The One About Edmond Losing His Mind By Visiting West Texas in July

I totally forgot to post a blog about my West Texas adventures. You know how much I travel. By that I mean hardly at all. So my going someplace far away...further away than, say, Austin...and for a few days is a huge deal in my life.

I posted these pics on my Facebook and through Twitter. There really isn't much to say that these samples can't tell. My solo jaunt was fun, educational and finally off my bucket list.

My five-day drive into Big Bend territory include quick stops at Fort Davis (well, the McDonald Observatory, anyway), Alpine (Museum of the Big Bend), Marfa (just my luck, a passing thundershower screws with my effort to see the lights) and the ghost town of Terlingua (where local craft beer was to be enjoyed).

Camping out in Big Bend itself was cool in that I didn't set myself up with ridiculously high expectations, such as attempting to climb Emory Peak. I settled for more scalable hikes...hikes in the mid-afternoons, completely by myself and virtually nobody else around for miles at times. Oh sure, Boquillas Canyon would've been more enjoyable if I could've actually step down to the Rio Grande's banks, had it not been for - ahem - friendly crossing illegals loudly reminding me not to look their way.

Then there was the 4-mile, 2-hour, round-trip walk to/from the Windows Arch. No shade, flat, rocky ground, NOBODY for miles around. I do believe I almost began hallucinating just before I could finally reach my car at the end of my journey. A 4-mile, 2-hour walk/hike may not be a big deal to you. It is when you barely have enough water to survive a relentless sun. Didn't help reading that, the week before, a Texas State geology student was found dead in Big Bend park while doing research. Eesssh.

Wish there were more time to hike other places around Big Bend. Wish there were more time to stop by all the other little towns in the region. Wish this for that, and so forth. I realize I'm far behind many of my friends and colleagues when it comes to traveling, to all those exciting adventures. An exhausting drive to and from the Big Bend, with all the hikes that came with it, in a few days may not seem terribly impressive to the veteran traveler or the experienced hiker.

For me, it was a trip to savor for a lifetime. I shot my mouth off about it plenty of times beforehand, never really able to take advantage of any seemingly clear opportunities previously. This trip, while preferable in spring or fall, came about by circumstances in my life and I made the most of it. Neither bears nor lions or javalinas could stop me. No regrets.

Lowered Expectations Could Make You Happier

Stop having unrealistic expectations about such hotly (and nervously) anticipated TV shows and movies such as the Netflix "Arrested Development." It's like some of you wanted it to be 2003-2006 all over again but then again you didn't. So what do you really want? It's like you're happy there are new episodes and then one episode in, you wish it would be dead for good. Stop. It.

And yes we knew it would be Khan as the villain in Star Trek Into Darkness and yes some of us knew it would be like The Wrath of Khan. (Don't blame just Entertainment Weekly for its oversight.) You want to really like "Into Darkness" and yet something holds you back from doing so? Good lord. It's got action, twists (silly as some of them might be). Oh, you really want your love for the movie to be validated. And yet, it doesn't happen.

Some of us have read most if not all the released "A Game of Thrones" books, so some of us knew the time for the infamous "red wedding" would be soon upon us. My God, it's like Twitter broke down and cried for three days after the TV series scene aired, finally, in its bloody glory and some of us are surprised it actually happened? What's with you people?

"Iron Man 3" ups the ante with its share of violence, in-your-face CGI action, anti-heroism, twists (including another Iron Man villain who doesn't turn out to the bad guy that many of us expected) and, while it's a vast improvement over "Iron Man 2," it doesn't come close to the first film.

It's true of human nature to have high expectations - or our ideal visions of what should be and what could be - when it comes to certain things in pop culture. The disappointment level in specific character turns in Iron Man 3 and the whole idea of even the existence of sequels to "The Hangover" are tantamount to our freak-outs over The Godfather Part 3, Star Wars Episode 1, and the Lost and Battlestar Galactica finales.

Now imagine all the irrational expectations that led up to the release of "Man of Steel." From the trailers early on, it looked kinda sorta kinda sorta like the original Superman except it appeared more more like Superman II. It ended up being both those flicks meeting Watchmen with a liberal dose of grandiose moroseness and numbing CGI'd violence.

I'm okay with the movie. I didn't terribly mind the non-linear style of storytelling. But with all the pre-screening conceptions and expectations, while I didn't think "Man of Steel" would ever top the original "Superman" movie in any way, I figured it would be way better than "Superman Returns." Instead, those two are roughly on par with one another. Henry Cavill makes a fine Superman (don't know yet really Clark Kent) and Amy Adams almost erases Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane from our memory banks, but the cons nearly outnumber the pros.

Think of the cons (in my opinion): No "kneel before Zod!"; we barely have a Jenny Olson instead of the ol' reliable Jimmy Olson; no slight campy comical feel that every comic book adaptation deserves; an exhaustible second half that almost makes the first half seem tame and moot by comparsion; an overwrought, overlong, mind-numbing Zod/Superman fight scene that nearly makes the alley fistfight scene from "They Live" between Roddy Piper and Keith David look like Oscar-winning material; a cartoonishly thorough demolition of Smallville and Metropolis where a body count soars and yet you don't care about anybody thanks to the emotional disconnect. And Zod gets dealt with like THAT? You're kidding. At about two hours into it, you instead care about how soon the movie ends. Not soon enough. You tried, Zack Snyder, you tried. But you also tried too hard. You and Christopher Nolan overthought it. "Man of Steel" is exciting yet joyless.

Now we get word that, indeed, Christian Bale won't play Batman once more and that, while "Man of Steel 2" is in the works, whatever Justice League movie becomes a reality won't do so for some time to come. Our insanely high expectations of a Justice League movie - our varying versions of what it proper one could and should be - are tempered by the mixed results of the DC Comics/Warner Bros. movies outside of The Dark Knight trilogy. Our cynicism in DC comic book adaptations such as Superman Returns and The Green Lantern makes us have pessimism for future DC film efforts to the point of developing ulcers.

If the violence was/is too much in "Man of Steel" and in "The Lone Ranger" -- itself a strange, loud, annoying, bombastic, outrageously violent, misguided, needlessly overlong TV-to-cinema adaptation -- there's too little of the graphic carnage translation from the book version of "World War Z" to the film version. There's too little of everything from the book that's missing from the movie. I guess we knew that, based upon pre-screening trailers and online reports, "World War Z" the film was going to be VERY LOOSELY BASED on the book. And boy, is it in almost every conceivable way. C'mon, not even hints of the battle of Yonkers, the South African solution or the hell on Earth known as Iceland?

As a movie in itself, not considering the source material, "World War Z" is a serviceable, entertaining flick. It's apparent that the story developers and the screenwriters, including interestingly enough Damon Lindelof and J. Michael Stracyznski, took cues from two Spielberg movie adaptations, "War of the Worlds" and "Jurassic Park," to put together a PG-13 zombie movie for the casual fan. But no doubt, "World War Z" is/was unfilmable in a Hollywood big budget way. What would work better? A TV series. The book works better as a TV series. I think the world is big enough for two serialized zombie dramas.

So here we are at the summer movie season midpoint (a summer of rage, one Twitter movie geek described it as) and, perhaps aside from some parts of "Star Trek Into Darkness," not one film this summer has wowed me.

What has met or exceeded my expectations.  Well, "This Is The End" - for one, amazingly enough - did the trick. Then there's "Pacific Rim," which only nourished my inner geek fandom for all things robots and giant monsters. Oh God, critic Roger Moore (not James Bond's Roger Moore)...take his critique of "Pacific Rim" as an example of simply not getting it: "dumb"..."suspend all belief."

Dude, IT'S GIANT MONSTERS VS. GIANT ROBOTS! What's there to understand? It is a fun movie from start to finish. My lord, you have: Charlie Day from "It's Always Sunny..." and "Horrible Bosses;" a relevation in Rinko Kikuchi; probably the next James Bond (or should possibly be the next Doctor Who) in Idris Elba; Ron Perlman doing his best Ron Perlman imitation; Owen from "Torchwood"; odes to "Independence Day" and "Starship Troopers"...what more do you want? Heck, I want Kaiju and Jaeger action figures. Really, you're gonna go see "Grown Ups 2" over this? It's not the most original, Oscar-worthy movie ever, but it's close to a near-perfect summer flick as you'll get in 2013...and before we get another Godzilla reboot on the big screen.

My hope had been that something during the latter part of this summer, on the big or small screen, would doubly reinforce my faith in television or cinematic entertainment. "The Wolverine" and "Elysium" didn't quite do that. " Sure, it's disappointing but not surprising "The Wolverine" didn't totally faithfully follow Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's famed 1982 comic book miniseries. Heck, the movie didn't even list Claremont or Miller as credit for the original story. But I think many of us expect different things from a Wolverine-only/not-so-really X-Men flick.

He kills a lot of Yakuza, yes.  Does he massacre a lot of ninjas? No. Is it a gritty, dark, noir-ish cinematic version of the comic book? For the most part, no, but in the same vein it's not comic bookish like most superhero movies. It's still a human drama about Wolverine/Logan trying to escape his mutant past. It's a crime drama that gets out of hand. We could've done without all the Jean Grey flashbacks. They almost remind us too much of the disasters that were X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The end is a tad absurd. But the end credit scene sets things up nicely for X-Men: Days of Future Past. A good try for director James Mangold, but not totally satisfying.

Not totally satisfying is a way to sum up "Elysium," Neill Bloemkamp's follow-up to his excellent "District 9." It's essentially the same story: A schism between two societies; a hard-luck case who's forced by circumstances to the extremes and ends up redeeming himself and practically changing "the way things are." But with District 9, Bloemkamp skillfully weaved some semblance of character development that's allowable in a sci-fi/action film, with decent acting, a solid script and a desire to keep you hanging until the very end to see how it all turns out.

That's not the case with Elysium. Visually like with District 9, it's stunning, with the 1970s conceptual art of future human outer space habitats come to life. The scenes of desolation, poverty, disease and desperation of 22nd century Earth contrasted with the almost surreal artificial perfection and beauty aboard Elysium are stark and overwhelming. Then you have a rather unoriginal plot, with stock characters portrayed by otherwise great actors, and a predictable ending. And you can't forget what is fast becoming a trademark of Bloemkamp films: lots of explosions or gory destruction of organic beings and robots.

Well, I'm still looking at you "The World's End" to provide me with some giddiness as this summer movie season comes to a close. But expectations aren't as high with that as they are with the now unfolding final episodes of "Breaking Bad" and - woo boy, JJ Abrams' Star Wars Episode 7.

The amazing awesomeness of "The Avengers" movie has us so giddy for more Marvel comic book adaptations that we fans are now overthinking the smallest things. Consider the worry some of us fans have about "S.H.I.E.L.D.," the Marvel TV series. Take a look at online talk of ongoing production for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Look at the chatter for Thor: The Dark World, which lost its composer and its director is under fire.

It's nice to dream of "what could and should be" in your favorite TV shows and films, but there's a reasonable limit. Perhaps some producers and writers want to take acceptable risks. If there's a sense that certain risks ultimately fall flat, maybe not all the fault lies with those writers and producers.