'Iron Man 3' Movie Release: And Other May Things to Be Excited About
Mostly to get myself hyped for the month ahead, I’m going to be doing a “What to be excited about this month” post to kick off each month. In typical blogging fashion, I will limit this to broad topics like sports, movies, and TV and not the things I’ll personally be looking forward to, like how tight my Memorial Day tank top should be (I still haven’t decided!!!). Feel free to see what you might've missed in prior months:
Sports - The Kentucky Derby, May 4
May is always a big month for the irregular sports fan. There's a lot of competition. You've got the NBA Draft Lottery on the 21, The French Open in the final week of the month, The X Games Barcelona from the 9-12 and the Indy 500 on May 26. Here's the thing, the Derby is only two minutes, and the "fastest wins" concept is so easy to follow, nearly everyone can appreciate this cultural blip on their Saturday afternoon. Also on the plus side, the country seems to have made a collective decision to give gambling a pass for the Derby, and if you haven't had next week's lunch money on the line as those horses come pounding around the last turn, you haven't lived!
How excited should you be? If you like mint juleps, big hats, making "his mudda was a mudda" jokes, losing 10% of your paycheck on an ill-advised Superfecta, saying "screw the damn julep! Just make it a bourbon," and slowly feeling the sting of defeat fade off with the light of a Saturday sunset, then you should be as excited as this horse:
Movies - Iron Man 3, May 3
Already on pace to out-gross The Avengers worldwide, there was really no competition here ... well, there was actually a hell of a lot of competition, but anyone who thinks After Earth, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast & Furious 6, or The Hangover Part III are going to hit the box office as hard as Tony Stark is obviously no genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist. The Marvel machine is currently at the height of its considerable powers, and we've all drank the palladium-resistant kool-aid that keeps Tony Stark and this mega-franchise alive. If any of the other blockbuster franchises released in May out-grosses Iron Man 3 at the global box office, I will grow my facial hair into an egotistical goatee.
How excited should you be? As long as you're not some anti-franchise, hipster goon, then you should be be this excited:
Television: Uh, just keep watching what you're watching.
So after a very intense 10 minutes of Google research, I found that there are actually no new shows to be excited about in May, unless you're super into the new Avengers Assemble cartoon coming out on Disney XD (a 1-hr season preview on May 26). It's kind of okay. We've got Mad Men and Game of Thrones delivering emotional and physical death at an epic scale respectively, the New Girl gang is finally getting busy in the boudoir, and the list of movies above that aren't Iron Man 3 all still appear to be worth the price of admission. It's a good month for entertainment. It just happens to be the entertainment you already know.
How excited should you be? Considering you're gauging your excitement on the status quo, you should probably land somewhere in the following spectrum of emotion:
[gif from wtfsignmeup]
Books: Inferno by Dan Brown
I've always argued that people have a more intimate relationship with books than anything supplied in the digital age. Forging a world via text just requires a more active engagement from the imagination of the consumer than anything visual medium provides. That said, unlike TV, people today have their discretionary time so split across mediums that no one I know is so well read that there's a lack of high caliber material in libraries, thus requiring the need for new. So when it comes to new books, Robert Langdon once again traipsing through history, art and puzzles edges out the prolific James Patterson's 12th of Never (a hot item for anyone who enjoys the Women's Murder Club). There's simply more fans.
How excited should you be? If this gif of Robert Langdon colliding with cryptic symbols and religious power gives you a warm fuzzy, then this book's arrival tops the excitement for your Sunday sudoku!
Miscellaneous: Memorial Day!!!
Sun's out? Guns out! I knew I said I wouldn't talk about my excitement for the Memorial Day tanktop, but spring has commenced into summer, bringing forth a new, more scantily-clad life. Plus, we get a Monday off of work! It's summer, baby! Let's celebrate it! Get out on the boat! Fire up the grill! Toss some cornhole! Prove to everyone (and most importantly, yourself) that you can still drink a case of beer in a day! I don't care what you do, but you should do something to cap off the spring. This is a holiday of possibility. Accept the challenge of what might be. After all, it's not the month of Can.
Continue to be excited for the month of May by following Dustin at @dustinriedesel.
