Hoping that spring come tomorrow because it's been cold.
Saw a good play the ripple, the wave that carried me home by Christina Anderson at Theater Nova in Ann Arbor and then went out to dinner with ten people. Awkward number but fun.
Saw One Life, which wasn't Schindler's List or Zone of Interest but it was good. Anthony Hopkins was amazing. How does he do it?
Watching The Two Body Problem and The Manhunt, and Northern Exposure and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which might be the funniest season yet. Is it Carol Leifer that's bringing some new jokes?
Finished Wednesday's Child by Peter Robinson. He was one of the best. I will miss him.
How about you.
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Warmer here more often than not. A good thing.
The kooks came by twice more for sleepovers. They were 13 days old on their visit Friday and beginning to learn how to use their muscles so they are actually moving rather then just flopping around. One of them has opened his eyes. They are now beginning to make bird-like sounds rather than raucous cries. They are still pink and bald and they are uglier than ever; it will be while before they become handsome birds. They are still called A and B -- the zoo is slow to name them. Speaking of names, the zoo is trying to name its new baby male vulture. In order to keep track of its lineage, each zoo baby is given a name that starts with the first letter of its mother; in this case, an "E." Suggestions included Eddie, Elmer, and Egbert. Soon we became silly. Erin suggested Eggplant. I came up with Ethiopia, Ecdysiast, Ear Infection, Eclampsia, Endometriosis, and Egotist. Mark said the zoo would not accept any of those names and then he stopped listening to me. Since its springtime, there will be a lot of zoo babies to name. Yesterday two baby lemurs arrived; they probably won't be getting any sleepovers here, though.
Walt made it back from Thailand. Mechanical difficulties on his first flight out delayed him long enough to miss his connecting flight, which added another 24 hours to his trip home. He arrived here tired but happy. He had a great time and hopes to go back next year, this time taking Christina with him.
Jessie finally got her back yard fence in after one further rain delay. The dogs think it is gorgeous and who am I to disagree? They can no happily run without leashes. Jessie and the girls drove to Birmingham this weekend to catch HADESTOWN, a hit musical reimagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice legend. Except for when demons took over their GPS and sent them on a long voyage over a potholed, uninhabited, dark, unlined road in backwoods Alabama whose only residents were bobcats, the mother of all jackrabbits, and many, many dear -- adding over an hour to their trip -- they had a great time, and the show was fantastic.
This week is spring vacation for County schools, Christina is hoping to be able to sent Jack to a daily karate camp to burn off excess energy. Last Friday was fire drill day and she discovered that standing in a closet with thirteen 18-year-olds is remarkably similar to standing in a closet with seventeen 8-year-olds.Christina, whom I love with all my heart, has one major failing -- she will want to try every new flavored potato chip that comes down the pike, without exception. Yesterday, God help us, it was Lay's new "IHOP Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity" flavor (strawberry-topped pancakes with syrup and bacon). She had Erin, Mark, me, and herself stand in a circle and, on the count of three, we each tried one. There were immediate sounds of "Eew!", some gagging, and a plaintive wail of "I can't swallow!" The dogs didn't mind it though, but dogs are known to eat their own poo.
Six years after his death, it looks like Bill Crider's blog is no longer available on the internet. Clicking onto the blog immediately brings you to various commercial sites. Sad, because it has always been fun to go back and revisit the many great things Bill has posted. I'll miss his blog almost as much as I moss him.
I'm long-winded again, more later.
(continuing on...)
Tomorrow marks out 54th anniversary, something I had hoped Kitty and I would be able to celebrate together. I'll post a few memories and thoughts on my blog tomorrow morning.
Easter Sunday, the fam is getting together for our annual outing at Blackwater State Park. Looking forward to it.
I spent most of this week binging on SHETLAND, finishing all eight seasons. The scenery is beautiful, the plotting and the characters got a little iffy later on, and my vote is not yet in on Douglas Henshall's replacement. At least with Jimmy Perez gone, gone to is his daughter -- possibly the most annoying girl-child since BOSCH. I also watched the latest DEATH IN PARADISE. I have enjoyed the "locked room" feel of the entire series, although the solutions tend to fall into a predictable pattern. Also, the cast of regulars can change so often that my head spins. Season 2 of BEYOND PARADISE is starting and I'm looking forward to it.
Because of my obsessive-compulsive binging, I only finished five books this week. The first book in the Black Bat pulp series, BRAND OF THE BLACK BAT was my FFB. It followed the pulp crime templates and was very enjoyable. The week before I had read the James Patterson/Brian Sitts atrocity CIRCLE OF DEATH, featuring another pulp hero, The Shadow -- that one was a meretricious mess with no redeeming values. This week I read the pair's HOLMES, MARPLE & POE, which was as much of a mess as CIRCLE OF DEATH, only not as meretricious and at times almost enjoyable. With 339 pages of large type and 118 very short chapters, the book exemplified the kitchen sink approach to writing a thriller; the only thing missing was a pregnant nun. the titular characters, who form a mysterious private detective agency, are faced with a number of so-called impossible crimes (some pretty easy to figure out), most of which are tied together at the end. Each character has traits of their literary counterparts, with a few extra quirks thrown in; Poe, for example, collects muscle cars and women, while mourning his long-lost love. (Whose death he feels responsibility for. Why? We are never told.) The while thing reads like a hastily thrown-together Lifetime movie and, with that approach, is moderately enjoyable. George's take, which he threatens to post sometime real soon, should be interesting. I also read the latest Eve Ronin mystery from Lee Goldberg, DREAM TOWN -- always a delight to read about her and her kickass attitude. I finished off the week with two books by John Creasey, MAKE-UP FOR THE TOFF (a.k.a. KISS THE TOFF) and THE TOFF AND THE SLEEPY COWBOY. I'm currently reading one of his books as by "Anthony Morton," HIDE THE BARON. I currently have 35 more Creasey's on Mount TBR, so I'll probably be reading a few more of them before I move onto something else.
May the Easter Bunny have many goodies for you in his basket, Patti. Take care, and enjoy the burgeoning Spring.
The THREE Body Problem. Only watched the first episode so far, so too soon to judge. Haven't read the book. The local PBS station down here is pathetic, so will have to watch any PBS shows on Masterpiece when we get home. Did see the first episode of CALL THE MIDWIFE (series whatever it is) and NOLLY last Wednesday, as they don't run on Sundays here. Added WHITECHAPEL to our Saturday Brit Night lineup. Had avoided it because I assumed it was Jack the Ripper and we don't generally like shows set in the 19th Century, but it is actually set in 2008, with a modern day copycat doing recreations of the Ripper's crimes, one by one, on the anniversary of each day. The lead cop is a political novice, Rupert Penry-Jones (just out of MI-5 when this was done, though his character there was a much better one), and Phil Davis as the grizzled, "veteran near retirement" Sergeant showing him the ropes against his will. The third star is the amusing Steve Pemberton as an expert Ripperologist, who leads tours - which, of course, they really do have - of the Ripper's sites. It's a fast 3 parts, probably 45 minutes each. Their second three part series has something to do with the Kray Brothers. Britbox, I think, or maybe Acorn.
The seventh and final series of the French TANDEM is finally on MHz, so we've started that. On series 8 of CANDICE RENOIR. The rest much the same as before. Can't be bothered to check at the moment.
We are leaving for home on Wednesday morning. It's been a very good three months down here for us, and Jackie has already reserved this place for 2025 and 2026 (fingers crossed all goes well). The weather has been cooler and rainier than normal, but they predicted that in an El Nino year. Since we don't go to the beach, that was not a problem for us. Only one new restaurant discovery this year (and nothing exciting at that), but we had more than enough from past years. We spent the first five winters (ranging from a month to two) down here in the south county area - Delray Beach - then 9 years at the hotel in West Palm Beach (45th Street), but since moving to the Palm Beach Gardens/North Palm Beach area in 2020, we've found the area we really like.
I am not looking forward to packing everything up and the drive home. As always, Jackie promised repeatedly that this year would be different, she would NOT buy anything to take home, but... yeah. One thing we will miss is Publix, which puts any New York supermarket chain to shame, as well as easier access to Trader Joe's, Costco, Target and even Walmart. The drivers may not have heard of a turn signal, but the roads are so much better paved than in New York, not to mention wider.
I did get a decent amount of reading done, including 135 short stories, but the internet has seemed to suck up huge amounts of my time. Only went to the movies once, but each week there seems to be less and less of interest to see. And keep off my lawn!
Have a safe week, and I hope to be back here next week, from home.
Once again Jerry wins the prize for the liveliest family.I am so sorry to be done DOG HOUSE on Max. THe joke is the people need rescuing more than most dogs. I can't remember if the first seasons were like that. I have had very little interaction with the animal kingdom so I am awestruck.
Jerry, the "girl child" on HOMELAND was way more annoying, as I remember it, but there is definitely a plethora of angsty teenagers on these shows. And most of them are girls (95%?).
I checked Bill's blog and it did indeed go off. But check billcrider.com for his Home Page, with the picture of Bill & Judy at Macchu Pichu.
One rule Jackie propounded after watching Deb's favorite MIDSOMER MURDERS, which usually follows on DEATH IN PARADISE and most other British shows - the "Best Known Guest Star" Syndrome, where that person - if not murdered him/herself - usually turns out to be the killer, re Richard Briers, Simon Callow (although on MIDSOMER he played both killer and victim), the Fox brothers, ad infinitum. Granted, sometimes they are red herrings. And occasionally, as in two of the last three episodes of PARADISE we watched, there were NO well known guest stars, so we were on our own.
Snow is NOT in the forecast for this week unlike the 5 inches of snow that fell on us over the weekend. The Arctic blast hit us after some 70 degree days so that was tough to take.
Patrick is in Paris. After a week in France, he'll be flying to Boston to meet up with Katie. Katie and Patrick have decided to drive home next week from Boston rather than fly because the airlines have upped the cost of flights to any city on The Path of Totality of the Solar Eclipse. Western NY is a prime viewing area for the Solar Eclipse. Niagara Falls expects 500,000 visitors!
I'm slowly chipping away at "downsizing" my book collection. I've been taking boxes of books to used bookstores in the area. I've donated a few boxes of best sellers (from the last 20 years) to local Library Book Sales. Diane celebrates whoever a book leaves our house! Stay safe!
Jeff, the British mystery shows tend to follow their own templates. With MIDSOMER MURDERS, nearly every episode (with a handful of exceptions) had EXACTLY three murders. With DEATH IN PARADISE the big reveal is almost always that the timeline of the murders (and therefore, the alibis) was wrong. I think these templates make the writing easier and allows each show to focus more on the regular characters, investing us with their personalities.
Yes, they use that Agatha Christie "shifting the timeline" trope often on DEATH IN PARADISE. JONATHAN CREEK used that more than once also, though in general that show had more ingenious murders than most of the other British fare. Deb is a big fan of the outre murders on MIDSOMER - Death by catapult, or a giant wheel of cheese, or crossbow or pitchfork, etc.
The weather has been nice here in the Santa Barbara area although I could do with more overcast and less sun. We had a lot of wind yesterday. Tomorrow I have a bone test and Thursday I will have a good bit of my hair cut off.
This weekend we watched two movies: Eric Idle's THE MIKADO OR THE TOWN OF TITIPU from 1987 and DEMOLITION MAN (Sylvester Stallone, Sandra Bullock, Wesley Snipes and many others) from 1993. We also finished the last three episodes of STAR TREK: VOYAGER. Sad to see it go. We have also been watching MIDSOMER MURDERS, and NORTHERN EXPOSURE, THE IRRATIONAL, DEATH IN PARADISE, and MURDER SHE WROTE.
I finished two books in the last week, both shorter books. I liked MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON by Elizabeth Strout a lot. Not a happy, feel good book, but I look forward to reading more books about Lucy Barton. I have copies of OLIVE AGAIN and THE BURGESS BOYS on hand.
The second book was A SCREAM IN SOHO by John G. Brandon, pubished in 1940, which I did not care for at all. It was a British Library Crime Classics edition and I think it was one of the earlier one in the series. Martin Edward's description of it is a lot more positive than mine; he does make the distinction that Brandon was a thriller writer like Edgar Wallace vs Christie and Sayers who wrote mostly puzzle type mysteries. The setting of Soho during the "phony war" is interesting; at night the investigation was hampered by the blackout.
Glen is reading ENIGMA: THE BATTLE FOR THE CODE by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. He has read it before but decided to reread it. It does have lots of very technical parts about the workings of the Enigma machine and how they figured it out, but he is enjoying it.
He also finished SING YOUR SADNESS DEEP: STORIES by Laura Mauro. That gets pretty good reviews but he only liked 6 of the 13 stories, and passed the book on to me to try. His favorite story was "Looking for Laika," which won the British Fantasy Award.
Jerry, Sorry to hear that there are problems accessing Bill Crider's blog. When I try to access posts at Bill's blog, it briefly shows the post I am looking for, but then is taken over by a lot of advertisements.
I have not seen that happen with a Blogger blog. I have seen some WordPress blogs disappear, although sometimes they will work with a slightly different link. Rick's blog is not accessible that I can tell except at https://web.archive.org/. However, his old Broken Bullhorn site is still available.
Well, I am giving up on THE Three Body Problem-too much science for me. And I am not even sure I am onboard for Manhunt. I love Toby Menzies but there is too much "red state" bigotry in it. Hard to believe Andrew Johnson almost stopped them for searching for Booth. Maybe I do need to subscribe to Britbox again. Hoping that Ripley will be good and Gentleman in Moscow.
Jerry, I wish I could have gone to Birmingham with Jessie. That is my home town, and I really miss the trees and the beautiful scenery. I haven't gone back since 2015, I think, and I don't have any plans to go again, but if I could be transported there for a day or two, it would be lovely.
Finally got around to watching a BluRay of 1966's GRAND PRIX that has been sitting around. As I watched I thought, "the editing in here is really neat". Sure enough, the editing won an Oscar. Neat that so many portions of the racing scenes did not have music. I'm not a car guy but the engine sounds were fantastic.
Continue to watch BLACKLIST and complain to my family about repeating themes and plot crutches. They are sick of hearing those complaints so I will share some here:
- Most episodes have at least 2 of these 5: foot chase, car chase, shoot-out, fistfight, surveillance gone wrong, con job.
- Main characters often abducted.
- Bad guys get shot and fall down dead. Good guys get shot and carry out athletic fights and recover in a day or two.
- Each episode's Bad Guy is a mononym.
- People running into traffic and being hit.
- Knocked out by concussion with quick, or immediate, recovery.
- Traveling by car across the Great D.C. metro area in moments.
- Apparently the CDC has emergency action teams responding in minutes to 911 calls.
- As do FBI SWAT teams.
- CCTV always available and playback immediately accessible.
Took 3 days vacation last week and mostly hung-out and did house work that includes painting our rear entry area. I found out that wall spackling is not the same as drywall joint compound. I made three trips to Menard's. I'm still not halfway through the work.
I have never been to Alabama and it's unlikely I will get there now.
I have never watched BLACKLIST and I guess Gerard's list isn't persuasive to doing so although perhaps all show of this ilk would share this list.
Trying to think of a birthday present for my son. If I give him money, he will likely just pocket it. Does a watch make any sense anymore?
Tracy, Jessie and the girls would have loved for you to join them on their trip; they are always looking for good company. Even if you had been persona non grata and the guards at the Birmingham border were looking for you, they would have been willing to smuggle you in covered with blankets in the back seat. Seriously, it is a lovely city and I hope you are able to re-visit it in the future.
Gerard, that reminds me of how Pete. Linc, and Julie ALWAYS managed to get jobs IMMEDIATELY at whatever business they were investigating in THE MOD SQUAD. It was very CHARLIE'S ANGELS of them and always seemed very logical to me. And how did TV detectives always manage to find a parking space? And how did Perry Mason always get clients who were innocent? You have opened up so many questions about my television viewing...
... or the undercover cop follows the bad guy to the bad guy's daily dive bar and the bad guy is quick to make friends and invite the undercover cop into a criminal conspiracy.
We could go on and on.
Jerry, thanks for the kind words. I know I would have had fun with them. Birmingham is a lovely city, although much, much bigger than it was when I was there. I was also in Tuscaloosa (Univ of Alabama) four years and Selma one year.
Gerard, we watched 5 or 6 seasons of BLACKLIST and mostly enjoyed it. I found that I had to just go with the flow and ignore inconsistencies because I enjoyed the characters a lot.
I enjoyed the first season of THE BLACKSLIST, as they at one point were juggling about seven different mutually antipathic agencies in conflict, but they couldn't sustain that for long. Or chose not to. I can well believe that Gerard's list of plot conveniences were constants by the series end...I was long since checked out.
Much more serious is the takedown of Bill's blog...this computer's ad-blocker results in my seeing the blog's last entries momentarily, then an html screen of something to do with Blogger. I will check the Wayback Machine, but, sigh. I assume it's either Blogspot or the younger Criders doing so.
I never enjoyed watches, but I've never enjoyed anything on my wrist. Watch enthusiasts like watches still, and there remain watch magazines (for a few more minutes) and the remnants of idiots who want to express wretched excess in having more expensive watches than each other, but if he likes watches...
I was so wrong. I have been in Alabama. We visited a friend teaching at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. But I have so little memory of it. It must have been the trip where we went down the Natchez Trace. if only I had kept a diary!
Super expensive watches are a popular robbery and burglary item. Also used for money laundering and exchange.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-68596235
I do like to wear a watch, but these days I think that's a rarity.
This would not be a super expensive watch (not at all). But I like to think it's something he wouldn't buy for himself.
Patti, in all the years I was in Alabama I never got to Mobile. I think it would be nice. My grandfather would sometimes call me Natchez Trace.
I wear a watch but my husband and son don't.
Probably taking a chance but better than cash in his pocket.
I always wear a watch. And when family ask me the time I remind them they should wear a watch.
I do have two suggestions if you stick with a watch as gift.
1. I myself don't like metal link watch bands because I can never get a nice fit to my wrist, especially from warm to cold seasons.
2. Casios seem to last forever. I got a Casio at Costco. One of the extra-special, neat-o, Euro Fancy ones Costco sells at $900 would be neat. But, the $100 Casio is a way better deal for me.
I am all in on BLACKLIST no matter the absurdities and contradictory behavior of characters.
Last night all of five seasons of BS was immediately forgiven upon the appearance of guest star John Waters. John Freaking Waters. Not sure what will have to happen at the end of the final tenth season to forgive the second five years.
Metal bands always were a better idea in theory...I had a hand-me-down from my father for a while, and even as a kid it was mostly good for pulling hairs off the back of my wrist.
I had one of the early Texas Instruments red LED digital watches, the ones introduced at something like ten dollars a hit back when. Carried it my pockets, usually, and for longer than any other watch I've had before or since.
Probably a better gift than a tie, definitely!
After two episodes I still didn't get TBP probably because the physics is so far beyond me.
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine is back up for full access at his former links, as https://billcrider.blogspot.com/ aka MyBillCrider.com.
Thanks, Todd, for letting us know.
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