Month: February 2022

The Book of Delights

I recently finished reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. He spent a year writing a daily essay about something that day that brought him delight. It sounds more inspirational and treacly than it actually is. His delights are often things that most of us would not necessarily think of as delights, and he often spun off into other thoughts from his original delight. This book was the 2021 One Maryland, One Book selection. One of my book clubs usually reads whatever that is every year, but we skipped this one because it was essays, and that didn’t seem great for a book club discussion. I still agree with that assessment, but I’m glad I watched a virtual event Ross Gay did where I work because it made me want to read the book and I’m so very glad I did. It earned a rare 5 stars from me on Goodreads.

All that is a set-up to say that reading the book reminded me a little bit of the original intent of this blog that I have very much gotten away from. Even though the book was not designed to be an inspiration, it has encouraged me to start looking for more little delights as I go about my day. I’m not saying I’m going to write an essay every day, and whatever I write is certainly not going to be as eloquent or profound as what Ross Gay was writing, but I want to try and commit to writing at least one post per week that shares some of the delights I’ve seen throughout the week.

Here’s a few things from the past week:

  • Last weekend we were in Lewes, Deleware. Every few hundred yards along the beach by where we were staying is a public beach access path. It seems like the people who live there just leave their beach gear at the end of whatever path that they use. There were all kinds of things like kayaks and beach chairs that people had just left out there. It felt like a nice bit of trust in the goodness of people that they could leave their stuff out there and no one take it. There feels like so little of that in the world in these days. It was a nice reminder that there can be something better.
  • Little kids jumping in mud puddles. My friend and I went hiking this weekend and the trail was pretty muddy in parts. We were trying our hardest to stay out of it the whole time, but right as we were getting ready to exit the trail we came across a family with some little kids just jumping around in the mud like it was the best thing ever. I didn’t go start jumping in the mud, but perhaps a little nudge to every once in awhile forget about the aftermath (when it’s not causing anyone harm of course) and just enjoy the moment. Those kids certainly weren’t thinking about the mess their parents were going to have to clean up or how they were probably ruining their shoes. They were just living in the moment enjoying the feeling of squishing around in the mud.
  • A tiny mailbox. I walked by a house with a tiny mailbox attached to their fence post yesterday. I don’t know why it’s there. I don’t know what it’s for. Certainly not mail, as nothing mail sized would fit in it. I hope whatever reason it’s there is for fun. Even if it’s not, it made me smile.
  • A banner for Penny’s last day of cancer treatment on 2-22-22. I don’t know who Penny is. I just happened to walk by a house that had this banner strung across the porch. What could be a greater delight than getting to celebrate someone vanquishing cancer, hopefully for good.

New Music Friday: King by Florence + the Machine

I’m going to make this brief today because I got a COVID vaccine booster yesterday and am not feeling super great. There is a new Florence + the Machine song out this week, and you know I love me some Florence + the Machine. It was kind of funny because Monday night I was doing the dishes and had some music on shuffle and a Florence song came on, and I thought to myself it’s been awhile since we’ve gotten any new Florence music. I wonder if she’s working on anything, and then on Tuesday she teased the new song which dropped on Wednesday. I like to think I manifested it. Anyway, here it is.

Long Weekend in Lewes

I decided a few weeks ago that I needed a real break from life and from work. After pretty much losing my entire in-person social life once the weather got cold and it was too cold to do things outside and having all my holiday plans canceled thanks to Omicron, I was at a point where I needed something to look forward to and some actual human interaction. I knew my husband would have President’s Day off, and I needed to use up some vacation time so I figured it would be a good weekend to go away. I asked one of our other couple friends if they wanted to join us, and they said yes. They laid low the week before we left, and we all tested before the trip to be as safe as possible.

I had never been to Lewes, Delaware before. I was looking for something in easy driving distance for both of us and another couple that we’re friends with loves it there and goes multiple times a year. So I thought if I could find a decent place to stay it seemed like a good winter beach getaway. From what I could tell it has a cute little downtown area, but since unless you’re new here you already know I’m still pretty much living in my own private COVID lockdown due to being immunocompromised. So we didn’t really get to enjoy the full experience the town had to offer, but maybe some future trip.

Even if just spent a lot of time hanging around in the house that we rented, it was still a nice, much needed getaway. I went out for walks on the beach every day, which is one of my favoritest things to do in the whole wide world. It’s nicer when it’s warm, but it was still pleasant in the cold too. I don’t actually think I would want to go to Lewes in the summer because the beach is not very wide, at least where we were staying, and it has to be insanely crowded when the town is full of summer beach vacationers.

We also went to Cape Henlopen State Park one afternoon, which was not too far from where we were staying. We just walked around the paved bike loop trail and walked out to the end of the fishing pier. It’s an interesting park in that it’s an old fort, Fort Miles, that from what I gather was mostly used during WWII but was in some sort of operation until the 90s when more and more parcels of land got ceded over the state for a park. But you also have beachy stuff in there too. So it’s quite a juxtaposition. I kept being annoyed because even though the park does indeed have many, many signs in it, somewhere every time we got to some junction where we were trying to figure out which way to go there was never a sign that was helpful to us. It might be nice to check out some of the non-paved, sandy trails at some point if we ever go back.

Mostly though we just hung around in the house, chatted, and played games. We made breakfast and lunch and then found places to get take out for dinner. I was pleased because there was a barbecue place that had baby back ribs and also had something my vegetarian husband could eat. Although we do have a good barbecue place in our neighborhood that he can eat at, which is rare for barbecue joints, they only have St. Louis Style ribs, which I don’t like as much. That’s pretty much true of all the barbecue places in Baltimore. If they have ribs at all they’re St. Louis style. So I was happy to have a chance to eat baby back ribs for a change.

There is also a ferry that runs from Lewes to Cape May, NJ. We weren’t prepared to sit inside a ferry cabin at this point, and it was obviously too cold to stand outside on the deck, but it might be fun if we go back in the future to take the ferry over for the day and check out Cape May, which I hear is lovely but where I have also never been.

All in all it was a very lovely weekend away, and I’m really glad I decided to put it together.

New Music Friday: Texas Moon by Leon Bridges and Khruangbin

Last year Fort Worth based artist Leon Bridges and Houston based band Khruangbin joined forces and put out an EP called Texas Sun. This year they’re back with another joint EP, and it delights me to no end that it’s called Texas Moon. Leon Bridges soul and Khruangbin’s dreamy psychedelic rock sounds blend perfectly together. I vote that they should put out an EP together every year. Next year’s can be called Texas Noon. I’ll let them have that idea for free. I think “B-Sides” is probably my favorite track off the new EP, but that’s been out as a single for awhile so it doesn’t feel very new. Thus I’m going to highlight my second favorite track, “Mariella”. Take a listen to this and then go treat yourself to both EPs.

TV Diary: Sit-Com Edition

There are a number of new sit-coms that debuted midseason that I’m really enjoying. Some of these shows stretch the definition of sit-com, but they’re all 30 minute comedy-ish shows so that’s how I’m classifying them for the purposes of writing about these shows.

Grand Crew

Grand Crew is my favorite of the new sit-coms. It’s a great hang out comedy about a group of friends. It reminds me of some of the things I loved about Friends. Instead of hanging out a coffee shop they hang out at a wine bar called Grand Cru. Nicole Byer is probably the biggest name in the cast along with Echo Kellum who plays her brother in the show, but it’s a real ensemble comedy. It’s funny. I like the characters, and I just really enjoy hanging out with them every week.

Abbott Elementary

Abbott Elementary is the show that has gotten the most press out of all the new sit-coms. It’s about an underfunded school in Philadelphia. It’s a workplace ensemble comedy. Janine is sort of the main focus of the show, played by Quinta Brunson, who created it. She’s a new teacher who is still full of energy and wanting to do the best for her students despite a system designed to beat you down. There are also another new teacher, a long-term sub, and the older teachers who are still trying to get things done but are also more resigned to the system they’re stuck in plus the laughably ineffective principal. It’s both funny but all too real. It’s in a mockumentary format, which is not my favorite, but there have been some really hilarious looks towards the supposed cameraman that have almost made it worth it.

Pivoting

I would have said Pivoting was my least favorite of the new network sitcoms, but I feel like a handful of episodes in it’s starting to find its footing a little bit more. The last couple of episodes have had at least one thing that made me really laugh out loud. The premise is a group of three friends who are reevaluating their own lives after the death of the other woman who was a close part of their friend group. Eliza Coupe is a reluctant mother who loves her kids but doesn’t know what to do with them and decides to scale back on work to spend half days with them. Maggie Q plays a successful doctor who decides to quit her job to work in a grocery store. Jennifer Goodwin plays a dissatisfied wife and mother who decides to try and have an affair with her personal trainer. There’s some good comedy here and think once the show gets to develop the characters a little more beyond the summary note they used to sell the show it will get even better.

American Auto

American Auto is another workplace comedy. It stars Ana Gasteyer as the new CEO of a car company who has no experience with cars and came from work at a pharmaceutical company. It’s created by the same people who did Superstore and is sort of the opposite of that show in that instead of focusing on the people out on floor it’s focused on the people in executive suite. It has its moments, but at this point it’s probably my least favorite of the shows. It’s still a solid comedy though and I think again it has the potential to get even better as the writers figure out what makes each of the characters really tick, which an take a little bit for sit-coms.

Sort-Of

I’m really happy that the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast alerted to me this as they were correct that I never would have found it otherwise. It’s a Canadian show available on HBOMax. It’s not something HBOMax is ever going to recommend to you. It’s my least favorite thing about every streaming service is that they basically only allow you to see like whatever 10 shows they are promoting and their algorithm decides you would like. There is really no way to easily browse their full library of content and find the more obscure stuff unless you already know about it and do a search for the title. Sort-Of is centered around trans woman, Sabi, who is a Pakistani-Canadian trying to come out to her mother. She is also the nanny to two kids. She makes the decision to move to Berlin with her best friend, but stays back to help out after the mother of the kids she nannies for gets in an accident and winds up in a coma. It’s a really great show with lots of interesting relationships. I’m not sure if it will get more than these short 8 episodes, but I do hope so.

Somebody Somewhere

Somebody Somewhere is an actual HBO show that is currently airing is about halfway through its first season. It’s about a woman who has returned home to her small town in Kansas to help take care of her dying sister, and who is now staying there after her sister’s death dealing with the rest of her family and figuring out her life there. She reconnects with an old friend from high school who runs sort of an underground gay choir in his church and he convinces her to join. It too has some really good characters and relationships, and I’m happy HBO has already announced there will be another season.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window

This Netflix show is a sort of parody of the movies like Gone Girl and the Woman in the Window starring Kristen Bell. I gather from some friends that perhaps it gets better or at least people were happy enough with where it went by the end, but I really just did not like the first episode at all. I saw some headline to the effect of that it’s a mysterious comedy that is neither mysterious nor comedic and that felt true to what I saw. I don’t think I am going to spend my time watching any more of it, but you can at least know that some people I know liked it better than I did.

TV Diary

I have a lot of new tv I’ve been watching to talk about. This is what happens when you’re one of the last people living still mostly locked down during the pandemic and it’s cold outside so you can’t even have an outdoor social life. You watch lots and lots of tv. This is just part of it. I’ll back later this week with a post specifically about sit-coms.

The Sex Lives of College Girls

Mindy Kaling has found her real sweet spot in creating teenage rom-com tv shows first with Never Have I Ever and now Sex Lives of College Girls on HBOMax. The Mindy Project had its moments, but I quit watching it even before NBC canceled it and then it moved to Hulu. I never even bothered watching her series version of Four Weddings and a Funeral because the reviews were so bad. Now though she is creating some of my favorite tv shows. I loved The Sex Lives of College Girls so much. I’m so sad that I’m out of episodes to watch. It centers around four freshman roommates at the fictional Essex College in Vermont. Leighton is a legacy whose parents went to Essex and her older brother already attends. She is also a closeted lesbian. Bela is an Indian girl whose parents want her to become a doctor while she wants to pursue comedy and is determined to make it as a writer for the school’s renowned comedy magazine while also making up for what she feels is lost time in her lack of a social and sex life in high school. Whitney is on the soccer team and her mother is a Senator. She is also having an affair with the team’s assistant coach. Kimberly is a somewhat naive girl from the mid-West who doesn’t have much money unlike most of the people at Essex who is trying to navigate her way in this new world. She is the character who is the most cartoonish. Either I got used to it or they dialed it back some over the course of the show. I loved this show. I loved the characters. I loved the friendships and the relationships. It’s a perfect teen dramedy, and I cannot wait until there are more episodes.

Elite

The Netflix algorithm knows I love a good teen drama so at some point it recommended this Spanish show to me. I added it to my queue and after it sitting there for years I finally decided to watch it. I’m really glad I did because Netflix was right and I did love it. There are four seasons so far and Netflix assures me a fifth season is coming. It centers on an elite private school in Madrid where lots of rich and important people send their kids to school. No one should ever send their kids there though because every season is framed with some sort of murder or attempted murder. Basically if your kid goes there they’re either going to be murdered or become a murderer. I thought maybe after the sort of throughline of the first three seasons was done that in season four they would drop the framing where you start with whatever that season’s crime was with everyone being interviewed by the cops and the show filling in what happened up to that point over the season, but they did not. I wish they had because they never really needed it. I’m much more interested in the relationships between the characters than I ever was about who committed whatever crime we were focused on that season. The first three seasons are great. The fourth season I don’t think was as good. Half of the original characters left after season three including most of my favorites. I did not like any of the new characters they brought into replace them, the stories seemed even more ridiculous than normal, and the personalities of the characters that came back did not seem consistent with previous season. Made me feel like they got a bunch of new writers in season four. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed watching it and will definitely be watching season five whenever it comes out. If you like a good teen drama and aren’t opposed to subtitles I recommend it.

Maid

Maid is a Netflix show loosely based on Stephanie Land’s memoir of the same name. It stars Margaret Qualley as Alex a young mother who flees her abusive husband and winds up working as a maid to support herself and her pre-school age daughter. She is equally caught in trying to get help from her mother who has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and having to take care of her. Her mother is played by Andie McDowell, Qualley’s real life mother. This show is excellent, but it is also one of the hardest shows I think I have ever watched. I definitely could not watch more than one episode of this in a sitting. I felt the stress that this character was going through. It made me really sad because I know there are so many people who are actually living this life where they are just caught in impossible situation after impossible situation and all the systems that are supposedly there to help them are built such that it’s actually impossible to get help from them and even make things worse. It really highlights how broken the systems in the country are because we’re so worried about someone who we don’t think deserves something getting it. Because the show does not want to be complete misery porn it winds up ending on a positive note for the character, but there are far too many people who will never manage to navigate their way out of lives that are stacked against them at every turn.

As We See It

As We See It is the new Jason Katims show on Amazon Prime. You may know Katims from his previous shows Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. He featured some of his experiences as a parent of an autistic son in the character of Max Braverman on Parenthood. Now he extends that into his experiences parenting a child with autism who is now an adult themselves. It centers around three autistic adults in their 20s sharing an apartment and being cared for by an aide named Mandy. Jack is really smart but struggling to keep a job because of his lack of social skills and inflexibility. He is also faced with finding out that his father has what will probably be terminal cancer. This story also focuses on his father worrying about how to make sure Jack is going to be all right after he’s gone. Violet is a sex obsessed woman who just wants people to perceive her as normal and doesn’t realize that her overattachment to people even strangers is inappropriate and potentially dangerous. She is being cared for by her older brother Van since their parents died. Harrison is the least functioning of the three. He is practically agoraphobic and Mandy is working with him to get him to leave the apartment and gain skills so that he too might be able to support himself in some fashion one day. In true Jason Katims fashion it mixes complete heartbreak with small triumphs that warm the heart. It does not however gloss over the difficulties of all of the characters with the autistic characters just wanting to be understood for who they are and not always understanding why people view them as they do and their families struggling with the weight of helping their loved ones navigate an unforgiving world and the stresses that they themselves have to deal with.

Station Eleven

I read the book Station Eleven back in 2015 and did not re-read it prior to watching the series on HBO, so I didn’t remember enough about it to know how faithful it was or not to the source material. I gather from the things I’ve heard about it that there was quite a bit changed, but that everyone seemed to agree that the changes worked. So let’s go with that. I do know that I felt differently about the book than I did the tv show. I remember feeling like there was a lot of hope in the book that I did not necessarily feel in the tv show. Perhaps some of that is that I read the book prior to having ever lived through a pandemic myself, so I’m pretty sure my feelings about the tv show were colored by my own experiences. The pandemic in this show is way worse than COVID, killing something like 99% of the population. It was sort of interesting watching the end of this as the supply chain shortages caused by so many people getting sick from Omicron were starting to ramp up given this series shows how much worse it could have been with these characters living in a post-apocalyptic world in which pretty much all of the things we have come to rely on as a modern society like all kinds of technology cease to function because there aren’t enough people to keep them running. Weirdly my favorite parts of the series were the parts with Jeevan and young Kiersten struggling to survive right after the pandemic happened, which is something I usually hate and why I don’t tend to care for post-apocalyptic shows or books, and which I said in my review of the book that I was happy it didn’t spend a lot of time on. Ultimately I really did like this show, but based on how i remember feeling after reading the book I liked it better which is generally the case when it comes to book adaptations.

Good Sam

Good Sam stars Sophia Bush and Jason Isaacs. He’s a world renowned cardiologist who is very difficult to work with. Sam is his daughter who has been working under him but is planning on leaving the hospital for another job until he is shot and they ask her to fill in as the Chief of Cardiology. Now he’s back at his job and having to be supervised by her until the medical board signs off on his recovery and is very unhappy about being subordinate to anyone, especially his daughter. It’s sort of a mix between House and Grey’s Anatomy with a curmudgeonly but brilliant doctor at the center, a case of the week, and some soapy elements mixed together. It’s a decent network drama that’s more than just a straight procedural if you enjoy these kinds of shows.

Around the World in 80 Days

Masterpiece on PBS is currently airing this new adaptation of the Around the World in 80 Days starring David Tennant. It’s fine. I don’t love it. I’m usually doing something else like reading or messing around on the internet when my husband puts it on.

TV Diary

I have a lot of new tv I’ve been watching to talk about. This is what happens when you’re one of the last people living still mostly locked down during the pandemic and it’s cold outside so you can’t even have an outdoor social life. You watch lots and lots of tv. This is just part of it. I’ll back later this week with a post specifically about sit-coms.

The Sex Lives of College Girls

Mindy Kaling has found her real sweet spot in creating teenage rom-com tv shows first with Never Have I Ever and now Sex Lives of College Girls on HBOMax. The Mindy Project had its moments, but I quit watching it even before NBC canceled it and then it moved to Hulu. I never even bothered watching her series version of Four Weddings and a Funeral because the reviews were so bad. Now though she is creating some of my favorite tv shows. I loved The Sex Lives of College Girls so much. I’m so sad that I’m out of episodes to watch. It centers around four freshman roommates at the fictional Essex College in Vermont. Leighton is a legacy whose parents went to Essex and her older brother already attends. She is also a closeted lesbian. Bela is an Indian girl whose parents want her to become a doctor while she wants to pursue comedy and is determined to make it as a writer for the school’s renowned comedy magazine while also making up for what she feels is lost time in her lack of a social and sex life in high school. Whitney is on the soccer team and her mother is a Senator. She is also having an affair with the team’s assistant coach. Kimberly is a somewhat naive girl from the mid-West who doesn’t have much money unlike most of the people at Essex who is trying to navigate her way in this new world. She is the character who is the most cartoonish. Either I got used to it or they dialed it back some over the course of the show. I loved this show. I loved the characters. I loved the friendships and the relationships. It’s a perfect teen dramedy, and I cannot wait until there are more episodes.

Elite

The Netflix algorithm knows I love a good teen drama so at some point it recommended this Spanish show to me. I added it to my queue and after it sitting there for years I finally decided to watch it. I’m really glad I did because Netflix was right and I did love it. There are four seasons so far and Netflix assures me a fifth season is coming. It centers on an elite private school in Madrid where lots of rich and important people send their kids to school. No one should ever send their kids there though because every season is framed with some sort of murder or attempted murder. Basically if your kid goes there they’re either going to be murdered or become a murderer. I thought maybe after the sort of throughline of the first three seasons was done that in season four they would drop the framing where you start with whatever that season’s crime was with everyone being interviewed by the cops and the show filling in what happened up to that point over the season, but they did not. I wish they had because they never really needed it. I’m much more interested in the relationships between the characters than I ever was about who committed whatever crime we were focused on that season. The first three seasons are great. The fourth season I don’t think was as good. Half of the original characters left after season three including most of my favorites. I did not like any of the new characters they brought into replace them, the stories seemed even more ridiculous than normal, and the personalities of the characters that came back did not seem consistent with previous season. Made me feel like they got a bunch of new writers in season four. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed watching it and will definitely be watching season five whenever it comes out. If you like a good teen drama and aren’t opposed to subtitles I recommend it.

Maid

Maid is a Netflix show loosely based on Stephanie Land’s memoir of the same name. It stars Margaret Qualley as Alex a young mother who flees her abusive husband and winds up working as a maid to support herself and her pre-school age daughter. She is equally caught in trying to get help from her mother who has undiagnosed bipolar disorder and having to take care of her. Her mother is played by Andie McDowell, Qualley’s real life mother. This show is excellent, but it is also one of the hardest shows I think I have ever watched. I definitely could not watch more than one episode of this in a sitting. I felt the stress that this character was going through. It made me really sad because I know there are so many people who are actually living this life where they are just caught in impossible situation after impossible situation and all the systems that are supposedly there to help them are built such that it’s actually impossible to get help from them and even make things worse. It really highlights how broken the systems in the country are because we’re so worried about someone who we don’t think deserves something getting it. Because the show does not want to be complete misery porn it winds up ending on a positive note for the character, but there are far too many people who will never manage to navigate their way out of lives that are stacked against them at every turn.

As We See It

As We See It is the new Jason Katims show on Amazon Prime. You may know Katims from his previous shows Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. He featured some of his experiences as a parent of an autistic son in the character of Max Braverman on Parenthood. Now he extends that into his experiences parenting a child with autism who is now an adult themselves. It centers around three autistic adults in their 20s sharing an apartment and being cared for by an aide named Mandy. Jack is really smart but struggling to keep a job because of his lack of social skills and inflexibility. He is also faced with finding out that his father has what will probably be terminal cancer. This story also focuses on his father worrying about how to make sure Jack is going to be all right after he’s gone. Violet is a sex obsessed woman who just wants people to perceive her as normal and doesn’t realize that her overattachment to people even strangers is inappropriate and potentially dangerous. She is being cared for by her older brother Van since their parents died. Harrison is the least functioning of the three. He is practically agoraphobic and Mandy is working with him to get him to leave the apartment and gain skills so that he too might be able to support himself in some fashion one day. In true Jason Katims fashion it mixes complete heartbreak with small triumphs that warm the heart. It does not however gloss over the difficulties of all of the characters with the autistic characters just wanting to be understood for who they are and not always understanding why people view them as they do and their families struggling with the weight of helping their loved ones navigate an unforgiving world and the stresses that they themselves have to deal with.

Station Eleven

I read the book Station Eleven back in 2015 and did not re-read it prior to watching the series on HBO, so I didn’t remember enough about it to know how faithful it was or not to the source material. I gather from the things I’ve heard about it that there was quite a bit changed, but that everyone seemed to agree that the changes worked. So let’s go with that. I do know that I felt differently about the book than I did the tv show. I remember feeling like there was a lot of hope in the book that I did not necessarily feel in the tv show. Perhaps some of that is that I read the book prior to having ever lived through a pandemic myself, so I’m pretty sure my feelings about the tv show were colored by my own experiences. The pandemic in this show is way worse than COVID, killing something like 99% of the population. It was sort of interesting watching the end of this as the supply chain shortages caused by so many people getting sick from Omicron were starting to ramp up given this series shows how much worse it could have been with these characters living in a post-apocalyptic world in which pretty much all of the things we have come to rely on as a modern society like all kinds of technology cease to function because there aren’t enough people to keep them running. Weirdly my favorite parts of the series were the parts with Jeevan and young Kiersten struggling to survive right after the pandemic happened, which is something I usually hate and why I don’t tend to care for post-apocalyptic shows or books, and which I said in my review of the book that I was happy it didn’t spend a lot of time on. Ultimately I really did like this show, but based on how i remember feeling after reading the book I liked it better which is generally the case when it comes to book adaptations.

Good Sam

Good Sam stars Sophia Bush and Jason Isaacs. He’s a world renowned cardiologist who is very difficult to work with. Sam is his daughter who has been working under him but is planning on leaving the hospital for another job until he is shot and they ask her to fill in as the Chief of Cardiology. Now he’s back at his job and having to be supervised by her until the medical board signs off on his recovery and is very unhappy about being subordinate to anyone, especially his daughter. It’s sort of a mix between House and Grey’s Anatomy with a curmudgeonly but brilliant doctor at the center, a case of the week, and some soapy elements mixed together. It’s a decent network drama that’s more than just a straight procedural if you enjoy these kinds of shows.

Around the World in 80 Days

Masterpiece on PBS is currently airing this new adaptation of the Around the World in 80 Days starring David Tennant. It’s fine. I don’t love it. I’m usually doing something else like reading or messing around on the internet when my husband puts it on.

New Music Friday: Title Track Edition

Good Morning Gorgeous by Mary J. Blige

Let’s get crunk cause Mary’s back! I’m not going to lie. I totally chose to write about this song today because I really wanted to use that lyric as my opening line. I’ve not seen it done, but I’m sure 8 million other people have used that line in a similar way whenever Mary J. Blige does something new since the song “Family Affair” came out. Anyway, if you hadn’t figure it out yet, Mary J. Blige is indeed back with a new album today, her first in five years. It’s called Good Morning Gorgeous and it’s a lot about learning to love the parts of you that you hate and trying to build yourself up. The title track is my favorite song off the album, so that’s what I’m sharing.

Dreamland by Amos Lee

I wrote about “Worry No More”, the first single off of Dreamland, Amos Lee’s new album, when it came out last year. I’ve been looking forward to this album for a long time. He actually finished recording it right before COVID happened and decided to wait to release it. It’s finally here, and I am in love with it. I was trying to decide which song to share off it, but then I wanted to write about the Mary J. Blige album too and hit upon the theme of the title track. So I’m sharing the first song off of the album, “Dreamland”. Like Mary J. Blige’s album, this one is also very thematic in that it’s a lot about trying to overcome depression and anxiety. I think we can all relate to that on at least some level at the moment even if it’s not something you chronically struggle with. An excellent album for these times.

New Music Friday: Do You See the Light Around Me by Uwade

Uwade is a Nigerian-American artist born in Nigeria and raised in North Carolina. She does some vocals on the Fleet Foxes song “Shore”, but she has only recently released a few singles of her own. She’s only 21 and recently graduated from Columbia. She wrote her newest single, “Do You See the Light Around Me” during her final semester. It has been released as part of the single series that Sylvan Esso’s record label is doing. It was produced by fellow North Carolinian, Brad Cook. The song is about having a crush and thinking about how they might see you in return. I dig it. Hope you do too.