Although colder than usual, and rainier than usual, we had a great time in La Jolla. It is such a gorgeous place it is hard not to. And showing it to two new people was fun. I did miss Phil--it was the first time I have been there since his death. But on the whole, it was tolerable after four years without him. We saw three musical events-the best being the Montreal Jazz Festival with Kurt Elling, Dee Dee Bridgewater and three younger performers. San Diego is struggling with a homeless epidemic and we were wary of walking the streets near the theater-in fact, a man warned us not to. But La Jolla is a world away so we could forget real world problems a few hours later, which makes me ashamed off and on. Friends from DC came in for five days, she with a broken foot from a hike in Tucson. Saw a good series that played on BRITBOX-BROKEN. Watched AFTERSUN on VOD-terrific movie. Saw several movies at the theater-all good: LIVING, MISSING, WOMEN TALKING. After starting and putting down several novels, I am now reading THE SOLOIST by Mark Salzman.
How about you?
18 comments:
Glad you had a good trip.
No movies at the theater this week. Been watching The Last of Us, Poker Face and old X Files.
Watched the Grammy Awards. Just awful. Jeff Beck, such a major figure, and no tribute. But a rapper murdered 3 months ago gets one. A lot of the winners get their awards due to name recognition such as Ozzy Osbourne for best rock album-horrible choice, and Willie Nelson for country. Post Malone in the rock category? The Muse, a decent band, in the heavy metal category. They are not metal. Not looking forward to the Oscars when Everything, Everywhere .... is the favorite to win. It was on my worst list. Two hours of fast edits and zero character development.
Reading Everybody's Talking by Jordan Harper. Almost finished and loving it. Reread The October Country by Ray Bradbury. My favorite of his collection.
RIP Tom Verlaine the band Television. Their first album , Marquee Moon, is always been one of my favorites.
Weather getting up into the forties this week. Nice.
And two more months till baseball.
Welcome back. La Jolla's loss is our gain.
I.m in the second week of my back acting up and it hasn.t been this bad for several decades. Uusually, when my back goes I walk like a crab; now I long for the crab-walking days. If things go to form, I'll have another week or so before I can move around easily. At least this is making me more aware of where I put (actually, shuffle) my feet. With an eight-week old puppy who feels it is her duty to attack my socks and my cane, you have to be careful.
Speaking of puppies, most of the crew went to Pensacola yesterday for their official Pawdi-Gras celebration. The donwtown was closed and there were at least 400 dogs out in force. Amy's animal shelter brought ten dogs to the event and were able to have four of them adopted on the spot. Erin spent the entire time ohh-ing and aww-iong over all the dogs. There were some beauties there.
Friday was Erin's 21st birthday and she made the trip back from Tallahassee for the occasion. Christina took her out to lunch on Friday and on Saturday we all went out to celebrate. Everyone in the family is doing very well and Jessie is anxious to start her new job next week -- it will be great to work at a place where everybody loves you and not at a place where everybody needs you because they haven't bothered to learn the basic functions of the job.
Atched THE GLASS ONION and THE PALE BLUE EYE. I liked both much better than I thought I would. Yeteday, based on Leigh Lundin's online recommendation, I caught both seasons of ADULT WEDNESDAY ADDAMS, a YouTube crowd-funded collection of very sort skits. Amusing but not laugh-out-loud funny; certainly worth and hour or so of your time to catch all thirteen episodes and the between-season teaser.
I finished Rex Stout's HOW LIKE A GOD for my FFB. I also read the last four books in C.s. Lewis's CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. The Christian symbolism could be a it overwhelming but the pure inventiveness, characters, and adventurous plots helped make up for that. After BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER went off the air, Joss Whedon continued her adventures in a series of comic books, issuing them as seasons (from Season 8 on). I read Volume 3 of season 10 and the complete Season 11. It was good to see the Scooby Gang back in action, only with far more mature action. I also read the Manga version of the Benedict Cumberbatch SHERLOCK episode of THE BLIND BARBER. I may be showing my age, but I doubt if I'll ever get used to the Manga format. Currently readinf ADVENTURES IN THE DREAM TRADE, a collection of articles, introductions, poems, songs, and fiction by Neil Gaiman; the largest section of the book is taken up with his online "diary" detailing the day-to-day events publicizing his book AMERICAN GODS.
It's been cold as a witch's anatomy here. I'm glad most of my time is spent lying down on a warm heating pad to loosen my back muscles.
Hoping you have a warm and happy week. Stay safe, Patti. (BTW, the cnstruction in front of your building has been completed, I hope.)
Glad you enjoyed your trip! We missed you!
We woke up to a 3.8 earthquake this morning. The house shook and everything rattled around! Yikes!
We survived the Arctic Blast on Friday and Saturday. Sub-Zero wind chills are No Fun. But, surprisingly, Western NY temps rebounded into the 40s. Wacky weather!
Diane and I have tickets to ANT-MAN AND THE WASP later this week.
I share Steve's assessment of The Grammys and the upcoming Oscars. Stay safe!
Welcome back, indeed...not so tanned, but mostly ready and rested...and post a jazz festival...it's been too many years since I attended one. Or spent time in the company of distant friends.
Glad it was mostly fun, if with certain caveats, including the weather to some degree.
Still working through the second season of DEEP STATE, but fell asleep before the new episodes of Showtime's new series and HBO's THE LAST OF US last night...eminently reviewable, however, as is DEEP STATE from four years ago on Epix-now-renamed MGM+.
So strange how much of Jerry's life has been about animals and how little of mine. When I walked home alone one night and a dog bounded up to me, I almost had a heart attack. And when my friends visited the animal safari, I declined. Having even a gentle giraffe nuzzle my hand seemed out of my comfort zone. Although walking home alone at night in the dark apparently did not.
Todd, you must have every channel there is. I just purchased Peacock to see Poker Face. Boy, maybe Natasha plays the same character a lot, but boy she is great at it. ALso watched THE LAST OF US, which too seems great.
It is warm here too, George. Great but worrying. I know so few recording artists now, it would be crazy to watch the Grammy's even if there wardrobe is worth a look.
Well, Florida is pretty great for us, as you'll see next month. Not too hot or too cold - mostly 70s to low 80s so far, with little rain, though we had a lot yesterday. The apartment is definitely too small for us as a permanent thing, but for three months it is fine, and we have everything we need. Mostly eating out, shopping, reading, playing online, and watching television.
Is BROKEN the series with Sean Bean as a priest. If so, we haven't seen it, but Jackie is a big fan of his and will surely want to watch it. It was written by Jimmy McGovern, best known as the creator of CRACKER, but who also wrote the 2021 TIME, with Bean in prison, which Jackie watched and liked.
What are we watching? Tops on our list currently is series 4 of the Israeli-Palestinian FAUDA, of which we've watched 8 of 12 episodes so far. Doron is still doing his thing and this series is very good. That's on Netflix. We're watching series 3 of ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL (4 of 6 so far) on PBS Masterpiece, which is releasing them one a week. It's grown on me since the first series. On Amazon Prime, we finished the second (and final) series of HUNTERS, which ended with the trial of Adolf Hitler, who had been hiding in Argentina for 30 years. This whole series was thrown off by the flashback scenes of Al Pacino, who died in series one. Also finished, on Netflix, was INTIMACY (Spain) and THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS (Italy), which was no MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, despite the same writer. We watched the 6 part THE PROMISE on MHz, about a serial child killer, with the daughter of the original detective, now a cop herself, still trying to vindicate her late father 20 years later. This one was set in France, near Bordeaux.
Ongoing shows we've watching: the new series of VERA on Acorn, I think. We watched the first episode of series 12 last night. CHERIF and CANDICE RENOIR. Four newer shows on MHz, I believe, are MONGEVILLE, PETRA, MAKARI, and THE PARADISE. Mongeville is a retired investigating judge in France, who helps out a detective solving crimes, perhaps because of the disappearance of his own daughter (who, we've learned, is still alive). PETRA is a little harder to watch, as the main character (also French) is a rather unpleasant and very unsympathetic woman, a cop happy to work in the archives who is transferred to deal with rapes (in the first episode) and homicide. Her assistant is a more more genial character and I suppose their relationship will mellow her, but she just isn't a nice person.
Apparently this is too long so will have to make it into two parts.
Part 2:
MAKARI was clearly MHz's attempt to cash in on the popularity of Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano series by setting another show in Sicily, with beautiful scenery. The main character either quit or was pushed out of his Ministry job in Rome and is back in Sicily, as sort of a novelist cum journalist and part-time farmer of sorts. He gets a girlfriend - a waitress at a cousin's restaurant, and has a series of 90 minute mysteries to solve. A local soccer star (and his cousin, though he hasn't seen him for 30 years) is killed in a car crash that is hard to explain. A zillionaire dies on a tour of Sicily with people depending on him for money.
THE PARADISE is actually quite interesting. I think most people probably know that a lot of British people retire to the Spanish Costa del Sol, where it is a lot cheaper to live, as well as having a much better climate than Britain. But they aren't the only one. Apparently there is a large colony of Finnish retirees too. Basically, someone is trying to get elderly Finnish women to sell their houses, presumably so they can build a giant resort (The Paradise). Meanwhile, a family of four vacationing int he same area is wiped out, two parents and two young kids shot in a camper. The grandmother of the family asks her friend, a Helsinki cop, to go there and see what happened. She does, and is called back by the Spanish cop on the scene (who conveniently speaks Finnish, as he had a Finnish girlfriend, though mostly they communicate in English). The thing that shocked me, something you would never see here, is that several episodes in, this decidedly unglamorous 67 year old woman and the 42 year old Spanish cop sleep together. Very interesting development. I'll be curious to see where the show goes, as there has already been a second series. Also, the cop is married to a doctor, though he has dementia and occasionally flies into a rage and hits people, including their grandchild.
I am so happy I got to see you, Patti! I'm glad you had a good time, too, as hard as it must have been. And you're right about how easy - how scarily easy - it is to forget the real problems out there when one's in La Jolla. It's that sort of place. I'm glad you're back safely!
Yes, Jeff. It is very very good. Lots of things to think about. I wish they had done a second series but I guess both Bean and McGovern thought it was finished. I loved Cracker when I was in the UK in 1995. He also directed PRIEST, which shares some things with this one. He wrestles so much with his Catholicism and if it is an evil thing.
Glad to see you too, Margot. So good of you to drive down.
Patti, Glad to hear that you had a good time (mostly) in La Jolla.
We haven't been getting as many walks in lately, but we did recently discover a new area near the Natural History Museum to walk in. It is farther from home but it does carry us towards the downtown Santa Barbara area and some different restaurants to try for breakfast.
We have been watching mainly the same old shows, but we did start watching DEATH IN PARADISE this week. We are starting at season one and it has started a twelfth season so it will keep us going for a while. I would like to try POKER FACE but not sure I want to add Peacock for that.
I am reading three books: THE COVER WIFE by Dan Fesperman, BULLET TRAIN by Kotaro Isaka and THE SISTERS by Mary S. Lovell (more about the Mitfords). I started all of those in late January. Haven't read many short stories lately either but will get back into that soon.
I watched the first few seasons of DEATH IN PARADISE but when they changed the detective, I lost track of it. I had the same qualms about adding Peacock but it seems easy enough to get rid of it when Poker Face is finished. Or so I hope.
Death in Paradise should be on PBS Masterpiece anyway. Yes, I 've liked some of the cops better than the others, and some of the mysteries are weak, but the scenery is beautiful and some of the guest stars are well known.
Correction: The Paradise is on Acorn.
I had been a little worried about DEATH IN PARADISE because I heard that the detectives changed over time, but I wanted to give it a try anyway. Definitely a different setting than any other show we have watched.
I get Peacock for free. Some commercials but breaks are seldom longer tha a minute.
Jeff: In The Magpie Murders the lead character has a boyfriend who is close to 20 years younger than her. Although that is the age of the actors and not the characters whose ages are never given.
Well, I got it for free but was told to watch Poker Face I had to subscribe. And there are still commericials, which is very irksome.
I saw that. In this one, in the next episode she does make the point to him that she is "way older" than him. They bonded over soccer.
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