Saturday Morning Brain Drain [14/1/23]

14/1/23 Elliecoo 28
Image via Telstra

What I Watched: Season Three of Jack Ryan. By now, you are either a fan of the books/shows or are not, because it maintains its genre. Paste Magazine calls it “classically styled Dad TV”, and they aren’t wrong. John Krasinski is fine as the hero, the supporting players are fine . . . the intrigue is perhaps plausible, and the scenery is enjoyable. But for me, the lone wolf, always the smartest guy in the room, rebel with cause schtick is growing a bit thin. Here is the blurb from Yahoo:

Overall, Jack Ryan Season 3 isn’t really reinventing or innovating the genre, it comes through as more of a step into the familiar, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re a fan of a classic spy story. But it’s not a show that’s particularly focused on giving you something new. It’s sitting on solid ground.

Jack Ryan Season Three Trailer

What I Read: The Witches of Palmetto Point series by Wendy Wang. I had the first six books of the thirteen-book series in a boxed set at a sale price. I’d put off reading it, as other books held greater interest, and it seemed to be too current-day for my tastes (nary a duke in sight). Was I ever wrong! Excellent series, good enough to cause me to stay up too late reading, resulting in “bookovers” the next day. I’ve also read books seven and eight and plan to acquire the remaining five. Here is the blurb from Amazon:

Ghosts won’t leave her alone and neither will her family. For psychic witch Charlie Payne, ghostly encounters and grisly murders are an everyday occurrence, and so is dealing with her nosy, loving, family of witches. Follow along as Charlie helps nudge spirits toward the light, hunt down murderers and embrace her witch heritage in this money saving bundle of the first six books of the Witches of Palmetto Point series. Where ghosts abound, magic is infused in the mundane, and there’s always something delicious cooking at the local café. And the following are the summaries of the box set books:

  • Haunting Charlie – Charlie Payne encounters a ghostly murderer who sets his sights on her when she attempts to clean the old southern mansion he once owned.
  • Wayward Spirits – Charlie Payne encounters a ghost hellbent on getting her revenge. Can she help the spirit move on before she ends up its next victim?
  • Devil’s Snare – Charlie Payne goes on vacation with her cousins and encounters a deadly ghost intent on having Charlie join her in the afterlife.
  • The Witch’s Ladder – When the Mayor of Palmetto Point’s wife dies under mysterious circumstances, Charlie Payne must find the culprit before another citizen dies.
  • The Harbinger – Charlie gets involved with the local deputy to help him find out who is murdering young women in the low country only to find the answer may be pure evil.
  • Shadow Child – When Charlie encounters the spirit of a child, she’s drawn into a 60-year-old mystery surrounding the girl’s death.

What I Listened To: Chris Staples – Hold Onto Something; Mypet – Pays To Know; Bear Garden – Cherry Tree; and Dekker – Let’s Pretend.

Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest DeadSplinterites? Darling ones, how as your week treated you?

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About Elliecoo 580 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

28 Comments

  2. I watched Mo on Netflix.  It was great.  I was disappointed that there were only 8 half-hour episodes.  Mo is a Palestinian immigrant dating a Mexican his mother doesn’t approve of, while trying to make a dollar under the table.  Some very funny moments.

    I watched the first couple of episodes of Lilyhammer.  The premise is hilarious, the execution not great.  A mafioso goes into witness protection and re-locates to Norway.  A few too many ethnic cliches.

    • …lillyhammer was one I enjoyed enough to excuse the ropey aspects of the implementation, as you put it…but I may have a weakness for that style of premise

      …it’s been a while since I really remembered how it goes in my blue heaven but there’s a film called “the family” where the whole witness protection meets the leopard who can’t change their spots thing gets the luc besson treatment & I enjoyed that a fair bit

      …my guess is that over the longer haul in terms of runtime lillyhammer being worth persisting with might depend a fair bit on how much the lost-in-translation/culture-shock aspect works for you as a source of humor?

      …I liked it enough to keep going to the end but YMMV…& it’s worth maybe considering tulsa king if it’s available to you as an option since it’s basically a riff on the same premise but the foreign land is just tulsa & stallone served the time instead of turning state’s evidence…I’m not caught up but it was going pretty well as far as I got?

  3. I read The Black Book, the 5th in the Inspector Rebus series.  I started the series in the middle and then went back to the beginning.  This is the book where Rebus really emerges as the character he will be for the rest of the series.  I will miss him immensely when Rankin finally retires him.

        • …think it was an ITV thing originally so even if iplayer gets the same treatment BBC sounds seems to have & stops insisting it needs VPNs & sign-in & a valid TV license to access from outside the UK it probably wouldn’t be on that

          …reasonably certain that outside of britbox it might be buy-able from amazon prime video & very possibly from apple…maybe roku if you use that at all…but beyond that I’d run short of suggestions so if you’ve tried &/or rejected those already I’m sorry I don’t have any better ones to offer?

    • …the rebus books are pretty good but I think I lost track of the chronology a while ago

      …I should maybe do something about that, actually…so I thank you for the reminder

  4. READ

    “The Cockroach” by Ian McEwan. Nice, short, funny read to start off the new year. Takes Kafka’s “Metamorphis” and turns it into an anti-Brexit story. I read it in one night. Highly recommended.

    “The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga” by Sylvain Tesson. A Frenchman goes and stays on the remote shores of Lake Baikal (I can’t believe that wasn’t featured in the title) through a Siberian winter. Author is well-read and smart, and a bit of a romantic. Recommended.

    “Frostbike: The Joy, Pain and Numbness of Winter Cycling” by Tom Babin. A very interesting read by a Canadian journalist who lives and bikes year-round in Calgary, which is not an ideal cycling city. Cycling in “Winter Cities” poses its own set of unique challenges, and the author delves into those issues and possible solutions. Even though I bike only a fraction of what I used to (I cycle commuted to work most days), I found this book super-interesting. Highly recommended.

    WATCHED

    “Would You Fall for It?” on YouTube. Interesting look at American transport infrastructure history, which has obviously favored the car over all else, and the results have been sub-optimal. The channel, Not Just Bikes, is a really interesting kind of tranportation and community design site. The guy is a Canadian currently living in The Netherlands, and is well-tranveled enough to be able to compare and contrast different cities’ systems. Highly recommended.

     

    LISTENED

    “Live in Denver 6-16-22” by The Hold Steady. THS has been performing series of concerts at a given venue, usually 3 nights in a row. This is the first of 3 shows at Denver’s Bluebird Theater. My brother and I went to the second show, which had a slightly different playlist. It was a great show, and I would definitely be happy to see them again.
    Listen to it on Bandcamp.

  5. …keep meaning to watch the banshees of inishirin but haven’t found a good evening for it yet

    …forget which week I actually watched it but I liked disney’s strange world…maybe not going to end up at the top of my animated disney movie rankings but it was enjoyable…which is at least a bit eye-of-needle-threading given the pretty obvious parallels between the framing/narrative & some not-especially-grin-inducing aspects of reality

    …mostly, though, I’m pretty sure this week I really have mostly wound up watching indeterminate drivel rather than forgetting something worth recommending?

  6. Watched:  Nightmare Alley.  Another long…and slow…film.  The premise was a good one, but holy shit the execution…

    Listened:  This weeks stop on the greatest engineered albums of all time brings us to Neil Young’s Unplugged album.  I know, right?  Look, there’s a reason why live albums almost never sound good–because they are typically recorded in venues with shitty acoustics, plus the unpredictability of crowd noise, and the fact that the gear used in concerts is NOT what is used in a recording studio.  However, that is precisely what makes this album worthy to stand among the others I’ve listed so far.  Considering the nature of the recording, the depth of the frequency response and the overall lack of the typical garbage that is part and parcel of live albums is really quite something.  I mean, just listen to World on a String, which really shines.  Sure, this is in the highly controlled environment of an MTV sound stage, but that really doesn’t diminish the incredible work done by the anonymous MTV engineer–especially considering what an asshole Neil Young has been known to be.  The word is that he had already walked out in the middle of a previous attempt to record a live acoustic album the year before recording this one–and he was apparently very critical of the performances of his bandmates a the time–so a tense environment is not a great one for clear thinking and making good, “sound”, decisions.  But between the excellent performances, and the heroism of the engineer, they pulled it off.

     

  7. Thanks for another round of good tunes @Elliecoo, they are exactly the type of soothing music I need right now. It has been a week. I’ve got a family situation that is requiring a lot of emotional energy. And probably will for a little while longer. I got a new book from the library but have barely started it, hopefully I’ll have time befor the next SMBD. I didn’t watch anything until last night. I binged Somebody Somewhere on HBOMax. It’s the semi-autobiographical story of a 40 something woman, comedian & cabaret singer Bridget Everette, returning to her home town. It’s sad and sweet, reminds me of Tig Notero’s One Mississippi. I would recommend and am looking forward to season 2 in February.

  8. What I wanted to watch: Corsage, about the life of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria. I think it might be in movie theaters only but I swore I read somewhere you could stream it. However, it led me to Netflix’s Empress, which is also about Elisabeth, Empress of Austria. She’s having quite a year, for reasons I don’t understand. It is a German-Netflix 6-episode coproduction so it’s in German with English subtitles:

     

    (The trailer is dubbed, distractingly so, but the show I watched was subtitled.)

    It was excellent and covers just the beginning of her marriage to Emperor Franz Josef, and there will be a second season/series. The German is so beautifully spoken, as it would be, since this is the Bavarian/Habsburg court and Bavarian and Austrian German is not as harsh as that spoken in the north, especially around Berlin, the Prussian areas. It’s like The Crown only weirder and even more opulent. I have notes, if you’d like to read them:

    1. Elisabeth, “Sisi,”was a Wittelsbach, which the show doesn’t really go into. The Wittelsbachs were a very noble/minor Royal family in their own right, yet they’re kind of treated like country bumpkins. Sisi’s mother was the sister of Franz Josef’s mother, so this is a first-cousin love story. Franz was a Habsburg, after all.

    2. Franz actually had three brothers, but one is conveniently not bothered with. His spare, Maximilian, plays a major role. IRL he (this is a long story) became the Emperor of Mexico briefly and met a tragic end.

    3. Franz’s youngest brother, Ludwig Viktor, who’s in the show, IRL was a cross-dresser who as an adult lived as an openly gay man and retreated to a palace outside Salzburg where he become a lavish patron of the arts and lived until 1919.

    4. Emperor Franz Josef himself lived to a ripe old age and died in 1916, when Austria-Hungary was in the midst of WWI.

    5. The brother who’s ignored in this series, Karl Ludwig, was the father of Franz Ferdinand, and it was his assassination in 1914 that was the proximate cause of World War I. If this series keeps going on like The Crown they’re going to have to write him in, if for no other reason than to explain the appearance of Franz Ferdinand. Karl Ludwig died of typhus after his sojourn to The Holy Land, where he made the mistake of drinking the water from the River Jordan.

    6. One of the best characters in the show is Countess Esterházy. The Esterházys have castles and palaces all over central Europe, and they’re their own thing, but take a look at the hairdo they gave the character. I assure you, it’s even more magnificent when you see it in action.

  9. Watched Bombshell on Netflix about the sexual harassment scandal that took down Roger Ailes (played by John Lithgow).

    Well acted. I found myself trying hard to feel sympathetic to people who said/did terrible things (Megyn Kelly for example.) In the end, no one should put up with sexual harassment no matter what they do.

    They did get the details right including small “brained” Sean Hannity walking around with a pistol because he’s afraid of some (liberal) nut trying to kill him for the stupid/awful shit he says. Based on things today he should be more afraid of MAGAts than an angry lib because a more than a few MAGAts have the means and are crazy enough to try.

    At least in the movie Kimberly Guilfoyle and Judge Winebox Pirro don’t look good either defaulting to defending Roger without listening to what the others say. Ironically, Ms Don Jr would get bounced from Faux with her own sexual harassment scandal.

  11. Is season 2 of the White Lotus any good?

    Season 1 held my attention just well enough that I enjoyed it, but like I had no problem having it on in the other room and letting it run while I did dishes or some cooking.

    I started season 2 and there’s a lot of subtitles with the Italian and that means I’ll need to actually read instead of multitasking in the next room.

    • @brightersideoflife I watched S1E1 and quit because I found the jokes about the staff were at their expense and couldn’t stand their mistreatment. I watch S2 in its entirety and enjoyed it. I don’t how it really compares to S1.

      Not sure if that helps you. If I remember correctly, others here have watched and enjoyed it.

    • I loved both seasons & highly recommend both.  Yes, many of the characters are obnoxious assholes but that is kind of the point & important to the overall stories.

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