I have the flu

I have not written anything since Thursday.  I have the flu.  It hit me at work- sort of and when I got home I was feeling miserable so I went to bed.  And pretty much stayed there until this morning. I gave up tickets to a play I was DYING to see- great seats too ( my friend who gifted us with them was able to swap them out for a later date, different seats but  I am NOT complaining!)  I am shaky but slept ok, without incident so I guess I am better.  We are so short-handed at work right now and I have a million things waiting for me ( more like 500 emails but hey)

I'm gonna give it a shot and see how it goes. No promises.

The worst thing was my eyes hurt so badly I could not focus to read.  Great.  I have THREE books, aching to be read and I was just in bed but NOOOOO. So I watched bad tv

I love the show "Love it or List it" but I know a lot of it is faked for drama purposes.  At some point in the binge watch yesterday, I started judging the characters and their performances.  I didn't LIKE some of the couples.  They behaved badly to the competitor hosts.  You are supposed to like Hilary and David does his best to be obnoxious.  I have a feeling it's just an act on his part.  Hilary was in the Rocky Horror Picture Show- she was the bride Betty Monroe.  Bit of trivia.   I enjoy what she does with the homes, I wondered if the new furniture was included, so I looked it up. For this show it was, It's  Fixer Upper that they have to pay for the furniture they want to keep. It sucks , in my opinion, because most of those people on Fixer Upper are not exactly wealthy, unlike those people on Property Brothers who sometimes have an  "All-in" budget of a million dollars.  Sheesh.

So I am off to work this morning.  Wish me luck.  I haven't really eaten much in the last three days, despite Chris' worried prompting and offers of food.  I'm hungry, just nothing sounds like I should eat  it and some stuff just makes my stomach roll in protest.

I should probably stay home, but you know me.  I will see what the day brings.

inwhich I get political

"Inwhich" was the name of Norman Bel Geddes  magazine BTW so the title to this piece is a reference to that.

I tried to watch last night's debate.   I have already pretty much made my mind up about who I will be voting for in the Primaries.

I also know I am going to vote for WHOEVER gets the Democratic nomination.

If you are voting- and if you are NOT You should tell me so I can YELL at you!- Please consider the following things:

Don't be a :Single issue voter.  Life is not limited to one issue.  Go with the person who best addresses that single issue if you must, but look at ALL the issues and try to imagine that person in the Oval Office.

Four more years of Trump, his mind deteriorating before our eyes and the level of his dictator-like behavior TERRIFIES me.

If you are a Republican, how do you justify what he is doing to the environment, to people in cages, to the judicial system, to everything he touches.   He runs it like he ran HIS businesses.  RIGHT into the ground.

There.  I said it.

Now last night's debate just gave me a headache.  I actually posted  " STOP picking on each other!  tell me what your plan is and why YOU can win"  Sheesh. 

When I was in elementary school, we had a teacher who was BIG on debates.  We would have them all the time.  Given a topic to research and to debate with each other in a formal setting.  There were RULES.  No talking over one another. and strangely, no insults or name calling.  No shouting.  I wonder what Mr. Plotkin would have said about last night.

The moderators were no better.  Talking over the answers. Constantly interrupting.

Someone needed a Referee shirt and a whistle last night. 

The Democrats have to stop behaving like Trump and start being the Adults in the room.  I know it is easier to snark at one another, to have a soundbite that can be replayed. That is what the Millennials seem to want.  Little  bits of information to digest. 

But we need to do better, we need to BE better.  We need intelligent, rational leadership.  We need someone who is not going to appoint people based solely on their support they have demonstrated.  We need SMART capable people to represent our Government out there in the world. We are NOT getting that with Trump and his administration and the lapdogs around him are just saying"yes yes" to everything he says. 

Frankly, I hope someone in the Republican Party steps up to stop this before we have another rise of the Third Reich.   We need both Conservative and Liberal voices to make this Country work, but the fear-mongering that is going on is polarizing our Nation to such a degree that a coming together of minds to solve a problem is becoming more and more impossible.

Movies

My friend Maria posted recently about the film Casablanca and one or two of her friends 'fessed up to not having seen the film.  It reminded me of another friend who said someone checked out the movie from his branch and told him they had not seen the film. He GUSHED that they were in for a treat.  He told me that he wished he could see it for the first time again,and I posted the same sentiment on Maria's page.  What a treat.

It made me think, what film would I like to see for the first time?  Robin Hood, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland.  What a gorgeous, thrilling film that is. Olivia is at her luminous best- that silver gown she looks like she was sewn into is heavenly.  The rumor was she was falling in love (unrequited) with Flynn.  It might have just been a rumor put out by the studios.  He was a real you-know-what, apparently.  Beautiful, but cruel because he knew the power of his beauty.

I was thinking the other day about mediocre films.  When you are in one, do you KNOW it?  What's that like, knowing you are making a movie that's just meh?  I suppose work is work and you learn something from the process, even if the accolades don't come from it.  I was thinking about two of my favorite films  ( there are more I suppose but for the sake of brevity I will mention only two)

A Walk in the Clouds with Keanu  Reeves. It's a beautifully filed if uneven love story about a soldier who comes home from the war to find his wife has taken up with someone else (they married in haste and he wasn't really crushed by it) he takes a job as a traveling salesman and meets a girl going home to her family.  She is pregnant and unmarried and does not know how to avoid the scandal. He offers to pretend to be her husband and abandon her, giving her an "out"  The lush scenery of the Napa Valley is the star of this film and the photography is lovely.  Sweet film.

The Holiday. Pure Rom-Com with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz.  Fun and sweet and NOT an award winner, but hey.  ENTERTAINMENT, nonetheless.

Not every film can be an Oscar nominee and I suspect some are just made to make or lose money for the studios.

What's YOU favorite?

music I listened to

Yesterday, Chris was searching online for a singer whose voice he really liked as a kid.  Turned out to be the lead singer from Deep Purple.  The song he played, however, threw ME back into my childhood; Lalena.  the Deep Purple version was somewhat faithful to the original, but I really wanted to hear the Donovan version.  Chris didn't know it was a Donovan song, and he talked a bit about Deep Purple instead delving into what happened to the singer and it is a tragic tale of lies and greed.  The only Deep Purple song I can name off the top of my head is "Highway Star" which I heard recently blasting at the casino. Boy THAT took me back the the smoky bedrooms of my misspent youth.  Not going there right now.

Donovan, however, evokes a gentler happy time in my life.  My neighbor , Liz worked ( I'm not sure worked is the right work, she might have been a volunteer or something) at an underground radio station in the mid 60's.  Underground radio in Los Angeles was what later became FM radio.it was wild and free-wheeling and I don't know how they got away with the things they said, but it was NOT KHJ! Liz was that girl, the one everyone in the 60's aspired to be; artistic, beautiful with a cool car and a cool boyfriend.  She used to laugh and say "Trendsetter" in a high society voice so it came out Trend- said-a and flip her long hair and laugh.  You knew she didn't take it seriously.  She was the reason I knew about Crosby, Stills and Nash and Donovan.

I loved - and probably still love- Donovan's music.  It meant a lot to me.  I wrote  ( and still write) somewhat bad poetry.  I enjoy the process and sometimes it comes out just as I meant it to but it is not anything anyone would PAY me to do.  It truly is art for arts sake. 

But Donovan, he wrote such deep and lovely things. He made you think. He made you dream. He opened your eyes to the mystic and the mythical that defined the mid 60's

I just downloaded Spotify on my phone for my commute to work.  I just might listen to a set of Donovan, if he is there.

Royal Family

What is it with the British Royal Family and the world's fascination with them?  I have no clue but I seem to have been sucked in.

I had a dream about Harry and Meghan.  I can't remember the dream but the whole vilification of Megan has gotten totally out of hand.   First she was an angel , now she is the Devil Incarnate.  Seriously I read a discussion feed where someone said they would no longer donate to Harry's charity- the Invictus Games- because he was stepping away form his "royal duties"

ok.

Let me get this straight.  The guy tries to leave the family business,because he saw parallels to the problems that caused his mother's death and you feel that NOT donating to a charity that helps wounded and returning  veterans is justified because YOU can't get your tabloid fix.

Yeah.  I get it.  Totally justified.

Harry is what, sixth in line for the Throne?  If Kate and Wills have more children he will drop even further down the line of succession.   So why is everyone so worried about him leaving the Firm?

I wish them the best, hope they can make it without to much intrusion and people will leave them alone.

Name Calling 101

I see that Mr. Trump is conducting yet another Master Class in Infantile Name Calling 101 ( or is it Level 401- I graduated college in 1980, I can't remember how they label the levels)

He's - to quote Daffy Duck- despicable.

I love that I learned all sorts of interesting words from Daffy, none of them as mean spirited as what trips from the corpulent mouth and the squat thumbs of the person who currently places his oversize backside in the chair behind the Resolute desk.

Tell me, when did name calling become acceptable in regular business dealings?  Oh year He did it all the time.  Perhaps that explains his failures, his bankruptcies, his need to borrow millions form overseas banks as banks in this country won't touch him.

How do we explain to our children that "name calling isn't nice" when every word, every tweet, every pseudo news conference involving that man includes some kind of slur?  I don't know.

We need to get back to where we treat each other with civility.  I am sorry but his wife's "campaign "  sadly headed "Be Best" shows a real lack of backbone.  "Be best... WHAT?  It's missing a word, but I think he command of English is not as good as they claim.  Here are a few suggestions:

Be your best
Be a best friend
Be the best you can be


Just a start.

As for me, I am going to do two things.  1- I will try my best ( ooh there's another one for Melania) NOT to lower myself to the level of that man and his followers and not name call.  2- VOTE and get out the vote ( if you are reading this, PLEASE vote, unless you are supporting the current regime.)

We seem to be trapped in a horrible remake of Back to the Future where Biff is somehow President.  Robert Zemekis has a lot to answer for.

Saturday

It's a beautiful day.  I am heading out in a few to meet a friend for lunch .  It's a long weekend and I want to do... something

But what?

Do you ever have so much to do that you wind up doing nothing?  Happens to me all the time.  I make these ambitious  "to do " lists in a vain hope to tackle something and NOTHING gets done, which is why I often add "eat lunch" or "take a nap" so that I can cross something off.

I am looking at hobbies I might take up in the near future.  Another friend of mine observed that hobbies tend to take up all your spare time and spare money if you do them correctly.  I see people whose hobbies become a second source of income, but as my hobbies are writing this blog and eating I doubt my income stream will increase any time in the foreseeable future.

Sigh.

I want to go out in the late Winter sunshine and enjoy the fact that I live in Southern California.  It's Saturday.  That should be enough.