What I Watched: Season Nine of Queer Eye, here is much of the review from Collider:
For Season 9, Queer Eye heads to Las Vegas to help a plethora of individuals change their lives. In each episode, the Fab Five continues to bring their expertise to life. Whether it’s to help a “forever” showgirl, remember to keep dreaming, or an infamous magician, Queer Eye hits the jackpot. Be sure to bring a box of tissues when you start binge-watching.
With a cold opening celebrating everything we love about Las Vegas, Antoni Porowski, Jonathan Van Ness, Karamo Brown, and Tan France are back, but this season, there’s a new design expert whose Vegas or bust: Jeremiah Brent. While the energy is essentially the same, Queer Eye’s introduction of a new expert doesn’t disrupt the formula. With just a tad of pizzazz to bring Brent into the bunch, he seamlessly fits into the well-oiled machine. For the most part, when the reboot of Queer Eye began, the Fab Five were stars on the rise. For Brent, he’s arriving with an established media career. His ability to slip into the fold is a reminder of how special this show is. Perfect chemistry continues to be the essence of this program.
This season allows Sin City to shine in the spotlight. Focusing on the individuals who work in the heat of Las Vegas or help the city tick, Queer Eye is helping those heroes who deserve a second chance. It truly is a celebration of Vegas. This season is about the people who make the city what we know it to be. You may enter one of Sin City’s many resorts and casinos and neglect how the locale operates, but the Fab Five take the time to shine a light on those individuals behind the scenes to give them a new lease on life.
The landmarks of Las Vegas play a prominent role throughout the 10-episode season. Perhaps it’s an unofficial tourism ad, but I’m ready to take another trip to Sin City and explore the places the Fab Five visited! Between the High Roller and one of the many restaurants Porowski brought the heroes to for a cooking lesson, Las Vegas is truly the star of the season. Now, the celebrity cameos may be upset that the city they work and play in gets more focus than them. Regardless, seeing the likes of Dita Von Teese, Penn & Teller, and Chef Bobby Flay give back to help the Fab Five make dreams turn into reality helps to show how this program is all about giving back.
What I Read: Catching up on the Christmas books, Deanna Chase’s A Witch For Mr. Garland (Witches of Christmas Grove Book 6).
Here’s the Amazon blurb: Welcome to Christmas Grove, the enchanting town full of love, magic, and holiday miracles. Sixteen years ago, on a snowy December night, seer Danny Frost received a message from a mage that sent him running from the love of his life, Marissa Cane. Since then, Christmas has never been the same. But when Marissa unexpectedly walks back into his life, he’s determined to right past wrongs and maybe find a way to heal both of their hearts. Marissa Cane’s heart was shattered at just nineteen, and since that day she stopped believing in fairy tales. So when a sugar plum fairy shows up in her adopted town of Christmas Grove with a message that could change everything, she’s skeptical to say the least. But when an old curse rears its ugly head, the only way to keep her safe is to let Danny Frost back into her life. Now they need to work together to break the curse and to do that, they’ll need a little holiday magic along the way.
What I Listened To: Two Blinks I Love you – Alright; Canty – Mirrorball; and Girl Scout – Desert Island Movies:
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I watched episode 1 of a new HBO Max documentary – An Update on Our Family – about a youtube vlogger family who had the bland, white Christian family identity and then made a big fucking to-do about adopting a special needs Chinese baby. And after they got him, at some point rehomed him.
It’s also about the whole family vlogging thing in general, which is an area of social media I’m not really familiar with since I cannot stress enough how boring I would find that content being a feral 40 yr old childfree atheist woman.
Wait. They sent the child BACK? Like returning a sweater at Kohls?
I know… terrible people.
Unsure, episode 1 did not get that far and episodes 2 and 3 aren’t out yet. I don’t know whether he was placed with another adoptive family or sent to China.
I’m on deck for posting this next week, right? Hopefully I remember.
I feel like I should watch a David Lynch movie, but I’d need to psych myself up for it.
You can always watch Dune. Probably the most straightforward of any of his movies, which is saying a lot since it’s a massive space opera set thousands of years in the future on far-flung worlds.
And young Donald Trump Harkonen wears space speedos!
I’m actually thinking of this
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Straight_Story
…I liked that one a lot…& like the riding mower it has a fairly gentle pace to it…compared to, say, lost highway
…at some point I probably ought to watch inland empire, though…I guess…the guy could make a hell of a film when he put his mind to it…some of them seminal…but I kinda regret having seen eraserhead if I’m completely honest…he put his mind some places I probably wouldn’t go on purpose?
Richard Farnsworth was great in this about a frontier criminal who finds himself struggling to adapt to changing times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grey_Fox
Blue Velvet?
YES!!! Thank you! Batter up!
Too bad Las Vegas is not about giving back.
…I guess I have a couple for this week…went to see “a real pain” &…I won’t promise that if you don’t like that caulkin brother’s kind-of-an-asshole-but-it-reads-like-a-defense-mechanism-&-you-sort-of-feel-for-the-guy routine it’d still manage to win you over…but it’s very much a feature not a bug since that would sort of put you in the other lead’s shoes…does overlap with the stuff of nightmares but is largely not “about that” so if you do laugh out loud you probably won’t feel guilty?
…&…bit of an unlikely shout…but the tetris flick is actually a lot more entertaining than you might think…easy to forget what else it intersected with in terms of russia (where some dude who couldn’t profit from it wrote it & then made it “IBM compatible” with some mates)…& a world where atari still competed with nintendo & robert maxwell hadn’t taken a murky header off a yacht…so…I know for a fact there are much less engaging things you could wind up sat in front of?
I’ve been watching lots and lots of basketball. I’ve spent at least 3 hours this week fighting w/ Comcast over my bill. They actually significantly lowered it & now for some reason I am getting NBA ticket for free? I also picked up a nasty cold & coughing up my lungs with fucked sinus drainage, good times! I’m listening to a fun ska band w/ an important message…
OK, we watched the first two seasons of some Nordic noir called “Follow the Money”. It was good but we bailed on season 3 because the two main characters were off the show. Last night we started a medical drama on Max called The Pitt about an emergency room in Pittsburgh. It was a cut above the usual ER-type shows and it confirmed my decision not to go into the medical profession. Also, why you should stay healthy and stay out of emergency rooms. I’m reading Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul by Karen Abbott about Chicago’s Everleigh Club back in the day. I fixed a toilet and am trying to wish Winter away.