To use an analogy, the original Lilo and Stitch, as a meme, would be a hand-drawn and lettered piece of art that would bring both a chuckle and a tear to the eyes of children and parents alike.

The 2025 live action remake is like the meme above, something that I thought would be cute, but threw together with mimimal effort and little attention to detail.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

This afternoon, after convincing myself that I did not need to spend $500 on a Romanian Mosin-Nagant or $2300 on a 1943 USMC M1903*, I noticed a new entry in the “Get yourself a little something on your way out” refrigerator next to checkout at Cabela’s.

That, friends and neighbors, is the Black Rifle Coffee Company “Freedom Punch” Energy Drink. It packs 200mg of caffeine into a 16 ounce can of fruity, zero sugar, goodness.

I tell you what, when I cracked that bad boy open, I felt a distant rumble of thunder and heard the cry of a bald eagle in a mountain pass. The light carbonation tickled my nose like the smell of napalm in the morning, and the effervescent taste of 1989 MRE cool-aid served in a Vietnam-era canteen cup made my day just a little brighter.

After sipping my way down to the bottom of the can, I felt my pulse quicken, my senses sharpen, and my spirit preparing itself to storm whatever objectives the day could throw at me.

Seriously, it wasn’t bad. It was very much on the sweet side for me, and probably could benefit from additional tartness. Irish Woman has developed a taste for Alani energy drinks, and the BRCC was head and shoulders better tasting than the one, count them, one Alani I have subjected myself to.

Cost was about par for an energy drink. Cabela’s was selling them for $2.99 apiece, and Amazon has them at $25 for 12.

200mg of caffeine is about what you’d get from two to three cups of strong coffee, so you should probably take that into account in your daily intake tracker. It can take me about an hour to drink several cups of coffee in a social setting, less when it’s fuel for work, but I downed this thing in about 10 minutes. The energy surge I got afterward wasn’t as drastic as the Fort Bragg Turkish Coffee Incident of 2000, but it was quite noticable.

On the plus side, each can comes with 100% of your daily recommended value for Vitamin B12, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Pantothenic Acid, (Vitamin B5)and Biotin (Vitamin B7). It has 160mg of sodium, which is slightly less than you find in the recommended serving size of Cheez-It crackers.

Overall, if energy drinks are your preferred method of your daily deilvery to your personal caffeine monkey, the BRCC Freedom Punch is definitely worth a try.

*I did not need these things, but I so, so wanted them. Darn this sense of responsibility and being an adult.

Over on her YouTube channel, Jill Bearup has been doing a series of posts that have had me in stitches. During this serialization of both a novel and her interactions with her main character while writing it, she points out almost exactly how things go when you’re trying to put a story together. I especially love how the character eventually goes off the rails in relation to how the author wants things to go.

If you’re a writer, this may give you a case of the giggles. If you’re a reader, it’ll give you a good story to follow and some insight as to what writers go through.

Her entire channel is a great resource for armor and medieval combat for the stage. I’m working my way through so that my own writing gets better.

Enjoy!

Alternate title – Crouching Panther, Hidden Avenger.

Marvel’s newest contribution to its already huge collection of popcorn movies, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, is a fun, engrossing ride that holds on and doesn’t let go.  If you enjoyed the Avengers, you’ll love this one.

I won’t give a plot synopsis other than to say that the film includes one of the most romantic ass-kickings I’ve ever seen.  It is studded with martial-arts sequences and just enough comedy to remind you that it’s a comic-book movie.  If well-done martial arts movies set in either a classical or modern Chinese setting are your thing, this one is definitely up your alley.

The acting in the movie is superb.  Simu Liu stars as Shang-Chi. His ability to work both the emotional and physical side of his character make Shang-Chi real from the first scene.  He is supported by a strong cast of notable actors, including Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung Chiu Wai.  A surprisingly strong performance by Awkwafina as Katy, his friend/love interest, filled out the cast and added some light-hearted levity to what could easily have become a much heavier and darker story.

The movie runs at over two hours, but it didn’t feel like it.  The plot moves quickly, pausing only a few times to expand on one point or another.  The characters are thrown down a rabbit hole and keep running until the very end.

Like all Marvel movies, Shang-Chi is targeted at younger people, but older folks who enjoyed the rest of the MCU should also enjoy it.  A good portion of the movie is in Chinese with subtitles, so if you’re watching with younger children who can’t read quickly, you may have to provide some help so they can keep up with the dialogue.  Other than a bit of mild cursing, though, Shang-Chi is appropriate for youngsters who can handle The Avengers or Spiderman movies.  That’s right, Shang-Chi is for the children.

So, if you’re in need of a couple of hours where you can just absorb a fast-paced action movie with outstanding acting, amazing visuals, and great characters, you really ought to check out Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Sarah Hoyt begins another engrossing series with Other Rhodes:

Lily Gilden has a half-crazed cyborg in her airlock who thinks he’s Nick Rhodes,
a fictional 20th Century detective. If she doesn’t report him for destruction,
she’s guilty of a capital crime.

But with her husband missing, she’ll use every clue the cyborg holds,
and his detective abilities, to solve the crime her husband was investigating
when he disappeared.

With the help of a journalist who is more than he seems,
Lily will risk everything to plunge into the interstellar underworld
and bring the love of her life home!

Mrs. Hoyt’s greatest talent as a storyteller is to mold characters that spring from the pages fully formed, and Lilly is one of her finest creations so far. She is quickly painted as a loving wife to Joe, the jaded detective with a starship. But when things go sideways, she quickly evolves into the heroine, doing everything she can to save her man.

If you’re a fan of hard-boiled detective novels, Other Rhodes will be like slipping into your favorite fedora and trench coat for a midnight stroll down by the docks. The story moves quickly, and where it surprises, it does so in a way that puts a great twist to a familiar story.

This is a quick read, and would be perfect for a summer afternoon by the pool. Like the best of Agatha Christie or Mickey Spillane, Other Rhodes is appropriate for readers from teenagers to their grandparents. Mrs. Hoyt takes her time to fill in the broad strokes of a universe in our distant future, all while filling it with the characters and forces familiar to all of us.

For anyone who has enjoyed a dime-store detective novel or just likes solid, character-driven science fiction, Other Rhodes is highly recommended.

Alma Boykin delves deeper into her characters in Malevolently Familiar:

Caught between the Old Lands and the New . . .

Less than a month after confronting an ancient evil, Lelia Chan, her Familiar Tay, and their allies meet an unmovable object. Meister Gruenewald needs their help. A new danger rises across the Great Sea, one that requires more than just his knowledge and power.

What Lelia and Master Saldovado find in the Old Land triggers a race. Can the shadow mages and their Hunter allies bring a power-obsessed sorcerer to justice? Or will his twisted idea of paradise destroy all they have fought to protect? Light-side magic workers have tried to stop the sorcerer, and paid with their lives, struck down by a creature from Elsewhere. One with a grudge.

Worse than death awaits Lelia and her chosen family if they fail.

Like all of the stories in this series, the best part of Malevolently Familiar is the characters and how they interact.  Yes, there is action and suspense, but the true thread running through this tapestry is Lelia Chan’s family.  In this installment, we learn more about Lelia’s employer and semi-adopted father, Master Saldovado.  As this character fleshes out, Lelia herself is evolving from the young mage to an elder.  Looking back on how Lelia started out all those books ago, it’s amazing how well Ms. Boykin has created and molded her.

While this is not a swiftly paced story, it does not drag.  It’s not a simple read, but I found it an easy read.  Boykin’s style is straightforward without being sparse. As her characters move in and out of the story, the reader can easily see them and how their stories play out.  By now, we know almost all of them, but with each book, they come more sharply into focus.

If you’ve enjoyed the series so far, Malevolently Familiar will be like spending a week with old friends.

Alma Boykin’s 17th book in her Familiar Tales, Learnedly Familiar, continues a series that I can’t put down.

Where do you file a Missing Meister Report?

Something is moving. Arthur Saldovado, Lelia, and André defeated ancient evil, but mysteries remain. And worse – Arthur’s name-sake is learning how to drive! Who needs abyssal creatures when you have teenagers, school-yard spats, and retail woes to worry about? Certainly not Lelia Chan Lestrang.

When André’s mentor disappears, Lelia braces for the worst. Trouble’s coming, as bad perhaps as the evil that drew her and André together. But she has a few surprises of her own now, including allies in very strange places. With very strange senses of humor.

Return to a Familiar world, full of adventure, bad puns, dark music, magic, shedding lemurs, and domestic chaos.

Like the rest of the Familiar Tales, Learnedly Familiar is a character-based story centered around Lelia Chan and the people who make up her world.  Her husband and soulmate, Andre, continues to be the rock upon which her life is built.  Her children are growing up and discovering their own magical abilities.  The extended clan of old-world hunters that adopted her continues to develop as a cohort of new characters, enriching an already powerful gaggle of personalities.

And, hey, if a wise-aleck lemur, a pack of demented ferrets, and an oversized skunk with a Scarlett O’Hara accent don’t catch your attention, what will?

Ms. Boykin weaves a comfortable plot that has a thread of tension in it that grows until the very last scenes.  Story arcs that reach back several books continue here, but new patterns start to develop in each addition to the Familiar Tales tapestry.  The continuity throughout the series, coupled with fresh faces and adventures, keeps me coming back for more.

If you’re a fan of stories that pull together family, life, and just enough magic to keep things interesting, then Familiar Tales is a great series.  Start at the beginning, but be prepared to devour them until you’re caught up with Learnedly Familiar.