Reading RIPLEY UNDERGROUND, which is enjoyable. Love the linear, single POV plot.
Just recovering from the flu and jetlag so a very quiet week. Watching YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, MURDERBOT, THE STUDIO and a Danish thriller series, SECRETS THEY KEEP, which was pretty good if scary.
Rewatched BEFORE SUNSET. Always enjoy that trilogy.
There was a nice article about Megan in the Washington Post. If you can get by the paywall. "Megan Abbott and the lure of private worlds" Lots of cool photos.
Finally feels like Spring here.
How about you?
How about you?
21 comments:
It's a beautiful Memorial Day, Patti, a day that I often spend in reflection, and one now tarnished in my thoughts because Captain Bonespurs is our
Commander-in-Chief. **sigh**
My sister-in-law in Massashusetts called because my brother was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. Kenny has Alzheimer's which has left him in a frail state, but Carmen advised us not to come up yet. He was sent home a few days later for "hospital-at-home," a concept we were not familiar with. My granddaugher Julie and her husband Tom had moved in Kenny and Carmen a year or so ago to help out with Kenny's care; their daughter Lily is about two now and has been a godesend for "Bumpa" Kenny. But Julie is now eight months pregnant (it's a girl and her name will be Emma! -- and I know she's going to be just beautiful) and has had a difficult pregnancy, so she is not able to help Carmen out as much as she would like. Carmen called at the end of the week to say that Kenny had been released from hospital-at-home, and is no longer on a ventilator or oxygen, and is moving around on a walker. He appears to have bounced back very well, and is close to what had been his baseline. Carmen said he is perhaps even more cognizant that when he was admitted, at least for the moment. Good news, then. Just to be on the safe side, I checked and I do have a real I.D. so I can be up there within a day if needed.
Saturday was the monthly Sister Day and Christina and Jessie planned to spend it cooking, binging on food, doing crafts, and reading -- all sandwiched between a massive talk-a-thon; Erin and Amy also joined in. The best laid plans...Erin's boyfriend Trey was driving from our house when he hit a squirrel. The squirrel was not dead but was bleeeding profusely. Tender-hearted Trey scooped the squirrel uo in a towel and brought it to his car and called Erin, wondering what to do with it. The squirrel began to regain consciousness and became active (and pissed) and scratched Trey. Then it bit him. Which means the possibilty of rabies, something that Trey foolishly poo-pooed. (It's a one or the other situation: either the animal does have rabies or it doesn't, and if it does have rabies, either you get a rabies shot or you die. It's that simple.) Local veterinary hospitals and outpatient centers do not have the rabies vaccine; major hospitals do, but the emergency rooms are swamped because it's a holiday weekend; local health departments are closed until Tuesday, which is perilously close to the time for safe treatment. So Trey waited until 5 a.m. on Sunday before going to the emergency room, figuring it would not be so crowded them It wasn't, and Trey is fine, but better safe than sorry. The squirrel? Trey let it loose by some bushes near their apartment, and the squirrel scampered off, bloodied but unperturbed.
In the mentime Amy has had a miserable week and felt awful.. she is unable to remember the beginning of the week. A visit to her primary care, followed by a stop to an outpatient clinic, and then to the emergency room showed that she had an abcess on her tonsils. After ome medicine and rest, and she was feeling much better by Sunday.
In other "medical" news, I had a minor proceudre soneon my left foot on Thursday and can now walk without pain. Yippee! And my back is also much better; I can sometimes go without canes, with is a big plus. The episode with my back over the Thanksgiving holiday was a real pain in the butt. Although I recovered (slowly), I was not able to stand up straight enough to shave until two weeks ago, when I was able to get rid of more than four months of facial fuzz, and now I am as handsome as the devil.
The good news this week is that Caylee is getting married! The date is set for the end of July and I wish them a lifetime of happiness and joy. They are a very cute couple.
More to come.
It's been too cold and too rainy for us this week. May has been very up and down, not just a few degrees colder or warmer, but 83 on the third, then 68 on the fourth. Then 81 to 70 to 63. This week, two days didn't get out of the 50s.
But, anyway...Saturday for the second straight week we had a matinee (and a much, much easier commute both ways than last week). This time it was STEPHEN SONDHEIM'S OLD FRIENDS, with Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga "starring" with 13 other singers, doing 40 of Sondheim's songs over two and a half hours. It helped that most were from favorite shows of ours: COMPANY, FOLLIES, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, SWEENEY TODD, and INTO THE WOODS. It made me want to see SWEENEY TODD again.
Wednesday is John Fogerty's 80th birthday, and he is on his 80th Birthday Tour. We'll see him that night at the Beacon, and it will be our first mini-vacation (overnight hotel stay) of the season. We've seen him 8 times between 2006 and 2019. Clearly, he is not ready to retire to the rocking chair.
We finished the second series of THE LAST OF US yesterday, and the third (?) of DARK WINDS. We finally remembered to watch the latest STRIKE on MAX, "The Ink-Black Heart," and it is as incomprehensible and - to me, at least - uninteresting as reviewers had said. I can't keep the characters straight, but I don't care about them or the storyline. Oh well, it's only four episodes.
Now that we have Peacock, we started WOLF LIKE ME again (only rewatched the first episode), and watched the first POKER FACE episode. For a while, we were watching almost nothing on Netflix, but lately there seems to be a lot more of interest, certainly to Jackie. She is watching a Harlan Coben series set in Poland now. We know a couple of the actors in the Danish series Patti mentioned from other shows, so will definitely try that one. HACKS was a little better last episode, but overall, I'd rank it worst so far.
I really feel like I need to make a list of what we're watching on each channel to keep it straight. If I just put on Prime and follow the "Continue Watching" thing, I'm OK, but when you add in Netflix, MAX, Peacock, etc. it gets too confusing.
Plenty of books from the library and Cloud Library, as well as my Kindle. It's either a drought or a flood, and I'd rather have the flood. Just downloaded that New Yorker fiction collection.
Back again.
Mark will spending part of the next five weeks or so hunting and catching gila monsters for some sort of university project. (He was a bit unclear on the details.) This involved a five-hour drive to the desert to meet up with the project leader, two days camping out on the desert -- using those two days to hunt down the gila monsters, and another five-hour drive back to Albuquerque for an eight-hour work day. Repeat for the next four or five weeks. Thank goodness Mark is young and has a lot of energy. We told him to bring plenty of water. Gila monsters are poisonous, but not as venomous as rattlesnakes, so that's a plus. They are shy, timid creatures who will not attack unless provoked...like when you are trying to hunt and capture them, perhaps? Our semi-proposed June trip to Nex Mexico will be postponed.
I finished binging on WYCLIFFE and have gone back to watching BERGERAC while I decide on a new show to watch. BERGERAC ran for nine seasons (1881-1991) and was just rebooted this year. Britbox is streaming all but Season 4 of the original series and I am now on Seson 5. I don't know why they skipped over Season 4, but there was a controversy about one of the show's locations: In Season 3, and thereafter, the headquaters of the fictional police Bereau des Estrangers where Bergerac worked was moved to the real-life Haut de la Garenne, a children's home that had closed in 1983. In 2008 it became the focus of the infamous Jersey Child Abuse Investigation, whiich probed decades of alleged child abuse. Then investigation, which became an international sensation was marred by rumors and misteps and (in many case) a lack of cinvictable evidence. Some human one fragments that were found were porved to be centuries old. And it was suggested that some of the "evidence" found were actually props for BERGERAC. Following his death, popular British entertainer and now acknowledge scum of the earth Jimmy Saville had several victims of Haut de la Gerenne among the hundreds who came forward to accuse him of child molestation. an inteersting back story to the television series.
Not much read this week but what I read was really good. The latest Elvis Cole/Joe Pike from Robert Crais, THE BIG EMPTY, The third Pentecost and Parker mystery from Stephen Spotswood, SECRETS TYPED IN BLOOD, and Donald Hamilton's 1954 suspense novel, NIGHT WALKER. Currenly reading NO HOUSE LIMIT, a Las Vegas crime novel by Steve Fisher.
No dolphins spotted at the beach Sunday, but plenty of sun, gentle waves, white sand, cool beezes, and relaxation made the day a big win.
Have a fantasic week, Patti! Stay safe and son't take any wooden Trump meme coins.
I am still waiting to hear the starting date for THE HOUSE FAMILY IN THE JUNGLE (or THE TROPICS or AT THE BEACH) Wow, you guys live a different life. Imagine if you had just stayed in Maryland.
It's been like that here too, Jeff, but the last two days have been good. I find STRIKE incomprehensible too.
I am going to lunch with my Senior exercise group. Last year people passing us treated us to the comment, "Isn't this cute." After that movies with Josh and Julie with Kevin joining us for something.
Glad you're feeling better, Jerry, and congrats on the impending family wedding.
We are both enjoying LANDMAN (Paramount+) more than expected, though ex-wife Ali Larter is a pretty unbearable character. She does look great, however.
Jackie is enjoying the over the top MOBLAND, too.
One interesting thing: just about every week when we watch an episode of SPOOKS (MI-5), Jackie comments on how prescient the show was. Even though it was 20 years ago (the final season was 2011), it is amazingly current in what is happening today. Of course, Americans tend to be the bad guys in these British shows, or at least the 800 pound gorillas, but all the stuff about Russia, China, terrorism, etc. could be on a current series. I think it is on Britbox. Great (if often depressing) show.
I have no instinct for spyworld although I do watch SLOW HORSES, whose name I keep forgetting. APPLE is my favorite steaming channel at the moment. I rarely use HULU but I am watching HANDMAID's TALE.
I liked Ripley Underground very much, too, Patti. I'm glad to hear you do, too.
Most of my recent rickety existence seems to have passed, except a little lack of balance (political metaphor?) and some residual soreness in back and calves...all sympathy to those who are wrestling with worse, and indeed glad you're feeling better, Patti and Jerry, and may that continue. Ah, the joys of the end of middle-age. We mostly engage HBO/Max, TCM, and broadcast, but of late I've been watching an unfair amount of THIRD WATCH, THE GOOD FIGHT (from the third season, when it was already P+ only) and HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS on Tubi and Pluto TV, free-with-ads streamers.
Sadly, twenty-five years ago, Russia and the PRC had given up most if not all of their pretenses of being horrific "socialist" states for more blatant fascism, and even more sadly have been encouraging it around the world, much as most of our US Admins have been doing to a greater or lesser extent...and terrorism is always with some subset of us, at very least.
BEYOND SUNSET might be my favorite of the trilogy of films it helps comprise.
Todd, just signed up for Peacock ($2 a month for a year) and one of the reasons was that HOMICIDE is streaming there.
Patti, Glad to hear that you are recovering from the flu and jetlag. Sometime soonish I need to read the first book in the Ripley series. We plan to start watching MURDERBOT tonight, and also YOUR FRIEND AND NEIGHBORS sometime soon. I have read the first three books in the Murderbot series so I am interested in how they will handle those stories in a 30 minute or less format.
We subscribe to the Washington Post. I found the article about Megan and I will read it later today.
This weekend we went to the Santa Barbara I Madonnari Street Painting Festival, held on Memorial Day Weekend at the Old Mission Santa Barbara. Our new approach is to go on the second day to see the artists working on the paintings and their progress, and return on the day after the festival and see all the completed paintings.
Glen is now reading two books: IN THE DARK by E. Nesbit (ghost stories), and OFF THE MAP: THE CURIOUS HISTORIES OF PLACE-NAMES by Derek Nelson (which our son had read first).
I recently read A MEDITATION ON MURDER by Susan Juby, a Canadian author. I was introduced to the series by Bill Selnes at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan. This is the second book, not as good as the first, but still a good read for me. The main character, Helen, is a former Buddhist nun, now a butler, who solves crimes. She isn't really a sleuth, but more or less solves the crimes accidentally, and helps people out along the way. In this book she is working for a very rich couple who loan her out to an impossibly cranky rich man who needs help with his daughter. I enjoyed the book, a cozy mystery which centers around a group of social media influencers. This is a topic I don't understand and I am not sure I want to. I liked the book more for the character of Helen, who is (almost) never ruffled by anything.
Worse choices can be made, Jeff! Pluto runs HOMICIDE on a dedicated channel, with no pause nor selection options (you can pick/"demand" your GOOD WIFE//FIGHT episodes, along with them having a continuous channel as well)...I was grateful that last night, when everything was done that Needed doing, that at a certain hour I should be sleeping, they offered the Vincent D'Onofrio episode "The Subway" (which was the example that a PBS documentary was built around not too long before I was the PBS and related networks scheduling guy at TV GUIDE), which might be my second-least-favored episode that people who didn't watch HOMICIDE much liked to cite--the least is the Robin Williams episode, likewise...
POST article (with moody photography of Megan): https://archive.ph/G0q9g (around paywalls)
"Influencers" are the answer for those looking for someone looking for someone else to think for them, usually on less serious matters than most cult-members choose to abnegate themselves to, but not always. Paltrow and GOOP might be a good, pervasive example...Joe Rogan being an even more irresponsible and thus more malignant example.
I love the leisurely pace, Margot. What a psychopath though.
What an setup that is, Tracy. Buddhhist-nun butler. I like Murderbot but then I love Scarsgard. And I hear his father is amazing in Sentimental Values that just played at Cannes.
She really had fun doing this piece.
Diane and I saw MISSON: IMPOSSIBLE: THE FINAL RECKONING. It took in $77 million at the Box Office. A good Summer Popcorn movie.
Diane is busy pack us up for a trip to Ohio for a High School Graduation Party for her niece. The weather might be a problem with a lot of rain in the forecast.
I'm hoping MURDERBOT gets the green light for Season 2. Diane and I hope to start watching THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH on Apple TV+ when we get back.
Hope you're feeling better after your trip. Our other friends who took a river cruise in Spain returned sick, too.
I can believe it. I note that Ms. Nguyen, who wrote it, was formerly of the political news desk before being moved over the literary desk...wonder if that was entirely voluntary, given Bezos playing footsie with Drumpf.
Or even "over to".
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