Underrated Movies: Hook

I felt compelled to write about this after watching Peter Pan and Wendy, which is a movie that came out on Disney+ recently. The comments/reviews on it seemed positive so I gave it a go on a boring Saturday morning. I mean, sure, it was a good movie, but it wasn't innovative. Peter Pan has been done 100 times and the story is pretty old at this point. There wasn't anything new or different about this one. However, some of the lines reminded me greatly of the movie Hook. And maybe that was because they were taken from the book; I don't know, because I have never read it. But it had me reminiscing about that movie and how great it was.

Hook was amazingly underrated in my opinion. Has it aged well? I'd say so; as a lot of Steven Spielberg movies tend to do (ie: Jurassic Park) thanks to extravagant and well built sets. The music, done up by the one and only John Williams, will never get old to me. There could not have been a better Hook than Dustin Hoffman - I compare all others to him. 

And Robin.

I thought briefly that it would be great to be able to remake this movie with more modern stuff, but Robin Williams can never be replaced. I grew up on Robin Williams movies, and his kind will never be found again. He was truly a one of a kind, amazing man, and perfect for the role of a child who never wanted to grow up.

The premise of this movie was very unique. About a man named Peter Banning, who is a grumpy, stuffy lawyer with no sense of humor or fun in his life. His two children get kidnapped, and it turns out it was Captain Hook who stole his kids and took them to Neverland in order to lure Peter back to his childhood home, where he had completely forgotten that he was actually Peter Pan. With the help of the Lost Boys, he begins to remember his past and how to fly and fight so that he can save his children from Hook. A fresh take on a childhood classic for sure.

The movie is not perfect. I do say that anytime Tinkerbell is portrayed as a jealous bitch who wants to kill Wendy is completely idiotic, (and I did appreciate that Peter Pan and Wendy did not go this route), and luckily Hook didn't go crazy here, but this Tinkerbell (played by Julia Roberts, whom I think was badly cast for this role) was completely strange and took away from the movie. Her love for Peter was kind of creepy to be honest.

The movie had a lot of slow parts. Hook trying to convince Peter's kids that he was a better father than Peter and trying to teach them how to be good pirates was kind of a stretch but interesting if not a tad boring. Jack switching sides was fun, and him teaching Hook and crew how to play baseball was really entertaining to watch.

One can never forget the scene where it finally clicks for Peter how to feel young at heart again, and is able to insult Rufio like only an unscripted Robin Williams can.

There are a few good lines, including one scene between Hook and Smee:

“- Smee: I've just had an apostrophe.
- Captain Hook: I think you mean an epiphany.
- Smee: Lightning has just struck my brain.
- Captain Hook: Well, that must hurt.”

But overall, I think this movie is very enjoyable and unique enough to keep you engaged. There are only so many movies in my life that I watch multiple times, and Hook is one of the rare few. If you've never seen it I would highly recommend it. Sometimes it's difficult to get into movies meant for children, but if you don't mind it, it's a good watch for sure.

Raising Awareness of PVCs... again?

If you are unfamiliar of my original blog post, it's here, and it kind of explains what a PVC is.

This is more of an update post because I had gone to the ER back on 4/13 for frequent PVCs. This was a little bit different than last time. It started on Wednesday evening 4/12, in which I began having PVC "events". In the world of PVCs this is not abnormal, but I was fairly concerned. What would happen is when my heart began an event and I would put my fingers on my neck to track my pulse, it would go something like this:

Beat/pulse

Beat/pulse

Beat/_____

Repeat about 5 times. The heart would reset itself, but then 10-15 minutes later, another event would happen. This went on throughout the night which became concerning to me.

The PVCs I was having back when I wrote my original blog post were more disturbing because my heart would go: beat/____, beat/____, a few times in a row, which feels a lot more like a panic attack or a heart attack and was a horrible feeling. If this kind of PVC lasts more than a few seconds, it can become V-tac, or Ventricular Tachycardia which requires a call to 911. Luckily, V-tach/V-Fib are two shockable (with paddles) types of heart attacks.

Source: https://avive.life/blog/shockable-vs-non-shockable-heart-rhythms/ 

Side note: if you are familiar with medical dramas, you have probably seen doctors try to use paddles on a non-beating heart. Defibrillators are named exactly for what they do - when your heart is in a fibrillated state, they send a shock to correct the error in the rhythm. You can not do this when your heart is in PEA (pulseless Electrical Activity) and Asystole (aka, "flatline").

Anyway, so I had decided by morning to go to the urgent care to be evaluated because the events hadn't stopped. I figured they might be able to monitor my heart rhythm or send me home with a 24 holter monitor or something. I was first in at 8am but realized quickly that they could do nothing. They advised I go to the ER so they can properly monitor my heart.

I had no other worrying symptoms like chest pain, dizziness, or SOB, but I just wanted to make sure my heart was okay, so I went in. Luckily, it wasn't super busy and we only ended up waiting about 30 minutes. I even got a "room" with patients separated by a curtain. Certainly better than the hallway, I suppose.

They drew blood to make sure my electrolytes were ok (I was still unintentionally fasting at this point so that's cool), did an EKG which showed nothing because its only about a 6 second picture, and hooked me up to their heart monitoring machine.

The PVCs continued in the couple of hours I was there, and the funny thing is that when I was checking in I told them I was having what I "thought were PVCs" but not being an actual medical professional I didn't want to sound like a know-it-all, but when the doctor saw the monitor he was like, "You were right, you're having PVCs".

Anyway, they basically said that because my heart was still pumping blood effectively, there wasn't really anything to be concerned about or anything they were able to do while I was there. They just warned me about calling 911 if it turned into V-Fib or V-Tach, and they were going to hook me up to a fancy new wireless holter monitor called a Zio XT. I was apparently their guinea pig that day because this was the first time the ER was going to hookup a patient with it. It was all so new that the Epic system wasn't even fully integrated with it yet so it took them much longer to set me up and make sure it was working before releasing me.

Besides being a little itchy under the diode, it's fairly unobtrusive, and with no wires, a lot easier to manage. I wore it for 14 days and was even be able to shower with it on without a problem, which was pretty neat. I got my results back very quickly (The PVCs only lasted for a total of about 24 hours, so the rest of the 14 days was fairly normal), and turns out I was having PVCs and PACs, so that's cool /s.

I have no idea what happens now, I'm assuming nothing because it's not really something anyone can do. There's no point in putting me on a medication when my heart isn't constantly going nuts. I'll write and update if that changes.