So This Happened...Week of August 4-10, 2025 -

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA (Aug. 10, 2025) — If you’re ready for your next superhero fix – plus a few hours out of the hot sun, movie critic Jeff Mellinger recommends both the new “Superman” and “Fantastic Four.”

“It helps that both films pick up just a few years after our heroes have made their existence known to everyone on the planet. The films quickly explain their origins so we can get to the matters at hand,” he notes.

Another way to beat the heat is to pour some iced tea and plop down in your comfy chair to read “Tahoe Speed,” the latest Owen McKenna mystery.

“Todd Borg usually begins his mysteries with prologues introducing settings and victims in Lake Tahoe environs. Instead, we find ourselves in Vars, France, peering down a ski track,” Sunny Solomon writes.

Meanwhile, the staff at Home Helpers offers some tips for avoiding heat-related illnesses this time of year: “A heatwave that might feel like a minor inconvenience to some can be dangerous, even life-threatening to others.”

Despite the dog days of summer, Pioneer columnist Nathalie Montijo reminds us not to let our exercise plans slide. “Americans find countless excuses to skip the workout, relegating it to the bottom of the priority pile, but a landmark study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2024 found those who exceeded that amount lived longer,” she reports.

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