Haven't been to a movie theater in a long time now. I may try to sneak away to one this week though. If we don't go to movie theaters, all our movies are going to be of the Hallmark/or MCU variety. Interesting that they are going to have varied prices at some theater. Do they think this will bring more patrons in?
Watching the same old, same old. Most seem to be wrapping up though. I am looking forward to the final season of SUCCESSION and the second season of PERRY MASON. I have also been watching SERVANT on Apple, which is actually pretty good. Certainly moody, and well acted. Not really my idea of horror so good on that.
Finished LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY, which I thought had some major flaws but I finished it so that's something. Now reading short stories by Edith Pearlman, which I had to buy. I don't understand why my library had none of her work. And it is a very good library normally. Also reading a book by Scott Ellsworth, BREAKING GROUND, about the Tulsa race riot of 1921.
Lots of people here without power again. I do not remember this happening in the past and I guess it is because our energy use is so massive now and no one is investing in improving the grids.
I listened to Megan discuss Paul Schrader movies on a podcast (@WatchwithJen). It is a weird thing that I can always find something on you tube or a podcast with Megan on it if I am missing her. Her schedule is crushing though. She was with Sarah Weinman at Columbia University yesterday, is off to Oxford, MS in a couple of weeks and a book festival on Long Island. And this is two months before her book comes out. The pandemic actually allowed her to do a lot of this on zoom. Now it's back to in-person events.
I will be in Florida with Jeff Nase and Jeff Meyerson next week but I will post this so you can share things.
Anyway, what is up with you guys?
32 comments:
Enjoy Florida, because I am sure Florida will enjoy you! Just pay no attention to the politics.
Kitty's birthday is tomorrow. She would have been 74. This coming weekend, the tribe is headed to Foley. Alabama, for a high tea, and then shopping at a Vera Bradley outlet. We did a high tea for Kitty's birthday last year and I have great memories; and Kitty loved Vara Bradley products. Mark and Jack will not be able to make it for the tea, so we're taking them out tomorrow for sundaes at Sweet Frog -- another thing Kitty enjoyed. Our anniversary is coming up later this month -- it would have been 53 years.
On the animal front, Jolly the puppy is growing by leaps and bounds and is leaping and bounding all over the place. She has a sweet, loving personality. Jolly will be getting her rabies shot this week so we will be able to take her to the dog beach this weekend, weather permitting. Mark is getting into the swing of things at the zoo. He texted pictures of Gordon, a four-hour old dwarf goat he fell in love with. Gordon's mother (a young first-timer) rejected him so he is being handfed and is thriving well. Mark has also gotten close to Mop and Bop, a pair of young nene geese who have also taken a liking to him. Meanwhile, Amy's rescue shelter has been dealing with three vicious dogs that killed a young man at a local crack house -- the dogs will be put down; sadly the owner won't. And Mango, the Tegu, escaped from his enclosure last night and led Walt and Mark on a merry chase through the house until Mark cornered him (? her? who can tell?) in the pantry.
No television this wek, although PERRY MASON starts season 2 today. Looking forward to it.
A heavy reading week. Finished Max Allan Collins's THE BIG BUNDLE and it was just as great as I predicted. Having read MAC's biography on Mickey Spillane just a bit earlier, I plowed through two books of Spillane novellas, ME, HOOD! and THE TOUGH GUYS. You have to be in the right mood for this stuff, and I was. Also read Lawrence Block's THE BURGLAR WHO MET FREDRIC BROWN and S. A. Cosby's MY DARKEST PRAYER -- both fantastic reads. Enjoyed Block's Keller novel HIT AND RUN, as well as Lee Goldberg's first Ian Ludlow (the character, not Goldberg's one-time pseudonym) novel, TRUE FICTION. Over the past few months I have dipping into Alan Russell's massive antholgy THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES 2, which has 46 stories from the illustrated British magazines from the Sherlock Holmes era, and I finally finshed the last 300 pages of that book, which also contained six of the eight stories from E. W. Hornung's THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN, about Raffles, the gentleman crook, so I went online and finished that book also. Lastly, I read Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon's horror novella FESTIVAL and, for my FFb, Richard Searight's THE BRAIN IN THE JAR. Up next is Grady Henrix's HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE and John Connolly's SHADOW VOICES: 300 YEARS OF IRISH GENRE FICTION.
It's been a bit overcast here at times, but the weather has been pretty good. Hoping Florida a weather stays this good for your trip. Stay safe, and don't let the Meyersons lead you astray.
We're looking forward to seeing you on Sunday. We were last on the West Coast at the St. Petersburg Bouchercon in 2018, but it was years earlier (the '90s?) when we were in the Fort Myers area. Of course, Jackie is driving me nuts with plans for what to do when we get back to the East Coast on Tuesday.
It has been awfully hot here lately, and their long-range forecasts have been less than accurate. For what it's worth, however, as of now it looks pretty good - more upper 70s/low 80s than the excessive heat we've been having.
I highly recommend Claire Keegan's SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE, a beautifully done short novel set around Christmas of 1985. She writes so well. I'm reading Will Schwalbe's WE SHOULD NOT BE FRIENDS now. Except for the constant breast beating ("Do they hate me because I'm gay?"), it's pretty interesting.
We finished the first series of UNDERCOVER finally. Good show (Netflix).
We've watched 8 of the 10 episodes (only 30-35 minutes each) of THE GIRL FROM OSLO (also Netflix) but it is annoying me more and more. The premise is this: during the Oslo Accords of 1993, this Norwegian woman and Israeli man (both married) had a brief affair. She got pregnant but didn't tell him or her husband. Now the daughter is taking a course (I think) and has to do a DNA test, where she discovers that her father is not her biological father. She goes to Israel (presumably to meet the father, but she doesn't), but ends up on vacation in the Sinai with an Israeli brother and sister when the three of them are kidnapped by terrorists. From then on, the mother's behavior (using the excuse that she will do anything to get her daughter back) is stupid and indeed unconscionable, and only makes things worse and worse. Yet we keep watching.
I discovered that several of our Britbox and Acorn series have new episodes - DEATH IN PARADISE (plus a spinoff series set in England), and ASTRID for two. We did start THE CONSULTANT with Christoph Waltz, but not sure it will hold up for 8 episodes. Also started a New Zealand series set in a gorgeous area of the South Island, ONE LANE BRIDGE.
I am keeping a copy of this, so if it disappears as usual I will send it to you.
It made it, Jeff. Such a pain for you.
You two have been reading up a storm. Reading Jerry's comments I always wonder if having more animals in my life would have enriched it. Certainly a dog would be nice company now. But it is too late although my building allows animals.
Funny how people from the midwest seem to head to the west coast of Florida and those from the east go to the east coast. I was in St. Augustine once and Miami once for a day and the Keys but other than that all west coast and never to Jerry's area at all.
We had some snow last Friday that is slowly melting now. I snowblowed my driveway and all the neighborhood sidewalks. Western NY is supposed to be in the high 30s all week so if that happens, all the snow will be gone. Again.
I plan to fire up TURBOTAX and do my taxes this upcoming weekend. Of course, we'll be losing an hour because of the stupid time change.
Just finished a Victorian mystery: OF MANNERS AND MURDER by Anastasia Hastings. It was okay.
I plan to watch Season 2 of PERRY MASON. It's a far cry from Erle Standley Gardner's guy! Have fun on your trip!
Jackie was always afraid of animals, or at least disliked them. Otherwise, I would have loved to have a dog. But then, we traveled so much in our younger years that I would have hated to leave it home. My cousins are down here for nearly three months, but even though they own their own apartment, they leave their dog at home on Long Island, but their son is there to take care of him.
Jerry House's reading list sounds like a good one.
Boy #1 returned home from MN on Saturday - and thank goodness for the train from Minneapolis.
Boy #2 has a week of tests. All high school juniors in WI have to take the ACT and his is scheduled for tomorrow. On Saturday he takes the SAT. He decided to take the SAT after UPS lost all our high school's PSAT test scores. Boy #2 does as well academically as Boy #1. After Boy #1 was a National Merit Scholar the university gave him a nice tuition discount and we'd like the same chance for #2.
I've been watching DAYBREAK on Netflix which is a post-apocalyptic teen drama featuring Matthew Broderick. The apocalypse includes mutations and one scene has a character with her back covered in a CGI produced holes in the skin and bugs/insects/worms crawling underneath. Watching that really creeped me out. My itching dry skin had me jumpy the rest of the night. Thinking of it right now makes me want to wash my hands.
Have a good time in Florida with Jeff Nase and Jeff Meyerson. We haven't been doing much lately; less walks due to the weather and medical appointments. The weather is still colder here than usual, especially for such an extended time; I envy the higher temperatures in Florida. I had relatives in Florida when I was younger and and the temperatures were always a good deal warmer than even in Birmingham in the winter months.
We are watching DEATH IN PARADISE and are now in the 2nd season. I like all the characters. Also watching PICARD, the new season. We will probably watch a PICARD and a MIDSOMER MURDERS tonight. I am looking forward to getting to the episode of COLUMBO with Donald Pleasance that you featured in your Friday post. COLUMBO had so many good guest starts. We are watching the COLUMBO episodes in order -- because it is easier to keep track of what we have seen -- and only now and then, so not sure when that will be.
As far as reading goes, I finished MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT by Elizabeth Taylor and loved it. Will definitely get more of her books. Tonight I will finish BABY, WOULD I LIE? by Donald Westlake. I am liking that one a lot too. As I mentioned last week, Todd had reminded me of that book, and I am glad I finally read. I need to read more by Donald Westlake. I just have too many books and don't read as fast as I used to.
I ended up not finishing ANGEL by Elizabeth Taylor. I always thought I could tolerate unlikable characters but this one was just not interesting to me aside from her foibles. MRS. PALFREY is a good one and the movie too. I should return to Death in Paradise and give the new detective a chance. Yes, my friends in CA are really complaining about the cold.
Kevin is taking a SAT class this summer. He did well on a practice test but it seems to count for so much now, he will take the class. This summer he is going to be a camp counselor, play tennis, shadow a judge for a school project (just for a week), and do some work for his community foundation and find a new place to play guitar. School of Rock here closed. He is really enjoying having a drivers license now and his parents are glad he can get himself more places. He and his friends go to the gym a lot and the movies. Too bad he can't be friends with Gerard's son. As in WI, the weather is not ideal for a new driver and a older girl hit his car a few weeks ago. Luckily he was not moving but it is a lot of damage right where the driver sits.
Yikes, glad Kevin wasn't hurt (I take it he might not've been in it at the time).
Pets can be confounding, though usually they are simply one's nonhuman friends. And paying attention to them, you can learn/be surprised by how they think and how much they do. At least the more intelligent ones (our tomcat Domino, taken in from one of Alice's colleagues who didn't think she could handle cats and a new baby, seemed autistic and also not too bright in several ways). We are about to take in another cat from the late sister of a dear friend...to join Ninja, who was taken in from my parents when they became incapacitated.
Now trying to find a place for the other cat from the late sister to land, while friend is trying to get acclimated to a new job, in physical therapy.
A lot of things hanging fire around here, from settling estates to ridiculously over-complicated Costco returns. And multiplatform megacorps in entertainment are doing their best to kill most of their interesting projects, HBO (and TCM) in the clutches of the jackasses who ruined Discovery Channel and its kin on over to Paramount/CBS/Showtime, who not only cancelled LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and CITY ON A HILL, but removed the old episodes from their platforms, for Tax Purposes. Meanwhile, Verizon is trying to kill their cable business, and I'm wondering if the various small distortions/freeze-ups/outages are their unsubtle way of getting us to give up on their cable box and take on their essentially streaming bundle they hope to replace them with. Starz snapped up a feminist drama, already completed and ready to roll, that Para/CBS/Sho refused to go forward with.
And I seem to be arguing a fair amount with people who want to see large corporate publishers and the authors' heirs, human and corporate synergist, testing the waters for bowdlerized versions of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming books as bad acts of the "woke" left as opposed to attempts at cash grabs on the part of said publishers and heirs, and How That's The Left Doing EXACTLY The Same Thing as the current reactionary governmental book-banning (and no doubt burning) of the right, not restricted to but unsurprisingly most chest-poundingly in Florida and Texas. There's no Woke Mob threatening to put people in jail for letting an 11yo look at the ez-reader about the penguin chick raised by two male penguins, much less a book on how their bodies are changing. "But there Must Be, or how else can I insist on false equivalence?"
Glad things are Mostly better for most of us.
Eric Alper asked on Twitter: What’s a TV show you loved but only lasted a season or two?
My incomplete response ran to: Sons & Daughters (2006 partly improv sitcom), Thriller (1960-62 Karloff-hosted anthology), Frank's Place, Sports Night, Deep State, Condor, Bookmark (1989-91 Lewis Lapham bookchat), Spotless (2015 crime drama), Jett, Karen Sisco, Get Shorty, Int'l Festival of Animation (PBS '77) and
SUNDAY NIGHT/NIGHT MUSIC, THE NIGHTLY SHOW w/L Wilmore, THE SHOCK OF THE NEW, THOMPSON (Linda T's 1988 sketch show), I'LL FLY AWAY, THE NEWSROOM (1996-97 CBC comedy), TRYING TIMES (1987-89 PBS comedy antho), THE PLAY OF THE WEEK (1959-61 NTA network antho), LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and
THE RICHARD PRYOR SHOW, JOURNEYMAN, THE MIDDLEMAN, TOUGH CROWD, LEGENDS OF JAZZ w/ R. Lewis, NYPD (1967-9), TIMELESS, RELATIVITY, WONDERFALLS, UNDECLARED, ANDY RICHTER CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, MAXIMUM BOB, THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS, SPACE FORCE, LUKE CAGE...loved might've been a bit strong in some cases, but definitely liked a lot.
Good list, Todd. I would second the ones I remember esp. FRANK'S PLACE, SPORTS NIGHT and KAREN SISCO.
And yes, I had to reinstate my emails, Facebook and Instagram today on this computer though not my cell. Constantly coming up with new passwords makes me steer clear of a password manager.
MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE.
MOACA was a decent series, as I remember it. I think it was on when I was doing too many 10-10 shifts at TV GUIDE.
And if you liked KAREN CISCO, there's a decent chance you'll like the only season of JETT (also starring and even more a personal project of Carla Gugino), which was (and perhaps still is) up on the Cinemax cable archives (it had the misfortune of having its first/last season in the year Cinemax lost all its series, also including QUARRY, the Max Allan Collins adaptation, which I liked nearly as well, and HBO didn't bother to pick any of them up. It might be viewable on HBO MAX.
ABC went through a brief (season or so) period there, with KAREN CISCO and MAXIMUM BOB, of offering good adaptations/extensions of Elmore Leonard novels, then strangling them in their cribs. At least there were two seasons of Epix/MGM+'s GET SHORTY, which was vastly better than the film, and even as good as the novel, albeit in part because it took the situations in the novel as its jumping-off point rather than attempting straightforward adaptation.
A more complete list might well include RIVER, even to the degree that its thread was more or less completed in one season, and wondering if the not altogether dissimilar ANNIKA will actually get its promised second season (or HIGHTOWN on Starz its promised third).
Loved RIVER. One of the best one season shows for sure. Have no caught up with ANNIKA yet. Did see GET SHORTY and liked it.
No second series of RIVER. Carla Gugino always gets great reviews, but she never does shows that I like. I'm pretty sure there will be another ANNIKA. If more than two seasons are allowed (as in some of Todd's choices) I'd go with BANSHEE (38 episodes, 4 series) on Cinemax.
I'll agree on several of those short-lasted series and add BAKERSFIELD, P.D. IMDB says there were 17 episodes. The show was my introduction to Giancarlo Esposito and had a really neat cast. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105947/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_148_act
Freaks and Geeks, My So-called Life.
DARE ME. (Although it is still on Netflix)
Yes, Freaks and Geeks. So glad they decided not to bring it back years later. So many in the cast have gone on to major success.
Nope, none of my choices had more than two seasons, unless I'm mistaken. I left off FREAKS AND GEEKS and MY SO-CALLED LIFE in part because many had cited them before I joined the Twitter thread. But RELATIVITY, which I did cite, was the one-season series between MY SO-CALLED LIFE and ONCE AND AGAIN (three seasons, thus "ineligible" but also my choice for the best of the Zwick/Herskovitz series), and was by me even better than SO-CALLED. I have not quite joked before that SO-CALLED was TEENSOMETHING, RELATIVITY was TWENTYSOMETHING, and ONCE AND AGAIN was FORTYSOMETHING...though all of the latter series were better, by me, than THIRTYSOMETHING.
All that was "required" of the citations was that they only had one or two seasons...DARE ME definitely qualifies. BAKERSFIELD P.D. was also a fine series, killed off quickly.
I mostly brought up RIVER because it was as good as it was, but it seems rather as if intended to be one season only. A miniseries, if one will, by design.
So, how was BLUES IN THE NIGHT?
UNDECLARED was a kind of follow-up to FREAKS & GEEKS, and rather unjustly overlooked by nostalgists.
Blues in the Night was terrific. Great voices, great score.
TERRIERS!
TERRIERS was a very impressive series, and I don't think it occurred to anyone who replied to the query (at least that I saw). Y'know, I might've cited THE NERO WOLFE MYSTERIES that Tim Hutton put together, as well.
For that matter, the eight Italian Wolfe telefilms, first imported by MHz Worldview, could be squeezed in w/o bending the rules too much:
Snake Track - Based on the novel Fer-de-Lance
Champagne for One - Based on the novel of the same name
Princess Orchid - Based on the novel The Golden Spiders
The Pact of Six - Based on the novel The Rubber Band
Checkmate - Based on the novel Gambit
Parasites - Based on the novel If Death Ever Slept
The Red Box - Based on the novel of the same name
Pair of Swords - Based on the novel Over my Dead Body
I just recalled Chris Elliott's GET A LIFE which ran two seasons, 1990-1992with 35 episodes. I would have sworn I bought the DVD set for my library, uet I don't see it.
-Gerard - Not Logged In.
I was one of the lucky folks who got to preview GAL, on Fairfax Media General Cable before Fox began broadcasting it. I gave it very positive feedback. I suspect it made Fox folks nervous.
I might well've cited it! Probably should on twi...
FOX sure was known for odd programming decisions and promos in the 1990s. Maybe weird decisions were an option after THE SIMPSONS and MARRIED WITH CHILDREN established the network. I recall an minor uproar when FOX won their first NFL contract.
I posted last week with an update from sunny Manitoba, but the post like some others that people mentioned got lost. Had a call this morning from my friend in Fort Lauderdale who asked if I might come down during spring training, but won't make it this year. COVID chased me home the last time I was there. Read recently that a favourite bookstore in Delray Beach called Murder by the Book has shut down. Once saw Randy Wayne White signing there. There is a great Friends of the Library shop at the Coral Springs library where I always found interesting books that were not library rejects. Heard this week that our Children's Hospital Book Market has a large sale scheduled for two days in late April, which was good news. On Friday I'm going to the storage area in our provincial archives building to price some hockey books and programs. Reading an older mystery by Sandra Ruttan set in the greater Vancouver area. No idea if she is still writing as I haven't been on the Dorothy-L list for years where she used to frequently post.
Sandra Ruttan is kinda active on Instagram. She does occasional video readings. @sandraruttan
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