I get asked those kinds of questions all the time, by everyone. And by ‘all the time, by everyone.’ I guess I mean ‘pretty often, by many people.’ Maybe not ‘pretty often’, more like fairly often. OK, I’ll come clean: I’ve been asked, ‘Watching or reading anything worthwhile?’ once or twice by a couple people. So, due to massively popular demand, this is how I’ve been filling my afternoons when I’m not writing in this blog.

TV shows – I usually gravitate towards shows that are kinda dark and gritty, they can also have a healthy dose of graphic violence and profanity sprinkled in just for fun. Shows that fit this bill are: The Penguin (great show), The Mayor of Kingstown, Game of Thrones and American Primeval. However, there is one show I just finished watching – its 18^th season and still going strong – it is the exact opposite of shows like the ones listed above and I really like it. It’s like a breath of fresh air, a palate cleanser that rebalances things. It’s called Barnwood Builders; it can be found on Max (formerly HBOMAX, formerly HBONOW, formerly HBO). I even got a t-shirt from the company that the show’s about. Basically, it’s a show about this small business in West Virginia (same name as the show) and the group of guys that work there. They’re just a buncha good ol’ boys and self-proclaimed “hillbillies” (their word, not mine), who are really good at what they do. They’re in the business of deconstructing old barns and log cabins, mostly dating back to the 1800s, then selling the reclaimed lumber and hand-hewn logs and beams to people who want to use that material in their building projects. They then help their clients with building their dreamhouse, fancy garage, rustic pavilion, wedding venue – whatever. What I take from the show is that it displays the virtues of hard work and comradery. I admit that watching a show about a buncha guys with strong country accents (no offense meant against country accents) taking down old buildings for 45 minutes doesn’t sound that interesting – and I don’t mean to try and sell it to you – but I find watching it oddly relaxing.

Another show I’ve kinda gotten into is on Netflix and it’s called Formula 1: Drive to Survive. It’s about, you guessed it, Formula 1 racing. Lots of drama and gut-wrenching footage. I’ve never been a huge racing fan like my brother, he’s big into NASCAR – but I’m coming around to it. To be clear, he’s a regular-sized person, not ‘huge’ at all. After watching a couple seasons of it I can safely say that “being a racecar driver” is near the top of my list of “things I wouldn’t wanna do in a million years”. It’s up there with: ironworker, rock climber and cave diver. The reasons behind the first two are pretty obvious: plummeting to your death while screaming your head off looks very unpleasant. I say ‘cave diver’ because claustrophobia is a real thing and it’s totally debilitating. I learned that the hard way the last time I had a standard MRI. So I thought I was being pretty smart the next time my doctor wanted an MRI – btw, don’t let the name fool you, there isn’t a whole lot of “openness” involved when having an “Open MRI”.

I wanna mention one more show I really like before I move on, the Max show The White Lotus. Season 3 started recently and the first couple episodes are available to stream. It’s one of the few shows I’ll watch as new episodes are released each week. Normally, I won’t watch something unless I can binge watch the whole season in a few days. I’m not sure how they market this show but the tagline should read: “Rich people vacation at a beautiful resort while being truly awful to each other”.

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Now, a few words about our sponsor:

Like many people, I’m no stranger to headaches, I get them fairly often. When that happens, I either woke up with it or it came on that morning. For me, a couple Excedrins will magically erase it about 75% of the time. For stubborn headaches I might get lucky with additional Excedrin or some Motrin. Things like: Tylenol, Advil or Aleve might as well be SweetTarts, they don’t do Jack. Taking medicine is a minor ordeal too. It isn’t as simple as Jen just handing me a couple pills, like she’s “Nurse Ratchet”, so she can get on with her day. No, it ain’t that easy. First, she has to go to the kitchen and crush them with our little Mortar & Pestle things (up until 3 minutes ago when I Googled them, I was pretty sure they were called Mortise & Pestil). Then she mixes the pulverized pill powder with water and hopefully, it’ll dissolve pretty well. After that, she’ll put the mixture directly into my stomach with a large syringe. A “Mickey button” on my abdomen allows for that (I’ll get into all that some other time). Half the time, it’ll get all clogged up and she has to go Roto Rooter on it. Then, after all that and with some luck, it’ll work and I’ll get some relief. So remember,

“Excedrin. It Just Might Work.”

And now, back to our program…

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I oughtta wrap this up now, it’s starting to run pretty long. (Fun Fact: Microsoft Word tells me that this post has 1057 words.) But I haven’t talked about this stuff yet:

Movies (streaming) –
Movies (theater) –
Books –
Podcasts –

Oh well, it’ll give me something to talk about next time.

Frieden raus!,
(Peace out!)

– Jim