I saw THEATER CAMP, which probably few of you have heard of based on the audience of six.
It was along the lines of a Christoper Guest mockumentary but less bite and more sugar. I didn't mind it, but I doubt I will remember it down the road.
Watching JUSTIFIED: CITY PRIMEVAL, which probably will rank as one of the lesser seasons. Debating whether to watch HI-JACKED. Finished up GRANTCHESTER and is it me or was that one of the worst seasons too. They really didn't seem to know what to do with half the characters on the show. Maybe it is me. Trying SLOW HORSES again after hearing an interview with Mick Herron on the BBC.
Been rereading some of the Andre Dubus II short stories. A great writer indeed.
Trying to shake of the politics of this country and having little luck.
What about you?
21 comments:
It's the first anniversary of Kitty's death. I keep muddlin' along.
Erin is now a college graduate as of this past Friday. She had a flat tire on the to her last test, but managed to make it in time. Now it's time to apply to vetinary schools. She'll go to whichever one accepts her, whereever it is located.
Christina, Erin, and Erin's boyfriend left for a ten-day vacation in Scotland. Their flight was delayed four times, causing them to miss their connecting flight to Scotland, but their luggage -- with all their clothes and Christina's migraine medicine -- is on the way there. Their new schedule (of there are no more dealys) means they will have to forego a planned visit to Edinburgh. Meanwhile, it means they will be sleeping on the floor of the airport. **sigh**
Jack starts middle school on Thursday, something everyone with an ADHD kid looks forward to. Time to fasten your seatbelts.
This was the last week for the free kid's movies on Tuedays and Thursdays. Christina and I went with Jack and saw THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2 (which was actually pretty good) and PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE (which was two hours I'll never get back). Jack picked up the Disney mOANA remake at the library and we've ben watching at night, but Jack keeps falling asleep. Maybe we'll be able to catch the whole thing sometime this week. Watched GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 3 and liked it. Am now on Season 4 of VERA.
Realized I now have over 1500 books on my Kindle (which I seldom look at). What to do? Buy more books, of course. Went on a Bill Crider marathon, reading THE GIRL WHO WANTED TO BE SHERLOCK HOLMES, A WEREWOLF NAMED WAYNE, and four individual short story e-Books. Currently reading THE BLACKLIN COUNTRY FILES, a collection of five Dan Rhodes stories. Also read THE COMPENDIUM OF SREM by F. Paul Wilson, my wednesday short story. Read two books by Charlotte Armstrong, SEVEN SEATS TO THE MOON and A LITTLE LESS THAN KIND (my FFB this week). Other books read this week were Sax Rohmer's THE VOICE OF KKALI: THE EARLY PAUL HARLEY STORIES, THE NEXT TIME I DIE (a recent offering from Hard Case Crime by Jason Starr), GIDEON AND THE YOUNG TOUGHS AND OTHER STORIES by John creasey, writing as "J. J. Marric", and DRACULAS, a collaborative gore-fest novel by Blake Crough, Joe Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson. I'm also poking my way through THE KINDLING SPARK: EARLY STORIES OF mYSTERY, sUSPENSE, AND hORROR by John Dickson Carr (a collection of fairly mature juvenalia edited by Tony Medawar) and 10 UNIQUE STORIES BY WILL F. JENKINS, stories culled from THE SATURDAY EVENING POST and COLLIER'S.
As for politics, it seems that every so often a goodly part of the world teetters on madness. This may be one of those times. **sigh**
It's not madness to wish you a much better, more fantasmagorical week, Patti. Stay safe.
I had no idea the kindle could hold that much. Technology truly is amazing.
Sorry to hear you haven't been really drawn in by the theatre or TV lately, Patti. We all can use a break from politics!
I think I have, in some vague way, heard of THEATER CAMP the film. Probably someone involved was being interviewed somewhere. Sorry both you and Jerry have had such mixed results with the theater-going...
Hit 59 yesterday, and for my sloth in not following up on the floods in Barre, VT (figuring I'd hear something if any of the family were affected), discovered I would but only indirectly and late: https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2023-07-27/a-forever-home-destroyed-in-barre-leaves-one-future-uncertain
Pay cable is finally repopulating itself with at least weekly shows, with the second season of WINNING TIME arriving on HBO, to join MINX on Starz and new episodes going up of THE CHI on Showtime (DOMINA on MGM+ and OUTLANDER on Starz seem less promising). Recorded the new DARK WINDS and the local PROFESSOR T repeat (having missed the latter series in its initial US run/s) last night.
Finally getting New Cat on a medical regimen...not too much to show for it yet, but it's early going. More books ruined due to central air conditioner leak managing to soak Just the right spot. But all things in perspective, getting by here.
Amused to have utterly stumbled into another talented mother/daughter duo this past weekend, before the Really Bad news came down, by catching musician Phoebe Bridgers and her current trio of previously solo singer-songwriters on CBS SATURDAY (their 500th musical guest) and then watching her mother, comedian Jamie Bridgers, perform on the UnCabaret Zoom show latish Sunday night, with Merril Markoe and Kira Soltanovich (who performed from her car in LA, just before going in to perform on stage at a Ukranian benefit--she's U-born USian), among comedians less familiar to me...further perspective-setting.
Don't live on steep inclines, folks. My customized version of stay safe(r).
Yeah, Kindle files aren't the biggest things in the world, and memory is (comparatively) cheap these years.
At least this USian country's most fascist potential despot is not likely to win anything but appeals on his prison sentence (once he trounces his Ghastly Old Pile rivals for the nom--it's a very sad situation where Hutchison, Christie and an ex-CIA agent/former US Rep. Hurd are the least bad options), but the fascists remain on the march in, notably of late, north-central Africa, where Putin-backed thugs, native and mercernary, keep plugging along. At least the fascists were trounced in Spain, a small bright spot...and, of course, began immediately bawling Trumpily about how Everything Was Rigged.
Congratulations to your Erin, Jerry...when my ex Donna and I drove down to Virginia Tech so she could be interviewed for the veterinary school there (getting into vet school is Much harder than getting into medical school, which makes very little sense but sure makes the bucks--at least at that time, I believe there were only 22-24 vet schools in the country, and most had state-designations...VT's took the students from Virginia and Maryland at that time, and probably still). The VA-MD School of Veterinary Med was Very concerned about animal rights activists in those happy days, as Donna was applying in 1990, and they were particularly concerned about what this "Amnesty International" thing was that she had listed as one of her undergrad campus activities. Yes, they were that blinkered/ignorant/paranoid. She didn't get in, despite grades and all the usual stuff. They loved their animal product testing and vivisection at Tech.
She is currently a biostatistical analyst for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I wrote a recommending letter to go with her application to UNC for medical stats grad work (in part because my title at TV GUIDE at the time was suitably corporate-impressive). Oddly enough, I bet they didn't quiz her on Amnesty Int'l.
Todd, I believe there are now 32 vet schools in the country. They are still difficult to get into and still tremendously expensive. Christina had all 32 ranked in order and Erin is applying to numbers 11 through 32, knowing she probably has no chance at any of the top ten. Our fingers are crossed.
Luckily the schools play no attentions to the politics, philospohy, or ethical stances of the applicants' grandparents -- not even in Florida.
Any longer, that is. Ask Donna, if you meet her, about how it went in 1990.
All good luck to Erin! Glad also that the geographical restrictions are not (or at very least less) in place.
More smoke from Canada and muggy weather shrouded Western NY over the weekend. Diane and I stayed indoors.
The second five episodes of THE LINCOLN LAWYER just showed up on Netflix so I'll be watching them this week. Diane and I watched the first episode of LIONESS. Diane finds it too violent so she'll drop it. I'll watch a couple more episodes before I decide to stick with it or drop it, too.
Patrick is in L.A. Katie was supposed to go to the Beyonce concert in Foxboro, but she got sick and had to give her ticket to a friend.
I have my yearly appointment with my Retina specialist today. Tomorrow I have an appointment with a physical therapist for some back pain relief. Getting older is Not Fun. Stay safe!
Congratulations to Erin, and Happy Belated, Todd.
Quiet week here, the way we like it. We went for our annual physicals, blood tests, etc. and both came out fine, which is good. No shows of interest on TDF (Theatre Development Fund), and no concerts scheduled for a few more weeks. At least the weather has improved. My cousins that we went to Maine with normally go to an inn in Vermont every August with friends, but this year's flooding made that impossible, so they are back in Maine instead.
What are we watching? DARK WINDS, RIDLEY (watched the last two parter last night), BLACK SNOW, TREME (repeat; we're on series 3), KOHRRA (not sure we - or at least Jackie - will make it through the last two episodes of this Punjabi series. One, it's hard to follow. Two, all the cops are brutal and some are stupid. None are in the least sympathetic.) THE LINCOLN LAWYER (7 of 10 episodes watched to date), THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF JERUSALEM, THE SHAPE OF WATER (set in Italy, near Trieste), BALTHAZAR, CANDICE RENOIR, AGATHA KOLTES (PBS Masterpiece. Another French show, this about a "great" cop but a neglectful mother, who gets herself transferred to work under her angry daughter, the single mother of two young kids. She's good and the daughter needs to lighten up.), probably others.
Also doing more reading - short stories by Edward P. Jones, Dennis Lehane, some anthologies. We don't seem to be eating out as much as in the past.
Jerry, I see I "only" have 941 book on my Kindle, but that is misleading, as my fiction collection has:
The Complete Wizard of Oz collection
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Complete Works
Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (read all the stories)
Complete Works of Wilkie Collins
Complete Works of Charles Dickens
Edith Wharton: Complete Works
100 Books You Must Read Before You Die (also Vol. 2 with another 100 books)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Complete Short Stories (read this)
O. Henry, Complete Works (read this)
Henry James: The Complete Collection
Rudyard Kipling, The Complete Novels and Stories
The P. G. Wodehouse Collection
The Complete Saki (read all the stories)
Complete Works of Anthony Trollope
Still debating on picking up AMC+ to get Dark WInds and Hank.
Why don't people delete books once read? I guess there's no reason to. SO far I have deleted all the books I have read on Kindle so I only have about 25 on there. I am a deleter even if it makes no sense. I like Phoebe Bridgers in the few tunes I have heard.
Kevin had a tour of U of M last week and liked that too. Of course, his parents and grandparents (other side) went there. Very hard to get in now. SATS have to be over 1400 and GPA around 4.0
Thanks, Jeff. Phoebe Bridgers's band is Boygenius, and they are good. While, despite having good actresses in it, to judge by the first two episodes (as mentioned by me here last week), there is little good (and much that is machismically stupid) about LIONESS...the violence didn't bother me, so much as the attitude toward it.
Me, I just mostly accumulate physical copies of books and magazines for various parts of this house, and other misfortunes in the past, to chew up.
Again, you do NOT need AMC+ for Dark Winds, just the regular AMC. That's what we have...
You don't have cable at this point, though, correct, Patti? Verizon is trying to get out of the everything business, it seems to me, but since we still (foolishly) use them for internet access and house phones, the cable doesn't add Too much, hence my reluctance in the current circumstances to sub to too many streamers. Broadcast reception of (essentially all) the digital stations around here not great.
I have been trying to ignore most politics right now, without burying my head in the sand. I am more aware of political stuff than I used to be, when I avoided all news of any kind.
Glen and I guessed that we had about 500 books on the Kindle (most of them are in the Kindle Library cloud) but I checked and we have ~1800. I definitely should delete some. We don't read that much on the Kindle, and no, that does not stop me from getting more.
Watching: We started THE AFTERPARTY, season 2. Only have one more episode in STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS, season 2. And watched the first episode of GOOD OMENS, season 2. Continuing on STAR TREK: VOYAGER, CSI, the original PERRY MASON, ALMOST PARADISE, and DEATH IN PARADISE.
Reading: I finished Charles McCarry's last novel, THE MULBERRY BUSH, a spy novel. It was not as good as his early books, but I still enjoyed it. Much too much about sex though. His other standalone that I read back in 2019, THE SHANGHAI FACTOR, also focused on sex. Strange. I read NUMBER ONE IS WALKING: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions by Steve Martin last night. Short and an entertaining book / graphic novel / memoir. I am still reading OPERATION MINCEMEAT; it is very good but dense and a slow read. AT this pace it will take me awhile.
Glen is reading THE COMPANION, the first book in the Lizzie Martin series by Ann Granger. It is a historical crime novel, set in Victorian London.
READING – So far this year I have hit a lot of duds – mostly new non-fiction.
MOVIES – Oppenheimer and Barbie are both worth seeing. They are even better on discount Tuesdays.
TV – Binged season 1 of The Lincoln Lawyer. Good stuff.
KINDLE – Many of the books on mine are not available in any other form. I’ve also picked up a lot of short-story collections.
Having just read Tracy's comment about too much sex in a spy novel, too much sex in any novel rarely works for me. I am not sure why. Romance works in small doses but not sex so much. I wonder if it did when I was younger and experiencing it for myself.
Lots of duds for me too, Elgin. I am hoping the new Ann Patchett (Tom Lake)will light my fire for reading.
Dang. Today is Tuesday already.
On Sunday we drove to visit my wife's family in Central KS. They have bought a condo and sold their home. We are the sisters-in-law are assisting with the downsize. We are looking into renting a trailer or truck to take furniture back to WI.
I listened to Nevil Shute's ON THE BEACH. I've always enjoyed Shute's novels but had off this one and have put off TOWN LIKE ALICE.
I've tried out a few TV series online and there hasn't been much of note. I am still working through THE WALKING DEAD.
Todd, it sounds like your VT relatives were hit hard.
They were, Gerard. Even a question if the house was safe enough to re-enter to pull out what was not already destroyed.
With all the sequel series, AMC wants to make sure you have all the Walking Dead you can handle and then some! BEACH is the only Shute novel I've read, thus far.
On the Beach (movie and book) terrified me as a kid.
Post a Comment