I liked:
- The chopped up timeline and different pov characters.
- That Elvis and Pike are always one second away from declaring their eternal love for one another.
- Heroics, guns, just guys bein’ macho.

I didn’t like:
- The vast number of bad guys. There were Korean gangsters, Mexican cartels, good and bad coyotes, a rapist, a murderer, some car thieves, and a Syrian. It was needlessly complicated.
- Cole was offscreen for too long.
- Jon Stone. I just don’t get him. We don’t gel.

TWILIGHT

Until my DVR kicks in, FX is playing Twilight. Yes! This is a great movie. Do you love sighs? Do you love people staring at each other? Do you love vampires? If you answered Yes, Yes, and No, then this is the perfect movie for you.

Ooh, we are jumping in for the field trip.

It’s weird that Edward highlights his hair.

Bella is one of those annoying people who thinks she is repressing everything and no one can tell how tortured her soul is, but actually everyone is rolling their eyes behind her back.

It’s also weird that Edward wears lipstick. I mean, he wants to be less attractive, right? So why is he a painted lady?

In this flashback the Cullens are eating a deer in olde tyme clothing – including hats and ruffles and cravats and stuff? Did they get all dolled up to run in the woods and rip a deer apart?

Bella needs a book, so she finds a store an hour away with no idea when she can go there. Bella! It’s called Amazon.

Port Angeles: Rape Capital of the Northwest. There are just bands of thugs! It comes up in the next movie, too!

I’m not sure I understand why Edward feels so protective of Bella. (Protective here means creepily possessive, of course.) Does he want to eat her? Or what? Is it a thing where he loves her because she smells like delicious food, so he wants to be near her, but worries that eventually he’ll eat her? But kind of wants to? You know, I wish that other book from Edward’s perspective had come out, because I don’t get it.

Secret best part of this movie: Bella’s dad’s mustache. That thing is amaaaaaazing.

WHITNEY

Oops, this is a repeat.

I am taking a break to have some oatmeal. I hate oatmeal.

SUBURGATORY

Halloween episode! My fave! Also, Jeremy Sisto: I have a thing about you.

He’s playing sex chicken with me, with his mime costume, but I will not blink.

Great costume on mini Emma Stone! Bump-it, velour tracksuit, love it!!!!

Dallas: “…makes people cry and scream and pee my pants.” Ha!

Um, this episode is maybe actually scary? I’ve been scared two times!

Three times: Jay Mohr! AHHHHH!!!

FIRST HALF OF L&O:UK

Third word of the episode: “fortnight.”

Ooh, this is going to be about kids these days, with their sex parties and youtubes!! Why isn’t this concerned mother wearing pearls to clutch?

I love this show, but I do not love the young detective’s neck beard. Shave your neck, handsome British man!

Oh no, it’s a snuff film! But TWIST! The girl is totally alive! I feel like the episode should be over now? But I guess not.

This is a bummer.

Haha, KitKat just fell off the back of the couch.

HAPPY ENDINGS

This show is funny! But there are too many jokes! Ha, that 80s thing where you check out a lady by pulling down your sunglasses!

Brad’s favorite sweatpants are named Karen.

Doorbells on TV startle KitKat even though I haven’t had a doorbell in like three years. So these trick or treat episodes are killing her.

Harold & Kumar 3D – can the world pot supply handle this movie?

Costume: ZZ Top Gun. YES!

Okay, time for english muffin. End of blog.

No context needed:
“What ho!” I said.
“What ho!” said Motty.
“What ho! What ho!”
“What ho! What ho! What ho!”
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

Bertie has been woken by a friend with an urgent letter:
“What is it?” I said. “What on earth’s the matter?”
“Read it!”
“I can’t. I haven’t had my tea.”
“Well, listen then.”
“Who’s it from?”
“My aunt.”
At this point I fell asleep again.

Verdict: read at least one Jeeves and Wooster books, unless you hate fun.

Maid to Match. Here is my three word review: Christian what now? This was a new genre for me, and I don’t get it. It’s a G rated romance where people pray sometimes. Like a Lifetime movie, but one of those Christmas ones where two people with stable jobs and normal personalities fall in love. In other words, boring but pleasant. I don’t see the appeal, since pleasant is pretty easy to find, and you can usually get pleasant and interesting or even pleasant and exciting.

And yet! Some very upsetting things happened. It was kind of tawdry! There were orphans being sold into brothels, for example. I guess getting to second base is more scandalous?

I had a weird problem where I could not remember that the protagonists were white. There were many reasons for this: it’s set in Asheville, which I thought was in Tennessee or maybe North Carolina? The names led me astray: Tillie, Mack, Ora Lou (Ora Lou!!). So I expected the servants in the South in the 18whatever’s to be black. Turns out that it’s set in New York. So sue me! And the lady of the manor wanted to hire Mack because he had a twin, which she thought would look cool – that seemed like something a racist southern 18whatever’s lady would definitely do. And there was a whole part about how white his teeth where, and how big he was, etc, which was again some serious racist stuff. Very very confusing. All of a sudden someone would mention the guy being blond and I was like, WAIT, WHAT?

Anyway that was very disorienting. I kept thinking, “wow, this is some fierce commentary on racism in the Old South.” But it wasn’t, at all.

Verdict: perfect for plump middle-aged ladies with a plane ride coming up.

Henry III – rebuilt Westminster Abbey, got parliament going.

Edward I – Edward Longshanks, from Braveheart! He never quite got Scotland, but he did get Wales. Unfortunately, he is also the guy who expelled the Jews from England. Kind of a mixed bag of a king. Overall, powerful.

Scotland got interesting at this point – Edward I came invading (like everyone before him). But then there was a popular rebellion under Braveheart. He did well for a while, but was eventually defeated by Longshanks and dragged back to London to be quartered. But! There was another Scottish great in the wings. Robert the Bruce charged in, killed his main rival, drove out the English, and became the King of Scotland. I am really cheering for Scotland, which has resisted one million invasion attempts and it’s only 1300!

Edward II – suuuuuucked. Spent a lot of time losing to the Scottish. Edward II was probably bisexual, because he had two different guys who he hung out with constantly and gave titles and land and such. As a result, his court was super corrupt and everyone hated him.

His wife, Isabella, went to live with her brother the King of France and soon became known as the she-wolf of France. She conspired with a pissy English baron named Mortimer. They invaded England (with foreign help). The English hated Edward II anyway, so he was deposed. At first they just imprisoned him, but then decided he was too dangerous, so they jammed a hot poker “up him.” Then showed his body, which didn’t have a visible mark, to prove they hadn’t murdered him. Crafty!

Edward III – started off strong, bad finish. Okay, so once he was of kingly age, Edward III turned on his mother Isabella and that skank Mortimer. England hated them (makes sense since they were clearly awful people). He had Mortimer killed, and Isabella exiled. Off to a great start!

This is when the Black Plague hit, so the rest of his reign is just plague-y. Edward III decided he was the rightful king of France, so he started the Hundred Years War. He and his fighting son, the Black Prince, were very successful at this new War. The Prince even captured the French King and England got a ton of continental territory back.

Edward III went senile. His court devolved into bickering between the Black Prince and Edward III’s other son John of Gaunt. As far as I can tell it was very boring. The Black Prince died just before Edward III, so his son became the new king.

Richard II – zzzz. Richard II started out okay by quelling the Peasant’s Revolt (they revolted partly about a poll tax, which has never been a good idea), but then he was somehow both weak and and a tyrant, plus uninterested in actually running the country. He was deposed fairly peacefully in favor of his cousin, son of John of Gaunt. Of course, he was later murdered too, just in case.

Richard I – Lionheart! It turns out he was not that great. I know him from Robin Hood, where he was beloved and brave and such. He was viewed that way at the time, too. But did you know he only went to England twice in his entire reign? Two times in ten years! Also, under his careless reign the Jewish people were slaughtered. See, they had loaned money to the Crusaders, and then the Crusaders came back and did not want to repay the loans. Instead of coming up with a payment plan or something, the Crusaders just murdered the Jews.

He died as he lived, fighting his millionth stupid war.

A word for his betrothed, poor Princess Alice of France. Okay – first Lionheart was supposed to marry her, so she was sent to live in the English court. Rumor is that Henry II (the king, her fiance’s father) took her as a mistress AND knocked her up. And then Richard married someone else while they were still engaged. Then her father offered her to John as part of a deal where he got France and John got England. That deal also fell through. She eventually married a duke, but wow. Always a bridesmaid, eh, Alice?

John – Note there has only been one John. My guess is that no one else wanted to be a King John because he was so shitty. Also see: Robin Hood. John had been trying to get the throne for twenty years already, like an impatient jerk. There was another heir in the mix – his young nephew Arthur of Brittany was actually the rightful heir, as John’s older brother’s son. But whatever, everyone decided to go with John because Arthur was so young. Arthur, at 16, was trying to nab more Norman territory in France when John captured him. Did John later sneak into his chamber and murder him? Maybe!

Putting aside John’s murderous tendencies, he was also bad at running a country. He ran afoul of the Pope and got England put under an interdict, meaning no Mass, no weddings, no funerals, etc. The people did not like that so much. He also lost the English holdings on the Continent,. The one long-view good thing he did, signing the Magna Carta, which basically invented liberty, he immediately reneged on. He ran away, and England was very nearly taken over by France. John saved everyone by dying from eating fruit (hahah!), leaving England with half the land he’d started with, and a 9 year old to run things.

William I – uh, did the Norman Conquest, otherwise not too interesting.

William II – Called William Rufus. Enjoyed taxes and getting murdered. He was hunting with his younger brother and was mysteriously killed with an arrow. The hunting party left him to die, perhaps to really emphasize how sketchy the whole thing was. He was found and dragged away by a charcoal burner and buried without a funeral.

Henry I – The murderous brother! This is what we call motive.  Henry I set up laws. I was surprised to learn that England still did not have the number zero at this time, which makes all the taxing amazing. He started Exchequer, so called because they used a checked cloth to calculate things. They really needed that zero. His only son drowned, so he crowned his daughter Matilda. All the nobles smiled and nodded. But when Henry I died from eating too many indigestible eels (true story!), they instead crowned Henry’s nephew

Stephen – Stephen’s rule was chaotic, largely because Matilda was always trying to take over. She got all the way to London, but the Londoners hated her and she escaped by walking on the frozen Thames. History! She sort of won out in the end, though, when an exhausted Stephen agreed that Matilda’s son would be the next king, passing over his own son, the unfortunately named Eustace.

Henry II – Played by Peter O’Toole. Great king! A+. He basically started the bureaucracy that would keep England going up to right now. He ruled England a quite a bit of France due to his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. He also married his son to the princess of France to get more French territory, ignoring the fact that they were 2 and 6 years old.

He was very good friends with Thomas a Becket – they enjoyed hunting and carousing and so on. Then he appointed Thomas to be archbishop of Canterbury and things soured. There were various church/state disagreements. Henry II said “I wish someone would get him out of my hair!” and thereby accidentally got his old friend martyred in Canterbury Cathedral, on the altar! He felt super bad about it. Thomas became St. Thomas, so all’s well that ends well?

During Henry II’s reign England took over Ireland. See, an Irish king was chased out, so he asked an English baron to help him get his kingdom back. In exchange, he offered his daughter. So Eva and Strongbow (sweet nickname!) were wed, and Strongbow’s forces ran into Ireland and were soon followed by Henry II’s. So he nabbed Ireland for the kingdom.

A word on marriage. Henry II was happily married to Eleanor of Aquitaine for 15 years, then very unhappily so until their deaths. It seems he took a mistress, Rosamund, who the queen may have stabbed outside a rose maze (history!). And anyway Eleanor helped Henry’s rascally sons in their frequent attempts to take England or the family’s parts of France before their rightful time. Henry put her in prison. Henry’s first son (the one with the preschool marriage) died of dysentary, leaving, in order, Richard the Lionheart, Geoffrey, and John. Henry liked John the most, for reasons no one understands.

So after the eldest son died, Richard should have been named heir. He really wanted that settled so he could run off to the Crusades. Henry II dragged his feet, so Richard teamed up with the King of France and they forced Henry II into it. Richard would be the next king.

1. Lois’s hair. (Not the later seasons’ soccer mom haircut.  Yikes.) In the first few years she had this sweet bob. It was so shiny. It moved like the Little Mermaid’s hair. I wanted it BAD. I wanted to be be Lois in general (sweet job, hot coworker, bffs with Superman – what’s not to like?) but I would have settled for that hair.

2. Will they or won’t they? (They will.) It was very important to me that Lois & Clark get together, but I had infinite patience for the false starts and time rewinds and bouts of amnesia. We’ll get ‘em next week! Like this one time they were hanging out with HG Wells (as you do) and he took Lois to the future, showing her that she ends up with Superman/Clark and their children form a utopia, etc. Lois writes CLARK = SUPERMAN on a piece of paper, so she will know when she’s back to her normal time. But Clark spots it and nabs it! Nooooooo! Or the time she finally does find out, but then Clark has to go to Krypton! This was before spoilers, so I was basically thinking, “Oh no, this show is going to so weird with Clark on Krypton. I guess it will just be Lois The Reporter And Her Reporting Adventures.” (I was not the sharpest 12 year old.) That only made it more exciting though – I really thought anything could happen.

3. The Kents. You know, it’s really weird that Clark’s parent were in every single episode. This definitely warped me for life. They were delightful, don’t get me wrong, but should 30 year old Clark really need their advice every single week? Thanks for making me codependent, Lois & Clark!

Also: Lex Luthor! Vague AND misleading information about journalism. Two reporters getting the front page every day. Silly scifi. Lois’s outfits. Perry, with his yelling. How I thought Perry was Lou Grant for a really long time. That the Daily Planet seemed to have only a front page and a gossip column. The kidnappings – dozens? hundreds?

Lois & Clark, I loved you.

Hawaii Five-0. Great love story, or greatest love story? Seriously, they are in love.

Person of Interest. This is a very good show if you imagine Michael Emerson is Oracle and Jim Caveziel is Huntress. And I do.

A Gifted Man. Yes, I watched this. I’m getting a head start on ages 50-75, when I will watch CBS exclusively. Anyway, I am not sure if this is good or not. I am going to keep watching it for a few reasons:
1. Patrick Wilson is handsome, and successful neurosurgeons on TV are sexy.
2. I like shows where we are shown people being very good at their jobs. You know how a lot of shows will just tell you, “House is an amazing diagnostician,” but you feel like if that were true he would be better at diagnosis? It takes him forever! And he seems to run a lot of intrusive tests that later turn out to have been useless. Lawyer shows do this too – “he’s amazing in court!” but I can hear him talking in court and he is not good at it! And I think he forgot to depose the witnesses.
Dr. Patrick Wilson is actually a good surgeon, and I know because they showed him removing a brain tumor and performing a caesarean at the same fucking time! Love it!
3. I like the grouchy assistant he couldn’t live without. I like it on every show!

There are some big negatives, though:
A. Ugh, ghost of ex wife? Gag.
B. Said ghost has a very annoying smile.
C. I don’t like the free clinic full of poor but noble people who just need this rich guy to help them out. Get a grant! Partner with a hospital! Raise some funds! You can make it without him! I don’t like the other side of it either, where the poor but noble people can teach the rich guy about being kind and so on. I don’t think there is a correlation between wealth and moral fiber, so shut up, show!

Also, Montaigne didn’t like the ubiquitous penis graffiti, thinking that it gave women unrealistic expectations. I find every part of this very charming.

12. Further thoughts on sex: married people had a duty not to enjoy sex with one another too much. It was corrupting, and the husband especially had a duty not to corrupt his wife. Given this, it’s a surprise twist that women were allowed to enjoy sex with others. Moral relativism, blah blah, but something seems just a bit off in 16th century Catholic France.

13. The benefit of goodwill. Nietzsche again, who I am surprised to like so much: “Good nature, friendliness, And courtesy of heart…have made much greater contributions to culture than those much more famous expressions of this drive, called piety, charity, and self-sacrifice.”

14. The benefit of a bouncer. Instead of a tough, armed, intimidating guard, Montaigne had an old guy at the door. He said he “serves not so much to defend my door as to offer it with more decorum and grace.” The idea is that openness is actually safer – thieves don’t open unlocked doors. Charming, again, right up until those plague infected soldiers settled in.

15. Shared humanity. Montaigne said we owe a moral duty to our fellow man. We share consciousness, which means we can recognize something in each other, which should make us kind to one another.

Today I walked by a man and his son, asking for money. The boy was reading while the father held up their sign. I recognized them, if you know what I mean. I didn’t give them anything. God knows this is complicated, but I wasn’t kind and I regret it.