Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Please don’t feed the bears.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We’re Living In

Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We’re Living In

by | 269 Comments

This post is in: ,

BGinChi is on vacation in an undisclosed location Mexico this week.

Given everything that’s going on, if you feel like it maybe we can all share what music, movies, books, TV and more we use to distract ourselves, calm or soothe ourselves, or just generally get away from it at all during particularly tough times.

Also, I remember the day that Soonergrunt shared the photo of his little white dog, which if asked to pick the dog most likely to be Soonergrunt’s… most of us would never have picked that cute little guy.  (I say this without criticism, I am now partially owned by a little white guy myself.)

What’s one thing about you that we would be unlikely to guess based on what we know of you from Balloon Juice?

Totally Made Up Example:  Raven’s favorite musical album is The Sound of Music.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

269Comments

  6. 6.

    lollipopguild

    Balloon Juice and videos on u-tube help me cope with the unrelenting stupidity of our right wing media as well as all of the brain dead GOP politicians. That and reading books.

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    Just after posting, I added this up top:

    Also, I remember the day that Soonergrunt shared the photo of his little white dog, which if asked to pick the dog most likely to be Soonergrunt’s… most of us would never have picked that cute little guy.  (I say this without criticism, I am now partially owned by a little white guy myself.)

    What’s one thing about you that we would be unlikely to guess based on what we know of you from Balloon Juice?

    Totally Made Up Example:  Raven’s favorite musical album is The Sound of Music.

  14. 14.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: I started it and couldn’t tell what the hell was going on.

    I loved Hacks! Brilliant acting by Jean Smart, and the whole supporting cast is great.

  15. 15.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Something you all wouldn’t guess? I don’t know. I think of myself as pretty transparent. Hm I went to an inner city high school in Detroit? I enjoy zip lining? Are those surprising

    ETA: Oh, I know! I used to write Tolkien fanfiction.

  21. 21.

    Eric S.

    Last night I watched Dune. The newest one. It was 2.5 hours of fun distraction. I’ve grown to enjoy Jason Momoa performances. Yes, he’s your cast but he does it so well.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    @Baud: I really liked Moana and my favorite is still UP, cause I’m a softy at heart.  Inside/Out was every parent’s nightmare about how their decisions affected their child.

  25. 25.

    CaseyL

    I am eco-conscious, try to reduce the amount of plastic I use and throw away, and look forward to being able to get an electric car some day.  I can get incredibly angry and depressed, contemplating what humans have done to the natural world.

    And yet, I love giant machinery, the emblematic items of the Industrial Age.

    I toured the Columbia Dam complex here in Washington State, and completely geeked out over the turbines.

    The huge counterweights you see thrust up into air by bridges which used to help them go up and down (I think it’s all done electronically now) always catch my eye and make me smile.

    I visited a commercial printer many years ago, and watching enormous machines fold paper into pages, and gather pages into sections, made me happy in a way I can’t describe.

    And canal locks!  I can watch ships go through locks for hours.

    I don’t understand me.

  27. 27.

    WaterGirl

    @Eric S.: The only thing I have ever seen Jason Momoa in was a GIF that LAMH posted where Jason Momoa is opening a folding chair outside somewhere, one-handed.

    If anyone has that link, I love that.

    Where is LAMH?  I though we were going to hear more from her once she returned to NOLA.

  28. 28.

    trollhattan

    Accidentally paired two Alan Rickman sort-of biopics: “CBGB” and “Bottle Shock,” released five years apart in the opposite order I list them. Both are simply fun, and not merely for Rickman who is reason enough to watch, of course.

    CBGB is about the seminal NYC punk club that as much as any one place, launched the punk revolution. Rickman plays Hilly Kristal, the owner and really marginal businessman who nevertheless was always music and artist, first.

    “Bottle Shock” is about Napa Valley early ’70s and the bombshell blind tasting of Napa wines against top French houses, held in France. Rickman is Stephen Spurrier who is definitely not a football coach but somebody hellbent on showing the wine world what’s happening six thousand miles away that will change everything. Spurrier was a Brit running a Paris wine shop, just to make the actual event even weirder than it seems at first. The fun-loving hard-living fist-throwing Californians are a little overdone but the ’70s cars are spot on.

  30. 30.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @WaterGirl: It was a small parochial high school. Our graduating class had 45 students. My brother and I were the only ones who went on to college. The school was suspended from the basketball league after a brawl at a game. I was a cheerleader. :-)

    I guess that last thing is unpredictable too

  33. 33.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    I think animation has been far stronger than film for many years. Better scripts,more fully realized characters, etc.

  35. 35.

    CaseyL

    @trollhattan: I saw Bottle Shock, and liked it.  Despite the cast, I think it was a “small” movie – about rather obscure subject matter – and I liked the glimpse into the wine world.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    @CaseyL:

    Do they still do Grand Coulee Dam tours, or has 9-11 ruined that too? Visited as a little kid and it really stuck–probably remains the largest manmade structure I’ve seen and still recall one of the tour tidbits was how many guys are entombed because they fell into the concrete during a pour. “Too bad about Bill.” That, and all the piping to cool the concrete as it cured. Only later did I learn “exothermic.”

  38. 38.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​

    I should have found a child to watch it with.

    “Run out and get me a four year old child, I can’t make head or tail of it.” -Rufus T. Firefly, President of Freedonia

    ETA: You’d probably guess I was a Marx Brothers fan.

  39. 39.

    CaseyL

    @WaterGirl: That actually might be some of the reason I love them:  they are a kind of art.  So much power that has to be so precisely engineered is artistry.

  40. 40.

    narya

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I once met this person, about my age, who went to high school in Detroit, and I said “Cass Tech?” and the answer was yes! How did you know? Turns out a close friend from college went there–at the same time as that new person. He had been the school photographer and, it turns out, had pics of my friend in the school production of “Guys & Dolls.” (I was the stage manager for MY HS production of “Guys & Dolls,” which should surprise exactly no one who knows me/has worked with me.)

  42. 42.

    Suzanne

    What’s one thing about you that we would be unlikely to guess based on what we know of you from Balloon Juice?

    I’m kind of a big Parrothead.

  43. 43.

    JPL

    @debbie: Did you ever see Persepolis about Iran.   The book was also quite good, but they really captured the essence of the country.   Your absolutely right about the strength of anime.

  44. 44.

    CaseyL

    @trollhattan: Good question!  The answer is yes, you can still tour it (they actually stopped tours during the Pandemic, but have re-opened). I don’t know if the tours are different now, if there are areas they no longer take you, though.

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    In light of a certain country in the news (rhymes with Plussia) wonder how many second thoughts at Disney over titling their newest “Turning Red.”

    //

  47. 47.

    trollhattan

    @CaseyL:

    They get quite a few things right, including the links the valley had forged with UC Davis, now world famous for its oenology department (or maybe it’s a school by now).

    I had the opportunity to taste the winning Montelena Chardonnay vintage and it was pretty remarkable still, many years later.

  50. 50.

    lowtechcyclist

    One of my favorite comfort reads is The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford. My mom bought the book for me when it first came out ~60 years ago, and at different times in my life, I’ve identified with the cat and each of the dogs.

  51. 51.

    Suzanne

    @CaseyL:

    And yet, I love giant machinery, the emblematic items of the Industrial Age. 

    Oh, I am with you on this. One of the best parts of my job is watching construction. The excavation and steel erection are just riveting to watch (see what I did there). Pouring concrete is amazing. But the best — THE BEST — is demolition. Heavy equipment is so cool.

  52. 52.

    trollhattan

    @CaseyL:

    Good to hear. “Big as a big thing” one of my English friends is fond of saying.

    The Grand Coulee region itself is pretty damn bleak, even if the geology is interesting. We drove there from Seattle in summer and wowzers, was it ever hot (no AC in the Chevy, I can tell you that).

  57. 57.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Baud: Encanto didn’t do much for me either but I liked it better than Frozen. Moana is pretty good.

    Have you seen Wall-e? One of my favorites.

  59. 59.

    West of the Rockies

    I happen to know for a fact that Raven’s favorite album is The Best of Donny and Marie…

  60. 60.

    MissWimsey

    Ooh this is easy. I like country music (think Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit). This only makes sense if you know I grew up in an immigrant family in Chicago’s West Side (Humboldt Park). I heard a lot of good alt-country music when I lived in North Carolina.

  66. 66.

    Miki

    Moar little white doggos for your collection.

    My little white guy is a 8.5 month miniature poodle, currently experiencing testosterone poisoning. What had been charming macadamia nuts are now life threatening walnuts. Nut Job is scheduled for April 5.

    TBH, the Puppeh is my SSRI. How awesome is that?

  67. 67.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    Binge watching Korean Series on Netflix

    Heaven’s Garden is a 16 part series that follows a family on a rural contemporary Korean farm. One gets a slice of Korean life and this has a little bit of everything. Divorce, evil turns good, surprises, connections with North Korea. My favorite was the estranged daughter returns to her Father’s farm with her own daughter and her step daughter. Of course the young step daughter struggles to be accepted after moving from city to farm and village life and a cranky grandfather. One day cranky grandfather takes step daughter to orchard and points out a fruit tree that has a grafted branch. He explains the branch was from a different tree but once grafted to and nourished by this new tree the branch grew strong and had different fruit but very good and is now part of the tree. The analogy was obvious and the series is chock full of these moral points

  69. 69.

    JoyceH

    What’s one thing about you that we would be unlikely to guess based on what we know of you from Balloon Juice?

    Um… that I knit socks? (BTW, any knitters out there? Learn magic loop if you haven’t yet and you’ll never touch double pointed needles again.)

  70. 70.

    Suzanne

    @WaterGirl: So Spawn the Younger blew my cover a couple of years ago. She went to Girl Scouts and they were talking about favorite songs, and she told her entire troop that her mom loves a song about a cheeseburger. And she sang it. Her troop leader texted me afterward and gave me some well-deserved shit.

    Oddly, I don’t eat cheeseburgers.

  72. 72.

    JoyceH

    Oh, and distractions? Lately I seem to be reading the complete library of Agatha Christie, most of which I’ve read many times before, and once I’ve watched all the news I can stand, I switch over to Netflix to rewatch Stargate SG1. I’m into season 4. After SG1, I plan to watch Stargate Atlantis, but not Stargate Universe because I didn’t like that one.

  73. 73.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Sure Lurkalot: I’m possibly the only person in American who’s never seen Frozen, but I did read an interesting interview with the two writers. They originally wrote it as a standard fairy tale romance, but when they audience tested it, the audience didn’t respond. They jogged together for a few weeks talking about how to revise, and finally moved the two sisters to the center with the prince as an opponent. It violated genre expectations and those are hard to resist. I respect that.

    I liked Wall-e.

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    In light of a certain country in the news (rhymes with Plussia) wonder how many second thoughts at Disney over titling their newest “Turning Red.”

    I understand that this is a comedy about puberty and may contain a reference to periods.

    This and the title will probably upset some conservatives.

    DeSantis may ban the movie in Florida.

    The insecure anti “woke” crowd will have a fit over a movie about girls and their bodies.

    What the hell was Pixar thinking?

    //

  80. 80.

    Scout211

    I think the original L&O just broke. The new season 21 just out is well, less than I had hoped. Anyone else see it yet? Yea or nay?

    ? for me.

  81. 81.

    Miki

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: Loved, loved, loved that series. I lived in the ROK in 1976 & 1977, in Seoul for a year then in a rural area for another year. Lots of memories ….

    One of the best changes from then was the end of the military dictatorship. Democracy is a fantastic thing.

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    @Miki: When I first got my little Henry, a friend of mine had returned home after a day at work to find her husband on the kitchen floor, bleeding from his head.  She struggled with that for a long time, but she called my little Henry “Prozac” for the very reason you are suggesting.

  84. 84.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I was a choirboy.  Literally.  I sang in an award winning boy’s choir that did church music. One prize we received was a Maria Theresa silver thaler coin..

  87. 87.

    CaseyL

    @Dan B: My last trip to Eastern Washington – well, north central – was a couple of summers ago, to check out houses in Oroville.  Beautiful area, but they’ve all gone completely MAGAt out there. Wrote off the area as a possible post-retirement relo destination.

    Breaks my heart AND pisses me off, because I do like the area’s geography and the desert color pallet.  I also used to enjoy going to Republic to dig in their Eocene fossil beds.

  88. 88.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @debbie: I think the reason why the scripts in animation are better is because it takes about five years to complete an animated feature. A lot of rewriting is happening during the process.

  89. 89.

    Steeplejack

    A few days ago I was down a YouTube hole, listening to some old music, and I stumbed across some recordings from What’s That Sound? Complete Albums Collection, a remastering of Buffalo Springfield’s three albums from the original analog tapes under Neil Young’s supervision. They sound great! I listened to all of them that I could find, and they’ve been running through my head since then. Good earworms!

    “Rock and Roll Woman.”

    “Kind Woman.”

  91. 91.

    WaterGirl

    @Suzanne:

    Her mom loves a song about a cheeseburger.

    That’s a great story.  Kids at a certain age say all sorts of interesting things.  When a friend’s daughter was about 7, she turned around on Amtrak and said to the guy in the seat behind her “Do you rape women?”

    We were both really involved in a rape hotline/women’s crisis center and her daughter came to all of our meetings.

    The other favorite was when she turned to some random guy in public and said “my mommy smokes pot but I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

  92. 92.

    zhena gogolia

    We’re enjoying Murder in Provence (Britbox) with Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll and Patricia Hodge. But boy, is it for old people!

  96. 96.

    brendancalling

    Last night I drive to RI to see Verbal Assault’s first show in 30 years.

    If you know, you know.

  99. 99.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I have never read Tolkien.

    Also, from the age 0f 7 until the age of 18 I appeared in more than two dozen musicals/plays/concerts alongside my father (I was also an altar boy to his Cantor at Mass) and we also sang barbershop together, both when I was a kid in school (when I actually got him involved because me and two friends who were also heavily involved in school music, stated singing with the local BB chorus) and later as adults (after he asked me to join his chorus, something I thought I would never do again).

    I can still sing most of Pinafore.

  107. 107.

    Dan B

    I used to hike and backpack a lot.  One solo trip I backpacked 45 miles over four high passes in two and a half days.  Another trip three of us hiked the Chelan Lakeshore trail just as the rattlesnakes were emerging.  May 18th. There was a lot of heavy artillery fire, stra fe grey and black clouds in lenticular and other shapes followed by a mile thick fog at the middle of the lake.  It was 1980 and we had no idea what happened to Mt. Saint Helens until we reached the town of Stehekin at the end of the lake.  A friend told everyone that I was hiking at the mountain and had died.

  109. 109.

    Josie

    @WaterGirl: I was a librarian for many years.  The most entertaining two years were at an elementary school in an upper middle class neighborhood.  Storytime  in the lower grades (K-3) was always an eye opener, since details in the stories always reminded children of information about their homes and families.  Parents would have been horrified about the things I heard during storytime.​
     ETA: Kids love to share.

  111. 111.

    frosty

    @CaseyL: Canal locks. You need to watch “Travels by Narrowboat”. British guy chucks it all to buy a canal boat and go touring through England.

    Printing: Years ago I got a summer job loading paper on to a folding machine in a bookbindery. Mindless work, with humans at the service of the machine keeping it fed and removing the results.

  115. 115.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @Baud: Thanks to a little one I know I’ve seen Encanto about 6x in the last month.  Including last night.  I really like it.  I also know it has to piss off the rwnj crowd because it’s about brown people.  We tried Red, a Pixar movie Friday but I found it a bit too mature for said little one.  The main character is an 8th grader.

  119. 119.

    Zelma

    Well, I’m not a really big presence here so I’m not well known.  But people who meet me (retired history professor; dour Scot; phlegmatic in spades) are usually surprised to discover that I reviewed romance novels for more than a decade.

  120. 120.

    geg6

    I always find the Great British Baking Show to be soothing.

    As for what people may find surprising?  No idea.  I’ve been friends with Donnie Iris for about forty years (if anyone knows who he is!).  I’m a fairly accomplished SCUBA diver.  Ummmm, that’s it, I think.

  122. 122.

    schrodingers_cat

    Just started with the third season of Peaky Blinders. Also Fame Game with Madhuri Dixit, which I am only watching because I love Madhuri.

    She ruled the box office in India in the late 80s and 90s. Amazing performer and a dancer. Goddess.

    So gaya yeh jahaan (the world has gone to sleep..)

    From Tezaab (Acid)  with Anil Kapoor (he was the game show host in Slum Dog). The movie that made both Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit household names

  123. 123.

    Brachiator

     

    @NotMax:

    We should all be thankful they didn’t go with Mars Needs Tampons.

    Gives new meaning to the old sci fi movie, The Angry Red Planet.

  124. 124.

    HumboldtBlue

    @frosty:

    Canal locks. You need to watch “Travels by Narrowboat”. British guy chucks it all to buy a canal boat and go touring through England.

    Love that show.

    I also love watching my man, Andrew Camarata, as he goes about his business of being an absolutely gifted mechanic/fabricator/heavy equipment operator/castle builder/dog lover.

  126. 126.

    Dan B

    @CaseyL: I love the eastern slope of the Cascades especially from Chelan north to Canada.  I’ve been several times including to the Pasaytan Wilderness.  Twisp is probably liberal but the fires are not a good omen.

  129. 129.

    Tony Jay

    @zhena gogolia:

    Murder in Provence is set in Aix-en-Provence, isn’t it? I lived there for a year 1999/2000 and basically spent most of my waking hours getting drunk with a posse of European students, American engineers and Afro-French locals. Beautiful city. Great climate.

    Why the hell did I ever leave? Damn!

  130. 130.

    zhena gogolia

    I went to an inner city high school too, but I don’t know if that’s surprising. KCMO

  132. 132.

    zhena gogolia

    @Tony Jay: Yes, although Allam said they filmed most of it in an abandoned school in Oxfordshire. But you’d never know it — there’s lots of pretty scenery and neat buildings.

    What’s hilarious is they make no attempt at French accents — which is fine, but Allam, Carroll, and Hodge are so English, so when they’re constantly guzzling wine and eating shellfish, I keep expecting one of them to say, let’s put the kettle on. I mean, putting on pants that don’t reach your ankles doesn’t make you look French.

  134. 134.

    NotMax

    Total fluff but recently enjoyed The Tales of Para Handy, currently on Prime. There’s a special flavor of low-key Scots wackiness that only they can do so well.

  135. 135.

    Tony Jay

    Am currently trying not to binge watch Peacemaker but it’s hard, show is damned funny. Even the cock-rock soundtrack is a secret pleasure. I’d happily watch John Cena in anything (except wrestling) and it’s been interesting seeing what a youthful version of Stargate SG1’s Daniel Jackson would be like as a nerdy psychopathic vigilante.

  136. 136.

    Starfish

    @Zelma: I learned that some of the romance writers are doing a boat load of history homework when it comes to trying to get things about the Regency period correctly.

    Was my impression of that correct?

  137. 137.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @Suzanne: Turning Red.  About 15 minutes in the mother raced to the gas station where the girl’s crush worked.  She was yelling at him and something something drugs.  I then suggested we turn it off.  Click.  On to Home Alone 3 which I had never seen.  Not terrible.

  138. 138.

    Tony Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    That, sir, was not hooliganism. It was an overly-boistrous expression of sporting fervour with unfortunate kinetic overtones.

    And at the time I was supporting France.

  141. 141.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Baud: @WaterGirl:  We watched Encanto, loved it. And there are no children anywhere around this house.

    Also watched a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, especially Lin-Manuel Miranda talking about the music. Really interesting. Spanish-speaking cultures are very different musically. Miranda is Puerto Rican, but immersed himself into Colombian culture and music to write in a Colombian style. And I think both Spanish-language songs were sung by Colombian musical stars.

    Also, he says that though he speaks Spanish, he doesn’t have as much vocabulary as in English, so it was actually a challenge to write in Spanish.

    As someone who can sorta kinda understand Spanish, “Dos Oruguitas” is just beautiful and heart breaking. I haven’t seen a translation and don’t want to.

    On the other hand, we started last night to watch the latest Disney flick “Turning Red” and it just didn’t appeal to either of us. We gave up at about 0:30 and probably won’t go back to it.

  144. 144.

    NotMax

    @Soprano2

    Me neither. With the exception of the original Fantasia, Disney’s animated output immediately gets stuffed into the “Ambivalent” file.

  145. 145.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    On the subject of this thread, hmmm…. I’ve taken classes in improvisational comedy, and know a number of people in the local improv scene.

  147. 147.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tony Jay: I knew an English barman in Kitzuhel who was barred from Sweden for just that kind of behaviour.  Rugby fans would never….  Speaking of, what’s up with England in the Six Nations?

  148. 148.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: One of my choir mates said “oh shit” every time she made a mistake when she was practicing piano. She said it during a performance. She was mortified! She used that story to impress on her students that you do what you practice.

  149. 149.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @mrmoshpotato: ​
      We watched Frozen probably a year or two after it had been out, when I got tired of seeing all the merchandise everywhere and decided I wanted to see what all the fuss was about (and why our granddaughter was so fanatically obsessed with it). It was enjoyable enough, and I can definitely see the obvious appeal to young girls.

    Wouldn’t have watched Frozen 2, except both grandkids were similarly obsessed with that and constantly singing songs from it. So I decided to check it out. Again, it was OK. I didn’t hate it.

  150. 150.

    Tony Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Don’t ask me, chap. All I know about Rugby is that it’s a transparent excuse for fifteen burly men to take a bath together and compare misshapen…ears.

    You don’t need to make excuses, guys, it’s 2022.

  152. 152.

    Tony Jay

    Anyway. Beddy Byes. You all have a time of it and the last one out of the thread leave a light on for latecomers.

  153. 153.

    Renie

    Something only a few people know is that for over the last 20+ years I’ve worked for Art Garfunkel doing his website and then FB. Which is the only reason I’m on FB. Suppose only boomers here will know who he is.

  155. 155.

    Brachiator

    I don’t do much of it anymore, but I used to love to travel, for work and for pleasure.

    I would enjoy lingering in airports and train stations, watching people and wondering where they were going and where they had been.

    Not too long ago the YouTube algorithms served up some videos of a guy who was reviewing the first class accommodations of major international airlines. Apparently Emirates A380 First Class is among the best.

  157. 157.

    japa21

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
      Not surprised. I was also a choir boy in an also award winning choir. The reason it was an award winning choir is because each time we entered a competition I was warned what the consequences would be if I actually sang instead of just lip-synced.
    I went to seminary to be a minister with the United Church of Christ. I dropped out because I thought I was just a little too liberal for them. They are very different now than they were in the late 60’s.

  158. 158.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Suzanne: ​
      I learned in various mediums the trick of acting like you intended that to happen, or at any rate not making a big deal.

    I think I learned that while running lights for shows. If you do the wrong light cue and light up the totally wrong part of the stage, just quietly fade to the correct lighting on a 10-count. Nobody will notice.

  160. 160.

    Kelly

    Just finished the latest season of Mrs. Maisel. The season came across to me as a series of lightly linked sketches rather a story arc. However the actors and the characters they inhabit were fun and well worth the time.

  161. 161.

    smith

    @Renie:  I once carried out an inspection of the research program at a VA hospital where Art Garfunkel’s cousin was the director. How’s that for 6 degrees of separation?

  165. 165.

    Madeleine

    Someone recommended the movie The Big Year in a comment this week. My spouse and I watched it last evening and thought it was great. Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson as birdwatchers trying to win a contest for the most birds seen in the US during one year. It has birds!!

  166. 166.

    MomSense

    I just watched the second season of Upload and enjoyed it.  Love the premise and the characters.

  167. 167.

    JoyceH

    I liked Frozen, but I really really liked Moana. And I liked Brave, once I’d adjusted to the Plot Twist. The trailers were so archery-heavy I thought it was going to be a story about a princess winning battles. Once I accepted I was watching a different story, I liked it, and then when it was over, I started all over and watched it again. Liked it even better the second time around.

  168. 168.

    japa21

    @Madeleine: Also loved it.  We had listened to the audio book on one of our driving vacations several years (decades?) ago and really enjoyed the movie.

  169. 169.

    Kalakal

    Was a bit stressed out yesterday so watched my 2 goto comfort films

    Local Hero and My favourite Year 

    Worked a treat

  170. 170.

    JoyceH

    @MomSense: ​
     

    I’m currently rewatching season 1 of Upload to remind myself of what all went on before I start season 2. I’d forgotten how Satiric it is – the In-App Purchases!

  171. 171.

    Zelma

    @Starfish:

    The better ones do!  Or rather, the ones I like better!  I was always known at TRR as one who called out gross historical inaccuracies.  And who railed against the tendency to use history merely as wallpaper.  Frankly, I lost that battle.  I don’t read many newer historical romances.  Not my cuppa.  But then, I’m not their target audience any more.

  172. 172.

    Splitting Image

    I once made a flowchart of every scene in Catch-22 to disentangle all of the flashbacks and viewpoint shifts. It gave me a tremendous appreciation for how tight Heller’s plotting is.

    There is in fact one continuity error in the entire book.

  173. 173.

    NotMax

    @Dorothy A. Winsor

    The actress is absolutely top notch in that part. Has been firing on all cylinders all along.

    Unfortunately, the guy playing Lenny Bruce seems more and more out of his depth.

    Also watched second season of Upload. Disappointing in that the whimsy running rampant through first season was so tamped down as the episodes progressed it became nearly undetectable.

  174. 174.

    Benw

    I don’t like to make a big deal out of it but I’ve been in a couple of big movies and won an Academy Award for directing Ordinary People!

  175. 175.

    JoyceH

    @Kalakal: ​
     

    Go-to comfort films, you say? When I’m stressed I watch old Gene Kelly movies. And when I’m REALLY stressed – Fred Astaire.

  178. 178.

    prostratedragon

    Another closet fan of old time country and bluegrass music. I also like a lot of the new stuff that comes on Larry Gross’s Mountain Stage show. (Are they back live?)

    That boomwhackers video reminded me of steel pans, another unlikely musical instrument. One of those New York moments I had back in the 80s was walking down Broadway in the 50s and coming up on an office building plaza that was jammed with passersby. The attraction was a steel pan soloist who was absolutely wailing on variations of Beethoven’s “Moonlight.” Never found out for sure who it was —not a scheduled concert, but this guy was no mere busker— but did hear someone say something like, “Well that’s the Professor for you.” So maybe is was Ken “Professor” Philmore, who would have been pretty young at the time. Here he is in a master class setting:

    “Pan by Storm”

  181. 181.

    PaulB

    My comfort and my surprise are pretty much the same. The comfort is listening to music like this. The surprise is that I’m the bassoonist in the woodwind quartet I’m linking to.

  184. 184.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    “The rank just below”: Life. I made it that far and quit, because, at least where I was, the merit-badge system was a joke. The requirements for a lot of them were pretty stringent. It was hard to find “sponsors” (instructors), and then I realized that there was a lot of rubberstamping going on, especially among the “optional” badges of which you had to get a number to make Eagle.

    I might have been psychologically aging out, too (14 or so?).

    ETA: I had a mostly good experience as a Boy Scout. Did a lot of camping and learned a lot in the legit merit badges, e.g., lifesaving, first aid, canoeing, etc.

  185. 185.

    gene108

    @NotMax:

    wonder how many second thoughts at Disney over titling their newest “Turning Red.”

    Considering American conservatives co-opted being Reds, since around 2004 or so, I’m not sure such old fashioned logic applies.

  186. 186.

    debbie

    I didn’t last a month in the Brownies, but I did learn how to make hospital corners.

  193. 193.

    Tehanu

    Well, let’s see. I wrote a bibliography of fantasy in 1975 with about a thousand entries; if I were to update it today, it would be 4 times longer — and that would be with leaving out most of the crap. And I love Grand Sumo — in fact, the March tournament starts today. Originally we just watched it as a laugh, but first we got sucked in by the gorgeous kimonos the referees wear, and then we started paying attention to the actual wrestling, and now we never miss a tournament. Heck, I have sumo heartthrobs, of whom the, er, throbbiest is The Wolf — the late great Chiyonofuji.

  194. 194.

    Miss Bianca

    @trollhattan: Loved CBGB – some jackal or other mentioned it a few months ago and I got it from the library on the strength of the recommendation.

    I always get Bottle Shock mixed up with Sideways. I preferred Bottle Shock because, well, Rickman.

  195. 195.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack: ​
      My troop in CT was pretty much a monthly camping club which was fun. Moving to WI, I just didn’t bother joining a new troop.

  198. 198.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Since this a pop culture thread, I figure this will be relevant; the latest from GRRM latest from GRRM:

    I know, I know, for many of you out there, only one of those projects matters.

    I am sorry for you. They ALL matter to me.

    Yes, of course I am still working on THE WINDS OF WINTER. I have stated that a hundred times in a hundred venues, having to restate it endlessly is just wearisome. I made a lot of progress on WINDS in 2020, and less in 2021… but “less” is not “none.”

    The world of Westeros, the world of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, is my number one priority, and will remain so until the story is told.  But Westeros has become bigger than THE WINDS OF WINTER, or even A SONG OF ICE & FIRE. In addition to WINDS, I also need to deliver the second volume of Archmaester Gyldayn’s history, FIRE & BLOOD. (Thinking of calling that one BLOOD & FIRE, rather than just F&B, Vol 2). Got a couple hundred pages of that one written, but there’s still a long way to go. I need to write more of the Dunk & Egg novellas, tell the rest of their stories, especially since there’s a television series about them in development. There’s a lavish coffee table book coming later this year, an illustrated, condensed version of FIRE & BLOOD done with Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson (my partners on THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE), and my Fevre River art director, Raya Golden. And another book after that, a Who’s Who in Westeros.  And that’s just the books.

    There are also the successor shows.   Those have taken a ton of my time and attention this year. I have seen some comments out there questioning how much I am involved in these new series. The answer is: a lot. Deeply, heavily involved in every one of the new shows. It’s my world, and while I have been working closely with some fantastic writers and showrunners, ultimately it is up to me to try to keep the canon… well, canonical… and to do all I can to help make the new shows great. (And I love these stories too).

    This went over like a lead balloon as you can imagine with the ASOIAF fanbase if the ASOIAF subreddit is anything to go by. It’s important to know that A Dance With Dragons, the most recent book published in the series, came out in 2011, over 11 years ago. That’s a very long time to write a single book. The above update has been taken as evidence by the fanbase that The Winds of Winter, the next book, will likely never be published anytime soon and feel that this update comes across as a passive aggressive, whiny snipe at the fans who made him famous for merely wondering what’s been going on for the past decade; for being frustrated at the lack of transparency on his part all the while claiming for years to be still working on the main series. His taking on all those extra side projects at HBO without making any credible progress on Winds has rubbed many people the wrong way.

    Several years ago he claimed on his NotABlog that Winds was his “top priority”. With this latest update, he clearly has gone back on that promise. Given the decade-long gap between the last book, he either has grown tired of ASOIAF, doesn’t know how to finish it, and/or is delusional and thinks he can still finish it but is using these other HBO shows to distract himself from TWOW.

    Based on everything I’ve read about the man, none of this surprises me. He’s always been bad at PR and setting fan expectations and he apparently kept expanding the books as he went along with bloat, falling more in love with the story’s setting than the story itself. He comes across to me as a guy who now that he’s become a multimillionaire has no real incentive to finish the book series; combine that with the herculean task of getting all of the plot and character threads to come together to make a conclusion, he’s pretty much checked out at this point, I think. He won’t/can’t admit that he won’t finish ASOIAF because it would hurt enthusiasm for the new HBO shows as well as book sales. Probably would also put him in legal hot water with his publisher.

    Martin can do whatever he wants; it’s his life. It just seems like a giant slap in the face to the book fans who have stuck by him for over two decades and made him the wealthy and famous person he is today. If he’s bored with the main series or can’t finish it for whatever reason, he should hire a co-author/ghostwriter to help him complete the series while he focuses on the other projects. Everybody wins. But I guess he’s too proud/stubborn to do that, so instead he strings people along for more than a decade.

    To me, it’s all of a piece with his old posts on his NotABlog where he would hawk shit like waterlogged, outdated calendars and old copies of his other books that nobody really cared about like it was some kind of garage sale (always for ridiculous marked up prices too). Never failed to mention the number of homes he had (one with a library tower!) and that he just had to get rid of these 15 books to make room and you can get them for the low low price of just $50 each!

    Bottom line, he’s an unprofessional, out of touch huckster who thinks he’s entitled to fame and fortune no matter what he says or does (or doesn’t do in this case)

  199. 199.

    Miss Bianca

    @Sebastian: Schlager!! Oh, dear God.

    Who was the huge Schlager artist who was so popular back in the 90s? Dude looked like Gerard Depardieu, and he won the Eurovision contest at least once. I cannot.remember.his.NAME! But I saw him on TV when I was in Berlin in the 90s, and I remember just being speechless at the awful wonderfulness of it all.

  200. 200.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    That’s how I feel about Mr. and Mrs. Murder, one-season Australian show from 2013. Low-key Aussie humor about a pair of crime-scene cleaners who see more than the police do. Available on Acorn.

  201. 201.

    PaulB

    I’ve also done a fair amount of community theater, including West Side Story. I played Officer Krupke in that production. There’s a scene where I’m interrogating two members of the Jets gang. There’s a bit of business where one of them kneels behind me and the other one pushes me over and then they both run off.

    Mostly, I would kind of roll off the guy kneeling behind me and it worked out pretty well. One night, though, they got it just right and I really lost control. I went back, my legs flew up, spread wide, and … my pants split all the way up the back with a very audible ripping sound. So I’m laying flat on my back on the stage, stunned, with the wind knocked out of me, knowing that my underwear is hanging out and there is absolutely no way for me to discreetly exit the stage and no way for me to hide what just happened from those few in the audience who didn’t hear the rip.

    Basically, I said to myself, “f**k it,” and I didn’t even try to disguise anything. I just got up and ran off, knowing that I was giving the audience a view. As I exited, the stage manager and everyone else waiting in the wings was dying of laughter, having seen and heard everything. Several of them begged the director to use velcro to repair the damage and keep the bit in the show. Thankfully for my dignity, he declined to do so.

  203. 203.

    Kim Walker

    I love Art Garfunkel’s music! And own several albums. I was never sad S and G broke up as I thought G was much the better singer.

  205. 205.

    NotMax

    @Tehanu

    Years and years since watching with a friend who was really into it.

    Chiyonofuji was an exemplar of being lithe and skillful. And little Mainoumi (5′ 7″) had so many moves one never knew what to anticipate.

  213. 213.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It’s not just me, check out this Reddit thread

    People are pretty pissed about this. I loved this comment, really encapsulates the entire issue:

    “I can’t believe you all would doubt that I’m still working on a book that has taken me 10 years and counting and that I first said I was close to finishing over six years ago and repeatedly thought I was close to finishing in years since then too.”

  214. 214.

    Tehanu

    @NotMax:  There are a lot of good young rishiki coming up now that the GOAT, Hakuho, has retired.  Ishiura in particular reminds me of Chiyonofuji a little, although he has quite a ways to go. My husband loves Takakeisho who looks slow and beefy but very much isn’t.

  215. 215.

    Miss Bianca

    @Zelma: Soo….who were your favorite authors? (Used-to-be-huge romance buff here, now reduced to mostly rereads of my Georgette Heyer novels.)

  218. 218.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Ooh, which one? The Emma Thompson/Ang Lee version? (one of the few movies I can think that actually *improved* my experience of the novel).

  219. 219.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Since you’re into Perry Mason, you might take a gander at Mr. and Mrs. North on Tubi.

    Early 1950s series featuring a husband and wife team who get caught up investigating dastardly doings. Definitely of its time; sexist but not in a “Oh, I can’t take watching it any longer” way. (Was originally a staple of radio before moving to the TV.)

  220. 220.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @James E Powell: They have been building for years.  This is the culmination of a long process.  And, of course, Dupont and Ntamack are the best half back pair in the game right now.

  223. 223.

    brendancalling

    I opened for Fugazi on their first tour when they played Providence. Operation Ivy was also on the bill.

    Basically, I was a 1980s hardcore kid. By the time Nirvana came along, I’d already checked out. Hardcore before hardcore was cool.

  225. 225.

    UncleEbeneezer

    We usually watch YT videos of multi-day hiking/camping expeditions to relax.  But there haven’t been many good ones recently so we’ve instead been watching soothing, Asian videos of rural living.  Also been watching Landscape/Portrait Artist of the Year on Amazon.

    Thing most people wouldn’t guess: I used to live in a house with two fetish models and a photographer who shot sexy sessions for an adult-content website in our living room.  I sometimes lent a hand holding lights, shades or props and tried my best not to stare!

  227. 227.

    trollhattan

    @Craig:

    When one has a teen girl one watches “Frozen.” It’s right there in the contract.

    Thought it was perfectly cromulent entertainment, that led its way to Travolta amusingly butchering Idina Manzel’s name at the Oscars™.

  228. 228.

    prostratedragon

    @NotMax:  I like the postwar touches in that series (or anywhere else I find them). He was a shipboard Navy officer, and now can’t seem to get enough sleep. She, however, might be the better hand-to-hand fighter.

  229. 229.

    Ruckus

    Cultural, cultural….. mmmmm….

    I made up an entire list. I stopped when I got to went to a play a second cousin stared in. Which was just after I wrote down that I’ve been to a number of art museums in several countries that I’ve visited. And that I have an original painting from my aunt, that she did for me as a gift.

  233. 233.

    Steeplejack

    @Brachiator:

    I would enjoy lingering in airports and train stations, watching people and wondering where they were going and where they had been.

    One of the best documentaries I have seen was pretty much this. It was in 2016 on the Japanese NHK series Document 72 Hours: “Christmas at the Bus Terminal.” Took place in a bus terminal in Sapporo, and the filmmakers just interviewed random people about their plans and reasons for traveling. Their stories were very interesting and touching. (Can’t find it streaming anywhere.)

  234. 234.

    Kristine Pennington

    I am OBSESSED with Scrabble…..my family refuses to play with me as I beat them every time.  ;).     Also try GamePoint website – they have a game similar to Scrabble called Word Tornado……

  236. 236.

    RaflW

    Maybe this is on-brand for me, maybe not. And I haven’t done it in months because it’s been too cold, but I can pleasantly zone out watching planes take off and land at our busy hub airport. It’s about a 15 minute drive from home to the well positioned cell phone lot by one of the runways.

    I’ll usually have MPR (NPR affiliate that basically all talk) on for company. In a less mentally well adjusted phase over a decade ago, there was a 1 in 4 chance I’d have a pint of Ben n Jerry’s with me for extra soothing (I’m not 100% free of emotional eating these days – good lord there’s pandemic, war, frayed democracy – but I aim for a row of chocolate from a bar, or a 100 calorie pack of cookies. Sometimes a good cara cara orange can tickle the itch).

  237. 237.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Martin can do whatever he wants; it’s his life.

    Exactly. You should have stopped here.

    It just seems like a giant slap in the face to the book fans who have stuck by him for over two decades and made him the wealthy and famous person he is today.

    In the end, an artist does not owe fans anything but their work or performance, should they decide to produce any work or performance.

    That’s it. That’s all. Fans having made him wealthy does not make him their perpetual plaything.

    Hopefully you will understand this one day.

  238. 238.

    cope

    I’m posting this now so it will continue to be an unknown and, possibly, surprising fact about myself. To wit, a play I wrote in college was awarded second prize in a contest judged by Vance Bourjaily. I believe it was deemed the Davenport Award for reasons I have forgotten (this was more than fifty years ago) and came with a $15 cash prize.

  240. 240.

    Brachiator

    @RaflW:

    Maybe this is on-brand for me, maybe not. And I haven’t done it in months because it’s been too cold, but I can pleasantly zone out watching planes take off and land at our busy hub airport. It’s about a 15 minute drive from home to the well positioned cell phone lot by one of the runways.

    There was a stretch of road near LAX that was great for this. I would sometimes stop by after work and unwind by watching the planes. I was surprised to see that other folk were into this as well. Some stayed in their cars. Others would stand and stretch and watch the planes.

  241. 241.

    xephyr

    The first dream I remember having, I was in bed surrounded by animals. When I woke up I was surprised they weren’t still there. Also Jim Harrison bummed a cigarette from me once.

  242. 242.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @WaterGirl: The other favorite was when she turned to some random guy in public and said “my mommy smokes pot but I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

    Calls to mind a joke from either Coronet or Reader’s Disgust mag ca. 1960 about a little girl whose mother was dieting with Metrecal: “My mommy doesn’t eat lunch anymore. She just drinks.”

  243. 243.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator:

    In the end, an artist does not owe fans anything but their work or performance, should they decide to produce any work or performance.

    That’s it. That’s all. Fans having made him wealthy does not make him their perpetual plaything.

    Hopefully you will understand this one day.

    Not when he’s made repeated promises and deadlines about completing that he’s blown past. He’s strung people along for years. He doesn’t have to be anybody’s “perpetual plaything”. He should be an actual professional and get the job done. He’s had plenty of time. 11 years worth. Being an author is a job. Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson, just two examples, don’t complain. They just sit down and write.

    And if he can’t manage that, he can at least be honest that he just doesn’t want to finish the story or can’t. Or, like I suggested, hire a co-author to help him finish the main series. If he doesn’t finish, his legacy will be ruined. Nobody’s going to read an unfinished fantasy series in 30 years. It boggles my mind that he’s wasting time on side stories in the ASOIAF setting when the main story that most people care about isn’t complete. It just seems utterly pointless. Frankly, it’s a crummy way to treat his readers and he comes across as an asshole. He was an asshole as the Hugo Awards host in 2020 too. He was too lazy to learn how to pronounce the names of the winners, several non-white, and went out of his way to praise John W. Campbell, a year after Campbell was called out as racist fascist by Jeannette Ng:

    The figures Martin referenced included H.P. Lovecraft and John W. Campbell. (The late author and the late editor, respectively, each won a Retro Hugo award this year. The Retro Hugos are given to creators from years when the Hugo Awards did not exist. Lovecraft won for a posthumous story published in 1945 and Campbell for editing in the same year.) “Between each segment, Martin repeatedly used his time to promote the work and legacy of Campbell, Lovecraft, and to rambled about a number of self-aggrandizing stories from his time within fandom and of conventions that he attended between the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s,” writer Andrew Liptak said in a newsletter recap of the event. Liptak mentioned that Robert Silverberg, a writer with his own racist history, also gave a speech during the ceremony. Lovecraft was xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and ardent in his white supremacy. Campbell, known for founding the magazine Astounding Stories of Super-Science — now Analog Science Fiction and Fact — as for his racist and pseudoscientific beliefs, was a peculiar choice for Martin given Campbell’s recent history with the awards.

    In 2019, during their acceptance speech after winning the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Jeannette Ng called out Campbell as a fascist. “Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, he is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day. Sterile. Male. White. Exalting in the ambitions of imperialists and colonisers, settlers and industrialists,” Ng said in their 2019 speech, which itself won them another Hugo on Friday night for 2020’s Best Related Work. The Best New Writer award was later renamed the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. It’s a connection many watching the show were quick to point out on Twitter.

    He’s an out of touch dickhead

  244. 244.

    prostratedragon

    @NotMax: One interesting postwar theme I’ve noticed is women who functioned quite well on their own during the war but now are expected to slide back into the little housewife/damsel-in-waiting role until something happens that they have to be the one to handle. It strikes me as a way of teasing the expectations of the audience.

    Mrs. North is a comic example of this type (well, there’s always a bit of comedy or at least irony in the parts). Others are the Loretta Young character in Cause for Alarm and the Joan Bennett character in The Reckless Moment. And one sees them throughout the Hitchcock tv shows.

  245. 245.

    Yutsano

    Well y’all know I have a music degree. What you might not know is that I sang jazz choir all through college. I got to know a few big names in jazz but my favourite to this day is Lionel Hampton.

  249. 249.

    prostratedragon

    @Uncle Cosmo:  Kids like to try out new words and check whether they have the right meaning for them. Apparently one day when I was about 5 I solemnly asked my aunt, “Are you divorced?” (Yes. Much later learned, actually 3 times. Called it a day with that last one.)

  250. 250.

    Ivan X

    After spending all of my adolescent and young adult years not caring one way or the other about baseball, I was so moved by my forgotten childhood wish for the California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels to win the World Series that, in 2002, when they finally pulled it off, I wrote 15,000 words about it. Most people who know me are surprised to hear this.

  251. 251.

    Kalakal

    Our school had an annual public speaking competition. The year I entered Alan Bennett was the judge. I came second – I’ve never forgiven him, the man obviously  can’t recognize talent

  252. 252.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Not when he’s made repeated promises and deadlines about completing that he’s blown past. He’s strung people along for years.

    Again, he can promise anything he likes, but he doesn’t owe you a goddam thing. What are you going to do, put a gun to his head and scream “Now write, motherfucker!”?

    He was an asshole as the Hugo Awards host in 2020 too. He was too lazy to learn how to pronounce the names of the winners, several non-white, and went out of his way to praise John W. Campbell, a year after Campbell was called out as racist fascist by Jeannette Ng.

    So, why do you want a guy who praises racists to finish a novel for your reading pleasure?

    Also, the sad fact is that a huge chunk of British and American writers have been terrible racists, sexists and antisemites. Fortunately, this was not always reflected in their works. And the publishing industry was long hostile to anyone who wasn’t a white male or a woman writing under a pseudonym.

    We could throw every book written before 2010 on a pile and light it up. Or we can try every day to do better.

    I don’t know about you, but if my bookshelf only contained the works of the absolute pure of heart, it would be a damn thin collection.

  254. 254.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Recent kulchural accomplishments include polishing off not one but two 9-volume SF series – The Expanse novels (I reread vols 5 & 6 and then plowed through the last 3, including the finale which only came out last fall), and Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes series (the final trilogy, rereading Empire Games and Dark State and then charging through the finale, Invisible Sun, also only released last fall). (NB All obtained gratis via the Enoch Pratt Free Library or the Baltimore County Public Library – they rate a plug!)

    FTR both series are well worth it, although Stross started the Merchant Princes 20 years ago and the early books need to be read with a days-of-future-passed attitude to be fully appreciated.

    As for

    the one thing about [me] that [yinz] would be unlikely to guess based on what [y’all] know of [yerstruly] from Balloon Juice –

    IRL I’m actually for the most part a nice guy. =8^O

  255. 255.

    Zelma

    @Miss Bianca:

    Oh, too many to name.  I love Heyer; she was my entree into romance.  I mostly like the old stand-bys.  Mary Balogh is probably my favorite historical author with Carla Kelly a close second. And I admit to being a Nora Roberts fan.   I frankly don’t relate to many of the more recent authors in the genre.  Too much sex and not enough romance.  I mostly reread old favorites now.  But like I said above, an almost 80 year old woman is not their target audience.

  256. 256.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Friend who had settled on Oahu wanted to open up a Maui branch of his business and contacted me to inquire if I was interested in moving here to manage it. Ended up buying the Maui store from him some time after.

    At that point in my life couldn’t get out of NYC area fast enough, so it was kismet.

  257. 257.

    Steeplejack

    @cope:

    That’s pretty cool. Haven’t heard Bourjaily’s name in years—decades, probably. Wikipedia tells me he died in 2010.

  258. 258.

    swordfish

    There are evidently a couple new books out about Buster Keaton. There have been reviews in several newspapers and magazines that I read. These inspired me to watch one of Keaton’s silent movies this weekend: Steamboat Bill Jr. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It was hilarious! Amazon Prime has all of his films, I think.

  260. 260.

    NotMax

    @swordfish

    If you’re new to Keaton’s silent-era films, I envy your coming parade of pleasure from watching them for the first time.

  263. 263.

    Tehanu

    @Zelma: Me too with Georgette Heyer but my “old standbys” are actually older — Mary Stewart and Sheila Bishop and Norah Lofts and Alice Chetwynd Ley. But Hilary Mantel is worth something and so is Connie Willis, who wrote what I think is the greatest historical novel I ever read (except for Wolf Hall), Doomsday Book, and Lois McMaster Bujold whose A Civil Campaign is dedicated to “Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy.”

  264. 264.

    Liminal Owl

    (In my usual lazy way, let’s see if the thread is still alive… I remember when people used to shout “First!” and maybe I should always start with “Last!” and see if anyone notices.)

    (Not that I’m enough of a regular to surprise anyone, but a grab bag of replies…)

    @JPL: UP is wonderful, but my heart is divided between Zootopia and Coco.  And I am fond of Inside Out, partly because I can use it to help clients understand “parts work” therapy.  Haven’t seen Encanto yet but expect to like it.

    @trollhattan: If you can find it (and if you can tolerate HEAVY trauma content), Closet Land is interesting. Alan Rickman and Madeleine Stowe, and nobody else.

    @lowtechcyclist: I too am a Groucho Marxist.

    @MissWimsey: Hey, this Jewish New Yorker loves a lot of country music too.   (And Lord Peter.)

    Also G&S, and S&G.

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:  You might want to check out the Colombian band, Aterciopelados. Their album Rio is one of my Desert Island picks.

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): yes, mostly, re: GRRM, but I did enjoy the books once upon a time.

    @Uncle Cosmo: ooh, I need to read invisible Sun. And probably reread all the previous books, since it’s been too long. And then start on the Laundry Files.

    @Tehanu: In HS I read every Norah Lofts book then available. (Also Jean Plaidy.). Now: yes on Hilary Mantel and Willis and Bujold.

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