Category: Television

Game Four

Bruins/Capitals Game Four of their first round series from the Gahden in Boston tonight. One period down, no score. What else is new? I was hoping the B’s would jump out to a 10 goal lead in the first few minutes so that we could have a stress-free game night experience. 33.3% through regulation and no luck yet.

It’s Nana Sitting night and I’m sitting in her living room watching the game. Jen and the kids are at home watching whatever they are watching on our swanky new 4K Apple TV which was delivered today. Our old Apple TV was getting buggy and weird. They announced the new one right at the exact time we were starting to think about replacing it. If I were a conspiracy theory loving red head, rather than the sane and rational cat that I am, I would think that was a bit too much of a coincidence. Nope. Not me.

Go Bruins.

Music Plans and Weekend Plans

I failed to play the guitar last night, but I did come up with some kind of running order for Quarantine Tunes Volume 4. I can sense your bliss.

I have one song for May that is close to being finished. There are a few more that I might be able to get done by the end of next week. I also have a potential batch of songs for a fifth round of re-recording, but I am seriously at the bottom of the barrel. So far I have tweaked a song lyric here or there, and one song had the lyrics rewritten. I think I’m going to have to do that a few more times. Of the 10 songs on the new list, three are actually written about the RPM Challenge. That’s no good. I see some new lyrics in my future.

Plans for the next few days include:

  • Finish watching this week’s episode of The Bad Batch (nine minutes to go)
  • Work
  • Nana sit overnight tonight
  • Nana sit tomorrow until around dinner time
  • Hang out with my family tomorrow night. If time allows, maybe play some guitar.
  • Sunday, celebrate Bellana’s birthday by watching The Godfather and The Godfather II and cooking a steak dinner on the grill.

Not a bad weekend.

The CPAP Helped

I went to bed a little before midnight last night with my alarm set for 6:00. I woke up before it went off and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I had the CPAP machine on the whole time. I figured it would help, but I was still a 6.5 foot tall guy sleeping on a two seater couch and looking like a full sized person living on dollhouse furniture. How do my sleep numbers look?

Five hours and 25 minutes of sleep.
83% of that being restful! Holy Crap, that percentage is gigantic for me!
32% Heart Rate Dip! Holy Crap, that percentage is gigantic for me!

So I guess using the machine was a good move, for last night at least. The only downside is that I had to wait an hour before I could pack it up because that’s how long it takes to upload all of the data to the server. I can deal with that.

For some reason, I cannot get to the wordpress.com editor on my Vivaldi browser on my work laptop. I can do it if I open a private window and re-log in, but I can’t get to it from the main window. Weird. Maybe I’ll try logging out and logging back in again.

Sunday night television… one of the infuriating things about hate watching Fear the Walking Dead is that every once in a while they put out an episode that doesn’t suck ass. Last night’s was okay, assuming you ignore the idiotic coincidence of that character meeting that other character out of the blue. For the most part it wasn’t so bad. I almost wish it had been terrible. It’s like Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. Uh.. uh.. we’re getting good again… here it comes… we’re getting good agai… Nope. Back to the same old awful.

Okay, it’s Monday morning. I have to finish packing up the stuff I had out last night that I don’t need during work, get my mother her 8:00am pills, and punch into work.

Have a good one, folks. May your Monday not blow chunks.

Monday Night Nana Sitting

I am staying at my parents house every third night. Last night was one of those nights. I’m sort of seeing a trend. I can’t sleep well here. I know I would sleep better if I brought my CPAP machine, and I am going to have to start doing that, but that’s not the issue.

The issue is falling asleep. Another issue is staying asleep. There have been a few nights now where my watch tells me I got less than four hours. Sometimes it’s because I go to bed at a decent hour, wake up a couple hours later, and then can’t get back to sleep. Other times I just can’t fall asleep to begin with.

The last time I was here was Friday night and it definitely fell into the latter category. I was trying to sleep around midnight but I was still awake around 3:00am. Then I was up before 7:00. Saturday and Sunday nights I slept great, at home, but all day Monday I was still really tired. Last night I did okay. I fell asleep around 10:00pm, my mother was already asleep which helps, but I woke up again around midnight. I eventually fell asleep but I woke up again a few more times and finally stopped trying to sleep around 5:00am. My watch tells me I got six hours. My body tells me that’s about right.

I should be bringing the CPAP machine. The only reason I don’t is because it’s a pain in the ass to break down and set up and the idea of doing that two out of every three days just pisses me right off. It’s probably worth it. I just don’t wanna.

On a mostly unrelated note, last night I decided to explore the Netflix looking for something to watch. Somehow I hit on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Not the original show, note the Comedy Central show, not the SciFi channel show, but the recent Netflix show. I had only watched a couple of episodes. They were good. I just never got around to watching more. Something on the list of episodes grabbed me though.

Ator.

In the long history of MST3K there are a few movies that stand out as being so much worse than the norm that they become legendary. One of my personal favorites is a little classic called Cave Dwellers. Back in the old days my MST3K watching friends and I learned that Cave Dwellers was a sequel. The first movie was called Ator, the Fighting Eagle. You don’t actually need to watch the first movie to follow the second because there is a flashback in the second movie that literally shows every noteworthy “plot” point from the first.

I had never seen Ator, the Fighting Eagle and I always wondered why MST3K didn’t do an episode on it. Well now I know they actually have, and I watched it, and it was TERRIBLE. Our heroes tore that turkey to shreds in glorious fashion. I was sitting in the living room watching it on my computer with headphones on all by my lonesome and there were a bunch of moments when I literally laughed out loud.

Tip of the hat for the self referential riff where they made a joke out of the “how much keeffe is in this film? Miles O’Keeffe” line from Cave Dwellers. While the episode was wonderful, it was still nowhere near the original. Cave Dwellers is worth it for things like, “stupid rock. Stupid, stupid rock” and Joel singing “Ator, Ator my sweet friend.”

As I get older I sometimes forget how much fun terrible, awful, what-were-they-thinking, movies can be.

Weekly Bad Writing Post

I just popped on last night’s Fear the Walking Dead and the avalanche of ridiculous writing started in the episode summary blurb on the website.

I’m less than nine minutes in and here is what we have so far…

  • Grace (who??) has amnesia. Remember, in the first half of this season Daniel pretended he had amnesia. Ugh.
  • Grace (who??) along with amnesia suddenly wakes up in the future. Ugh
  • We know it’s the future because Morgan has white hair and a white beard. I’m not going to say it’s the worst make-an-actor-look-old make up job in history, but it’s probably top 10. That’s not writing though. The bad writing? One of the first things Morgan says is something like my memory isn’t what it used to be. Ummm… so we’re now up to three characters with the bad memory trope, and two in this very episode. What the ever loving fuck? Ugh.

I don’t feel like I’m nitpicking. If I were nitpicking I’d say so, proudly. This doesn’t feel like nitpicking, this feels like plain old awful.

I could make all this dumb go away by just not watching. It’s that simple. I just need to stop watching. Why am I still watching? I have a theory. I think I’m watching so that I can keep listening to a couple of podcasts that are hate watching. I think that’s the reason and not some unconscious desire to force suffering upon myself.

Bad television is bad.

ADDENDUM: In the grand scheme of things, this episode wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, but when compared to everything that’s happened since the show runner swap after season three it was okay. The premise was idiotic. The writing was garbage. The acting was good, as it almost always is on this show. I just don’t understand how the actors take it. They are all better than this. Even the child actors. The writing is miles beneath them and yet they all keep coming back. Well… not all of them. We know for sure that two of the main characters have asked to be written off since the start of the fourth season. I think the miracle is that they all haven’t asked to be written off. Oh well. We’ll see how bad it gets next week.

Friday Dinner on Thursday

We have a little thing going on in 2021. Friday dinner with Jen and Harry is burgers and fries with a side of super hero tv shows.

Unfortunately this week Friday is a nana sitting night and I won’t be here for dinner. Harry suggested we do burgers and fries and super hero tv today instead.

If I haven’t said this before let me say it now. My step son is really good people.

Misery Porn

I am up to date with season four of The Handmaid’s Tale. I listened to a podcast today (House Podcastica) where they discussed the first three episodes. One of the hosts referred to the show as misery porn.

All through the first three seasons I was looking for the words to describe the show, and that was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, House Podcastica!

Good Things

The Bruins are beating the Devils

The Red Sox are smoking the Tigers

There’s a new Star Wars show on Disney+

There are new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale

I get to see my father tomorrow

I closed all three activity app rings

All good things. Looking for bright sides everywhere.

May the Fourth

It’s May the Fourth. The day that people celebrate Star Wars because of a coincidence of pronunciation.

Disney+ released the first episode of a new animated show today. I was going to watch it before work but it’s 75 minutes long. A 75 minute Star Wars cartoon episode after the first few episodes of WandaVision didn’t even run for half an hour? I’ll get to it but not today.

After work tonight I have a Nana Sitting night. Tomorrow I have an appointment to visit my father in the hospital. Yes, you read that correctly. An appointment. Thanks, Covid-19.

I haven’t done any music since Sunday. It’s only two days, but I wanted to be more up on it than this. I’ll get it done this time.

Unless I am mistaken, 3/4 of the members of The Lizardfish have had their second vaccination shot. With all the other shit going on, do I have time to play with the band if they are ready to start playing again? Just another thing to be miserable about, I guess.

May the Fourth Be With You.