Above the Law

Donny T has been indicted? It's about time. Lock him up! While I want to believe no one is above the law, we see people every day who get off for crimes they've committed, so I don't have much hope Donny will actually do time for his crime. Still, it's nice to see headlines that say he's been indicted. Will this guy's reign of terror ever end? Jeez. 

In other political news, Donny Jr (not the real son, the adopted version: aka Ron DeSantis) got served trying to bring down the House of Mouse. Is this guy stupid enough to think he can beat Disney? Apparently. If he thinks the House of Mouse is going down without a fight, he's in for a surprise. Take him out, Mickey! 

In non-political news, I've been thinking a lot lately about getting a new car. My current car is 12 years old now. (I haven't had it for 12 years; I bought it used.) My car also has almost 100,000 miles on it and the maintenance is expensive. I had no idea when I bought a Volkswagen that it would be so expensive to maintain. This is the first foreign car I've owned and, while I like it a lot, just about every time I take it in for service, I end up paying hundreds of dollars. Maybe it's time to get a new car. I haven't had a new car since my 2000 Saturn. It's been 23 years since I had a new car. Wow. I think I'll make a decision before the summer ends. 

Tummy Troubles

I am fairly certain I had food poisoning last week. My stomach was gurgling and upset Thursday night and then I spent the wee hours of Friday morning with bouts of diarrhea and vomiting. I don't recall ever having stomach problems like this before. I don't even think I'd vomited since I lived in Brooklyn and had a bad batch of Chinese food. This was bad. I'm recovering, but I'm still fatigued and not back on a regular diet yet. I believe the culprit of my tummy troubles was a frozen Stouffer's meal of Swedish meatballs I had for dinner Thursday night. That's what I seemed to be barfing up and crapping out. 

When I got sick from a Lo Mein meal in Brooklyn, I stopped eating Chinese food for years. The same goes for when I got sick from an Arby's roast beef sandwich years ago. I was done with Arby's for years. And, to this day, I've never eaten another McChicken sandwich or Catalina salad dressing after I'd barfed up both before I was hospitalized in my early 20s and had to have my inflamed appendix removed.  I've since gone back to both Chinese food and Arby's, but still get queasy just thinking about a McChicken sandwich or a salad with Catalina dressing. I feel the same way about Stouffer's Swedish meatballs right now. Never again.

Since I've been incapacitated this weekend, I've watched a lot of TV including two documentaries that were interesting:

1. MH 370: The Plane That Disappeared: I watched this three-part series on Netflix yesterday and was left with more questions than answers. How does an entire airplane filled with more than 200 passengers just disappear? I don't know but I also don't believe that the supposed debris from the plane found isn't really from the plane. Even if it was from the Malaysian Airlines flight 370, where's the rest of it? Where are the bodies? It makes no sense. With all of the sophisticated technology around these days, I find it hard to believe that on one can find this plane and its passengers. 

2. Who Killed Robert Wone: I watched this two-part series on Peacock last night and this morning and was fascinated by the case. Attorney Robert Wone went to his college friend's house in Washington, DC to spend the night after working late and he never made it out of the house alive. He'd been stabbed, but the three occupants of the house all claimed an intruder had come into the home and killed Robert. But no one actually saw an intruder. There was hardly any blood on the scene. And all three guys who lived in the house were sexually involved with each other and into bondage. I don't know what happened here. This is another documentary I watched that left me with more questions than answers. But one thing I'm certain of is that the three guys at that house are covering something up. If one of them didn't kill Robert, they know who did kill him. I personally think one or more of them did something, maybe things got out of hand and Robert was injured or killed accidentally, and the three guys covered up the debacle with a fake intruder story. The fact that the three guys walked on this really bothers me, but the case against them wasn't strong enough. It's all so bizarre, but the documentary was really riveting to watch. I hope Robert Wone's family finally gets justice here and the truth, but I suspect that will only happen if one of the three guys breaks and tells the truth and that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

Too Much TV

I am making an effort (a small one) to wean myself off of watching hours of TV each night after my day job is done and it's working (sort of). I'm trying to take time each evening to do something other than watch TV like read or write. (During the week, it's mainly reading time and my weekends are left for writing.) But I'm still watching TV (just not as much as I used to watch). Two things I'm watching now are:

1. Daisy Jones & the Six on Prime. Let me say up front that Prime has turned out to be a disappointment for me on the video front. It just isn't offering a lot of stuff I want to see. This one might get the boot before this year ends, but while I have it, I've been watching the series based on the book Daisy Jones & the Six. I read the book over the holidays and I enjoyed it, but the miniseries isn't good. I don't care for the guy who's playing Billy Dunn. There's something off-putting about him for me. His looks aren't great and his singing voice isn't either. He also doesn't look the way I imagined Billy would look when I was reading the book. I'm not crazy about the actor playing Daisy Jones either. She at least looks more like I imagined the character to look and I think her voice is okay, but I'm not bowled over by her performance either. Once I saw Reese Witherspoon was behind the film rights to the book, I should have known a movie version (or miniseries) would be messed up. Thanks to Reese, a good book was turned into a cheesy, lame miniseries. And the wigs are bad. The one they stuck on Timothy Olyphant's head is a disgrace. Ugh. It's a shame that I feel the need to mute the sound when the band starts singing, but I do. Color me underwhelmed by this one.

2. Breaking Bad on Netflix. I'm late to the Breaking Bad universe, I'll admit. I never watched this show when it aired. I only got into it after I started watching Better Call Saul (that I enjoyed), so now I'm playing catchup with BB. I almost bailed on this series early on because it wasn't holding my interest, but I just finished Season 4 and I'm all in. Bryan Cranston deserves all the kudos he received for his work as Walter White. It's amazing to me to watch a supposedly mild-mannered high school science teacher turn into a stone-cold drug dealing killer. But maybe that side of him was always there and it was just suppressed. Or maybe the circumstances he was in made him change. Whatever the reason, his story makes for good TV. 

Bye, Lori

The public has spoken and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot won't be given a second term. The runoff between Paul Vallas and Brendon Johnson will determine who will be the next mayor of Chicago. Since I don't live in Chicago, I don't have a dog in that fight, but I do work in the city (whenever I'm forced to go back into the office), so I do care who's elected even though I don't get a vote. Lightfoot, in my opinion, never had a chance. She alienated too many people, she was too stubborn in sticking to people and plans that weren't working, and she seemed often to be in denial about the crime problems in the city. Police superintendent David Brown was ineffective and should have been shown the door a long time ago. (He really shouldn't have been hired in the first place, but I digress.) I hope whoever the next mayor is that he does make crime in the city a priority. The shootings, carjackings, problems on the CTA, muggings, etc. are bringing the city to its knees. I'm glad I've been able to work from home so I don't have to go into the city on pubic transit. I can't even imagine getting on the L and riding to the Loop these days. During my few trips into the city for work, I've taken Metra that costs more, but at least feels fairly safe to me. 

As someone who has been an advocate for public transit, it pains me to have to say I'm seriously afraid of taking public transit these days. I never feared riding the subway while I lived in New York or even when I was commuting to my day job in the Chicago Loop. But I fear it now. A huge part of the problem is the revolving door of criminals being let back onto the streets with an ankle monitor and a court date. If you tried to shoot someone, you need to be locked up and stay locked up. No bonding out. No ankle monitor.

People want to feel that they can venture out of their homes safely and do things like see a show, go out for dinner, or go shopping without wondering if they're going to make it back home alive. I wish the new mayor the best because he's going to have his work cut out for him.