It’s a whirlwind of emotions this week, folks! Some very serious stuff, then not so serious stuff, then silly stuff, then more semi-serious stuff. We’re all over the place. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Who are some of the people you think are expressing good ideas in the world today? –Jas
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Tony, I’m sorry to hear about your dad’s health struggles. I’m here if I can do anything
Mom is a favorite of my wife’s and I have said the same thing about it, I like it but it’s very “sitcom” and that annoys me. If they took away the audience and some of the top-level whacky moments, I would like it more.
I’m a Stephen King fan and I have read The Shining and Dr. Sleep. I enjoyed both books, but I wasn’t a fan of the movies too much. Some of it is done well, the acting is good but over all I’m not in a hurry to see either again and I fell asleep during Dr. Sleep.
Interesting, William is right that The Overlook is destroyed in the book but in Dr. Sleep they do return to the site of the hotel at the finally.
I think the big thing about it having to be a sequel in my opinion, is the cultural weight of The Overlook to us the viewer and our understanding of Danny’s power and trauma. That’s what makes the ending satisfying instead of just a South Park style beepbeepbeepbeep-dootdootdootdoot psychic battle.
Tony, I’m sorry to hear about your Dad. Yes, let me know too, if I can do anything. I went through it many years ago with my Dad so it’s something I’ve been kind of attuned to hearing news about over the years.
I’m teaching online which is somewhat more time-consuming than I expected just because I can’t make one plan and implement it and then I’m done. I keep having to figure out other individual responses because of different situations the students are in.
Also making fabric surgical masks ’cause not enough supplies at hospitals.
Anxious for my Mom who lives in Florida where they don’t seem to be taking the social distancing very seriously. She was going to go to the hair salon a couple days ago but I talked her out of it.
Watching Task-Master as new episodes are released. And Open Culture posted a list of free online movies the other day and I watched a 1952 version of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe directed by Luis Bunuel. It was definitely a 1950s Hollywood movie but with weird undercurrents that were definitely Bunuel. And of course all the racist stuff that’s in the original story to deal with.
Then last night we watched Star-Trek: First Contact ’cause my son had never seen. I hadn’t see that since seeing in the theatres. The first contact story is cool. I wish there was more of that. The stuff about the Borg, especially the Borg queen, is really weird.
And doing cross-words together, and playing Cataan.
Tony – Sorry to hear about your dad. I hope he’s able to get the care he needs even though it’s coinciding with this global pandemic.
William – I also observe the type of houses people on TV live in. This week I was watching the end of series of Parks and Rec where Leslie is an executive at Dept of Interior and Ben is a congressman and they’re showing them set in a HUGE kitchen in a single family house in DC, while raising their triplets that they didn’t think they could afford when they found out they were pregnant with 3 in small-town Indiana. I then realized that there are several TV shows where they show people in public service jobs in comparatively palatial apartments/houses in expensive neighborhoods; every show I’d seen set in DC actually. I think that all contributed to what I thought living in DC would be like, and why it felt like we never had enough money to achieve it, even though our salaries were at least on par if not quite a bit better than the people on TV. Feeling like we were just getting by is a lot of why we moved back to the much-less-expensive Iowa. In addition to buying a house in Iowa that is twice as big for half the money of our DC house, we also both got raises in moving back; actual dollar for dollar raises, not just a cost of living comparison. Our quality of life is good in Iowa, but I miss the breadth of interesting things to do that was available there. We’re closer to more of our family, which lets us see grandparents more often (every month or so when we’re not social distancing), but we moved away from cousins, who we used to see weekly. It’s hard, there are pros and cons to both locations, although because of that, I wonder if I’ll every fully feel settled and content no matter where we are.