More Theatre

I went to see Penelope at Stage West. It's like a play/musical, where Penelope tells the audience about her life waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War, but often she breaks into song, while the band plays and acts as a Greek chorus. The website describes it as a "solo cabaret" and the audience seating was arranged to feel like you were at a bar or nightclub. I saw a show with the understudy Rowan Gilvie, and they were wonderful.

Meanwhile I look forward to the next production, the 2nd Sherlock Holmes play in David MacGregor's trilogy. I hope it will be as funny as last season's Elusive Ear production. If you can't see any of these plays near you, apparently you can buy the trilogy in book form too.

There seems to be a comedy Moriarty play in Allen, currently, but I don't think I want to drive that far to see it. The description of an international mystery with spies also turns me off. But good luck to them.

The End of the World As We Know It

This R.E.M. song was featured in the new Looney Tunes movie The Day the Earth Blew Up, so it's been stuck in my head. It's appropriate for the times too. I would have avoided the movie because I hate Warner Brothers lately, but articles say that WB didn't want to release the movie. Instead they allowed an independent distributor to buy it, so watching the movie can be an act of protest against WB, even if it's not the same as getting the Batgirl movie or the Coyote Vs Acme movies that they shelved. The movie itself is a zany comedy and I liked what they did with Petunia Pig and Farmer Jim. But still, fuck Zaslav.

Anyway, the Ides of March came and went without the government shutdown after all. Schumer claimed that keeping the government open was important for the court cases to continue, but does that matter if Trump's just going to defy court orders? Any power we have to stop the lawlessness needs to be exercised. At least the Tesla protests are working.

But speaking of movies, after the Amazon boycott ended, I went on Prime to watch the Murder She Wrote TV movies, which I haven't seen before. I've only had time for 3 out of 4 so far, so I'll finish tonight. I enjoyed seeing these additional mysteries with Jessica. The first film on the train reminded me a little of Murder on the Orient Express, but had interesting twists too. I did guess that the Macguffin would be in the Gameboy, though. The second film is set at a high-end speaker's conference, with an ex-KGB head getting killed; I never really liked espionage plots on the TV show, but this one at least had some good clues. Some characters even suggested that Jessica solved murders as publicity stunts for her books. The third film The Last Free Man tells a cold case story set during slavery in the South. Angela Lansbury plays Jessica's ancestor Sarah McCullough in the 1860 scenes as Sarah investigates when her slave Samuel Pinckney is framed for a murder. I was surprised to recognize Taraji P. Henson in a minor role, before she got famous. I liked that Sarah knew that solving the murder should be set aside for Sam's more urgent need to escape the lynchmob. I hope the new rumored Murder She Wrote reboot movie will be good, with whichever actress they cast to play Jessica. I miss my JB Fletcher.

Whitewashing

I'm sad that The Wild Robot didn't win at the Oscars. I haven't seen the winner Flow, so maybe it was deserving too. Oh well. Award shows usually disappoint in multiple ways. Zoe Saldana won for a problematic movie, but that's been a thing since Hattie Mcdaniel won for playing a maid in Gone With the Wind. You do your best in the parts you're given. One can imagine it's a reward for a different role in Zoe's filmography instead.

On Paramount+ I can also access documentaries from the Smithsonian channel, and they had some interesting ones for Black History, such as Black cowboys in the Wild West. I found one doc called "Birthing a Nation: the Resistance of Mary Gaffney" which is very short, only about 20 minutes. Weird title but it talks about an important topic, the slave owners who would "breed" more slaves so they could get more free "property" without buying at auction. Besides raping the women themselves, some enslavers used to forceably pair off slaves to make them have children, treating people like animals/livestock, calling them wenches and bucks. This disgusting practice was part of keeping up the "domestic slave trade" after international slave trade was made illegal. However, Mary Gaffney apparently knew a secret contraceptive in cotton roots to prevent getting pregnant while she was enslaved, though after emancipation she had children with her husband. I like that she managed some agency, though there's resignation too in her just staying with the guy she previously said she hated. Also the documentary mentions the thousands of "slave narratives" from the Works Progress Administration interviewing the survivors of slavery who were still alive at the time. What important history could have been lost, if nobody thought to do this work during the Depression.

I fear the Trump administration will try to delete all this history, like they're deleting "DEI" photos from military history too. Do we have enough online archives that can save this history? Where can they download from?

March Forward

Apparently the Oscars are tonight, so there are a ton of movies in theaters this weekend, but I don't think I'll bother. I don't recognize a lot of these titles, and some descriptions like Emilia Perez are frankly offputting. As for the awards, I don't really care about anything other than The Wild Robot. I've heard good things about The Substance, but I don't like horror films in general. Good luck to Demi, though.

On Tuesday Trump is going to do the State of the Union address. There are protests scheduled for Tuesday, along with ongoing protests at Tesla and more rolling boycotts against Walmart, Amazon, etc. I hope the Democrats will have a strong message rebuking Trump, especially for his awful meeting with Zelensky on Friday. Also I think the government funding will end on March 14th, so we could actually have a government shutdown on the Ides of March. Given how Elon Musk is slashing government jobs and is freezing funds that were already earmarked and approved, I don't see why Democrats would trust any deal negotiations this year.

I'm sad to hear that Joann's will close their stores. I'll miss them. I'm still hoarse from my sore throat and wishing I had some Vietnamese chao (also known as congee rice porridge) like my mom used to make. The closest thing I got is a chicken and rice soup from the local Asian buffet.

Sick again

I got another yucky cold. Most of the symptoms went away except the sore throat and a hacking cough that goes quiet for a while until erupting into a violent fit of several coughs. I'm taking cough drops and a truly disgusting cough syrup, and it still doesn't get better. I hate this.

Yesterday was an economic boycott and I managed not to buy anything. I will have to go to the store today and try to find a more palatable cough remedy, or at least buy more soup. I've been having to resort to yogurt and ice cream to soothe my throat.

Looking though my Sherlock Holmes media, I found my box set of 1950s radio shows starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson as Holmes and Watson. These are actually on audio cassette, and yes, I still have a boombox capable of playing cassettes and CDs. I've only got 12 out of 16 shows, but I guess I can find the rest online. (My set is sadly completely out of order from either the radio series or the publication dates of the stories.) I never knew before that Gielgud did these shows while recovering from scandal in Britain. He'd been outed as gay with an arrest not unlike that of George Michael decades later. Gielgud had feared his career was over, but thankfully was wrong and eventually his prolific acting career revived.

Similarly in America, Raymond Burr had to remain in the closet and lie frequently about his personal life for the sake of his Hollywood career, but I'm happy to hear that he did find love and happiness with a partner. I've been watching Perry Mason episodes lately and while some of the shows are dated, I like the diversity of the cases.

Hurdles

I've been having computer problems again. Hard to log in and open my browser. Even opening the Private Browser clean of cookies was an ordeal. I thought I had a roof leak, but it appears to be a false alarm. However I do have an expensive car repair now. So much trouble lately.

Also I recently decided to upload my Private Life of Sherlock Holmes fic to AO3, so that it's all in one place. I'm gonna try and add more chapters. I was glad to see that other people have been writing fic for that movie too.

There's an upcoming scifi movie called Mickey 17, and the premise sounds eerily similar to the 2009 film Moon starring Sam Rockwell. The only difference seems to be that Mickey knowingly signed up to become an expendable series of clones, whereas Sam didn't discover he was a clone until later on. There may also be other differences in tone or plot, but we won't know until it opens in theaters. Moon felt very solitary and lonely, whereas Mickey 17 seems to be a comedy, with a larger group of characters in the space colony.