…continued

OK, where was I? Oh that’s right, I was singing about A Few of My Favorite Things:

TV shows

Homeland – I’m getting caught up on Season 4 now, I’m about halfway through. So far this season the lead character, CIA officer Carrie Mathison, has emotionally and sexually manipulated a young Pakistani college student so that he would become a CIA asset and she’s shown herself to be a completely unfit, and quasi-homicidal, mother to her newborn baby girl. She’s basically a hot mess of a trainwreck. She’s gonna have some serious splaining to do these next six episodes if she wants people to root for her again. My sister had a good question: The CIA wouldn’t install into a volatile Middle Eastern country as station chief someone who was on 14 different medications and had severe mental imbalances, would they? I hope not.

Orphan Black – Last winter my cousin and his wife told me about this show and I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll have to check it out sometime’, so I put it on my ‘when I get around to it’ list. Well, I finally got around to about six weeks ago and now I’m hooked and eagerly anticipating Season 4 next spring. If I had heard much about it ahead of time I probably wouldn’t have watched it, it wouldn’t have sounded like my cup of tea, but I think it’s worth checking out.

Better Call Saul – When Breaking Bad wrapped things up and finished its run, it was a real bummer. That’s okay though, because one of the best characters from that show, Saul Goodman, got his own spinoff series! Another one of my favorite characters, Mike Ehrmantraut, also plays a prominent role. (Now if they can just figure out a way to have Jesse Pinkmann and Skinny Pete make cameos.)

Alaskan Bush People – A show on the Discovery Channel about a family of nine that lives out in the Alaskan wilderness. They’re obviously very backwards but they’re a tight-knit and loving family, they’re kind of fun to watch. It can be funny too, for example: The one kid had never seen a microwave and was amazed at how it ‘magically’ cooked his food. His brother had never heard of Kim Kardashian before and had only used a phone three times in his life – and he was in twenties!

Ray Donovan – In a post about stuff that I think is great, there are only so many ways I can say that I think a certain thing is great. Needless to say, I think <enter certain thing> is great! It won’t be any more if the show’s best character Mickey (Jon Voight), keeps jamming himself up and winds up taking a dirt nap.

The Americans – It was strongly (ahem) suggested to me more than once that I give this show a chance. I’m so glad I did. A show about Soviet spies that takes place in the 1980’s didn’t sound all that great to me but I changed my mind. I can’t wait for Season 4!

Game of Thrones – I don’t normally get into fantasy, dragons, medieval nobility, Renaissance fair type stuff – watching the geeky science nerds on The Big Bang Theory is about the extent of that – but this show is great, especially the first few seasons (Spoiler alert: 75% of the main characters have either been beheaded or poisoned by Season 5!) I put this show up there with my all-time favorites like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and The Walking Dead.

Fargo – We finally found a show that we both like. Jen sits down for 60 minutes a week when this show comes on. I don’t mean to offend Minnesotans or people who like that state but I never want to live there. It looks like the place where pleasantness goes to die. By the way, just how bizarre and creepy can Billy Bob Thornton be anyway? We can’t wait for Season 2 this fall!

Bloodline – I didn’t have real high hopes for this Netflix original from the get-go but as I got into it after couple episodes I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a drama/mystery about a seriously jacked up family that runs a hotel down in the Florida Keys. I loved the setting, that’s why I kept watching it early on.

Fear the Walking Dead – I think this show has the potential of being one of my favorites, especially if a certain whiny teenager either gets eaten by a zombie or starts behaving and quits making the apocalypse a real drag for everybody. I don’t need to point her out, oh, she knows who she is. Anyway, this show is a spinoff from The Walking Dead, which I think could be winding down (in my opinion). It might end up being better than the parent show, it just has a grittier and more cinematic feel to it.

The Carmichael Show (NBC) – Terrible acting, so it’ll probably end up getting canceled, but the subject matter is good. It takes on ‘hot button topics’ that other shows don’t touch. I’m not sure what a ‘hot button’ is exactly but I imagine the show will be controversial, if it isn’t already. It recently had an episode featuring an open and frank discussion about religion, another episode was about gun control. It also touched on transgender identity and the pro-life/pro-choice debate. It was funny, in one episode the Mom was saying how she scored all this Paula Deen cookware on clearance after her racial slurs got leaked to the public. She said, ‘I wish Rachel Ray would use the N-word so I could afford some of her stuff.’ Cracked me up, I like that show. What are your thoughts, Jen? (Actually, we do communicate with each other outside of this blog sometimes. I just didn’t feel like typing ‘Do you like The Carmichael Show?’ into my speaking program because that might lead to some confusion and then there’d be more questions and ‘ain’t nobody got time for that’!)

Impractical Jokers (TRUtv) – All you need to know about this show is in the opening credits: ‘This show’s sole reason to exist is so that four lifelong friends can publicly humiliate each other.’ These guys are hilarious! We saw them ‘Live’ down at the Peabody late last winter and it was the best show I’ve seen this year.

Miscellaneous stuff

Willie Nelson – We went over to Lindenwood’s new auditorium (I forget the name) to see him give a concert last spring. He’s 78 years old and still going strong, we had seen him once or twice before. He’s an awesome guitarist and I happen to like his voice. The thing about Willie is that people either love him or hate him – there’s no middle ground. Kinda like Neil Young or Bob Dylan. (I happen to like Neil Young. Bob Dylan? Not so much.)

Neil deGrasse Tyson – Saw him down at the Peabody. If you’re not familiar with him, he’s a popular astrophysicist and educator. (Those two words, “popular” and “astrophysicist”, usually don’t hang out together very often.) He’s somewhat of an egghead and a little nerdy, but he’s actually pretty interesting and kinda funny. At the beginning of the night he said, ‘By a show of hands, who is here because the person next to you made you come with them?’ Well, I thought it was funny.

Jim Gaffigan – We saw him live down at the Peabody. He was good but he was funnier the last time we saw him. Unlike Louis C.K., one of my other favorite stand-ups who writes all new material every year, he re-hashed some of his old stuff that I had already heard before. By the way, he has a sitcom on the FX channel that is very funny.

Cardinals – Hasn’t this been an awesome season so far for this team? I realize that as a Cardinals fan I’ve been spoiled for the last several years, but we just got shut out by Cincinnati last night 11-0. I know they’re calling it a ‘mini-slump’ or ‘hiccup’ or whatever, but at what point should I start getting nervous. I hope that by the time you read this, in a few days, that there’ll be joy in Mudville once again!

Global warming – For the last year or so, I’ve been learning about and have become concerned with climate change. You have to use the phrase “climate change” nowadays because the term “global warming” implies temperate weather and is a cause of confusion during the winter months. I caught myself watching that documentary An Inconvenient Truth from a few years back. Who would have thought that I’d ever watch a movie starring Al “Snooze-fest” Gore? Actually, it was kind of thought-provoking. I don’t really have a huge problem with the use of fossil fuels as the source of energy production, I’ve been reaping its benefits my whole life and I don’t wanna sound hypocritical, but it’s time to get away from burning coal, oil and gas because it’s old-fashioned, dirty and harmful to our environment. I, like many others, think the U.S. should lead the way in developing clean, renewable energy.
OK, I’m done. Will someone help me down from my soapbox? I don’t want to sprain my ankle.

Todd Ponder – We were in touch with a family living in Tucson (spelling looks weird to me, had to double check it) whose roots are from around here. They’re a family of four, having two small children. The husband, Todd Ponder, also had a brainstem stroke and his condition is similar to mine but he’s had a much rougher go of it than me, unfortunately. His wife, also named Jennifer, works herself ragged trying to keep everything afloat as best she can, just like my Jen does. They have a GoFundMe page set up for them that provides assistance and a place where she can post updates about their situation.

Trivia Night 2016 – We just reserved the gym up at St. Charles Borromeo for our Trivia Night next year on 3/12/16. For the last couple years in the days and weeks leading up to the TN we’ll say, ‘This’ll probably be the last one of these.’ We’re just always running low on material and besides, we’re down to our last inflatable palm tree! Then the event comes and goes and things settle down and we’ll say, ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad – let’s do another one!’ So, who knows how we’ll feel next year?

Brick Oven pizza – We found our 17th new favorite pizza place. It barely ekes out Pirrone’s in O’Fallon. It’s in a strip mall up by Costco in St. Peters. My sister told us about this place, it’s putting a serious hurt on my weight loss program (thanks Julie!) and they (yikes) deliver.

www.waitbutwhy.com – A couple months ago my brother told me about this website (blog) and I’ve been hooked on it ever since. It’s a bunch of stuff ranging from articles about Artificial Intelligence to completely silly topics like types of annoying people on Facebook. The guy’s name is Tim Urban, he’s probably super smart but he writes in such a way that a regular guy like me can find it interesting and informative – not to mention that it’s usually pretty hilarious. They’ve recently gotten into creating podcasts which is cool because that’s right up my alley.

www.ted.com – We heard about this website on 60 Minutes a while back and I love it. It’s a humongous collection of short videos (mostly 10-20 minutes) called TED Talks. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. You can find a TED Talk on practically any subject given by an interesting expert in that field. I’ve watched talks on topics ranging from drone capabilities to racial issues in America.

Well, those are the highlights of everything I’ve (we’ve) been up to. Sorry for the long post but thanks for reading. I’ll try not to wait another 12 months before getting back to this!

Jim