Hey, we’re back! I really need to get my weekends under control. Working too much (and the results don’t necessarily show below, which is its own frustration), and I’m on my way to reaching out and touching burnout again. And I’d been doing pretty well with setting boundaries and taking better care with my personal life.

All right, that’s starting to sound a little whiny. February felt much more like 2017 than young 2018. But I’ll get it back. Strength. Power. Chill.

I apologize in advance if that Adam Rippon GIF is driving you crazy. But I wanted to put a GIF in this post, man. And I thought the thing I wrote about Rippon this week would draw more interest, but I don’t think the audience for that post gives a shit about figure skating.

Lesson learned. Onward. Here’s how the past week went at Casselbloggy HQ.

Writing

Monday
* Figure skater Adam Rippon declines opportunity to be Olympic correspondent for NBC
* This Week in Trailers: Mr. Incredible Dad, Sock ‘Em robots, Earn and Paper Boi return

Tuesday
* Michael Rapaport sends Barstool Sports a cease and desist letter over the Rapaport clown t-shirt

Wednesday
* Donald Glover helped out on the Black Panther script, leading to a Thank You in the credits

Thursday
* Kirk Herbstreit will replace Jon Gruden on ESPN’s NFL Draft coverage
* These are the MLB free agents we are most surprised to see unsigned (Roundtable)

Friday
* HBO releases full trailer for Paterno, starring Al Pacino as the disgraced Penn State coach

Saturday
* Game Night uses all its pieces well, notably Rachel McAdams, for a twisty story full of laughs

Watched

Nearly every day, I get pulled into a YouTube rabbit hole while looking for clips and highlights I can put into posts. This past week, it was clips from the old Shazam! TV show that got me.

I remember watching reruns, but was so young that I couldn’t tell you anything about it other than there was Billy Batson with an old man, driving a RV across the country. And Captain Marvel always seemed to be in a field when he arrived.

So this clip is probably originally from like 1975 or 1976. But the message fits for 2018. (Although a character named Isis delivering the public service announcement is probably less than ideal.)

Reading

** Oh yeah, there are gonna be some Black Panther links here for the next few weeks. Gotta catch up with all these think pieces. And some of you are probably still getting around to seeing it. Here’s one taking Erik Killmonger’s side, which is why I think he’s such a great villain. [Shadow and Act]

** “You’re not going to make the team by being here at quarter-to-six in the morning.” MLB teams are placing a greater emphasis on sleep and recovery. (I feel like the NBA went down that path first, but could be wrong about that.)

But I always figured baseball players did their spring training work early so they could play golf in the afternoon. [Associated Press]

** There have also been plenty of pieces written on why Black Panther is so meaningful to audiences who hadn’t seen themselves represented in superhero blockbusters before. As Carvell Wallace says here, the future had often been speculated by white writers. But Black Panther is an example of that changing.

Though the piece doesn’t say this, I also think it’s great that Marvel has taken the opportunity its success has afforded to serve different audiences. [New York Times]

** No disrespect to Mike Tirico, who’s done a very good job. But I kind of missed Bob Costas at the Winter Olympics. However, it’s totally understandable if he didn’t want to relive his pink eye episode at the 2014 Sochi Games. Even my mother figured that’s why he didn’t go back, even if that’s not true. Here’s an oral history of that ordeal. [Vulture]

** Brendan Fraser is about to start his comeback, starring in FX’s Trust — a longer, Danny Boyle-directed version of the John Paul Getty kidnapping story that Ridley Scott told in All the Money in the World.

So where’s Fraser been? (He was up for the role of Superman years ago, and there were rumors that the contract for that kept him from being in other films, in case the movie got made. That’s not mentioned here, though not getting picked for Superman did have an effect on him.)

Part of the issue was doing all those Mummy films beat the hell out of him. He also went through a divorce. And he lost his mother. That’s a lot of shit to deal with, man. [GQ]

** How many of you saw Terrence Malick’s 2012 film, To the Wonder? (I haven’t; Malick is one of those filmmakers I always say I’ll catch up on. I did a better job of that in the days when Netflix was DVD-only.)

But the movie lives on with never-used footage of real people telling their stories, some of which were horribly sad, to Javier Bardem’s character, a priest. [New Yorker]