Triscribe

Category: Brooklyn

  • Farewell to May 2016…

    Farewell to May 2016, hello June 2016.  Times flies.  I guess I’m back from my latest hiatus from triscribe.  Life is funny, in a not very ha-ha kind of way, as I’ve been saying on Facebook, and I’ve been rather introspective – more than usual, if that’s possible – about what is the meaning of life, and why can’t life come with an instruction manual (as I noted on tumblr, to explain a lag in posts).

    I’ve also come to the conclusion that I should try to stay away from news headlines, as this has been one of the strangest presidential campaigns.

    Anyway, APA Heritage Month is about to close, but APA issues – American issues – don’t go away. See below for APIAVote’s latest PSA for this year’s presidential election (and fits for every election). As Angry Asian Man notes, listen to the Sulus! (and all the other folks who are getting out the vote). (h/t Angry Asian Man’s Facebook page post; Angry Asian Man log post).

     

    And between the #StarringJohnCho campaign and the #StarringConstanceWu campaign, I’m just hoping that we keep the dialog going past May about increasing APAs on screen.  I appreciate Amanda Hess’ article in the NY Times on APA actors and actresses’ expressing their concerns of continued invisibility/pursuit for visibility on screen.

    Oh, don’t forget behind the screen! I really hope that the Star Trek movie will be at least ok, if not good, if only so that director Justin Lin can keep his own reputation intact. I loved that this Wired article about Lin reminded me that he directed that infamous paintball episode on “Community” (which, if you haven’t seen it, you should; it’s hilarious). With Star Trek about to be a tv show again (well, a streaming one, anyway), Lin ought to get this almost 50 year old franchise going again. And, hey, he and John Cho reunited for the new Star Trek movie; so this has to be good for something!

    (disclaimer: I still haven’t seen Lin’s movie “Better Luck Tomorrow,” which has John Cho; go figure).

    (and as Angry Asian Man noted, at least with the new Star Trek movie, there’s a movie poster where you don’t have to Photoshop John Cho on it).

    Last, but not least, I note that I walked through the Brooklyn War Memorial over at Cadman Plaza Park on Sunday, the day before Memorial Day. I was really moved by the inscription:

    THIS MEMORIAL DEDICATED / TO THE HEROIC MEN AND WOMEN OF THE BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN / WHO FOUGHT FOR LIBERTY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1941-1945 / AND ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO SUFFERED AND DIED / MAY THEIR SACRIFICE INSPIRE FUTURE GENERATIONS / AND LEAD TO UNIVERSAL PEACE.

    Food for thought, during our interesting times.  I wish the pursuit for peace was really happening… keep hope alive.

  • Farewell to Argle-Bargle, Jiggery Pokery, and all that

    The passing of Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court, on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016.  Here’s the in-depth obituary in the NY Times, by Adam Liptak.

    Check out the link to NPR’s Nina Totenberg’s remembrance of J. Scalia.   I liked how Totenberg explained some questions of concern – the work of the US Supreme will still continue (that’s a given), but if there’s a 4-4 tie on some cases, there won’t be precedential value for some cases beyond the circuits of the cases’ origins.

    Slate’s Jordan Weissmann has some analysis on what might occur with some cases, including the affirmative action case (which is back at the US Supreme Court again).  (I’ll also link Weissmann’s article on how the phrases “jiggery-pokery” and “pure applesauce” became part of the mythos of Scalia).

    Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick on how J. Scalia captivated us, even when a whole lot of us may have vehemently disagreed with him.  There really won’t be a US S.Ct. justice like him anymore (probably, anyway).  Lithwick’s remembrance of Scalia is also worth a read.

    Personally, I wish we didn’t have to be so partisan right away about who will replace Scalia, since his passing was so sudden and shocking.

    But, of course, the debating went into high gear, with the Republicans already decrying the idea of any confirmation of a prospective nominee.  President Obama is still president, and he has a job to do – pick a nominee for the Court.  If the Senate won’t do its job… well, I guess it’s on them.

    See here in the NY Times by Carl Hulse and Mark Landler about how the battle lines are drawn.   And, as Lithwick noted, Obama has a lot of prospective nominees; it’s not like there isn’t a whole load of choices, even possibly moderate ones.

    The Republicans might very well hit new level of ludicrousness here.   We might want to revisit how this country handled, say, the failed nomination of Abe Fortas under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, or the confirmed nomination of Anthony Kennedy under Ronald Reagan’s administration (under the final year of that administration, at that). But, we really haven’t had anything like this at all in modern history, at least nothing that might last a full year of a vacancy.

    (NPR has an overview on the time frames and nominations of yore).

    PBS NewsHour also has a nice review on how ugly this could get, without a hope of compromise (at least, nothing on the horizon, anyway).

    It’s easy for me to blame the Republicans, from the armchair quarterback position.  It’s not like I’m the one making appointments or confirming them.  I did a search of Scalia in past posts on the triscribe blog, and as I said here in the post on Jeffrey Toobin’s book, The Oath,  about how things could get messy (and that was my commentary about the nomination of Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (later confirmed)): realistically and in a fair-minded way, I think it might even get hard to figure out who to blame in the long run (if, say, the President doesn’t pick a perfectly good candidate to make the Republicans look foolish here).

    But, maybe it’s not about blaming anyone; maybe it’s about making sure that things get done and we don’t get stupid?  Or is that wishful thinking on my part?

    At least there isn’t total ugliness: let’s remember that J. Scalia and J. Ginsburg had a warm friendship, despite the political and jurisprudential differences.  (I thought this article at vox.com by Dara Lind was interesting about that, in light of how uncivil our world is these days).  People are people and maybe we could look to our better angels and how we can be good to each other.

    Oh, well, on a ice cold Valentine’s Day, there is a lot of food for thought.  Stay warm!

  • Happy Lunar New Year and Post Super Bowl Edition

    Happy Lunar New Year! (a day late; but celebrations in China are still ongoing, and events in the city for almost the rest of the month, so whatever!).

    May the Year of the Monkey bring us all the luck and good fortune we need (and we need a lot of that).

    See here in Time Out New York for more Lunar New Year events.

    Gothamist’s Jen Chung on the 8 auspicious foods of the Lunar New Year (well, to Chinese people, anyway).

    How cool is that: over at Mashable, photos of Chinese New Year, Chinatown, NYC, circa 1960.  A lot of those old landmarks or restaurants are gone and 1960s fashion is what it is, but these photos might as well have been anytime since or before then. (h/t Angry Asian Man‘s Facebook page post).

    Speaking of Super Bowl:

    Super Bowl Sunday was this past Sunday, with the NFL going all out for Super Bowl 50 (going with the Arabic numerals, rather than the usual Roman numeral of “L”), and there were expectations for the game between Denver Broncos vs. Carolina Panthers.  Kudos to Denver; quarterback Peyton Manning got his fairy tale ending (assuming he retires).

    I do think one day, quarterback Cam Newton and the Panthers will win a Super Bowl; they were simply great this past regular season and at that NFC Championship game, they scored ridiculously well.  But, as Denver showed, defense beats offense.

    I was rooting for Peyton and Denver, for sentimental reasons, but toward the last five minutes of the game, I kept wanting Cam and Carolina to make it competitive, even as the defense was putting the nail on the coffin.   I’m pretty convinced that the curse of Sports Illustrated lives (since Cam Newton got on the cover and people who get on the cover get cursed; the previous cover was Peyton and Tom Brady, and they couldn’t both lose at the AFC game).

    And, as usual, the disclaimer holds: I’m only a casual sports viewer.  It’s not like I understood a lot of what was going on.

    I was impressed to see all those past Super Bowl MVPs prior to the start of the game.

    I understood that the promotions/marketing was all about how this was the San Francisco Super Bowl, and it was at the home of 49’ers, but it was funny how they were actually miles away from Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and all the other San Fran landmarks. The Super Bowl of New York/New Jersey was at least a less vaguely odd situation; you could still see the NYC skyline from Meadowlands, after all.

    I thought the halftime show was colorful.  Coldplay had some audio problems, but I liked how Chris Martin, Beyonce, and Bruno Mars (with Mark Ronson in the background) looked like they had fun in the end.  Kids were brought out, because of course this stuff is all about the kids (insert sarcasm there).  Generally, I agreed with the initial Time Magazine reaction by Daniel D’Addario – it was a decently entertaining halftime show. Also, I generally don’t look for political messages from halftime show performances, and even if Beyonce had been making one, I didn’t think people should have been offended simply because Beyonce has a political opinion – and at least she didn’t let her point of view get in the way of her making a good show and promoting her own brand (and vice versa – she seemed to have made her point the way she wanted to make it; I giver her credit for that).

    It’s funny how with each passing year, I’m becoming more convinced than ever that the NFL and the broadcast networks should all apologize to Janet Jackson, because without her allegedly notorious contribution to that halftime show years ago, we wouldn’t have these halftime shows that are so doggedly determined to be campy, celebratory, and entertaining, at the risk of having so much nostalgia for certain bands and brands, and maybe being a tad boring. (plus, Jackson’s so-called nipplegate was also because of Justin Timberlake, yet she still gets blamed; sigh).

    The commercials generally disappointed me, not that I really watched for commercials (this year, I really didn’t; I missed most of the 1st quarter commercials and I really tried to pay attention to the game).  They were an odd mix, in my opinion.   The “puppy monkey baby” commercial for Mountain Dew disturbed me for (a) blatantly hitting all the cute points of a Super Bowl commercial; and (b) that puppy monkey baby chimera did not have the cute parts of a puppy, monkey, or baby. The chimera made me not want to drink Mountain Dew (which I don’t do anyway).

    I missed seeing the notorious Doritos commercial, and later saw it online – this is the one where the fetus ejected itself from the womb just for… Doritos.  It was disturbing – seriously, fetus: Doritos aren’t that good.  It’s not worth risking your life to eat something you can’t even eat yet.

    I say this because, as I get older, I find that I can’t eat Doritos endlessly like I used to do.  It gets unappetizing after awhile.

    But, the movie commercials were impressive.  Captain America! Jason Bourne!  The commercials made me want to see those two movies in particular (but, I was hoping to do so anyway, so clearly I’m just weak).

    And… Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck, who I’ve been deeming “Batfleck”) shilling for Turkish Airlines, to fly us viewers to Gotham City, which Wayne Enterprises has invested to rebuild; and Lex Luther (Jason Eisenberg) also shilling for Turkish Airlines, to fly us viewers to take us to Metropolis, which Luthor’s company has invested to rebuild since the General Zod disaster of “Man of Steel.”  Uh huh.  Geez, Bruce, Lex: did Gotham or Metropolis really need these ads?

    Needless to say, neither of those commercials has persuaded me of a genuine desire to watch “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice” or fly Turkish Airlines.   I’d watch the movie mostly to see how Batfleck probably won’t match up with Christian Bale’s Dark Knight (at best, Batfleck will have to be his own man), or how Batman and Superman will really have to get over their testosterone rivalry before they realize they’re much better at being buds.  But, hey, corporate synergy!

    Speaking of corporate synergy: Ant-Man (with what sounded like the voice of actor Paul Rudd) and his stealing Bruce Banner’s last can of Coca Cola, and Bruce as Hulk going after Ant-Man – that commercial was a much better way to meld brands.

    The Toyota Prius commercials about the bank robbers who go on a police chase with their stolen Prius and the cops who use their own Prius to go after the bank robbers – hilarious.

    Helen Mirren, via Budweiser, telling us not to drink and drive because she said so – awesome.  Although, I’m convinced that she would drink better beer in real life.  And, the Bud Light commercial with Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer, along with the Ant-Man movie actors Paul Rudd and Michael Pena: Seth and Amy didn’t convince me of how a Bud Light Party could be an analog for a political party (that kind of party?  Come on!), but Paul Rudd and Michael Pena were hilarious. Hmm!

    The Audi commercial using David Bowie’s StarMan song (i.e., Commander Tom to Ground Control) was strangely moving to me.  I think it was the timing of it – since it came after the passing of David Bowie.

    Slate’s Seth  Stevenson did a nice rundown of the commercials over at Slate.  He was hilarious about puppy monkey baby (and I ditto the weirded out reaction), and about the Bud Light commercial (yeah, America apparently does like Paul Rudd a lot).

    Well, that’s what I’ll post for now.  Perhaps one of these days I won’t do a combined Lunar New Year and Super Bowl post…

  • Post-Snowmageddon 2016

    Some wrap up on the storm!  Last week this time, we were in the tail end of the blizzard.  There are various names for it – Snowpocalypse, Snowmaggedon, etc. I went with Snowmaggedon simply because it was a lot; I did not call it “Jonah” just because I was not giving in to the Weather Channel’s ridiculous naming conventions of winter storms (no, Weather Channel, these storms aren’t like hurricanes).

    Of course, because the blizzard happened on a Saturday, it wasn’t a snow day that disrupted the workday. And, I had predicted no snow accumulation at all, a few days before the storm; I was shocked that, by 11am Saturday, 1/23/16, the thing was a blizzard and was going to be less than two feet.  It wasn’t like I did math or anything, of course…

    Anyway, I generally thought that the city did a decent job – the travel ban more or less got people off the streets; the MTA didn’t totally go overboard, even though removing bus and removing subways from exterior lines were measures that left everybody but Manhattan (well, more or less) without travel anyway.  More specifically, however, on Facebook, I did gripe  about how the street corners/crosswalks were in awful shape by Sunday evening, 1/24/16, and questioned who was responsible for that, since clearly no one anything.

    On the Monday after the blizzard, 1/25/16, Gothamist had a good post on the problem at street corners/crosswalks. I agree that this is a yearly problem, but I ended up not e-mailing my city councilman about it, since the melting happened so fast by Tuesday, 1/26/16 (hitting more than 40 degrees, short of 50 degrees, Fahrenheit can do that easily).  NY Times says that the job of clearing snow to the corners belongs to the property owners adjacent to that sidewalk, but I think that enforcement – in the form of hefty fines – is clearly not happening. Someday we have to figure this out in a better way, if only to ensure public safety. Sigh.

    Also, the perennial question appeared to be who will the city leave behind/forget in the process of plowing.  Given that this was a historic blizzard, I was curious, and lo and behold, it looked like Queens, the biggest borough, made the stink about how their neighborhoods didn’t get plowed (Staten Island came awfully lose, when I was watching the news late that Sunday night). I’m not going to belittle how Queens got buried, but considering how every mayor since John Lindsay has tried so hard to save Queens from snow, I do wonder why we haven’t figured out how to do better by now with Queens.

    Bob Hardt over at NY1’s Inside City Hall’s blog, raised the point in his post about the plowing that, the city did a decent job and unfortunately, someone is going to be the last plowed, but the city ought to review and revise the plowing plan.

    Then, the NY TImes covered how the city had a new plowing plan and that it clearly didn’t do that great a job for Queens. Apparently, after the December 2010 – day after Christmas mess which stranded a lot of us in south Brooklyn and the rest of the outerboroughs – Sanitation modified the usual plowing of primary, secondary, and tertiary streets, and used a so-called two level process, critical and sector. I thought the NY Times article was interesting for explaining the process, but didn’t quite fully explain what happened.

    Frankly, I had no idea that Sanitation wasn’t doing their usual primary, secondary, and tertiary plowing during the blizzard. Then again, it sounds like a lot of finger pointing going on, so the city and the media might actually want to thoroughly investigate what happened and what might be a better system, so we don’t ended up leaving people buried and stranded again.

    My theory – which is hardly based on any real scientific research on my part, of course – is that we’ll have more weird, wacky storms with the climate instability.  We might want to learn to adapt somehow, but it sure is going to cost us…

    Anyway, if we’re lucky, we might not see more snow for awhile yet? And, the snow was a generally better distraction compared to a lot of other bad news in the world.

  • A Review of Reading/Literary Highlights 2015

    As a follow up to the 2014 analysis, here’s the analysis of 2015.  At a total of 43 books, the count in the year 2015 was the least I’ve read since I started keeping track of my reading since 2009, a year in which I had started my count late and so I couldn’t say what was the total that year).  The list for 2015 is this post.  The breakdowns for the 2015 reading are as follows:

    7 non-fiction; 34 fiction; 2 poetry; 14 ebooks; 1 history/literary criticism; 1 memoirs; 4 literary fiction books; 2 romance novels; 17 comics/graphic novels; 1 anthology; 5 mystery/suspense/thriller books; 2 in the category of meditation/psychology/medicine/self-help/lifestyle type books; 6 approximately children books (not counting the comics/graphic novels); and 1 career development book.

    I did a check, out of curiosity, to see the gender and/or racial/ethnic breakdowns of the authors.  About 6 were women writers/co-writers (not counting any in Manhattan Noir 2).  I was terrible with people of color as writers/co-writers; possibly two or three, not counting those behind the comics/graphic novels.  The reality is that I was haphazard with my reading; I’d have to be more conscious and active in deciding what I read and who I read, to have a more diverse reading.  Will I do that in 2016?  That remains to be seen; I haven’t made such a specific or concrete resolution.

    I tackled some heavier reading with Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book was for my book club meeting this year, actually).  Austen’s Mansfield Park was very much not my favorite; it took forever to read and wasn’t that much intriguing.  I couldn’t get into Woolf’s The Years; the idea of taking in the moment is always a good idea, but I couldn’t “get” it – it wasn’t about a story and that made it harder for me to swallow.

    I really binged for a period in reading ebooks for awhile there.  As usual, thanks to the public libraries, Brooklyn Public Library and New York Public Library, for much of the books and ebooks.  As usual, by November, I didn’t do reading because of NaNoWriMo.

    In 2015, I still didn’t finish Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass or Linda Greenhouse’s Becoming Justice Blackman.  I still didn’t get to reading Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose or Shakespeare’s King Lear.  Due to work, I didn’t get to go to much book club meetings.  I read a lot of my issues of bar association magazines, since I was behind, but I’m behind on reading everything (forget watching television; my watching television in 2015 was also pathetic).  2015 was strangely disappointing, honestly.

    Books purchases were mostly from the independent bookstores (thanks, Strand; Housing Works; and McNally Jackson).  Online book purchases were still from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

    Literary notable things in 2015: Brooklyn Book Festival!  MoCCA Arts Festival (comics and graphic novels galore).  And, I completed (well, for NaNoWriMo purposes “completed”) yet another NaNoWriMo project.  I had checked out the Ernest Hemingway exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum; very impressive.  The exhibit motivated me to read a Hemingway book, and I liked reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast at the end of the year.

    Hopefully I will have a better year of reading in 2016.

    (cross-posted at sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com)

  • Some TV Highlights of 2015

    A little belated, but here it is.   As usual, my personal TV Highlights of 2015 is not really a best/worst list and, as noted in previous years, it doesn’t help that I’ve really cut back on tv viewing (shocking, I know). I still don’t have Showtime, HBO, or Cinemax (so, no “Homeland,” “Game of Thrones,” or “The Knick”), and I have not pursued the streaming trend (so, still no “House of Cards,” “Orange is the New Black,” and also no “The Man in the High Castle,” “Marvel’s Daredevil,” or “Marvel’s Jessica Jones”).  But, I managed to catch some “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” via a friend.  So maybe I’m not totally hopeless?

    Yet, I’m not still on the “Downton Abbey” bandwagon (still shocking). Moreover, I’m behind on loads of stuff – missed “The Americans” or “Key and Peele”; blew off watching the last season of “Community” and “Justified”; and much other fascinating stuff that I couldn’t fit because of various reasons (primarily: life, or what passes for it, and 2015 was not a very good year for me, personally). And I didn’t even get to watch all the superhero shows out there on regular tv, forget the streaming stuff.

    Regarding other items that didn’t make my list: I watched some of the 2nd season of “Broadchurch” on BBC America, but not very consistently and it felt disappointing for me (or perhaps that was the point: that this kind of situation that Inspector Hardy and Sgt. Miller investigate can never be fully resolved?). I was also an inconsistent viewer of “The Walking Dead” and I could only take so much of suffering that the show portrays (or, specifically, how much more can poor Glenn, played by Steve Yuen, can take).

    The one episode return of BBC’s “Sherlock” aired on PBS on New Year’s Day 2016, so I’m not including it here. I might just have to do a separate blog post about it soon. Note that it re-airs on PBS (Channel 13/WNET in the NY Metro area) on Jan. 10, 2016, and on the PBS website.

    In no particular order:

    1. Adventure Time (Cartoon Network)

    The adventures of Finn the Human and Jake the Dog and all their friends – and the mini-series about Marceline the Vampire Queen – all of it weird, wacky, and heart-breaking. This is a kids show? (check out the AV Club‘s coverage of it; some deep analytical stuff).

    1. Elementary (CBS)

    Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Joan Watson dealt with a tumultuous season back in the 1st half of 2015, and they came back in November 2015 at a weird base level of emotion: at least, with the arrival of Sherlock’s dad, Morland Holmes, I’m left wondering what the hell will happen (and why the writers still don’t push more from the other cast members of Aidan Quinn as Gregson and Jon Michael Hill as Bell).

    Moreover, did Sherlock and Moreland totally forgot about Mycroft? They act like he doesn’t exist, which bothers me, because as weird and meandering as his storyline was, I still thought that he and Sherlock had a story (as opposed to the terribly uncomfortable off-screen romance/affair that Mycroft had with Joan). Plus, Morland would turn into the candidate for close to worst dad if he managed to screw both his sons up like this. Anyway, John Noble as Morland Holmes has been intriguing – but it often felt like he’s channeling Walternate, Walter Bishop from the dark alternate universe of “Fringe,” who was a bad father for a large number of reasons.

    1. Dancing with the Stars (ABC)

    Fun watching the pros, who are turning into real stars, dancing. I can’t say that I cared for a lot of the “stars” (some of whom I still don’t know how they should be considered stars), but it’s still fun television. Val Chmerkovskiy still got my interest, I have to say…

    1. The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)

    Farewell to David Letterman in 2015.

    1. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS)

    Welcome (to broadcast network late night tv) to Stephen Colbert. I’m not a Colbert fan to begin with, but he’s okay. Jon Batiste and the Stay Human band are loads of fun and talent.

    1. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart/Trevor Noah (Comedy Central)

    Farewell to Jon Stewart in 2015. Sniff. Welcome to Trevor Noah. Same show, new host, less righteousness (without Jon Stewart, I doubt righteousness can quite be there). But, Noah aims to make a laugh, and I laugh. I can’t hate or fault the show for that.

    1. The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (Comedy Central)

    Larry Wilmore aims for the righteousness, with a laugh.  I like that Wilmore and the show have heart.

    1. Masterpiece (specifically: Grantchester, Wolf Hall, Downton Abbey, and Arthur and George) (PBS)

    Grantchester brought the return of actor Robson Green to PBS (he’s aged okay, but not quite as cute as his old Reckless days, when he was the philandering doctor), as the police inspector, interacting with the vicar played by James Norton. Norton’s clearly the handsome charmer this time, but the two had a good buddy/bromance vibe. Decent series.

    Wolf Hall – wow. Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell – subtle and watchable. And, Damian Lewis as Henry VIII – he seemed quite capable playing creepy as ever.

    I managed to catch Downton Abbey this past season, even if I’m not on the bandwagon.

    Arthur and George – a curious way to explore Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and life in turn of the century England. After more or less watching the series, I might make a better tackle at the original book (which I didn’t finish because I was lazy).

    1. Doctor Who (BBC/BBC America)

    Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor – he’s great. Strange season (mostly two-parters, leading to the emotionally tumultuous farewell to Clara Oswald, played by Jenna Coleman). But: Peter Capaldi!

    1. Better Call Saul (AMC)

    The fate of Saul Goodman – or how Jimmy McGill became Saul Goodman, the lawyer who intertwined with a certain chemistry teacher’s meth situation.

    1. Mad Men series finale (AMC)

    Farewell to Don Draper and associates. I never quite got on the Mad Men bandwagon, but that series finale was worthy viewing.

    1. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix)

    Funny, weird, and kind of heartbreaking. I’m putting it as a highlight even though I didn’t watch all of it yet, simply because it was that something as television (I could see why no network aired it; it’s a weird sitcom).

    1. Galavant (ABC)

    Galavant is a medieval fairytale, musical comedy. I liked it and I’m glad that it’s back for this year!

    1. Agent Carter (ABC)

    An original Agent of SHIELD, Peggy Carter dealt with the post-World War II world – and she was a lot of fun to watch.

    1. NY Mets taking it to the World Series… even though we lost…

     

    Honorable mentions:

    The Wiz (NBC)

    The Late, Late Show with James Corden (CBS) (lots of watchable moments in 2015)

    The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (NBC) (lots of watchable moments in 2015)

    Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (still terrific from what I was able to watch on YouTube).

    I’ll Have What Phil’s Having (PBS) (Phil Rosenthal, most known for co-creating “Everyone Loves Raymond,” on eating adventurously).

    Nova (PBS) (especially the episodes for “Making of North America” (the continent not enough people really think of in so far as it came to be); and “Chasing Pluto” (the incredible photos from the space craft New Horizons, the science story of 2015!)).

    American Experience (PBS) (the episodes on Walt Disney were engrossing and fascinating).

    First Peoples (PBS) (fascinating look at the evolution of early homo sapiens, and how they became the aboriginal peoples on each continent).

    I’m probably forgetting other notable stuff of 2015, but I never promise to be comprehensive!

  • Merry Christmas 2015!

    “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will towards men.”  (Luke 2:14)

    I suppose wishing for peace on earth and goodwill to all is a stretch, but that’s what this time of year is about.

    Listening to Handel’s “Messiah” at the moment, and will probably listen to more Christmas music to get myself in the Christmas mood.  I will try to stay away from Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you,” since it’s ubiquitous and almost tiresome for me.  For some reason, I’ve been amused lately by Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time.”

    Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the original video, so… this is… interesting…

    I was recently watching the original “Miracle on 34th Street” movie and I realized more than ever how it was a funny way to go into the whole Santa and the law thing. I’m still amazed by how Kris Kringle’s lawyer pulled it off, but considering that the burden of proof/persuasion in civil litigation is that much easier than in criminal law, plus considering it was about Kris Kringle’s sanity, so the lawyer expedited the process – well, it is impressive!

    Some holiday items of interest:

    NPR on Santa’s cookie and milk habit.  Personally, I think that Santa really has to get over this snacking thing.

    And NPR on how NORAD got into the Santa tracking business…

    Over at the A.V. Club: The evolution of that Christmas thing from Saturday Night Live, “I Wish It Was Christmas Today,” with Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, and Tracy Morgan, looking festive and silly.  And, I mean silly – it’s goofy to watch them do that thing over the years.  And I totally didn’t realize that their song (or Horatio Sanz’s song, since he did the singing with Fallon, as Kattan just held the keyboard and bopped his head and Morgan energetically danced) had a cover done by someone else (I’ve heard the song on one of the car commercials on tv, but didn’t realize that it was THAT song).  Ultimately, there’s something positive to be said about silliness and Christmas.

    Stay tuned: tonight on BBC America, it’s the Doctor Who Christmas episode.  The Doctor has a reunion with River Song.  Their out-of-time love story continues, I suspect.

    Further stay tuned: the 2015 Reading List and TV List will eventually be posted.

    Currently reading: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.

    (cross-posted at sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com)

  • The End of NaNoWriMo 2015 or Happy December 2015

    And so another National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, a.k.a. November) comes to an end.

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    I made it at final count of 58,986 words; tentative title: “Masquerade: Starting Over” – a redo (more or less, with a slight sequel-ish element) to my last year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project.  I technically “won” at 50k on Saturday, November 28, 2015, thanks to the encouragement of the folks of NYC NaNo – especially the peeps of our regional IRC chat room.  I’m probably going to keep at it for a proper revision, since it’s a mess and ended with “to be continued.”  (this also assumes I’ll ever learn to revise my fiction; this might the exercise that I’ve been looking for to learn to do it?  We shall see!).

    Anyway, Wrimos/Nano’ers – we did it again!  Whether you made 50k words or didn’t, you wrote something. You tapped into creative energy, and that is good.  In a world where everything’s a mess, make something positive (or positively something to you; I say that because, hey, some people like to write dystopic futures or zombie apocalypses, even though I don’t think of that as my cup of tea).  That’s the spirit of NaNoWriMo!

    Now, on to December.

    Crap, December already?!  I am so behind on writing other fiction, reading books, watching television, and resuming the war against clutter.  Goodness…

    (cross-posted at sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com)

  • Thanksgiving 2015

    Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!  Take a moment for some gratitude; going forward, may we try to be more considerate of each other.

    I’ve pretty much given up on Black Friday. (and I don’t shop on Thanksgiving; nope). But – Small Business Saturday! (and contrary to how much American Express has been promoting it, per the link there and sure, they pretty much started it, it’s not like you really need your American Express card for Small Business Saturday (Wikipedia link)).

    National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) update: I’m still at it.  At the moment, I’m at 44256 words.  It’s basically a re-write/revision of my last year’s story, with the gimmicky idea of doing the story through various points of view except the protagonist, the Batman-like character.  I’ve had bouts of writer’s block, including this afternoon, since I didn’t plan this out properly at all (thus undermining the concept of revisioning).  Oh well. 50k words, here I come!  We’ll see how I resolve this story this time.

    FC mentioned brine for turkey over on Facebook.  I manage to just think about side dishes and not going into a food coma.

    In the meantime, here are links to some triscribe Thanksgivings past:

    Thanksgiving 2014 (where I closed with this thought: “Don’t overeat, watch the parade, and some football. But, take a moment to be grateful for what we have; we are all luckier than we may think we are.”)

    Thanksgiving 2013

    Thanksgiving 2011 (which has more links to past triscribe Thanksgiving links)

  • Stumbling into November 2015

    Well, I guess I’ve more or less recovered somewhat from the NY Mets’ loss of the World Series to the Kansas City Royals.  I mean, I was realistic enough not to expect too much, but man, I was so hoping that they could have won Game 5 and let the Royals win at home, not at Citifield.   But, the Royals were indeed the better team, and at least the Mets gave us a nice run.

    And, maybe next year the Mets could be next year’s Royals?  (the guys who come back for a consecutive World Series and win).   Who knows?  Hope springs eternal!

    Otherwise, I’m in the throes of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  Crappy writing so far, but at least it’s (fiction) writing.  If you’d like to follow along on my progress (or the semblance of it), you can check my posts over at my tumblr, under the NaNoWriMo tag.

    And, unlike the contingent of our very own Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY), I’m not in New Orleans for the NAPABA annual conference.  FC has been posting yummy looking photos from New Orleans on Facebook.  Mmm. Fried food.  Thank goodness they’re only photos and so I just have vicarious calories and not real ones.

    Further posting will be up… eventually.  November means the return of Bond, James Bond (not that I’m planning to catch the movie’s opening weekend). And, the return of the tv series “Elementary” (season premiere – so, not to make spoilers, but the season premiere of “Elementary” basically had a crossover with “Fringe.” It felt like a weird, other dimension, in the manner of “Fringe.”).  And, I’m behind on “Doctor Who.” Sigh.

    Oh, well. Back to writing something.