sweater. Mimi would rather her little apple dumpling have smooth, beautiful, unadorned skin, not a sick-green outline of a dove that starts to look like an amorphous blob after ten years.

Think ahead. Don’t be a putz. Tattoos are for military veterans and bikers, not corporate drones sending e-mails for a living.

Lazy Sunday CDII: Chapel Stuff

It’s been a Chapel-filled week here on the blog, so I’m dashing off this quick Lazy Sunday before dashing off to play bass at church:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP