Category: pop culture

Taste. What I Watched – and Didn’t

Maybe it’s me. Oh, and my wife.

We’re not enamored with either the GOT or LOTR prequels. What are they called again?

We watched the maiden episodes of each of these new prequels. Yes, it’s but one episode of each which we watched. We had our own opinions about them. I’ll not interpret my wife’s thinking, but she was disappointed. I’ll say that I didn’t find anyone to root for in either. They threw so much at me, dangling storylines, trying to force tension while showering me with music and CGI, that it all elicited a weary shrug for me. Yes, it’s just one episode. Needs to grow on me, right? Give it time, right?

Right.

Much better in my mind were several other shows. One that we’re watching now is The Nevers on HBO MAX. It’s a compelling, twisted, and complicated science fiction fantasy speculative fiction beast. Terrific acting, excellent production values, tantalizing spoonfuls of past, present, and future possibilities are regularly dribbled out. We cheer for many on that show.

Second, one we finished, was Paper Girls on Prime. Those were four girls and young women which we enjoyed watching and cheering, with an intriguing and different take on time travel. It was a fascinating look at life as well, about what we try and hope to become, and what we share with the world. I hope the sophomore season is as entertaining as the first. Doesn’t always happen for us. Like The Boys. Loved year one. Year two did little for us.

Of course, some, like The Umbrella Academy and Stranger Things stayed strong for me. My wife didn’t feel the same with either one, as far as I know, but I don’t want to elaborate on that because I didn’t follow her reasoning.

Likewise, we didn’t enjoy Picard season two as so many did, but Strange New Worlds delivered a solid taste of the Star Trek franchise.

We know that taste is subjective. Need the truth of that? Talk to others about food and drink, like pizza and coffee. You’ll see.

Others will love these new series no matter what. Others will never ‘get them’. Like, as fer instance, I enjoyed The Sopranos but had friends who disliked the lying, killing, and violence. Justified always engaged me but friends and others dismissed it as a cowboy soap opera. Yeah, huh? Okay, maybe some, but it had smart dialogue and strong acting.

I also enjoyed the Dune series when it came out, but it didn’t stay with me the way that the novels did. Of course, I was a young and impressionable human when I read the books. Never at all got into the Foundation series. It was a strike out for me. Again, others loved it.

While I loved Game of Thrones and enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies, I’m dubious that prequels will ever surmount the favorites upon the top of my list, The Last Kingdom and The Expanse. That could change. Someone might bring out The Murderbot Diaries as a successful series. And I’d be interested in seeing how someone handles When Women Were Dragons.

While I’m at it, I’m bemused that Quantum Leap has been rebooted, and that The Sopranos have a prequel series. While I’m at it, did you hear of the Hulu show called Reboot about a reboot of a once popular show? Perry Mason has already been redone. Multiple Sherlock Holmes versions exist and compete. Magnum PI and Hawaii 5-0 were rebooted. What show is next? I doubt they can do I Love Lucy. It wouldn’t be the same without Lucy, would it, although they brought us Lucy. It’s all about finding something that satisfies and entertains. That’s a pretty hard task.

Now excuse me, it’s back to my novel writing for me. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

The particulars are not impressive. Friday. September 2, 2022. 73 F now, 99 F later. Purple air, 148, not healthy for some, limit exposure. A pleasant sunrise complete with jay squawking at 6:37 AM, sunset ensuing at 7:43 PM. No clouds in the sky, but wildfire smoke grays the blue.

Mom tested positive for COVID this week. Born in 1935, with existing underlying conditions, it’s a worry. Sounded horrid on the phone and is dealing with a range of symptoms. Picked it up from her partner, who picked it up from his daughter, who picked it up from her high school reunion. So it goes. He tested and has symptoms but appears to be recovering. Mom is on a new med being evaluated in clinical trials with the FDA. The dice have been tossed. We’ll see how they come up.

Musically, The Neurons have Bob Seger doing “Shakedown” in the morning mental music stream. The song is from the 1987 film, Beverly Hills Cop II, an Eddie Murphy vehicle. This can get confusing because a movie with the same name as the song, Shakedown, with Peter Weller and Sam Elliott, came out the next year.

The song came into my head last night for unexplained reasons. Now, what’s interesting to me is that I knew I used this song before as the day’s selected them music, so I looked it up. It was on September 1, 2019. Weird to me that the song is in my mind on September 1 on two different years. Coincidence? Aliens? Witches? Quantum entanglement? Feline manipulation? None of it can be ruled out.

Stay positive and test negative. Take precautions as needed. I need coffee, you know? Then it’s off to write. Here’s the music. It’s a muddy video, but the sound is fine, and you can taste the flavor of the film, and those times, way back in the late 1980s. No, don’t do the math. Have a good life. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

The bers landed early this morning, while most of us pursued sleep. First of these is September, harbinger of seasonal changes and falling leaves in much of the northern half of our planet. South of zero, spring is shaping up.

It’s Thursday the First, 2022. Long may she rule, but it’ll likely be just twenty-four hours. We have another hot flash with poor air in store for us in my valley. Probably a 99 F high. Our air is purple on the chart, with a reading of 187 attached to it and a warning not to prolong your time outside. It’s 21 C right now, which would normally be pleasant, but this smoke is trapping the heat. Can you say stifling?

With all this, sunrise was surprisingly clear and pleasant at 6:36 AM, the sort of rising sun that makes you smile in appreciation of life and the world. Night’s duties commence at 7:45 PM. Last night’s sunset was a hot furnance red display. The biggest difference about the dwindling daylight hours with its later sunrise and earlier sunset is that it’s a more abrupt transition. Whereas in May through July, it’s quite light before the dawn and stayed light a bit after sunset, darkness more frequently prevails in those hours.

The smoke has not given the sun protection that I thought, only shaving off one degree from the high temps of the last several days. Two fires are spooning this smoky flow into us, one in California, and Oregon’s Rum Creek fire, less than an hour away on I-5.

The Neurons are enthusiastic about “Pumped Up Kicks” this morning. They’re not forthcoming about their reasoning. I suspect it’s a byproduct of reading the news. PUK by Foster the People was released in 2010. It’s a dark song against a pop beat about a human with a gun shooting others for the fun, because of how it makes them feel.

An unusual song. Stay positive and test negy, and do what you can. I will do the same as soon as sufficient coffee is imbibed to satisfy The Neurons. Here is la song. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

He read a Reddit thread on the insanepeoplefacebook forum. It claimed, with this capitalization and punctuation, “MENSTRUATION ISN’T Natural. It’s a UNNATURAL response to improper dietary habits & toxic environment. ALL ESTROGENS are POISONOUS.”

WTH, he wondered. Do people honestly believe this? Where do they get their ideas? Or were they just posting this insanity to pull attention?

Either way, it was from a wholly different world than the one he inhabited. Of course, that’s why he read it: to see what people in this other world were saying, so he could try to understand them.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Something crashed into me. Once mental equilibrium was restored, I raged, “What happened.” Looking around, I discovered that I’d been hit by Wednesday. Right in the middle of the week, too. Examining it in the mirror, I admired a developed welt and darkening contusion. Wednesday was leaving a mark. That’s how life goes for Day Hunters. Sometimes they strike back.

This is August 31, 2022, which happens to be September Eve. Naturally, I’m gonna dress up and party, as my tribe has done since they first illuminated recorded history.

Sunrise broke night’s grip on the valley at 6:35 AM. Night fled but vowed to return at 7:47 tonight. I admired his willingness to express such a specific time in this day of vague promises. It’s a lovely 21 C right now, but Purple Air says wildfire smoke from Rum Creek to the northwest and another blaze in California pours a blend into the air that makes it red, 148, and unhealthy for sensitive folks. That must include me. I’m zinging sneezes and coughs to beat the band (an expression that seems very confusing and leaves me wondering about its origins). Eyes are teary and the nostrils are smarting. So, I’ll take precautions, y’all, if I were me, which I think I am.

The Neurons have plucked a Stevie Wonder song out of the 1965 memory cells and loaded it into the morning mental music stream. I always loved the energy of “Uptight (Everything Is Alright)”. Knowing this, following a successful writing expedition which naturally also rendered me anxious (does this work or am I fooling myself?), The Neurons kicked the song on in a game effort to reassure me.

Over to you, Jim. Here’s the music. I’m setting off into the kitchen’s darkest corners in a quest to find a cup of hot, black coffee. Come at your own peril if you wish. Stay positive, test negy, and so on. Don’t look know, my fellow Americans, but Labor Day weekend is rising out of the calendar’s murky depths. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Gonna be a hundred F here today, they tell us. I’m doubtful. Rum Creek smoke fills the air, making it unhealthy to breath, but it also blocks the sun and cools the air. I don’t think it’ll go over 95, 96 F today. It’s now 20 C.

After much discussion among replay officials, they’ve concluded that this is Tuesday, August 30, 2022. When I typed that 3-0, The Neurons said, “That ain’t right, is it?” But the replay officials say it’s so, so let’s move on, and play ball. First down.

Happy sunshine sneaked over the eastern mountains and winked through the leaves at 6:34 AM and will take its light and heat and stalk off, probably in a deep red glow, given this smoke, at 7:48 PM. The sun’s light comes through different windows now as the Earth’s relationship with the sun shifts via orbital mechanics. The eastern windows see less sunshine as the sun treks into our southern sky. By the time winter has arrived, we won’t see sunshine through most of the eastern windows.

I’d like to pause to mention folks in Mississippi, coping with their flooding, along with Pakistan. Here’s a call out, too, for the people around the Rum Creek fire here in Oregon, and for those enduring power outages from storms in the U.S. Midwest and South. Send positive energies to these people and places if you can, however you manifest it.

Music – that’s why we’re here, innit? – in the morning mental music stream is “You Only Get What You Give” by the New Radicals, circa 1998. The Neurons, putting their whimsy in the display case, plunked the song into the M3S after I struggled to remember a dream. The dream keeps poking its head out but whenever I shout — mentally or figuratively, right? — “There it is”, the dream ducks out of sight. Maddening. Perhaps after I’ve had coffee…

Better go get some. Duty calls. Stay posi, test negy, and so on. Here’s the music. Sing along if you know it. Cheers

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Mewsday’s Theme Music

The Tucker floof awoke me with song at an early time. “Get up, get up, it’s time to eat. Get up, get up, no time to sleep. Get up, get up, feed me some food. Get up, get up, or I’ll keep up this tune.”

Which he did. So I did. That makes this Mewsday.

The sky crashed down on his last night. Well, starting just after two in the afternoon, winds shifted, bringing the Rum Creek fire‘s smoke right down the I-5 corridor, changing the color of our air quality indicators from green to red like a traffic signal at work. Although it looks and smells better today, we’re at 152, red, and not good. Actually, the peculiarities of the narrowing valley and slope that I live on brings the air quality down to a more endurable 105. A wind shift can take that away, making us like the rest of the city.

Sunrise was a mellow and uneventful period at 6:33 AM. Sunset cometh at 7:50 PM. Cool 54 F now but a high of 34 C is on deck.

Got a Tom Petty song in mind. Heard it on the radio the other day. The Neurons said, “We like this,” and kept it on as background music in the mental music stream since. The song is “Leave Virginia Alone”. I remember hearing the Rod Stewart version back in 1995. Didn’t move me deeply. I was unaware that Tom Petty wrote it, learning that later, when he covered it himself. It sounds more like a Tom Petty style song than a Rod vehicle to me.

Okay, where is the coffee, please? The cats have abandoned me. Tucker is silent and coffee is needed. Stay positive, test neggy, etc. Have a good Monday, whatever that means on your spectrum. Here’s the song. A little mellow for a coffee-less Monday to my ears but it makes The Neurons happy. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s about 17 C outside. Minute haze dulls the blue sky’s purity. My wife looks out and says, “I wish it would stay like this for a month.” Welcome to Sunday, August 28, 2022.

It won’t stay like this today. 90 F is expected as a high. The sun showed up this AM at 6:32 and will vacate our sky at 7:52 tonight as the length of daylight continues shrinking. I do miss the ocean and beach where we spent last week. Oh, that lovely air, and the glory of hearing the ocean and watching waves hurry in and crash and then drift away. We had no sinus issues there, whereas we began experiencing sinus blockages and postnasal drip when we were still a hundred miles from home. Today brings me full stoppage and the need to blow a few times.

The Neurons are feeding Echosmith and “Cool Kids” (2013) into the morning mental music stream. I don’t know the course that brought the song in. I suspect it emerged from a spectrum of thoughts and slivers of quicksilver dreams at once reflective and amusing. I was a cool kid. Just sayin’, that’s how I was often described. When I pressed why that was used to describe me, people said, as the song says, that I seemed to get it. Yet, I had issues, loads of family matters, though not as heavy as many endure. At least I had shelter and food security. Nobody was abusing me.

Of course, I sang a slighter different version as I pet my orange buddy, the little ginger bear known as Papi. I sang, “I wish that I could be like the cool cats because all of the cool cats get all the kibble.” Papi was too cool to respond beyond disdain. It’s his standard M.O.

The coffee has landed. Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Dream your dream and pursue your hopes. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

When they finally broke through to the other side and the dust cleared, they found a material world with many boulevards of broken dreams. No matter; it was Saturday, August 27, 2022. They had that going for them, if nothing else.

It’s overcast in my swath of the world. Though the day advanced with the sun cresting the eastern mountains at 6:31 AM, the sun’s warmth is remote and oblique. 18 C now, we expect 83 F to be the temperature’s peak. Night will take over at 7:53 this evening, when the sun ‘moves on’ as the world turns.

For music, The Neurons are plying the morning mental music stream with a song from Peter Gabriel. Named “Blood of Eden”, you might expect it to be an energetic, uplifting, hard rocker. Surprisingly, it’s not. (Yes, you correctly detected snark. Good for you. You must have already had coffee.) I’ve always been a Peter Gabiel fan. This 1983 song was another one which prompted me to listen carefully as my brain asked, “Wait, what’s he saying?” The Neurons restored the song to active presence in my mind after overhearing an older man and woman chatting over coffee. He said in response to her reply, “She said that she can’t afford the insurance.” And while my brain remained engaged on its task, The Neurons took up that line and hooked it up with the “Blood of Eden” lyric, “I cannot get insurance anymore. They don’t take credit, only gold.” That’s just how The Neurons play.

My coffee is at hand. I wasn’t always a coffee drinker. Didn’t start that until around fifth, sixth grade, while visiting a friend’s house. We had the same first name, Michael, although he was a Mike. People habitually said, here’s Michael and Mike, or M and M. Mike used to have coffee with a lot of sugar and cream. I only drank it this way a few times, always at his house. When our compasses took us in different directions, I quit drinking coffee and didn’t resume until I was twenty and in the military. Even then, I was only an occasional imbiber of the black brew, usually on midnight shifts. I became a regular drinker when I went off shifts and became the Training NCO. My boss would come in each morning and say, “Let’s go get coffee.” That’s where the habit really developed for me. That was at Kadena on Okinawa, after I’d been there a few years, so I was twenty-seven. My relationship with coffee blossomed. By the time I reached Germany a few years later, I was identified as a hard-core coffee drinker.

BTW, the coffee was bought at an Army & Air Force Exchange Services cafeteria upstairs from the command post where I worked. It cost ninety cents.

Stay positive and test negative. Take care of your family, community, tribe, and self. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

You ever think about changing your calendar? I wonder how it would affect us if on each New Year, our first day was 365 (366 for a leap year). Then the days count down, like a Julian calendar in reverse. Today, instead of August 26, 2022, it would be something like Friday, 128, 2022. Then you’d think, oh my goodness there’s only 127 days left to this year. Your conversations would be interesting as people suggesting having a celebration on the 120, and you reply, “Is that a Friday?”

Today’s particulars aren’t notably different from yesterday. When I awoke a few hours ago, the temp. was 61 F. We’re up to 20 C now. Sunset is expected at 7:55 PM after a sunrise of 6:30 AM. Our high will be about 93 F. No clouds in the sky, and it’s blue. Air Quality is 2, so pretty darn good. On the news front, the GOP has shifted targets from the DOJ and are no longer chanting about defunding the FBI. Now they want to defund the IRS. Their cycle, from the false statements of the former GOP POTUS to their continual insistence that the 2020 POTUS election was stolen to some who lost claiming they won (yes, I’m commenting on you, Laura Loomer), to verbal attacks on different government departments seems to be about sowing discord, distrust, and confusion, which destabilizes our government, polarizes our politics, and disrupts our society. So no changes in the news, other than, oh, yeah, flooding, fires, droughts, baseball, football, and other sports. But yea, people cry, Lake Mead’s water level is no longer falling. We’re saved!

From reading news and reflection on my dreams and daily activities and routines, The Neurons feted me with John Lennon, “Watching the Wheels” from 1981. Do you remember when he was gunned down? I surely do. Anyway, The Neurons have “I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round, I really love to watch them roll,” repeatedly playing in the morning mental music stream. That’s how my mood is, to some degree. Moods, like so many things, are a spectrum, so I’ll be sliding along to something else sometime, and then probably back again, and off again, and so on.

Yes, I have my coffee already, and I’ve eaten brekkie — waffles today. Now I’m contemplating the cats washing themselves and contemplating their fur, ears moving as a car passes, a bird breaks cover and tweets, caws, or screeches, pausing as a far dog barks and a prop plane drones closer. Stay positive and test negative and so forth. Here’s the music. Sing along if you will. Cheers

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