Enjoying Frank Rich's memoir, GHOST LIGHT. Tried the Beatles doc but it didn't hold my attention. Now I have to figure out how to cancel Disney again.
A quiet holiday here. How about you? Kevin drove the family down from Rochester for a walk and a porch sit. In Michigan you can drive at fifteen with your parents if you completed a driver's ed class. They leave for a skiing trip today. I bet he does some of the driving for that too.
Josh and I did a zoom call with Megan where we mostly talked about movies, books. No snow yet in MI.
and TV. When they were kids we always went to a movie on Christmas Eve and we had fun remembering them. We did this because it was just the four of us and we needed to have some rituals. The worst movie we ever saw was one with Andy Kauffman called Heart Beats, I think. Actually we saw a lot of lousy ones over the years. Also face timed with my brother and his wife.
What's new with you?
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Reading both Radiant Apples by Joe Lansdale and The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan. Finished Shetland and Irvine Welsh's Crime on Dritbox. Watched Don't Look Up on Netflix which I found okay but not great. And the new Matrix movie on HBO MAX which I thought awful.
Didn't do anything on Christmas day. Spent today with my oldest daughter and her kids and in laws. Monday I'll spend with my 3 kids and their families. Always a logistic nightmare getting everyone together when they also have in laws to see.
Mild weather for this time of the year in Michigan and that's fine with me.
Hope everyone had a nice holiday.
It's so hard to believe Kevin's old enough to drive! Wow! I'm glad you got a chance to connect with your family, even if it wasn't the sort of visit you'd have wanted. I really hope 2022 treats us all better.
Amen, Margot and I hope your holiday was a good one.
I am watching CRIME, Steve. I think Ken Stott is overdoing it and the scenes of what's going on in the main character's head get tiresome. But at half through I will stick with it.
Great picture, but that guy in the middle looks a bit scary!
A quiet and relaxing Christmas. Per tradition, I made my Christmas Eve chili and for the first time ever it was a flop. We had gone out earlier in the day to buy the ingredients nd Walmart did us dirt -- they had discontinued the brand of beans I always use and had decided that nobody in Florida needs tomato sauce. They also rearranged their shelves again. So we bought a different brand of beans and managed to find the one can of tomato sauce in the store, but that one had some sort of kinky seasoning added to it. (Walmart, those b*st*rds, has added a bunch of spaghetti sauces and cajun specialties to replace the things I needed.) Oh, and they also stopped stocking chili seasoning. I made due with what I could find but the result was less than impressive. **sigh** Despite that we had a good family Christmas Eve, complete with laughter and Christmas cookie decorating.
Christmas Day we went to Christina's and Walt made a scumptious dinner: a beef stew that was out of this world, a turkey and veggie dish (also yummy), sausage stuffing, mac and cheese, kim chi carrots and cucumbers, and much more. Jessie brought the mashed pottoes and Christmas hot chocolate; Kitty brought her peppermint brownines, and I brought my appetite.
I enjoyed DON'T LOOK UP; Kitty didn't care for the ending. Watched a couple of Christmas rom-coms; my not complaining was one of my Christmas gifts to Kitty. THE WHEEL OF TIME ended its first season with a thud; the wannabe GAME OF THRONES wasn't -- poor plot, casting, effects, sets, and monsters was a waste of the series' big budget.
Read Christmas short stories almost exclusively last week, about four or five a day. I still have about 40 stories left on the bedside table and hope to finish them by Epiphany.
Weather started out cold (for here) and then turned gorgeous for the weekend. Threw my back out and have to use two canes (very slowly) to avoid falling over. Our upstairs neighbors just had another baby and he's beautiful. Their other child has learned how to run and chase a ball, both of which she does constantly judging from the vibrations coming from our ceiling. Her activity makes us smile, and she is a beautiful, sweet toddler.
The New Year is a-coming and we are bracing ourselves for it. I hope you are doing the same. I also hope 2021 ends with a fantastic week for you, Patti. Take care.
Such a joyousness is a treat for me, Jerry. Thanks!
Wow, 15. How fast time flies. I just looked at my past calendars/notebooks (since 1975) to look at what we did on New Year's Eve over the years. We visited my parents in California a number of times, flying out on Christmas Day (or Eve) and usually home January 1 or 2. We went to the movies a number of times, but mostly they were not special movies, just whatever was playing locally (where we often were able to sit through two movies). Some years we ate out, other we made dinner at home (especially on bad weather years). IN 1983, we went to a matinee (on Broadway) of Marsha Norman's incredibly depressing 'NIGHT, MOTHER (with Kathy Bates). When we came out, it was such a downer we did not want to go home, so instead went over to the Beekman on the East Side and saw THE RIGHT STUFF, which we enjoyed a lot more.
Today let me talk about Summer of Soul, which we watched last night on Hulu. Now I have a very good memory, can remember plenty of what we did, what we saw, what we ate, not to mention what was going on in the world over the last 60+ years. But I swear to you I have absolutely no memory of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival at all. I remember the Apollo 11 landing on July 20. Jackie and I had been visiting her parents' bungalow in the Catskills and came home that Sunday night and watched it on television. I remember Woodstock from August 15-18. Yet how could the other have totally gone under the radar? This was six free weekly concerts, from the last weekend in June to the beginning of August, in Mt. Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) in Harlem, with up to 50,000 people at each, and acts that included The Staple Singers, B. B. King, Mahalia Jackson, The Fifth Dimension, Stevie Wonder, Sly & the Family Stone, and Nina Simone. Not that we would have been likely to go - white people were few and far between, judging from the movie - but to not even remember it happening? That's weird to me.
In any case, it's a terrific documentary well worth two hours of your time.
I'll get back to other stuff shortly. Next Monday we should be on the road to Florida so won't have time to post here.
But Jerry, the big question is, does Walmart still have Chef Boyardee ravioli?
We're trying to finish some things before we leave, though we will probably have access to Netflix when we're there. Not sure about Amazon, Hulu, etc. We're watching HUNTERS and THE TEAM as mentioned last week. We did watch BEING THE RICARDOS on Prime and thought it mostly worth a watch, though there were things I found annoying, especially the constant flashbacks and forwards so common these days. The acting was pretty good overall. We also took a couple of days for Jackie's favorite Christmas shows and movies - MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS and LOVE ACTUALLY, plus the Christmas episodes of Gavin & Stacey, The Good Life, and The Darling Buds of May. (I will NOT be watching the new reboot of that, by the way. You want the David Jason version that was Catherine Zeta Jones's breakthrough role.)
Looking out our windows, all I see is green grass. Not a speck of snow! Very weird December. Glad you got some Family Time.
Patrick and Katie baked up a storm and Christmas dinner was a lot of fun. Yesterday, while Diane and I watched the Buffalo Bills beat the New England Patriots in a MUST GAME for the Bills, Patrick and Katie met with their vaccinated and Boosted friends from High School.
Diane has a long TO DO LIST for Patrick--mostly technical issues with various appliances. Patrick reprogrammed out microwave--which flashed FOOD FOOD FOOD every time we tried any setting. Patrick reconnected my BOSE speakers on my computer that somehow had come undone. Diane had Patrick "clean up" all the clutter on her iPhone after Apple did a software upgrade that added a ton of stuff Diane didn't want. Stay safe, stay well.
It is snowing here today, George. Only a couple of inches but the most we've had. Boy, I wish there was a Patrick in my family.
Love Gavin and Stacey but have never seen the others. I will look for them.
It was a great doc, Jeff and they commented several times how it went unnoticed. But I thought people in NY would know about it. What separate worlds we lived in then. And probably now.
I enjoyed the comments by the people who had been there as high school or college students in 1969, and especially the one guy (forgot his name) who had been 5 years old then. At the end he was crying, with the movie confirming that his memories were really, it really did happen.
Also, Mavis Staples getting to sing with her idol, Mahalia Jackson, and the latter asking her to take over for her because she wasn't feeling well. Mavis was just 30 then, 82 now.
It snowed Christmas Day and last night and is snowing now, though not heavily. It’s pretty but will be gone in a day or two. We had a nice Christmas, watched some football, read, played Wingspan. Same yesterday. Monday am is when I weigh and take my numbers, everything is up, which is bad. Water and salads for me this week. Glad you could visit with family!
The holidays do wreak havoc on our bodies.
Hi, Patti! Glad you were able to spend some time with family. Tom and I spent our third Christmas with just the two of us (plus the cat). I took some time off work for a "staycation." It's been nice and relaxing - just being lazy, reading books, and watching holiday movies. Also trying to go through the endless boxes from my Houston house, Tom's New Orleans house, and Dad's house. Maybe one day we will finish that and not know what to do with ourselves!
We always watch movies around Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Friday and Saturday we watched DIE HARD, PIRATES OF PENZANCE (with Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt), and THE FRIGHTENERS. Last night we watched ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. The first two we have watched many times over the years, the other two we have only watched once or twice before. All were good.
This morning I finished reading Reginald Hill's PICTURES OF PERFECTION, the 14th book in the series. A very good read.
Hope the rest of the week is good for everyone.
How great it is to see the name Crider on here. What a chore to clean out two houses in two places!
Hill was so very good. I haven't had the attention span for movies lately but I have watched a lot of episodes of Cheers. I think the show was terrific in its later seasons. They knew how to use the supporting cast more adeptly.
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