Also finished POST MORTEM, a Norwegian vampire story, which was disappointing in the end. Very hard to combine a police procedural, with a horror story, and a comedy. The dubbing was terrific though. Such a relief not to have to read a movie. Also enjoy the low-keyed Mr. Corman, about an elementary teacher (Apple TV)
Listened to bits of the Detroit Jazz Festival, which is virtual and live this year.
Reading John D. Macdonald's THE LAST ONE LEFT, which is a standalone. George Pelecanos and Megan are developing it for HBO. Also reading THE VERY NICE BOX, which seems a lot like Eleanor Oliphant so far. And Steve was right. CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR by Mathew Spector is terrific.
Saw Josh, Julie and Kevin. Kevin loves his new high school and his favorite class is music theory. He is doing well with tennis and I hope to see him play soon. Is there anything better than seeing a kid love to go to school. His school has devoted teachers and students. It's very small and has only modest classrooms and equipment but real learning can take place when everyone's goal is for that to take place. They are reading Shakespeare and Euripedes. He is also enjoying microeconomics.
My friend and I tried to haul 12 bags of books to a charity sale but it was closed. I am purging books like the blood in POST MORTEM. Went out to dinner (patio) on Friday, but inside a huge wedding was superspreading germs. I think we are never going to be done with this based on what I have seen over the last week. Hope things are safer where you are.
Your turn.
29 comments:
I've done very little this week. Had the Arts, Beats and Eats in Royal Oak this weekend but I couldn't find anyone else to go even those it's only a couple blocks away.
Watched Clickbait on Netflix. It was okay, nothing special. Started The Defeated. Watched a lot of baseball.
Read Rovers by Richard Lange, Another Kind of Eden by James Lee Burke and Finished off the Jeffrey Ford collection Big Dark Hole. I liked all three Also read Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion. Not sure what to make of it. Full of unlikable characters who unfortunately also uninteresting. I like her essays better although her read on the Manson Family was wrong.
My favorite Jack Lemmon movie would have to be The Apartment.
I'm glad you had the chance to see family, Patti. And the Detroit Jazz Festival must have made for great listening - I hope you enjoyed it.
Yeah, I always found her essays better than her fiction. I went to that festival once and never again. Just too crowded even in pre-Covid days.
I have never gotten to it in person, Margot. Phil was not a jazz fan.
Diane had a colonoscopy last week. She was supposed to have it last August, but Covid-19 changed her mind. Even though the number of cases in Western NY is going up, Diane decided to have it done now. The results were good: no polyps and she doesn't have to have another colonoscopy for 5 years.
Last August, when I had my colonoscopy, it was eerie. Practically no one in the hospital. Diane had to wait in the car while I underwent the procedure. I was the only patient in RECOVERY. Very strange.
The plague of Heat and Humidity has abated. We're in the 70s now with rain in the forecast for practically every day.
I'm glad to hear Megan is working on a John D. MacDonald project! That's a writer who should not be forgotten! Happy Labor Day!
There is a FIT test (done at home), which is supposed to be as good as a colonscopy but doctors don't want to give up a very lucrative business. Check out the NYT January 12, 2021 Paula Span.
I am afraid you're right about the pandemic, Patti. We've noticed more and more in the last few weeks that most people here seem to have just given everything up and are acting like COVID doesn't exist. Masks in restaurants are no longer required, it seems, as more and more places have servers without them. Groceries and other businesses still require them, but you see people walking around maskless with impunity and unchallenged. And this in a neighborhood that was much better than this for a long time. We did eat out twice this week, once outside, which was fine, and once inside in a not very crowded restaurant, but with the waitress unmasked. We will definitely get the booster shot as soon as it is available to us. Eight months after the last shot would be the end of October.
With 9/11 coming Saturday, there are many specials and recaps. Our local news team put together a show on their streaming services (I watched it on the phone) of their coverage from 20 years ago. It was actually quite good. What amazed me a little was that other than a couple of retirees and a couple of people who left, almost all of the reporters and anchors involved that day are still working at ABC-7. Last night we watched (on CNN) the 9/11 documentary done by French brothers Gideon and Jules Naudet, originally shown in 2002 and still moving. They have added interviews with some of the principals at the end, so you can see where they are today. After seeing all the people working on The Pile unmasked, it is just good to know they are still alive. Lastly (so far) we watched Worth (2002), a based-on-a-true-story movie with Michael Keaton as Kenneth Feinberg, Special Master of the 9/11 Victim Compensations Fund, and Stanley Tucci as Charles Wolf, whose wife was killed on 9/11. I wouldn't call it compelling viewing, but the stars make it worth a watch.
We had a fun visit from Ida on Wednesday night (not!), which dumped over 7 inches of rain on the city (less definitely less by us) in a few hours and left death and flooding in many neighborhoods. At least it brought in four days of cooler, dry weather after it left.
I did get four books read this week and I'm reading two books of stories, two non fiction, and one novel at the moment. No big plans this week.
Stay safe out there!
WORTH should have read 2020. It was released at Sundance then, and on Netflix this week.
We are still watching things like The Defeated (very dark), The Break (Belgian), Hanna, The Chair, Game of Thrones, Money Heist, and to lighten the heaviness, SEASIDE HOTEL (though we are now up to 1940 and the Nazis have arrived).
Agree on your Joan Didion comment. The non fiction for me too.
Patti, the Wall Street Journal had an article on a company working on a blood test that could diagnose a dozen different kinds of cancer without biopsies or scoping. It may be a few years before FDA approval, but non-evasive testing looks promising. Diane thought about Cologuard, but went the traditional colonoscopy route this time. But, this may be Diane's last colonoscopy.
George, Jackie is the same. She said her last colonoscopy last year was it for her too.
Phil's experience with colon cancer makes me both terrified to have one and not have one. They say no one needs one after 75 because it's a slow-growing cancer. But it does seem like a cancer they have made very little progress with treating.
Cologuard is 92% effective so that might be an option for you. The actual procedure is easy-peasy. It's the day before the procedure when you have to drink Gatorade and Miralax to purge yourself that really sucks. But, as Diane said after her latest colonoscopy, "That's one less thing I have to worry about for the next five years!"
Patti, glad to hear that you saw family and that Kevin is doing so well in school. That is encouraging in these times.
Here, I mostly see people masking, but we have stuck with one nearby restaurant (where they do require masks to go inside, which we only do to pay), and the grocery store. We did step out of our comfort zone and return to our favorite restaurant at the harbor, but their primary seating was outdoors even before the pandemic.
We have watched a couple more COLUMBO episodes this week plus THE TAKING OF PELHAM 0NE TWO THREE (1974). And our standard science fiction series.
Last week, I read THE LADY VANISHES (original title THE WHEEL SPINS) by Ethel Lina White, and liked it a lot. More an adventure than a mystery. We will watch the movie soon. It has been a while since I watched it.
Also MURDER by Parnell Hall, the 2nd Stanley Hastings mystery. That was a lot of fun. Glen is a big fan of the series, has read the first ten books.
I had no idea THE LADY VANISHES was a book first. Funny how you don't always think to look for a book even if the movie is a favorite. Where do you watch COLUMBO. I never come across it.
Oh, I have had several colonoscopies and dread doing it again.
Yes, Ethel Lina White wrote not only THE LADY VANISHES but the original filmed as THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE.
Patti, We have all of the Columbo episodes on DVD and have had them for years. This will be our second time through all the episodes on DVD, and some we have probably watched three times.
Jeff, the paperback edition of THE LADY VANISHES that I have also has THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, and I have never read that one. I think it was originally published as SOME MUST WATCH. Unfortunately the book has tiny print. But I will be reading it sometime, soon I hope. Haven't seen the film either.
On the web, IMDb of all things makes the COLUMBO first series available, and therefore through Amazon as well, free with ads. On broadcast with ads, of course, on the MeTV network on Sunday nights. Sundance Channel on cable, and presumably their streaming service with A&E.
iF SPONTANEOUS was my last pleasant surprise among dark comedies of sorts, FRENCH EXIT was the next this past week. Very brittle at points, but nonetheless interesting throughout and often very funny, it involves a wealthy widow (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has been blithely burning through her inheritance living in NYC, who lives with her 20-something son, for whom life seems also to a matter of spinning his wheels, and their taking up the offer of the widow's friend to crash at the latter's Paris apartment after selling their domicile and Getting Out of the City. Also, she has a very well-behaved cat, who becomes part of a fantasy element to the film about halfway through. Excellent cast, well-written, deftly shot.
Among more important matters, my friend in the hospital has come through her surgery OK and is now recuperating at home; her GP let her know, each abdominal surgery will hurt more during recover than the previous...which I suspect is our body's way of letting us know, Stop Doing That, Stupid. This being her third, she finds the continued weariness of the knitting up process more surprising than the fading pain...resources reallocated.
Meanwhile, another good friend tries to readjust to cope with her crisis of faith. Hanging around with too many of us atheists and looking at the world ever more closely can do that, I suspect.
The reinforced Ida apparently managed to kill, or be the occasion for the deaths of, at least, more New Jerseyites than those who resided in any other state, Large tornado in Mullica Hills didn't manage to actually kill anyone, iirc, but sure put paid to some houses.
I'm not sure I've ever understood people who dislike whole fields of music (individual performances, artists or even schools within the musics, sure). I shall have to see how much of that festival remains online, and for how much.
Glad folks are well and generally enjoying life. Got about half-way through Bill Maher's self-congratulation-fest from Friday this afternoon, but it got to be too laborious (perhaps after the third or fourth reference to how he and Ralph Reed were great friends despite having nothing in common--aside from a remarkable over-estimation of their own sophistication about Everything, and concomitant self-appreciation). May love's labors be fruitful for all of us going forward...
Tracy--oddly enough, both the remakes of THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE are not bad, if neither is in the same league as the first film adaptation.
Been meaning to try French Exit. Sorry for your friends' difficulties. Hope my old neighborhood in Philly made out okay.
I know I’m late, so you may not see this, so I’ll keep it brief. Happy Labor Day, Patti. Glad you saw family, that’s great. I read William Kent Krueger’s new novel, Lightning Strike, and as usual with his books, it’s terrific. I need to continue my reread of the series soon.
Now I have no eyeglasses for a wee, as my frames are having new lenses installed. Don’t know why it takes so darn long but it does. Thus no reading - maybe on ebook if I make the font huge. Si I’ll be mostly out of touch, I guess. Maybe I’ll find a movie to watch, but I don’t have all the extra channels & streaming most of you all have.
Stay well.
Todd, I would like to see the 1998 TV version because I like D’Onofrio. I would not mind seeing the Travolta and Denzel Washington version, but I read that it is modernized which would be less appealing. I also like James Gandolfini, who is in that version.
I always have a backup pair of glasses even if it's not the most recent prescription. A week is a long time not to be able to read.
My wife and I deposited Boy #1 at the U of MN - Twin Cities a week ago. A lot of time was spent driving around - A LOT OF TIME. The drive there is four hours but finding our way around town, finding parking, driving to look for a place for lunch, construction closing one of the few bridges over the Mississippi, so on so forth. Classes begin today and he has two to attend. His roommate is from Bangladesh and seems to be a good dude. I chatted with him I found out he has many, many Bangladeshi friends studying across the U.S.
Wife, Boy #2 and I attended a grilling party on Sunday. Local guy restarting his Skewer Fest where everyone brings meat and a vegetable and all items have to be grilled on skewers. A pretty decent time and I, for a change, was the one who wanted to stay later than the others.
Meanwhile, Boy #2 is a HS sophomore and saying as little as usual about school. He's in a cooking class this year that sounds neat and the HS's new commercial kitchen is impressive. Not much homework yet but calculus, being calculus, had homework the first day.
I've been watching DARK on Netflix and am on season two. I enjoy the show but may burn out. even with the plot's twists and turns that come along. My current audiobook is Nina Revoyr's SOUTHLAND from 2003, a literary mystery novel. I've enjoyed three other novels by Revoyr and was happy to find this electronic version of the audio.
Inn order to have backup glasses, I’d have to buy new frames, and they are so expensive.
Last frames I bought were from the local shop for convenience and because my insurer has a discount. I still had to pay a good amount out of pocket; but, my insurance also plan has a partially funded, pre-tax medical savings account.
My previous frames and lenses were through Costco at a very nice price.
I just go in when my prescription is done and give them my current glasses and they put them in my frames. takes about 45 minutes.
Another late comment: I've resumed watching TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG on Amazon with about two episodes left. Gorgeous and slow moving and I have to watch while sitting and watching. I'm unable to take everything in if the show is playing as I exercise or do other tasks and their are frequent Spanish conversations with subtitles.
Steve, my eye doctor is near home in Portland, but the lense place is in Washington, about 2 hours away. So I take my glasses to eye doc, they send them by carrier, the lenses are installed, then carrier back. I don’t want the four hour round trip, so I wait.
I wonder why Blogger stopped notifying me when there are new comments on here. Sorry that sometimes I forget to look after the first day.
It was traumatic for me dropping Josh and the next year Megan off at college. And they were only one hour away in Ann Arbor!
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