This is the view here today. (The other side is the race track) It will look pretty much like this until November. You can only exit in the rear of the building where the dumpsters are. In my case, I get picked up there, which means people have to dodge delivery trucks to get to me.
This goes on for about ten blocks. People I had dinner with Friday night suggested that the management should have warned me this was going to happen, but truthfully, I probably would have rented it anyway because I was so eager to be gone from where I was. A few people are suing the city though, claiming that it is unsafe for anyone with disabilities. And it surely is. The narrow path we have left to us is potholed and there is nothing to grab on to.
A mix of weather this week but more good than bad. I used my gym here finally but had to listen to Fox News while I treadmilled. Awful The stack of WSJ on the table in the lobby was my warning. But I had a book on my cellphone to listen to, thank goodness.
HAPPENING was a shot from the past to the future. It's a French film about an abortion in France in 1960. Terrifying to think this sort of thing is coming very quickly to a neighborhood near you. Also watched three films directed by Billy Wilder, LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR and ONE TWO THREE. My favorite will always be THE APARTMENT. Megan had discussed lesser Wilder films on a podcast and although I had seen LOVE, I watched it again too.
Watching HACKS, BARRY, THE STAIRCASE, UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN. Can't watch PBS until I figure out why my Passport is not working with the new Roku.
Reading a book about Billy Wilder as you may have guessed. CONVERSATIONS with Cameron Crowe.
I lost a hearing aid. It will cost me $2500 to replace and I am sick but the combination of mask, glasses and a hearing aid has always been troublesome. It has gone flying a dozen times. I sent away for masks that have elastic rather than go around the ear. But I doubt that will completely solve the problem because I know on my knobby head the elastic will slip and end up at my ears.
What's up with you?
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My view from my seventh-floor apartment is of the back of a hotel and its parking lot. Not any better than Heathens by Ace Atkins and Trust by Chris Hammer. My reading is going slow due to having to read with a magnifier. My left eye has improved a lot from my injections, but my right has gone downhill. Going to the eye doctor on Tuesday and will probably get cataract surgery scheduled. I had my left eye done last fall.
Watching Barry, John Oliver, Under the Banner of Heaven and Bosch Legacy. Bosch would be better without the character of his daughter. Also watched Night Sky on Amazon Prime. It has two very fine performances by J. K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek.
Didn't see any movies in the theater this week. Going Wednesday to see Men.
Glad I haven't had to get hearing aids yet. I couldn't afford them.
Forgot to mention that I also love The Apartment. For me Wilder did four great movies- The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole. Some Like It Hot doesn't seem nearly as funny to me as it once did.
I have never seen ACE IN THE HOLE but the other three are top drawer. SLIH makes me queasy now too. As did LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. The age gap is too great.
The mask-glasses-hearing aid combo is one of my greatest first world problems. To solve it, I would often forsake the hearing aids. Since we moved, my hearing aids are buried somewhere in an unknown box and I have not yet been able to find them. Just as well -- most of what people have to say doesn't really interest me.
Kitty is recuperating nicely, although she is still very tired. This has been playing havoc with her circadian rhythms and has her sleeping at odd hours. She still has to use a walker until she gets her strength back, but progress is there -- slowly, but surely.
School lets out this week, so things will be less hectic here for a couple of months.
Not much television watching this week. We can't seem to concentrate on much. Kitty has been watching a lot of YouTube videos about European royalty, both past and present. Our old TV is now in our bedroom -- something I never really cared for but am (very) slowly getting used to. Christina's TV is in the living room, running on Fire Stick and confusing the hell out of me. Yes, I am showing my age more and more.
Jessamyn and Amy "kidnapped" Christina and Erin on Saturday and took them on a mystery trip to Safari Land in Alabama. They showed great restraint and did not smuggle any of the animals home.
Reading this week consisted of Pronzini and Greenberg's anthology, THE MAMMOTH BAOOK OF PRIVATE EYE STORIES (my FFB) and an anonymously-edited "big fat book" that George sent me, CLASSICS OF MYSTERY, which included John Buchan's THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS -- novel I had always meant to read but never got around to. I have another big fat book waiting for me at the library: THE LETTERS OF SHIRLEY JACKSON. Also in the queue is THE BLIND SPOT, a creaky SF "classic" by Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint. (Flint, a talented writer, is best known for his violent and mysterious death: his body was found, crushed, under a taxi at he bottom of a ravine; he was last seen in the company of a known criminal and it was suspected -- probably unfairly -- that a gun and a robbery had a part in his death.)
Lovely May weather here, interrupted only by a rip-snorter of a storm yesterday.
Have a great week, Patti! Stay safe, and navigate the path to and from your apartment carefully.
That is dangerous, Patti! I hope something is done about it soon! In the meantime, I hope the weather's on your side...
Diane and I are heading over to our local Rite-Aid to get our second Booster shots. Covid-19 rages in Western NY. Two of Diane's friends--who stopped wearing their masks--contracted the virus and had to go to the ER as their breathing was affected.
We wore our N95 masks to our AMC theater and saw a sold out DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA. A few days later we attended the Wake of my former Chairman of the Business Department. I worked with him for over 30 years. A great guy! But he was suffering from dementia and several other health problems.
Buffalo is dealing with the aftermath of the massacre at a local grocery store. Biden met with the grieving families last week. There seems to be a funeral every day.
Stay safe!
I've had trouble qith my glasses flying off when I try to put the mask on or take it off too. At least I don't have a hearing aid to worry about too.
Sounds to me like management should have planned better or at least made a smooth walking path to get in and out of the front of the building. We have exists on the first floor of all three buildings, but most people use the basement to come and go, from any of four entrances that enable you to access all three buildings. My problem is when the elevator breaks down (a not infrequent occurrence) and we have to walk up and down six flights of stairs, often with heavy groceries.
Tomorrow is Jackie's first cataract surgery (on her bad eye). The doctor said "early" so we were picturing having to be in Midtown at 8:30 or 9 am, but when they called Friday the time given was 11:00, hardly early. And for some bizarre reason, she is not allowed to eat after midnight, even though they are not using general anesthetic.
Sissy Spacek and (especially) J. K. Simmons are very good, but so far NIGHT SKY seems more than a bit of a downer. Curious as to where it is going next. Now that we have HBO Max finally, we are enjoying HACKS. She must have a LOT of money to support that lifestyle. I love the Rolls. BOSCH: LEGACY is pretty good, but so far I see no reason we need to see the daughter as a rookie cop. We're holding off on LINCOLN LAWYER until we finish this. We've added three new Israeli shows to our list but haven't started them yet. Still watching several French language shows. RIDLEY ROAD finished on Masterpiece last night. Meh. I'd continue to rank Betty Ford, Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle Obama in that order of interest on THE FIRST LADY. We both wondered how they got their information on the intimate scenes between Eleanor and Lorena Hickok.
Going to Park Slope for the first time in several years today, to meet my cousins for lunch. For some bizarre reason, they stayed in a hotel there last night (they live on Long Island) after seeing MR> SATURDAY NIGHT on Broadway.
I used to love SOME LIKE IT HOT, but the last time I tried to watch it...gave up. And as a kid, I thought ONE TO THREE was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. Granted, I was 13 at the time. I saw ACE IN THE HOLE (I think under the name THE BIG CARNIVAL) probably 50 years ago), and I remember liking it.
Reading the interesting if depressing IN LOVE: A MEMOIR OF LOVE AND LOSS by Amy Bloom, centered around going to Switzerland so her Alzheimers-afflicted husband could end his life legally. Also reading (thanks to Jerry for mentioning this, as I missed it) Joe Lansdale's collection, DRIVING TO GERONIMO'S GRAVE and other stories. I loved the title story. It's what Joe does best.
ONE TWO THREE
I had forgotten that Cagney yells every line in every picture. It does get tiring and that was without the hearing aid! I started one Israeli show, something about a beautiful bride in Jerusalem. It's in English but it seems disjointed to me.
Good luck to Jackie! I am sure she will be fine and see better.
May everyone's sight and sound be more accessible in the near future! And your pathways less encumbered, elevators actually working. Goodness. And very glad Kitty is one the mend, as well. (Alice is progressing nicely, though one of my other friends went back into the hospital this past week, and two others close to me are incompletely but apparently doggedly coping with not so mild depression.)
I can report that THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE the series continues to be engaging enough, and that the second episode draws rather heavily on Fritz Leiber's "Try and Change the Past", to which the Niffenegger novel and not a few other time-travel stories owe some inspiration as well. Script by Steven Moffat and produced by Sue Vertue, which I had failed to note in watching the first episode, so perhaps that duo's tendency toward glibness in scripting Might be the source of the negative reviews? (I haven't yet seen any.) Sophomoric as it could be at times, I rather enjoyed the wit and general spirit of their Better British FRIENDS sitcom COUPLING back when, and enjoyed what I saw (admittedly not much) of their work on DOCTOR WHO.
GASLIT, TTTW, BARRY, THE SIMPSONS, LAST WEEK TONIGHT, ZIWE, and some ROCKFORD FILES episodes I'd recorded on Saturday (their THE STING episodes) were last night's viewing (all recommendable), along with some of 60 MINUTES, and VICE, with various reactionaries, of course universally calling themselves conservatives, slobbering over Victor Orban's fascist activities in Hungary.
I read Damon Knight's review of THE BLIND SPOT when young, Jerry, and haven't ever been moved to follow that course!
ZIWE?
Satirical chat show. Ziwe Fumodoh is a Nigerian-American woman and improv comedian, who in her series is a parody of Constantly Fabulous influencers and chat show hosts. She usually asks her guests questions that leave them uncomfortable. Somewhat in the Zach Gallifinakis BETWEEN TWO FERNS mode. On Showtime and Hulu.
ZIWE pilot episode with Fran Lebowitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG-C515Uo_U
Wow, a lot of bad things are happening to you, Patty. Especially losing the hearing aid. So expensive.
That path you describe would be hard for me to walk on, and I do not consider myself disabled, but I need level ground or at least something to hold on to (because of problems with ankles and feet, and also mild vertigo).
I will admit that ONE, TWO, THREE is far from Cagney's best movie, but he is one of my favorite actors (partly because of his fantastic tap dancing) so I like most movies he is in.
Watching: STAR TREK and STARGATE SG-1 and ATLANTIS. A MIDSOMER MURDERS episode. DOCTOR WHO. PERRY MASON, season 4; KOLSCHACK: NIGHTSTALKER, and BROOKLYN 99, season 8. We started BOSCH: LEGACY.
Sorry, Patti not Patty.
Yes, it is hard to walk although there is no traffic (other than huge construction vehicles) on the street so it is safer to cross now.
I called the hearing aid place and it will only cost me $600 since you get one reduced rate replacement.
I was Patty to fourth grade. Well, actually I was Patsy, then Patty, then Patti. I tried to change it to Pattie but my mother put her foot down.
I was a Never-SOME LIKE IT HOTter, myself. Reminded me as a kid of the kind of thing that would happen when the jr/sr high school football teams, all male, would dress as the cheerleaders...about as unconvincing, and about as contemptuous. See also, TOOTSIE, THE UGLIEST GIRL IN TOWN, BOSOM BUDDIES, etc.
What made, say, Pattie more engaging?
There were so many Patty's in my Catholic neighborhood. I was trying to put some distance between me and every other Patty.
My hopes for improved health for all.
I always think ONE, TWO,THREE is Woody Allen's DON'T DRINK THE WATER. I've been re-watching AGENT CARTER on Disney+. A Marvel series that is not all super-heroes and completely filled with extremely improbable super gadgets.
Boy #1 has been home for two weeks and NEEDS TO GET A JOB. Maybe I should start playing the Silhouettes song on a loop at home. He does still need to get his driver's license, but there are plenty of jobs in town.
I bought a new backpack on Sunday with plans to get out and about this summer. I really don't want to drive far - gas cost and time - so I'll try to stay within 2-4 hours distance for backpacking. Trying on packs at REI was a pleasant experience with a lady guiding me and the comfort and features were so much better than the loaner I used for the past few trips.
Listened to a Joe Ide novel. Very good with equally strong narration.
He is a really great writer. Thanks!
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