#and like i've got plenty of issues with band of brothers but it just does it for me. idk. i'm complicated by avril lavigne

[mastersoftheair]

ok, so my own final (and very, very fresh) thoughts, bc i wanted to wait until i'd watched everything to make a sweeping opinion of the whole series, and it's quite opinionated. and long. probably too long. i write essays for fun (everyone point and laugh):

my personal (and very, very fresh) ranking of the hbo war shows (not including gen kill bc that's a different war, sorry) goes- band of brothers > masters of the air > the pacific (it's the same for my title score rankings. that hasn't changed yet)

my main points of contention with MotA are 1) the nine episodes, 2) the length of the episodes, and 3) certain editing choices. nine episodes, compared to the classic ten, isn't Nearly enough time to showcase all that they wanna showcase (especially when the episodes are as short as they are, once you get past the recap and "next on" parts). and they wanna showcase A Lot! there so much going on! i'd ask them to pace themselves, but they literally Can't!

i mean, the editing choices are a Whole Thing! practically gives me whiplash sometimes lol. i feel like the weaker episodes still have parts that are Really good, but like. Individually. they don't work together as a stronger whole, which is to the episode's detriment. rather than jumping around (as the show often did), they could've benefited a lot from focusing on the One Story instead of squeezing three more stories into there (i say that, but i think the 4-5-6 episode run (all with multiple stories per episode) did this very well while Still being very good episodes, so it's not like it Can't be done, it just didn't work for 7, 8 and (partly) 9). granted, i suspect a chunk of the weird editing can be blamed on, well, there being only nine (and not all that long) episodes and no one wanting to cough up enough money for a tenth. ugh! i'm blaming both hbo And appletv for this (and covid19 ig). it's just One More Episode, how much could it cost?? and on the subject of episodes, why no episode titles? you used to love episode titles! i could've brainstormed episode titles for them For Free!!

when it comes to the characters, the rankings remain the same: BoB > MotA > TP. it's not totally fair tho, since BoB followed the exact same (and large-ish) group of guys from beginning to end, so you're Gonna know who they all are and get attached. this wasn't the case (for me!) when watching TP, since, unlike BoB, they jump around from group to group. i never felt like i got to know them all that well, outside of the main characters. i think MotA almost hits that sweet spot, especially knowing they had those two main things going against it: large cast And jumping from group to group. there's a case to be made for bias here (i Was the blog blogging about everything MotA for like. years.), but i still think they found a good enough balance of fleshing out the main characters while Also helping the audience get to know about a bunch of minor characters, of which there are a shitton (and their personalities, motivations, backgrounds, quirks).

there's also the representation of women. actual angel renée lemaire is and will always be a cut above the rest (bastogne is just That Good, argue with the wall). she's written so well that it almost makes me forget about how a bunch of women are portrayed in carentan. i have...issues with how women are portrayed in TP (even tho i love lena), so there's that. MotA falls in the middle (again) bc there's Way more women on-screen, but the writing can be questionable. balanced (as all things should be?) captain l'sandra wing-westgate is a character of all time, but episode 7 birthed the craziest discourse known to man (the hbo war fandom), but it wasn't all that unwarranted. manon and michou were sooo cool, but we didn't see nearly enough of them (another victim of the 'editing too many stories into one episode' problem. why not a whole resistance episode? or at least as the only b-plot?). paulina was interesting, but fulfilled one of those 'attractive foreign woman gives sage advice during/after sex' tropes (there's probably a tvtropes page for that idk). so many red cross girls, but none of the in-depth payoff :/ epic highs (multiple women!!) + epic lows (writing women??) = pretty tolerable. not great, not terrible. it was aight. i trust the fandom to build on this tho.

narrative is the big one tho. it's the whole "doing so much with so little" thing they've got going on (i'm ignoring their big budget here lol, could've been bigger). rather than having one main story with many connecting side stories (like BoB), it does the TP thing where there's many semi-connecting side stories set in the same general area. it helps that there's crosby's narration (i enjoy narration, sue me!), and he helps everything connect, sorta. but there's still other side stories that have Nothing to do with him (sandra's side gigs (revealing what she did takes away the mystery of what she Might be doing), the tuskegee airmen, quinn and bailey's eurotrip). would it have helped if there were two narrators (say, someone like rosie)? idk. gonna sit with that one. if there's a through-line, it's not super obvious like in the other two shows. which is insanely funny to me bc i literally like TP less, but that show's got an Extremely tight through-line all the way down. i can't lie and say it doesn't!

back to budget- i've seen people criticize this show for being called "masters of the air" when there's not much of "the air". ig that's fair, but there's the money issue, again. also, it'd get very repetitive if they were always in "the air". there was enough confusion about identifying who was who with the masks on, so imagine if that was Every Episode. out of All the issues the show has, this is the least issue-y. again, that's just my opinion, and it could change.

another budget thing (i think??)- idk enough about costuming and hair for period pieces so i can't comment on that with my 0 background in it, all i Can say is that i knoooooow people were clowning on marjorie cleven's hair in episode 1 (and i could see why, no such thing as 1940s beach waves). but from what i could understand- that actress' addition was a last-minute thing (bc i had No idea who the hell she was and i already found someone cast for marjorie all the way back in 2021). maybe there's something to say about the quality of rush jobs, but i really do think it was the most last-minute thing bc it came out of Nowhere, and timeline-wise, it looks like that bit was done long after everything else had been filmed. outside looking in, it seems something probably went wrong/didn't work out with who or what they already had and there wasn't enough wiggle room (time and money) to fix it. this isn't me being an apologist (lol), but i feel like a theorist at a big board bc nothing adds up! and i wanna know what happened! i'm just speculating! speculating on this blog is All i did for like Years lmaooo.

this is more of a side thing, but some of the lines in MotA feel really on-the-nose, almost corny. and that was Gonna be a knock against it, but there's some equally Extremely on-the-nose lines in both BoB and TP (Especially in BoB), so if i give MotA shit for it, i'd have to give all three shows shit for it lol. none of them are free of cheese.

another silly aside- no peaches, no main gingers, no main eugenes! we can't have 'em all, but c'mon!

there Is some good tho lol. one thing that MotA really has going for it, that i think the other shows have less of, is- and GOD it feels so weird to call this "world-building" when it's actual goddamn history, but- it's got world-building. maybe that isn't the best word for it. but i like how much Bigger ww2 feels in this show. BoB is one stop, then the next stop, then the next stop, which is, admittedly, good from a narrative-perspective (easy to follow), but not as good when you want a scale of how devastating the war is (in fairness, it was filmed in 2000). even TP feels pretty "enclosed" in a way. there's island-hopping, yeah, but all the damn islands look the same (not including australia lol). it's a theatre of the war we otherwise don't really get to see, but there still isn't all that much to see. it's water and sand and rock and dirt. which is the point, but Whatever! would've been cool if we saw sledge and co. in china, but moving on. MotA's able to really show the scale of it, both in the air and on the ground (that scene in germany during episode 6 was both harrowing and fantastic, also the inclusion of the actual children forced to fight nearer to the war's end in the finale). idk i just liked how it was able to zoom in and zoom out (and in and out again) in a way that the other shows weren't.

another thing it's got that the other shows don't is Really driving home how young everyone is (not "child soldier" young, but damn young). the cast is full of baby faces (rip babyface). a lot of ww2 shows/movies don't bother casting to reflect this, but i think overlooking that takes away from the overall impact. you browse through some old newspaper articles or photos of soldiers during ww2 enough and you're gonna Regularly get hit with the face of someone who looks like they could've sat in the desk next to you during a high school lit class. a lot of those b&w grinning faces look like kids bc they pretty much were (more so if they lied about their age). you don't really get that in BoB or TP (it's Crazy when the real life pics of the soldiers portrayed in those shows look younger than the actors).

i'm mixed about the tuskegee airmen. what we have, i love (thank you, dee rees). unfortunately, my biggest irk is that it leaves me wanting more of them, which i won't ever get. speaking as a black person (not speaking for All black people, just how i personally feel about it), having them included feels like a catch-22. if they weren't included in any capacity (all while knowing there were whole tuskegee airmen in stalag iii with the white main characters), there'd be a problem. however, including them (all while having these time constraints and not enough focus on them) leads to the feeling of having them "tokenized" (which i can see). there's no world where there'd be 50/50 split (even a 70/30 split) bc, at that point, just give them a show of their own. but there'd still be a general annoyance that big budget ww2 shows are only ever white. on the other hand, hanks and spielberg and orloff and miller and all the directors (except dee rees) are white, and how good of a story about black people are you really gonna get from the perspective of nonblack people? that in mind, i personally don't feel put-off by having the three tuskegee airmen in the posters/trailers/promos, bc i just Know there'd be a whole nother problem if they weren't included in them at all despite being in the show for however long (it'd be even worse if they made their pictures smaller). like i don't work in advertising, but i don't know if a "sweet spot" even exists for something like this. people would be pissed off no matter what imo (i'm also speaking with a bias here bc i had to browse through sooooo many comments written by white guys whining and crying and pissing and shitting themselves once they learned that the tuskegee airmen were gonna be in the show in Any capacity, so i'm just cool knowing they're in shambles rn (and josiah cross- he played richard macon- always goes Wild seeing his face in the promos, and his joy is pretty contagious).

i give it somewhere like a 7.5-8/10. 3.75 stars out of 5. not perfect, subject to change, gotta marinate, but i'm overall happy with it! MotA's best episodes are better than many other individual hbo war episodes. should i be grading it using the overall sum of its parts, not just the different parts? idk, i'm not being paid to grade lol.

#i feel like i'm knocking the pacific too much in this even when i like the pacific. i just like it much less #i've talked my sister's ear off enough about it (she adores the pacific the way i do band of brothers) #and like i've got plenty of issues with band of brothers but it just does it for me. idk. i'm complicated by avril lavigne #this is an essay. my GOD is this an essay #but better to vomit it all out now so i can look over it later and see how my opinion changes over time. i want to archive my fresh thought #masters of the air #hbo war #masters of the air spoilers #mota spoilers #band of brothers #the pacific #for once i'm not spam-tagging those. i talk about them a decent amount in here. sorry for the people who don't go here tho #long post

[ahoncc]

The Adidas Velosamba is a hype train and it sucks

The Velosamba cycling sneakers were released early this March in the UK and US markets. I was excited to see my favorite Adidas silhouette get an SPD version (DISCLAIMER OF MY BIAS), so without second-guessing, I went to the UK site and copped a pair. They finally arrived, and I've already used them for about 75km.

TL;DR: I lied. It doesn't suck. Believe the hype.

If you're still here...

Adidas UK shipped the shoes to my forwarder of choice for free. My card was charged 7,038PHP (100 GBP), which is not bad considering that regular Sambas retail at 5,300 PHP. Shipping to my doorstep through Shipping Cart cost me 1,919 PHP. The Crank Brothers compatible cleats I bought from Shopee cost 215 PHP. My total expense is 8,957 PHP. This is by no means a cheap price to pay for a pair of bicycling shoes, so I wasn't surprised that many people hated on the shoe.

I've read plenty of commentary in the Manila scene about the Sambavelo not being worth the price. People ripped into it for just being a commuter that won't support your foot well, the gum sole not being durable enough, and the shoe not being suitable for long rides. It seemed to me like baseless conjecture; none of these people has bought or used or even seen the shoe in person. But is there any truth to it?

It's probably just grumpy keyboard warriors who secretly want it for themselves attacking the shoe and anybody who buys it because they couldn't get it before it sold out or because they can't afford it.

COST

Let's exclude the cost of shipping in the value-for-money discussion. The shoe was released only in specific markets, and getting it outside of those markets will cost you more -- there are no two ways about it. Whether you are willing to/capable of or not of paying for it is a different matter. If this were released in your local market at the same SRP, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The shoe is worth it in my humble but correct opinion at its SRP of 100 GBP or 120 USD or +- 7,000 PHP depending on the exchange rate. If you'd pay full price for both a new pair of Sambas and full price for a pair of Shimano MTB shoes, copping a pair of Velosambas makes sense. It is, after all, the best of both worlds.

FORM

This is a moot point. The Samba is a classic; ergo, it's widely accepted as a good-looking shoe. People have their tastes, and some might think it just looks okay, but if you think that the Samba is an ugly shoe, I don't think we can be friends... kidding.

That said, there's nothing visually remarkable about the shoe. It looks almost exactly like a regular Samba. The only visual difference is the gum sole, which is thicker to hide two-bolt cleats, and the band on the tongue to keep bunny ears in place. Oh, and the 3 Stripes are reflective, both for style and safety.

FIT

It fits true to size. I'm an 8UK with Adidas. While that's the case, the Velosamba does not feel the same as a regular Samba. Sure, the upper and inserts are just as snug and comfy, but the midsole is stiff. It doesn't flex much because it's reinforced with a plate similar to a regular cycling shoe. Some people might prefer to go half a size up and wear thicker sports socks.

FUNCTION

The shoe feels great while you're clipped in. My foot felt very supported and secure, which is the opposite of what naysayers said. I couldn't tell the difference between the Velosamba and my Shimano XC3 in terms of support while clipped in.

At first, my foot wasn't as comfy on my pedals because the Velosambas are wider than my XC3s, and they were rubbing on my cranks. I was having a bit of difficulty clipping out too. But fixing the position of my cleats eliminated these issues, and I was pedaling without any sole rub on my cranks and twisting out with ease.

This eliminates any unfounded concern that the gum soles wouldn't last long and would rip from clipping in and out. I use Crank Brothers Candy pedals, and with the cleats positioned correctly (I prefer them all the way back, closer to the midfoot to avoid numbing in my forefoot and toes, and as far to the medial side of the shoe), there's barely any contact with the gum sole. The little contact isn't enough to wreck your soles any faster than walking would.

In terms of walking, the shoe is better than your typical MTB shoe. Even with an MTB shoe, there's still a bit of clacking as the cleats still hit the ground. Granted, it's not as horrendous as road cleats, but it can still be annoying. There's none of that with the Velosamba. Overall, I was comfortable walking to and fro in these bad boys.

CLASS

The shoe is sold as a commuter, and it certainly lives up to its classification. When we're back to working in the office, this would be my daily shoe. I'd go as far as saying that I'd wear the shoe to anywhere in the metro that I'd go to on my bike. Like, say, to visit a pretty awesome girl in the South area...

Gone are the days of packing your sneaker of choice and switching shoes at your destination. But is it more than that; can the Velosamba fight outside of its class? Can it be an adventure shoe? The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is that any shoe can be an adventure ride shoe. Heck, sandals, which technically aren't even shoes, can be adventure ride shoes.

FINAL THOUGHTS

10/10. I love the Velosamba, but that's a given since I love the Samba in the first place. I love it so much that it restored my faith in Adidas after years of substandard and just dull, repetitive sneaker releases. Even Yeezys got boring. But objectively, the shoe isn't for everyone. The shoe is only suitable for you if:

You use two-bolt cleat pedals

You plan to use two-bolt cleat pedals

If you like the Samba but don't fit the above criteria and:

You're a fixed-gear rider who only believes in toe cages or straps

You only use flat pedals and are a hater

THEN BUY A REGULAR PAIR OF SAMBAS AND LET PEOPLE WHO LIKE THE SHOE ENJOY IT. NO ONE NEEDS YOUR COMMENTARY. PEACE.

#velosamba #adidas #adidasvelosamba #cycling #cyclingshoes