Superman

Saturday is a terrible night for television.  Absolutely nothing interesting to me on, which is how I happened to watch Superman last night.  The original with Christopher Reed.  So sad to watch that handsome, virile man and realize what would happen to him in just a few years.  But the movie is a good one and I have not seen it in years.

It was over fairly early and the following movie was Supermen II, also with Reeve as the man of steel.  I wasn't going to watch it but it was still kind of early, so I started watching it.

In this movie, Lois Lane finally realizes that Clark Kent is really Superman (by taking off his glasses to clean them).  Not sure how that lady could have been so dumb all those years, but Kent does part his hair on the right and Superman parts HIS hair on the left, so maybe that fooled her.

Now that she knows, he says, he wants to take her to his "home," that land of ice in the far, far north where he communicates with the spirits of his mother.  As Lois wandered around exclaiming about how beautiful it was, I envisioned her trying to "keep house" in this land of ice.  Where would she cook dinner?

Anyway, Superman tells Mama that he has fallen in love and she warns him that to live the rest of his life with Lois, he will have to give up all of his super powers.  Lois is watching with a look of shock on her face, and I wondered if she would love Clark Kent if he didn't have super powers.  But he is determined and he steps into the crystal box that will remove from him all of his super powers.

The only thing I could think of was that they were in the far north, in a place of all ice, surrounded by snow and how would they get home?

By this time, bad guys from Krypton had come to earth and were busy blowing up everything and everybody in attempt to establish a totalitarian regime for...whatever purpose....  It was getting to sound too much like the nightly news, so I turned it off and never did find out how/if Clark and Lois ever made it out of the ice cave.  But there is a Superman III, so I assume they did.

It reminded me of the days when I was involved with The Lamplighters.  When we first started going to shows, it was for the fun of discovering the shows.  By the time we had seen all the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and knew them well, we continued to go to see our favorite performers in roles that we enjoyed.  When I joined the company and worked there weekly, we continued to see the shows, but now it was to watch my friends on stage.  I don't enjoy the shows as much any more because I rarely know anybody in the cast and after some 30-40 years, the joy of seeing HMS Pinafore one more time just isn't quite the same.

I was thinking about that watching NCIS-LA today (there is a marathon on every Sunday).  I've been watching some series like the various iterations of NCIS for so long that my enjoyment comes from some place other than the plot of a show.

This week they are doing shows from Season 2 when Hetty was more involved than she has been. I think all last season Hetty (Linda Hunt) was off on some private mission.  I recently learned that the actress had been in a bad auto accident and spent a long time in the hospital.  She returned to the show this season, and looks much older...and slower...than she did in Season 2.  (I always check actor's ages and Hunt is 2 years younger than I am).

It makes me wonder about Miguel Ferrer (son of Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer), who died of cancer in 2017.  His very last scene in the show took place in a hospital bed, where he was very weak.  He then sent a note to Hetty that he knew he was dying and had things to do before that.  He was not seen again, but at the conclusion of that show there was an "in memory of Miguel Ferrer"....I wonder how sick he actually was when that scene was filmed.

(it's the same thing I wonder about Spencer Tracy, who died a week after completing Guess Who is Coming to Dinner in which he gives a very moving speech about his love for his family.  Close ups of Katharine Hepburn during the scene show her with tears in her eyes ... was that real, or was that acting...?)

Have you noticed that the bad guys in cop shows are terrible shots? A single person, male or female, with a hand gun, running out of bullets, can take out a group of bad guys with AK-47s and not receive so much as a scratch.

It also makes me wonder if the FBI really breaks down doors on a hunch and shoot whoever happens to be inside "just because."  (He always turns out to be a bad guy, but they don't know that at the time.)  And is everyone taught to go for the kill shot?  Can they never hit someone in the knee or some other place on the body?

And how about Criminal Minds where when they rush a house, they are preceeded by a phalanx of heavily armored people, with helmets, face masks, guns drawn, and all sorts of protction.  They are followed by the stars, who maybe have Kevlar vests, but nothing else.

Have you noticed that all those shows -- NCIS, NCIS-LA, SVU, etc. -- take suspects into interrogation rooms, and then leave them there?  They don't UNlock the door to exit and they don't LOCK the door when they go away.  What keeps the suspect in the room without even trying to leave?

The interrogation room for NCIS-LA is on some "secret" boat in the harbor of wherever they are.  But how "secret" can it be when everyone is taken there?

Also, for rap singers, LL Cool J (NCIS-LA) is a better actor than Ice T (SVU).

---

 

So today is the day I will face the computer problems and call the guru.  I have been so disheartened I haven't wanted to think about it, so I've been doing other things.  But in the meantime I've been getting all-Zen about it.  If I have to reboot Windows and lose the two programs I use most, I can work around.  If I can't find another program like Front Page (which no longer exists) to do this journal, I will just move to Blogger exclusively.  Though today I found a site that may allow me to download a free updated version, if I need to.  I hope.

As for PhotoShop, which I used to use much more for complicated stuff, I now use it mostly for sizing photos and fixing the exposure, and I can find another way to do it.

I will grieve for the loss of the programs, and for Funny the World, if it must happen (and I don't know that it has to happen yet), I can live with that too...not happily, but it can be done.

So, cross fingers, as I prepare to call the guru.

The New Season

Now that fall is here, favorite TV shows are returning and new ones are vying for my heart.  I've tried a few of them and am pleased that I seem to be liking a handful of them.

I'm sad that this is the last season for The Big Bang Theory but think they are very wise going out on top.  They have reached a point where the story line could become mundane and I would hate to get to the point where I felt "this isn't as good as it used to be."

Chicago Med is back but those guys are getting tricky. They are trying to con us into watching not only Chicago Med but also the other two Chicago shows, PD and Fire by making it a triple crossover plot.  Things started with Chicago Fire, which I've never watched before, moved on to Med and the plot ended, sort of, in PD.  I have enjoyed Chicago Med ever since it began 2 seasons ago.  As I have said before, I'm a sucker for a doctor show and this one is great.  I particularly like Oliver Platt, but I've enjoyed him in anything.

I also enjoyed Chicago Fire, but I think that  I'm not up to guys fighting fires every week.  I tried watching Chicago PD in its first season (5 seasons ago) and just couldn't get into it.  I watched its part of this triumverate, but again didn't feel drawn into it.  I hope it won't be necessary to watch it again.

New Amsterdam is another new doctor show.  I wonder how long it will last since the main character now has cancer.  But I like this show.  And, interestingly, I had just seen Ken Burns' story of the Mayo Clinic and the philosophy that started it and keeps it going and so recognized that this is what they are trying to do with this show--a doctor show where the focus is on the patient doctors are on salary so there is no incentive for ordering unnecessary tests or prescribing expensive meds, and they don't worry about the cost to the patient.  Totally impractical in this day and age, of course, but it will be fun to see how it develops.

The jury is still out on Manifest, that Lost - like show about a plane that has been missing for five years and suddenly shows up, the passengers and crew having no idea they have been gone for so long.  I've only seen one episode so far and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  I'm not sure where it's going and if it starts getting as "Lost-y" asLost I probably won't stick with it, but I'll give it a couple more weeks.

Out of curiosity, I checked out something called God Friended Me, which I thought was going to be pretty silly.

It turns out to be kind of a modern day Touched by an Angel, with an athiest pod caster whose father (Joe Morton, who used to be Olivia Pope's dad in Scandal) is a priest, gets a friend request from God which leads to all sorts of things that are too complicated to explain, but I find that I like it and have set the DVR to record it.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the new Jim Carrey show, Kidding.  With Carrey at the helm, the story about the TV host of a kids' program with a crazy hair style, and all the promos that I've seen, I expected it to be a comedy, but it's definitely not.  Carrey's character is suffering from depression over the break-up of his marriage and the possible loss of his show (his father, the producer, feels he's lost his edge and wants to replace him). The whole thing is actually very dark, and definitely R-rated, with some partial nudity

I think I'm enjoying the return of Murphy Brown, though I'm wondering if the writers for Rachel Maddow are in on the script writing of this show too!  The old Murphy Brown did battle with Dan Quayle over her becoming an unwed mother.  I am assuming that it is only a matter of time before Trump catches wind of this show and starts tweeting about it. So far I'm enjoying it, but it does feel like it's trying to get its footing again and I hope that it does because it would be fun to have this thorn in Trump's side.

A friend recommended A Million Little Things, which I had heard of but which sounded like a This is Us wannabe, so I didn't check it out but she had talked about a "twist" she had not expected and so today I decided to catch up on the two episodes that have already aired.  I liked it a lot.  The group reminds me a bit of our Pinata group, only in that they have been friends for many years but we definitely have not encountered the kinds of situations that they have in only two episodes  At least I don't think we have.  By the end of those two episodes, I was hooked and have set the DVR to record upcoming episodes.

And it was fun last night to see the return of Madam Secretary.  Best part of it of it was the finale with the reunion of secretaries of state, called to give Elizabeth advice -- Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Colin Powell.  In their scene, the trio suggested that what terrorists wanted was to divide the country over its diversity and advised her to seize this opportunity to highlight those differences instead.

“I think what we’re all saying is talk about what unites us. Even at this moment of peril, remind Americans of our nation’s original motto, something that I think about a lot and which seems more important today than ever,” Clinton says. “E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one.”

Hmmmm.....  No tweet about that one either, though apparently there was much unhappiness on social medial.  “After last night, I’m no longer watching this show. It was disgusting to see Hillary in a position where she would be giving you advice! Then I have to listen to the bias script about nationalism? So what we should become globalists?? I’m DONE here,” one viewer wrote.

Owell...we'll see where it goes.  Personally, I loved it.

All in all, this is a more promising season than I have seen in a couple of years and we all know what I need is more TV to watch.

Changing Dynamics

We watched the Food Network's Best Baker in America last night.  I think I watch these Food Network competition shows to make myself feel bad.  Not only can I not make 99% of what the adults and children make, but I only know the lingo from listening to them use the terminology for so long.  (What is a semi-fredo anyway?  Still not sure what a "coulis" is.  It took a long time to learn that ganache is just chocolate melted in cream.)

Best Baker is a competition among professional bakers in who can make the best looking/tasting "thing" (whatever the project of the week is).

I had this strange feeling when the judges were introduced:

I remembered Jason Smith from when he entered his first contest, for which he was the first self-taught chef winner, and then he competed to be the Next Food Network Star, which he also won (he worked in a school kitchen and now he has his own Food Network show)  And as for Marcella Valladolid, she is a chef on The Kitchen and a very active on social media.  I know her, her kids, her husband, her house all from following her posts on Instagram.

Social media has changed the celebrity-fan dynamic.  Now if you like a certain celebrity and they use Social Media, you can feel a real part of their life, especially if they ever answer one of your tweets (even if only 'thank you.')

Matt Bomer (White Collar) and Sam Heughan (Outlander) are two of the most handsome actors I've seen on TV (both are younger than Tom).  They are also both prolific tweeters.

Bomer's show has been off TV for a couple of years, Outlander is heading into its 4th season.  It was ignored by awards shows in its first season, had a couple of nominations in the second, and now has seventeen nominations for the third season, including one for Heughan.  I'm wondering how much the availability of Heughan especially has to do with the show being finally noticed.

Paulie Perette and Brian Dietzen, both of NCIS, are also big tweeters.  Perette had lots of interactions with fans in the weeks leading up to her departure from the series and Dietzen may be the show's best publicity person, with his pre-show tweets each week.

When I was a star-struck kid, I had to wait for the latest issue of a movie magazine to learn anything about the actors I enjoyed (information carefully orchestrated by the studios...talk about fake news!).  Now you can chat with them on a daily basis or follow their lives by reading what they share with the public.

And it's not just the younger guys who use social media.  One of the most prolific tweeters is 96 year old Carl Reiner, who is a very stern Trump task master and tweets often.  Slightly less prolific, but still a frequent tweeter is son Rob, who likewise holds #45's feet to the fire...for whatever good it does..

---

 
We watched David Letterman receive the Mark Twain award for comedy last night.  They ran several clips from his show, including my very favorite stupid pet trick

No More Laundry!

My mother and I spent an hour looking at each other yesterday, with occasional brief conversation about how beautiful her floral arrangements were and who is that strange man in the picture on her dresser (her husband), but really there was absolutely nothing to talk about.  She wants to know what I'm doing that's exciting and, in truth there is nothing on my calendar this week, so I had nothing to tell her.

I'm going to have to get better about making up exciting stories for her, though I did tell her that I have an upcoming radio interview about the summer season in Sacramento and her response to that was "Oh?  Aren't those flowers beautiful?"

I would have suggested that we go for a walk in the garden or something but (a) it was hot out and (b) she was barefoot, so I figured that could be a suggestion for a later, cooler date.

But actually, I am encouraged to see that the move to memory care seems to have been good for her.  With increased contact by the staff, she can't just lie in her bed all day any more and that seems to be a good thing.  She's not exactly a social butterfly, but I she does seem brighter these days.

Her laundry hamper is still missing.  They told me to label it (it's rather unique looking so I'm not sure why it needs to be labeled), but by the time I got back with a Sharpie, it had disappeared and I have not seen it since.  But I also didn't see any dirty laundry lying around.  

When I left her, I met with Jen, who is in charge of memory care (technically it's called "life guidance," which seems a strange euphemism).  She actually acknowledged having received my email (be still my heart) and she asked me if I had been given a copy of the assessment on my mother done by "the other side" before she moved in (no).  She gave me a copy which I read before seeing my mother.  I had a few question about it, so we met after my visit and I found her delightfully forthcoming.  She also gave me the web address for a SurveyMonkey questionnaire about my mother's background and her likes and dislikes.  Presumably this will help them set up some sort of a program for her.

But my big question was about laundry and she told me that the staff does the laundry, so I'm off the hook after 4 years.  I am not sad about that.

I let her know where I have put her supply of Depends and pee pads and mentioned the odd places where I'd found the used ones in her old apartment when we were cleaning up (the oven?).  Jen said she found them stuffed between the mattresses in her new place.

The other interesting thing was that in her old apartment she had necklaces that she laid out on her dresser and kept fiddling with them to make sure they were in a straight line.  When I decided to take her jewelry box home to prevent pilferage, I left a small box and a few things in it and I noticed that box is now opened and two more necklaces are now laid out on top of the dresser.  She doesn't wear them, she just arranges them.  I wish I knew what that was about.

In the evening, I fixed our last Blue Apron meal.  The chicken had been sitting in the freezer for several weeks, since it arrived when Caroline was here and there was not enough for three.  The recipe was for "chicken under a brick" and was apparently an old Italian way of cooking chicken to retain all the juices.  For the "brick," they had me use a pot of water that I periodically pressed down on the chicken as it cooked (foil was over the chicken).  

I found the end result, for this last of the Blue Apron meals, very disappointing.  Though I cooked it the minimum amount suggested, the skin burned and the flesh was very dry.

This compared to Home Chef, which I am loving because the recipes aren't as complicated and they have ingredients you can actually go out and buy for yourself, if you want to recreate the meal.  And so far everything has been very good.  I'm glad I made the switch.

After dinner, we watched two documentaries which I am going to suggest people check out, if you have not already.  One was Carl Reiner's "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast." The 95 year old Reiner gathered a bunch of nonagenarians and centenarians to show how it is possible to stay active and engaged long after retirement. 

The show is delightful, inspiring and depressing all at the same time.  Depressing because these are people without memory impairment and, in fact, they do discuss that all this is possible if you do not have memory impairment.  But he interviewed the likes of Dick VanDyke (still dancing at 90), Betty White (95), Mel Brooks (91), Norman Lear (91), a woman who is running marathons at 100 and many other people who are living happy, productive lives into their 90s and see their involvement in activities that they love as one of the reasons they are still around.  

It's such a fun show and you marvel at what these people are doing with their lives.

The other documentary is no less compelling than Reiner's special, though I suggest watching it some day other than the one on which you watch Reiner's.  It's also an HBO documentary called Cries from Syria, which takes a harrowing look at the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the devastating civil war.  It is not easy to watch but I felt it important to know what we are doing and what the results are in Syria (when our buddy Russia came in to "help" it bombed 22 hospitals and killed many children).  It will leave you shaken, but it will be difficult to be dispassionate about what is happening in that part of the world again.

Click...Click

This is a very busy time for TV addicts.  It's the start of the fall season, with old favorites (the ones that have not been canceled) returning and a host of new shows to check out.  This year for many of the old shows returning there is a new look.  NCIS lost Tony DiNozzo (who is now starring in Bull, which follows NCIS) and he has been replaced by two or three new people.  I haven't figure it out yet.  It will take a few episodes for me to start to accept them as part of the family.  There are two big losses with DiNozzo and that is first, his father (Robert Wagner) and then all of those glib movie references he used to make.  I note with some amusement that all of the now old timers are doing it -- McGee, Bishop and Palmer especially.  They make a movie reference and then look at each other in amazement, realizing what they have said.  it's as odd as Penny quoting Star Wars on The Big Bang Theory.

The first show of the new season for Criminal Minds started tonight too.  I haven't figured out yet who is out and who is in and where the hell they all were.  That's going to take some getting used to too.

(Thank goodness there are marathons of old shows every day, just about, if I find the need for the way things were)

But this is the time of year when I make important life decisions that I often end up regretting every time Emmy award nominations are read.  Blue Bloods has now had such a long life that I regret never having watched it.  I'm sure I would have liked it, but like many things I had to choose between that and something else when it first started.  There probably were two other shows I wanted to watch in the same time slot so I couldn't even record it.  Now it's been around so long and has become such a respected program that I feel I lost out on something special.

I feel that way about Veep every year too because until my Veep marathon last weekend, I had never seen a single episode of the show, and yet it seems that Julia Louis-Dreyfus takes home the Emmy for best actress in a comedy every year and it was not until last weekend that I understood why.  I also understood why the writers win year after year too.  It always upsets me that they beat out Big Bang Theory, which I think is some of the most clever writing on TV, but Veep is pretty darn good.

There have been other shows that I have not started watching because I decided to go with another show instead, and then the one I decided not to watch ends up having longevity and acclaim and my own choice is canceled after one season.

So far I'm happy with the choices I have made so far this new season.  Someone told me that Bull was a disappointment, but I guess I'm not all that discerning because I've enjoyed the two episodes that I saw.  But if it is indeed as week as they say it is, it will probably be canceled.  What I liked from Episode 1 to Episode 2 is that by Episode 2 Michael Weatherly was starting to slip into his "Bull" character and leave Tony DiNozzo, the 50 year old smart aleck that never grew out of college humor, behind.  I hope the show makes it, since I've staked my television watching on it.

I am not a sitcom person any more, but I was hoping that the new Speechless was going to be good.  And it is.  Minnie Driver is the mother of 3 kids, one of whom has cerebral palsy and the story covers the strange situations that come up with a kid with disabilities who can't talk.  I really wanted it to be good for Rob Rummel-Hudson and daughter Schuyler, who uses a computer to speak for her. What I like about the show is that it treats the handicapped kid as normal as the other kids, though his mother tends to dote on him too much, but he's now getting older and having his own ideas and making his wishes known in often funny ways.  Micah Fowler, who plays JJ, the kid with cerebral palsy has the condition himself and he's marvelous.  Also took me awhile to recognize John Ross Bowie, Minnie Driver's character's husband.  I knew I had seen him before and then realized he is the guy who plays the obnoxious Barry Kripke, with a speech impediment, on Big Bang Theory.

I think this show is going to make it.  Just read this review from the San Francisco Chronicle:

The show is a perfect balance of comedy and heart, and the performances are superior on every level. Micah Fowler, though: wow. He doesn’t utter a word, but he communicates more than words could ever say with facial expressions and the inflections of his monotone responses to life around him. There’s no BS about J.J. He’s centered, smart and determined. Fowler delivers one of the most eloquent, Emmy-worthy performances you’ll ever see. He makes you feel sorry that every other kid in the world isn’t as great as J.J.

I also like the show because Jeri's husband Phil has been caring for a young man with cerebral palsy for several years now and when I watch JJ's helper with him, it reminds me of Phil and what he has done for his charge.

I watched The Good Place, another sit com, where Kristen Bell's character wakes up dead and learns, Ted Danson tells her, she is in "the good place."  Because of her good works they have prepared a home for her with all of her favorite things.  Only they aren't her favorite things and her death resume is of someone else, so she's trying to figure out how to get back.  It's cute, but I think it is not going to hold my interest.  I'm always interested in the afterlife and I like Ted Danson, though he's one of those actors whose name I can never remember.  I know he was Sam Malone on Cheers.  I know he's married to Mary Steenburgan.  I know he's not Alan Alda or Sam Waterson, but I almost always have to look him up to remember his name.

How to Get Away with Murder is another show I decided not to watch which gets a lot of acclaim now.  I didn't watch it for two reasons -- the story of a class of law students and their professor (Viola Davis) was so convoluted and filmed so dark much of the time that I couldn't make heads or tails of it.  But Davis has won a couple of Emmys and critics call the show "the best show on television," and with a creator like Shonda Rimes could it be otherwise.  The main reason I didn't watch, though, is I just hate Davis' character's heavy make up, particularly the red-red lips, all the rage now, that look like she's been hit in the face by a ripe tomato (as my father used to say to me when I wore makeup).

(Unnaturally red lips seem to be all the rage now and though in the days when I wore lipstick, red ws my favorite, they just make me shudder now.)

I'm looking forward to the first episode of Timeless this week.  It seems to be a time travel series where people try to go back and prevent bad things from happening.  The previews show them trying to stop the crash of the Hindenburg.  I know from watching Star Trek's "City on the Edge of Forever" and reading Stephen King's "11/22/63" the havoc that can be wrought by well-meaning people trying to change the past and how it can cause disaster in the future, so I'm wondering how this show is going to sustain a series.

Lucifer is back, that weird show about Lucifer Morningstar, "who is bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell and resigns his throne and abandons his kingdom for the beauty of Los Angeles, where he gets his kicks helping the LAPD punish criminals". Lucifer runs a piano bar, with the assistance of his demonic ally Mazikeen or "Maze." The longer he stays on earth, the more human and less demon he becomes and he begins to notice that his superhuman powers are fading.  There's also an attraction for a homicide detective and though he freely tells her his real identity she never believes him.  I very much enjoyed the first season and I'm glad to see that it's back.

Speaking of superhuman powers in someone hiding his true identity, what happened to Forever about the guy who couldn't die and kept reappearing as a young man, at this time working with his now elderly son (Judd Hirsch).  I enjoyed that show and don't see it on the new schedules.  Yet.  I hate it when a show I have come to really enjoy just disappears without a word of explanation.

That's not likely to happen to The Americans, that cold war spy series focusing on a Russian couple in a sleeper cell, raising two typical American kids who have no idea that when Mom goes out she's probably going to be having sex with someone and then killing them, or that Dad is married to another woman whom he married so she could spy for him. (She's gone now, poor clueless dear--learning his identity and shipped off to Russia to start a new life). The latest season hasn't started yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

So many shows, so little time, though Comcast has helped greatly by giving us tons more recording space, so I don't have to spend so much time juggling which shows I need to watch right away because something else needs to be recorded in its place.

Ahhh...the life of a TV addict is such a busy one.

Season Finale

This is an unsettling time for a TV addict.

I record ever program that I watch regularly, for different reasons.  Mostly so that if I fall asleep during the program, I can go back and see what I missed.  But also in case something happens that we aren't home when a show is on, or that we get a phone call or something else.  All the shows are neatly recorded and as soon as I've watched them, whether live or on DVR, I erase them.

One of the things I do first thing in the morning, when I'm awake and the dogs aren't, and I don't want to get up yet, is to check the scheduled shows to be recorded that day.  It reminds me of what is coming up that evening and what I have to look forward to.

But at this time of year, reading the capsule summaries of favorite shows is frustrating, since each one seems to start with "Season finale..."

 

I checked the upcoming recordings for a day recently and there were NONE.  Not one single favorite program was going to be broadcast that day.  What in the world would I do with myself?

Also, with the TV seasons being so short these days, sometimes you just start to get into a series and it's over.  Better Call Saul finished its season weeks ago.  It wasn't a favorite, but I looked forward to the quirky program each week, though Ned gets more out of it because it's the prequel to Breaking Bad and Ned is much more familiar with that show than I am.

TV addiction is one thing Ned and I share and it's fun that we both watch so many of the same shows because we have lively conversations about our favorites.

Tonight is the season finale of Scandal and Big Bang Theory and the first of a 2-part season finale of The Blacklist.  Tomorrow the racers of Amazing Race run their last leg and there will be no more of that show for awhile.  Next week on Monday is the day when there are no shows to be recorded.

Tuesday will see the season finale for both NCIS and NCIS-New Orleans.  For NCIS fans, it will be a sad day as Michael Weatherly, "Very Special Agent Tony DiNozo" leaves the show after 13 seasons.  (Presumably this also means the end of the show for his father. Robert Wagner.)

I will miss Tony.  I like Tony, but it's a good time to retire--on top of his game and before his shtick gets old.  Tony's juvenile pranks and sexual proclivities were cute 13 seasons ago, but he's nearly 50 now and they have become just formulaic.  Also, the character has nowhere to go with this story.  He's already the #2 man, by his choice, so there is no place for advancement, no way, really for his character to grow, as the other members of the team are still growing.

I'm going to miss him a lot, but since there are NCIS marathons on twice a week, I can always get my "Tony" fix if need be. 

It's also just about season finale for The Blacklist and the big questions are (a) will there be a next season, and (b) can the show move forward without FBI agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone), who has been the reluctant partner of Reddington (James Spader) all this time.  Her death a few episodes back was a big shocker, but like Weatherly's departure, probably a necessity.  She was pregnant and it's hard to go racing around the country killing bad guys when you have a nursing child at home.

I wondered how they were going to move forward without her, but then have realized that Reddington is the show and if they choose to go forward, the show will do very well.

Scandal's tone has changed significantly since Olivia's (Kerry Washington) long affair with the president (Tony Goldwyn) ended.  Not sure I like the tone of the "new" Scandal.  I miss the softness, but it was interesting seeing how totally unfit to be first lady Olivia was and how it shows why the whole affair was impossible from the get go.

Of course, the saddest season finales are those where the season finale is also the series finale.  Walt doesn't watch nearly as much television as I do, but he was addicted to The Good Wife, which has no ended it's 9 season run. They left things up in the air...what is really next for Alicia (Julianna Marguiles)?  We'll never know now.

Surely The Americans is headed for a series finale.  There's not really any place for the show to go, now that the Russian spies' identities are starting to be known.

The only good thing about all these season finales is that the summer replacement shows are back, but those, too, predict sadness for the loyal viewer.

Royal Pains, the story of a concierge doctor in the Hamptons (Mark Feuerstein), will start it's 8th and final season.

This is another of those "where can they go from here" decisions, and better to leave it all while it's still popular, but I've followed it for 8 seasons and will miss it

So many shows shutting down for the season and for good and it's always difficult to find a new show to latch onto.  But the salvation for a TV addict are reruns, and there are plenty of them to fill in the gap for a departing...or just vacationing show.  There is always September to look forward to, when they start coming back again.

Late Night Musings

I was a devoted Tonight Show watcher since the Steve Allen days, up through Carson's last show, and then into the Leno years, at least for "headlines" until the business with Conan O'Brien, where Leno decided to take his show back and leave O'Brien out in the cold.  I couldn't bring myself to watch the Tonight Show ever again after that.  Jimmy Fallon seems like a nice guy and the show is entertaining, but I don't see myself ever watching it with the devotion that I gave to The Tonight Show for decades, mostly because I don't know most of today's "celebrities," especially not today's music.  Call me a fuddy duddy.

I was neither a Letterman fan (nothing against him, I just never watched his show because I was loyal to The Tonight Show) or a Colbert fan (just couldn't get into his vain Conservative shtik, though I liked him as a comedian just fine), but I was interested to see his first show, taking over for Letterman.  The jury is still out.  Some funny bits, some "why did they do that?" bits, a band that I liked better than any of the other late night bands, and I will watch again.

BUT...in the years when I zoned out on late night talk shows have they all been like this, or was this one special?  There were NINE commercials (totaling nearly 5 minutes) between the George Clooney interview and the show's return and eight commercials (nearly as long) between the end of the Jeb Bush interview and the return to the show.  I didn't count the commercials in the other breaks, but I had the feeling that I was watching an hour of commercials sponsored by Colbert interviews.  I'm thinking that if I decide to watch Colbert for awhile to see if I like the show, I will just record it and zip thru the commercials, rather than watching live.

It's like going to the movies (which I also rarely do) and watching 20 minutes or so of previews before the actual feature film that you have come to see.

And while I'm complaining about commercials, I hate two other things--first those "funny" mini-movie commercials that run across the bottom of the TV screen about upcoming shows, which are not only distracting, but sometimes cover up something on the current show that you want to see.  And the new thing on the internet where you click on a link to read an article and before you read the article you must watch a commercial and then as you are reading the article, a video suddenly starts playing in the right hand column and you have to search to find out where to turn it off.  It's all very annoying and has at least saved me money because I wouldn't buy any of those products that annoy me so much, whether I liked them or not.

And then there is Kentucky, the "united we stand, divided we fall" state whose state dance is, appropriately, "clogging."

Along with Rachel Maddow, I will not name the County Clerk who has been in all the news because she is getting enough personal publicity everywhere else, but it's been great media fun.  Her checkered past, her latter day holier than thou stance.  What people forget in all the hype, is that it was never an "attack on Christianity" which Mike Huckabee, in wonderful campaign photo ops tries to promote.  This is a woman who took an oath to carry out all legal transactions of her business.  Like it or not, marriage is a legal right of all American citizens, gay and straight.  She took it upon herself to ignore the law and that got her jailed.

As someone pointed out, she put her hand on the bible and swore to upload the constitution, not put her hand on the constitution and swore to uphold the bible.

True, the Kentucky clerk had no reason to believe that her duties would eventually disagree with her religious beliefs, but if she feels that strongly about her beliefs, the answer is not to ignore the law of the land, but to make a big show about resigning her position.

The sight of sanctimonious Huckabee supporting her stand against a law with which he also disagrees is stomach turning.  Have we become a country where the law is irrelevant?  If you don't agree with a law, just ignore it and sue anyone who tries to hold you accountable for it?

If you are Muslim, don't become a flight attendant and then refuse to serve alcohol because it's against your religion (another case of religious freedom currently in the courts).

I thought we were a country of checks and balances, where we had a judiciary to legislate the legality of issues.  When they make a decision with which one side disagrees there are claims of "legislating from the bench."  If the court had upheld all those challenges to Obamacare, you can be certain nobody would be crying foul, but there would have been cheering that the Supremes saw things the right way.

The Rapture

Quote from George Takei:  "Well this is a bit of a circus. So let us be clear: This woman is no hero to be celebrated. She broke her oath to uphold the Constitution and defied a court order so she could deny government services to couples who are legally entitled to be married. She is entitled to hold her religious beliefs, but not to impose those beliefs on others. If she had denied marriage certificates to an interracial couple, would people cheer her? Would presidential candidates flock to her side? In our society, we obey civil laws, not religious ones. To suggest otherwise is, simply put, entirely un-American."

Cooking is Trending

There's that new word that seems to be everywhere today -- "trending," meaning what is "hot" right now.  As I was fixing dinner tonight, I realized that cooking seems to be very hot these days.

I remember when Julia Child had the very televised cooking show.  We watched her to see her goofs, watch her wave a butcher knife like a sword, but also to learn the mysteries of French cooking.  I bought her cookbook and may have tried one or two recipes, but it was really more work than I wanted to do.

We loved Joyce Chen, with her mispronounced words (I still think of "oil" as "oir").  Her description of how to cook Peking Duck still ranks up there as one of the programs Char and I remember and laugh about.

And I knew Martin Yan before the rest of the country knew him because he taught classes here in Davis and it was my boss's son who helped him get his first television show. He was flamboyant and a lot of fun, but I also learned to make a pretty decent Chinese meal.

I've always enjoyed watching cooking on TV and learning from it.  I loved Emeril Lagasse, who was the staple on the newly established Food Network, which debuted in 1993.  Again most of his dishes were more complicated than I wanted to make, but I enjoyed watching him work, and yell "BAM" whenever he added his "essence" to the dish he was cooking.

But today cooking has come into its own.  Not only is there the Food Network, but there is also a Cooking Channel (which I believe is the same franchise).  The TV chefs today are more relatable to the average housewife.  Their recipes are easier, but delicious and introduce the home cook to things he or she may not have thought of trying before.  There are cooking contests, and bizarre shows like "Cutthroat Kitchen" where chefs bid on how to make it more difficult for their competitors -- they have to use tiny (or oversized) implement, or can't use the stove, or must cook while on a rocking horse or a tall ladder or something else strange.

Saturday is my day for cooking shows  Starting with Demaris Phillips, who does southern cooking, to Farmhouse Rules, with former chef Nancy Fuller cooking for and playing with her family, to Rea Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, whose blog I followed for years until she got a TV show. (Wouldn't it be nice to have two houses on your property so you can use one of them exclusively to cook in?) Then the kitchen of Trishia Yearwood, who may be the most "home cook" of the bunch and who likes to cook with her friends and family.  There are a host of cooks I like to watch and I usually learn something from all of them, whether a specific recipe, or a technique or something I want to try.

I've also watched the "Next Food Network Star" for so many seasons now that I enjoy seeing "old friends" I rooted for in the competition who now have had their own shows for several years...except maybe Guy Fieri, whose Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives seems to dominate the Food network on the weekends and whose show I have never liked much.

I recently discovered Tiffani Thiessen on the Cooking Channel.  I initially watched her Dinner at Tiffani's because I have enjoyed Thiessen on White Collar and was happy to see that the first friends she would be cooking for included Tim DeKay, her White Collar husband, and Willie Garson, the strange "Mozzie" on the show.  But I discovered that Dinner at Tiffani's was just a fun, low key show with good tasting, easy to make food.

So tonight I made her lemon chicken with rosemary (only I used thyme) and I convinced Walt that with enough bacon (she used pancetta) and balsamic vinegar even he would like Brussels sprouts...and he did.  He had two helpings.

Cooking is definitely trending and what with the hundreds of home cooks posting YouTube videos, this may be the golden age of gastronomy.

The Dogs, the Bugs and Me

So.   Whaddya want to talk about?  I've been home all day with my virus and the dogs and I don't really have any material to work with.

Here's what I did today:

* Said goodbye to Walt, as he took the car and started out for Santa Barbara.
* Had lunch
* Watched TV
* Checked internet stuff
* Talked with Jeri
* Fed the dogs
* Had dinner
* Watched more TV

and now here I am, ready to go to sleep at 12:30 a.m. and realizing that not only had I forgotten to write this entry, but I have absolutely. nothing. to. say. because I did absolutely nothing today.

However, this may have been a good thing, since my cough is much better tonight.  It has moved from my throat and upper chest down into the lower lobes of my lungs where it is now what they call a "productive cough" and I find a bit more comfortable, since I'm not coughing as much.  If this follows my annual pattern, it will probably remain here for then next couple of months and we will be quarantined on the ship for fear that I am carrying ebola.  But main thing is that I am feeling better.

Someone on Facebook mentioned that she had been watching a new TV show called Forever.  With all the hype that networks give new shows weeks before their pilot episode, I was surprised I had never of this one.  It has only aired four episodes so I decided to give it a try.  I found it charming.

The gimmick with this crime fighting duo (medical examiner, Henry Morgan and Detective Jo Martinez) is that the M.E. can't die.  Sometime 200 years ago he was shot and tossed off a ship.  Ever since then whenever he is "killed" he almost immediately comes back to life, always in water and always nude (the assumption being that his clothes go off into the afterlife or something).

At some point in the 1940s, when clearing a concentration camp, he came upon a baby whom he adopted.  The baby had numbers tattooed on his arm.   The baby is now old man Judd Hirsch, the guy who rescues him whenever he comes back to life, and the only one who knows his secret (like The Shadow's Margo Lane)

I think the reason I liked the show so much is that the actor who plays Henry (Ioan Gruffid -- with a name like that he surely must be from Wales) is suave and charming and the relationship between him and Martinez (Alana DeLa Cruz) is friendly without (yet) any of those messy sexual overtones.

The other reason I liked it so much is that it has hints of The Avengers, with some quirky plots.  So I'm all caught up now and ready to watch next week's episode live.

The other thing I watched was PBS's Live from Lincoln Center, which was broadcasting The Nance, a play with music, starring Nathan Lane as Chauncey Miles.  I had heard Lane interviewed about this show a long time ago and hoped to see it, so I was delighted to find it was being broadcast.  Forget the Nathan Lane you have known these past few years.  This is Lane as you probably have never seen him.

It is a dark comedy, set in 1930s New York.  It's an amazing contrast to 2014, when all around the country gay couples are getting legally married this week.

The "nance" character was a flaming parody of a gay man, exaggeratedly camp and usually played by a hetero actor. For reference, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz and Edward Everett Horton in dozens of 1930s film comedies count as nances. The nance was a master of the double entendre, making people laugh "at the gap between what is known and what can be said," Lane's character says.

On stage Chauncey is outrageously funny and beloved (until Fiorello Laguardia started cleaning up things and drove gays underground), but off stage he is a closeted, bitter, lonely man, seeking assignations in the automat, where men cannot be seen talking together, so everything is done in code.

He briefly finds a relationship with a young man newly arrived in New York and a scene toward the end of the play where he agonizes over that relationship and why it didn't work out is very poignant.

It's an interesting education for younger people today to think how it was back in the day.  Even I remember San Francisco in the 1950s with the newspaper printing pictures of men being loaded into paddy wagons and taken off to jail for immoral conduct (which could be something as simple as being inside a gay bar).

The playwright, interviewed about the controversial nature of this play says, "there is a young generation of queer writers who think we should be angry about (the nance stereotype) and hate it. But I look at it as visibility. I look at it as, they're almost always funny, and they almost always lift up any scene they're in. They're kind of strong, and they kind of say what they want to say and get it done." At the same time, he said, "I also know that that comes from a place of ridicule, a place of humiliation... so, the minute something is two things and they're the exact opposite, I'm drawn to it as a writer."

And lookee here...I've written a journal entry!   Whoda thunk.

A BIG Change

Walt came downstairs the other Friday morning to announce the the picture on the upstairs TV was gone.  It had just a line where the picture should be, though the sound worked fine.  The TV is one of those old ones, from the days before there were flat screen TVs.  I thought he was going to go TV shopping that afternoon, but he didn't get around to it until today.

Ned suggested to me that instead of just getting another TV like the one we already have, that we get a larger one "You deserve to see Survivor in all its glory," he laughed.  I told him I thought Walt was just going to get the same size and I was happy with what we had.

Apparently he sent a text to Walt suggesting the larger size screen for downstairs and apparently that got Walt to thinking and so when he returned from Costco, he had a big screen TV.

Not only was it a big screen...and I mean big screen...TV, but it is a smart TV (though at times this afternoon I doubted that!).  It has a built in router, so that brand new Roku I bought isn't needed (which means Walt can use it upstairs), it has an internet browser (reading Funny the World on television, should I want to).  We can connect to Facebook, watch my wonderful (yes I"m kidding) videos posted on Vimeo. 

Haven't figured out if we can get YouTube yet,but I haven't had time to check everything out.

Anyway, it sounds like dying and going to TV addict heaven.  By the time he had gone to the store and taken time to read the instructions, it was really too late to get it set up last night so today was the day it was going to get done.   I was ready and waiting in eager anticipation for my new BIG screen TV.

I'm so lucky to have Walt to get things like this set up.  I'm such a bull in a China shop, I'd break the thing before I ever got it into the family room.  But he takes his time.  First he removed it from the box and attached all the stuff you're supposed to attach to it.

Then he took the "old" one upstairs and got the space all cleaned out.

Finally the time had come and we carried the TV in from the living room and got it put up where the old one had been.

Then it was my turn to get to work and I started getting all the settings right.  One of the first things is to update all the software.  It told me it would take about 45 minutes to do, so I did other things.  It got to where the update was 97% complete and then the TV shut off.  I waited and waited...there had been no message that it would shut down and start again, so I turned it back on and had to put all the same information back into the machine again.  Then it said it would take about 15 minutes, now, to update software ('cause presumably there were a lot of updates in the past 5 minutes).  This time I sat there and watched it and again, at about 97% finished, the TV shut down.  I left it alone, this time, for about 15 minutes and then when it hadn't turned itself on, I turned it on and had to put all the information back in again.  This time when it told me it would take 20 minutes to update, I skipped that step, figuring I could go back and do it again.

We finally got through all the set up screens and waited for our glorious TV to open up and show us glorious pictures, but instead we got a message that said we had a weak or nonexistant signal.  We tried everything and couldn't figure out what to do.

Naturally these days all manuals are on line, so I went on line to do some troubleshooting and saw that I could take to a Samsung help person, named Mickey.   So Mickey and I tried texting and I didn't even understand his questions, but was trying to find the answers when Firefox decided to crash, which ended my sessions with Mickey.

When I had Firefox back and went back to customer service, this time I had Victoria, who didn't ask me any of the questions that Mickey did, but just told me to do one thing for her.  I did and there was our picture.  I think she should have a good chat with Mickey about effective customer service!

We had gotten it working just in time for Amazing Race.

It being Sunday night, there were things to watch so it was late before I started trying to customize our new baby with the things we will probably want to use.  The problem is that you don't have a keyboard but have to input everything one letter at a time using the remote control.  My e-mail address is basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us and my password is about 15 letters long.  I have a basic password, sometimes putting a capital letter in it, sometimes adding a symbol, and sometimes with a minor variation in the basic 15 letter/number combination.  I have all the passwords stored, but sometimes I forget to update them, so if I get the password wrong, I have to go back and start all over again, one damn letter at a time.

I finally gave up, but had added a couple of apps (like Skype and Netflix) to my basic screen.  Tomorrow I'll worry about fine tuning it.

But I are a happy person!  I'm going to have to go buy popcorn.   The screen is so big, I feel I should be eating popcorn when I watch it.

My Marathon

For those who have never watched Breaking Bad, it's the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who learns he has inoperable lung cancer.  He has a wife, a teen age son with cerebral palsy, an unplanned baby on the way and is already in debt.  He learns that aggressive treatment of his cancer will cost a fortune, which his wife wants to pay to prolong his life.  He wants to leave his family financially stable when he dies.

On a ride-along with his brother-in-law, who works for the DEA, Walter sees a former student fleeing a raid on a local meth lab.  Walter contacts him and the two collaborate on cooking methamphetamine, which, because of Walter's chemist background and his insistence on cleanliness in his lab, becomes desirable because it is significantly more pure than anything else on the black market.

[disclaimer:  before this series, I had no idea that methamphetamine had to be "cooked," that there were levels of purity, and that the more pure the drug, the better the high.  Whoda thunk I would have cared about these things!]

Over the five seasons, we see Walter becoming the drug king "Heisenberg" who, gradually begins to enjoy his empire-building role which includes many immoral things that the original Walter would never have envisioned.   He eventually drives his family away.  More would be a spoiler and I don't want to do that.  This is about my watching yesterday.

My day started at 3 a.m, when I found myself wide awake.   Reading all the hoopla building up to the Breaking Bad finale, and strong encouragement by Ned over the years to watch this program, and signing up for Netflix's streaming video service, I had started watching Breaking Bad on my iPad a week ago.  I had made it all the way through Season One and was into Season Two when I discovered that AMC was doing a Breaking Bad marathon, running all five seasons, in order, ending with the finale at 9 p.m.  Watching it on TV rather than on my iPad was appealing because that meant I could watch either in the family room, or in my office, as I worked at my computer.

At the time I discovered the marathon, it was already into Season Three.  I knew I couldn't watch all of Season Two and catch up with AMC, so I decided to skip watching Season Two and just plunge into Season Three (of five).  I got an overall view of what happened in the second season by reading a synopsis on line so I kinda sorta know how they got where they were when I started watching AMC. (Ned is appalled that I skiped a pivotal season.)

Walt knew that I was going to be immersed in Breaking Bad all day and was very tolerant.  I watched until time to go to brunch at Atria, with Ned and Marta.  (I recorded all the shows from when we left until the finale so I wouldn't miss anything.) 

It was probably a good thing that I was in the middle of this marathon (and Ned was very impressed that I was going to do so much in one day!) because Ned is such a fan that he has watched every episode a dozen times and knows all the minute details that would escape a viewer on the first or even second watching.   

Since my mother has such a hard time participating in a conversation, I think that it was a good thing that she could sit with us and listen to Ned expound on his favorite show without having to contribute anything (other than snorting that she didn't watch the show).  He gave me a detailed explanation of all the things I missed by not watching most of Season Two...which ended up being a good thing because at the end, I had plot holes filled in for me because Ned had explained them to me.

We got home from Atria around 2:30 and I dove right back into Breaking Bad again, while Walt tipped toed around not bothering me. 

At 7 p.m., at the end of whatever episode it was, I turned it off so we could watch the opening episode of The Amazing Race, then I turned Breaking Bad on again.  I did a cop-out dinner, boiling pasta (the last of my Barilla) and pouring pre-made spaghetti sauce over it.  Walt, bless him, did not complain.

There were four more episodes before the season ended and by the time dinner was over, Walt was kind of into the show too, though he asked a lot of questions about or what so and so was.  I had hoped to watch the finale with the rest of America, but I wasn't there yet in watching my pre-recorded shows.  We sat here until 12:30, when the show finally ended.

I was pleased this morning to discover that 80+% of American fans agreed with me that it was a good ending and that it did all that it promised to do, tying up all sorts of loose ends.  Again, not revealing any spoilers.

I'm glad that even though I was five years late to the party, I ended up a fan and could appreciate the tension of the last season.

What I've learned from Breaking Bad, other than what I listed in the "disclaimer" above:  Walter spends more time digging holes in the desert than he does cooking meth.  Choose carefully when buying a container in which to melt a body with acid.  It's impossible to launder $7 million+. None of the drug dealers ever seem to actually spend any money.  The stacks grow taller and taller, but nobody seems to see it as "money," but more just something to collect.  

And finally ... probably not a good idea to buy your child a pink teddy bear.

 

Good bye, Walter -- our relationship was brief, but memorable!