Post-Thanksgiving Greetings

I hope everyone has had a restful, enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday (those who celebrate). I've been off from my day job since last Wednesday and took a quick road trip to the D (that's Detroit) for the weekend. I'm back now, but had a great time. It's always nice to see family and have some good food. I miss Michigan and whenever I go back to visit lately, I feel that more and more. However, I'm not looking to move back there. Sorry, not sorry! I love Michigan, but I think I'm done living in the mitten state. Once I left the last time (more than 15 years ago), I kind of knew I wasn't going back there to live. Too much family drama and too much familiarity. Also, I just needed a change of scenery. I don't love Illinois, but it's my home for now. I don't want to die here, but I'm here for the foreseeable future.

Weekend News

So Bloomie is officially in the race for POTUS. Interesting. I'm curious to see how this plays out but I think we need less candidates on the Democratic side rather than more right now. I'd like to see some folks drop out (and they know who they are). I'm tired of these 10+ person debates. The field needs to be narrowed significantly so we can channel our efforts into a few candidates. I really hate that states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are first states to push their presidential choices forward. Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the country which is why you see Buttigieg leading the pack in those states. And South Carolina? Ugh. I have my own issues with that state and don't want those folks deciding anything based on my personal prejudices against the state and its citizens.

In other weekend news, I saw two movies over the weekend: The Good Liar and Knives Out. The Good Liar was...good! Helen Mirren is great in pretty much anything. The plot was interesting and I kind of want to read the book version now to see how it matched up with the movie version. Knives Out was good also, but a wee bit too long. There were a few too many scenes of people being interrogated that made the film drag in parts. And Daniel Craig's awful Southern accent was no bueno, but I did enjoy seeing Chris Evans in his battered sweaters. (It took far too long for him to appear on screen also.) The early preview for Knives Out that I went to last night was packed. Clearly, people are interested in seeing the movie and I'm sure it'll make a ton of money over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Recommendations

My doctor asked me today to recommend a book for her to read. I first had to ask her what kind of books she liked and she gave me a wide range. It's always hard for me to recommend books or movies to people particularly people I don't know very well. I know what I like and I have no problem telling others about books that I liked, but I  also know what I like isn't necessarily what someone else would like. For example, I talked about how much I liked the series House of Flowers at work and one of my co-workers later told me she couldn't get through the first episode. Now I never would have recommended this show to her because she's extremely conservative. (She tries to hide it, but she doesn't try too hard.) Hence, House of Flowers with its gay sibling, transgender ex, and drag queens would not have been up this lady's alley. (No pun intended.) What I would recommend to her would be the series Grantchester that I've been watching lately about a British vicar who likes jazz, cigarettes, women, and booze. My co-worker may still have a problem with this, but I think she'd be more open to it since it takes place in the 1950's and, despite the jazz, booze, ciggies, and women, is still straight-laced enough for her to probably handle.

But back to the doctor. Based on what she told me about the kind of books she likes to read and based on my limited encounters with her, I recommended A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne, one of the best books I read this year. I enjoyed it. The main character was thoroughly evil, but that made for a great narrator, in my opinion. It's not a perfect book, but it's a good one. I did warn the doctor about the main character's evil tendencies because I realize the character could turn a lot of people off.

Bloomie?

So former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering getting into the presidential race? I'm not surprised. I lived in NY during Bloomberg's illegal third term, so I'm familiar with his thirst for power. When I lived in Brooklyn under Bloomberg, I didn't think he was the worst mayor, but wasn't the greatest either. I remember when he was trying to ban big soda drinks. Really, Mike? I think the city had more pressing issues to deal with, yet he spent so much energy on trying to ban Big Gulps. Ridiculous. I also remember the snow storm that shut down the city subways and how Bloomie was at his home in Bermuda at the time. City officials tried to cover it up, but everyone knew where the mayor was. When he finally got back to town, he tells people to go out and see a Broadway show because the city was open for business. How are we supposed to get to the theater if the subways are shut down, Mike? I guess he assumed everyone (including the Broadway performers and theater crew) could either walk to the theater or get a hired car to take them to work so the show could go on. The guy was just tone-deaf on a lot of things. Stop and frisk? The people who usually advocate the loudest for stop and frisk aren't the people who'd actually BE stopped and frisked. Still, Bloomberg did help New York to thrive and it's expensive as hell now, but there's a lot of money there and he helped to bring a lot of that money into the city. And, if he ends up being the Democratic nominee, I'd vote for him. Dealing with him in office would be a million times better than the current POTUS.

Post-Halloween Greetings

Happy Post-Halloween greetings. My day job sent me to New York again this week for a quick visit and I was there Halloween. The weather was amazing. I was out walking around with no coat, no jacket, and only an umbrella Halloween night because it was so warm (unlike back here in Chicago where it snowed on Halloween).  I didn't make it to the parade (because I don't do crowds), but I saw a lot of people in costume during my evening walk around Union Square. 

During my flight back, I had an aisle seat and when I boarded, there was a guy in the middle seat and his girlfriend had the window seat. He told me, "We already went to the bathroom so we won't have to bother you to get up during the flight so we can go." Okay. I thanked him for letting me know. 😄

TMI, kids.

I've Seen This Movie Before

I saw Joker this weekend and while it was droning on for two hours, all I could think was that I've seen this movie before and it was called The King of Comedy. Until the Joker embraced his joker-ness in the last half hour of the film, all I got was a lot of maniacal laughing, smoking, and witnessing someone mentally break down. Now if that's entertaining for you, Joker is your movie. It wasn't for me. I do think the outrage over the violence in the film was uncalled for. I've seen more people killed on TV cop shows. In fact, I saw more people killed in a trailer for the next Terminator movie than I saw killed in Joker. Let me also say that I haven't seen a Batman movie since Michael Keaton was the caped crusader so I'm not exactly the demographic for this kind of movie, but when I saw the trailer, I wanted to see the film. I just wish it had been better. (Nice shots of the Bronx though and I did enjoy Joaquin's dance sequences.)

Helping or Hurting?

I watched a man take a picture of a guy who was sleeping on the purple line of the L this morning. I assumed (as I'm sure the picture taker did) that the sleeping guy was homeless. He had his backpack and was stretched out across two seats. The guy who took the sleeping guy's picture on his phone then proceeded to text it to someone. The guy was sitting next to me so I witnessed the whole thing. I didn't see what he texted (I didn't want to be too obvious) but I assume he was making some derogatory comment about the sleeping guy. Then again, maybe he was texting a friend to say, "No one should have to sleep on the train like this! It's an outrage that there are so many homeless people on the streets!" But the cynic in me doubts this guy had any sympathy for the homeless guy.

Now I have my own issues with the homeless panhandling and stinking up the train cars and sleeping across multiple seats on the L. However, I would never take a picture of a homeless person to make fun of him/her. That's just mean and cruel. The thing that killed me about the guy taking the picture this morning was that he smelled like he'd crawled out of a bottle. Yeah, at 7:00 AM that dude smelled like he'd been drinking all night. He looked clean, ready for work, etc., but your pores don't lie! If you drink like a fish, that alcohol seeps out of you even after you've showered. I've smelled it before and I smelled it again today. Maybe the photographer had a drinking problem. Who was he to judge someone else who fell on hard times? He should try getting some help for himself and stop taking pictures of strangers on the train.