Black Sails and a nope

I started watching Black Sails last week when it was added to Netflix. I had no expectations plot-wise, beyond general knowledge of the age of piracy. Its pacing is a little slow and I’m somewhat impatient with Eleanor Guthrie and Charles Vane, but I’m definitely going to keep watching, in part because it’s beautifully shot and the sets look amazing. I find the pervasive female nudity irritating, not out of prudery but because there’s so much full frontal for women and almost none for the men.

A social media algorithm suggested The Summer Proposal to me. (Not BookTok, thanks, I have Opinions about that app and do not use it.) I find a lot of recent hockey-set romances to be terrible but it had a bunch of positive reviews, so I downloaded a sample. It failed the 20 page test. Did the author do any hockey research? I couldn’t say because I didn’t get that far. Had they ever watched a game? Or even done a web search for game day schedules? Seems unlikely, which is unfortunate because there is SO MUCH information out there. Most players start arriving at least two hours before puck drop. Warm ups on the ice start 30+ minutes before puck drop. I am sorry, but a starting player is not going to be in a bar down the street from the arena 30 minutes before puck drop unless they want to be healthy scratched. Maybe in the 1980s but not in the 2020s. Or maybe if it is a Very Different book, not a romance. Nope. Could the rest of the book be awesome? Maybe, but the lack of basic accuracy in the opening erased any credibility for the author for me. Deleted the sample. Next.

(Shout out to Lexi Lafleur Brown for her commentary as a former player and spouse of a former NHL player. Her reviews are terribly funny.)

Now reading The French Ingredient by Jane Bertsch.

car vs pedestrian

I feel a wikipedia spiral and other web search rabbit hole about to strike. Are there psychological or sociological studies about USian drivers and their absolute disregard for pedestrians, even in the face of actual laws giving pedestrians rights of way in places?

Twice today while in a pedestrian crosswalk drivers in giant SUVs with tinted windows beeped at me, presumably because they wanted to make a right turn and I was delaying it by not walking fast enough through the crosswalk to suit them.

What benefit do they think they will derive from beeping? Yes, I saw them. Yes, I still had the right of way, was in the crosswalk, had the little walking man sign. Frankly, beeping at me makes me want to stop dead so they have to wait longer. (I didn’t but I wanted to.)

If you cannot share the road in densely populated urban areas consistent with the traffic laws on the books (which locally give pedestrians in crosswalks the right of way) then maybe you should not drive there. Your impatience is not the problem of pedestrians.

2023 in review

On the reading front, I finished 28 books in 2023 which was equivalent to recent years but nothing close to the early 2000s when I read 150+ books per year. The best books of the year for me were Patrick Stewart’s memoir, Making It So, and the English language translation of Juan Gomez Jurado’s Red Queen.

In terms of other media, I don’t keep track of movies or television as well as I do books (thanks, LibraryThing!). But here’s what I remember off hand:

• Foundation – hit or miss.
• Ted Lasso – not impressed with S3.
• Only Murders in the Building – liked the two episodes we watched at Thx, on my list to subscribe to Hulu for it when I pause other streaming subs.
• GBBO – I always enjoy it, I’m predictable that way.
• Deadloch – I finished the first series but am not sure I would watch the second series.
• The Fall of the House of Usher – really enjoyed it.
• Queen Charlotte – ambivalent about it.
• The Diplomat – some of it was cringey but I liked the PM and his sister.
• Glass Onion – yes, please, more Benoit Blanc.
• Hijack – I have professional opinions about parts of this that I will keep to myself. But Idris Elba.
• Klaus – friend recommended this holiday movie and I really liked it.
• Last Christmas – only good things about this movie were the music and Michelle Yeoh (who I assume did it for the paycheck), otherwise it was painfully written/plotted and acted.
• Dungeons & Dragons – enjoyed, would watch a sequel set in the same universe.
• Last season of Escape to the Chateau – it was time for a variety of reasons.
• Mafia Mamma – it was terrible, I can only hope that Toni Collette got a huge paycheck because otherwise there is no excuse for it.

Rewatches: Persuasion, While You Were Sleeping, The Grinch (Original), The Expanse

Theater/BCS: Tiny Beautiful Things, Life is a Stage, Flamenco by the Royal Opera of Madrid

Hockey: a lot? Games in PGH vs the Bruins, the Flyers, opening night against the Next Next Next One, VGK, the Rangers, the Blues, and the Islands. And Chicago vs. the Leafs in Chicago.

Live music: Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, The Eagles, Stevie Nicks, Billy Joel.

Travel:

• Pittsburgh (does it could as travel at this point?)
• Chicago
• Portland (Maine)
• Cape Cod
• Portugal – Lisbon, Porto, and Sintra, with road/day trips to Evora, Aveiro, Braga, Guimaraes, Azeitao, Setubal, Arrabida, Tomar, Obidos, Fatima, Nazare, Batalha, Queluz, and Cascais.

As an aside, I cannot express how much I do not care for the upgrades/updates to WordPress. As someone who does a lot of writing in Word, I find its formatting to be clunky and the hovering box to be irritating. I don’t blog much, although I would like to do it more and get back into the habit, but I’m not sure it will be with WP/JP.

Creative-ish things lately

Did some holiday baking. Candied orange slices and some peel for the first time. Loved the slices but the state of my stove after making them was a sticky mess. Candied some almonds as well.

I saw an Atlas Oscura post on serpentone and thought I’d try it. Almond flour, sugar, egg whites, how hard could it be? Uh… The dough was crumblier and dryer than I expected. I might add less sugar and another egg white next time. My serpentone looked more like The Hungry Caterpillar.

Before baking.

After baking.

It puffed up more than I anticipated (egg whites, I assume). And the peel used for the tongue was inedible. Lesson learned there.

I love frangipane tarts and make them regularly during the winter. Use homemade cranberry sauce at the base, yum, and store-bought crust. Somehow when I bake them for anything other than eating at home, they are less attractive. (Like last Christmas’s poached pears on top.) This year I decided to add candied orange slices…but I should have put them on at the end of baking or after. Tasted fine but looked wonky.

Before.

After.

Also on the creative or crafty front, I tried decoupage of glass vessels. Mostly to repurpose some jars and bottles. I like it.

Need to let them cure then seal them.

My favorite scarf – the one I knitted to match a hat I fell in love with – has been lost. I know where but when I went back to the restaurant, they said no one had turned it in or found it. I think I’ve found the same yarn online and will try to remake it. Meanwhile, I’m making a navy scarf in a simple moss pattern, but the breakage is ridiculous. My fault for not using the yarn sooner, I guess?

The late, lamented scarf. 😭

Recent music

It’s a shame that paper tickets and ticket stubs are no longer a thing. I used to collect them and then put them in a scrapbook of sorts at the end of each year. I very often forget what live performances and even movies I’ve seen now that I lack the physical reminder.

So I’m reminding myself here.

Flamenco by the Royal Opera of Madrid – seen at the Howard Theater. Really enjoyed it, although as usual I could only make out about 10% of the lyrics. Which is to be expected since I can’t tell lyrics in English half the time. (Looking at you, FOB)

The Eagles on their farewell tour. Steely Dan opened, but due to a complete meltdown by Amtrak (a 3:10 delay) I missed it. Got there just in time to hear the full show by the Eagles though. Don Henley has aged very well. Joe Walsh looks pretty dessicated and sounds like a crotchety old stoner when he talks but he still kills on the Stratocaster. Vince Gill did well on some vocals, as did Deacon Frey. The set list was about what you’d expect, I think, and didn’t miss any of the biggest hits. My personal favorite was Heartache Tonight. (I refuse to acknowledge the Michael Buble cover. It’s just wrong.)

Stevie Nicks and Billy Joel. The pre-show PA music could have been a set list lifted straight from a high school dance in 1990. Seriously. I forget how much I like Stevie Nicks and how many of her songs I know…until it’s pointed out to me. Loved the Free Falling cover with video of Tom Petty and Billy Joel coming out to sing his part in Stop Dragging My heart Around. Closing with Landslide and a montage of Christie McVie photos seemed appropriate. Billy Joel’s set list was what you’d expect, I think, plus a bit that you might not: the first verse of Start Me Up, part of an Italian opera aria sung by backup vocalist, etc. His intro of Vienna was something like, “This next song is from an album I did in 1977. It has a lot of hits. This song isn’t one of them.” My favorites were An Innocent Man and We Didn’t Start the Fire, the latter mostly because of nostalgia. (Shout out to Mr. R., the history teacher who used the song as a lesson and made us add lines/lyrics with historical updates.)

Today’s musical inquiry – Carin Leon, who was in town last night also. (There should be acute accents over the I and O but once again I fail at the keyboard command for that.)

Rained out

ArtScape returned this year after a three year hiatus. Lots of drama and conflict behind the scenes: changing dates (from July to September) drove out other, smaller festivals usually schedule for then; some of the venues relied on for staging weren’t available due to scheduling; there were performance problems; and Tropical Storm Ophelia caused Saturday’s events to be canceled.

Usually I go out of my way NOT to be in town for ArtScape, but I waited too late to book and what I wanted to do (Lost Evenings in Anaheim) was $$$$$ for travel arrangements. So I figured I’d just deal with the people and noise and massive amounts of debris (seriously, the refuse is enormous) and also the honks of people who are angry about gridlock due to street closures. I feel sort of guilty that the cancellation on Saturday meant my neighborhood was quiet.

Live hockey is back! The first preseason games started this weekend. As I tap away, the third period of the Blue Jackets vs. Penguins is streaming in the background. And the Orioles are playing, with the post-season on the horizon 🙂

Just finished reading Juan Gomez-Jurado’s Red Queen. I saw a review of it in Financial Times – or rather of its translation to English – and borrowed it from the library. Really enjoyed it, but now I want to read it in the original. And the rest of the series, which is not (yet) available in English; need to see if I can find it in Spanish.

Recent reads?

Eh, not much.

I borrowed an edition of selected prose of Fernando Pessoa from the library, along with a collection of poetry by Luis Camoes (there’s a tilde over the o and an acute accent over the i but I don’t know how to do them using my keyboard). I enjoyed the poetry, which had the English next to the Portuguese, but really struggled with the metaphors in translation; my Portuguese is still extremely rudimentary. For the Pessoa, some of the prose intrigued me but other was just nah. I struggle in part with the heteronym idea – fundamentally, are they just a bunch of pseudonyms like Mark Twain and Samuel Clements? Were they indicators of mental illness and multiple personalities? (The introduction alluded to this possibility for Pessoa based on some of his behavior.) It doesn’t really matter in the end. I can appreciate some of the work, enough that I’ve put his Book of Disquiet on my to read list.

Ilona Andrews is another former autobuy that I’m slowly letting go of. I still read the books, but not as autobuys and from the library if possible. Magic Claims was fine, I guess.

Picked up a couple of books of Mary Oliver’s poetry at the library yesterday.

In terms of watching things…not much there either. I finally watched the new season of Ted Lasso. It was disappointing overall. It felt like several possible interesting threads were abandoned, and like a bunch of storylines regressed or were wasted.

Just started watching Good Omens, in part because of the uproar that GO fans are in following the end of season 2.

Haven’t seen Barbie or Oppenheimer, mostly because I feel like everyone I know who has seen them has told me enough about them that I don’t feel like I’m missing much. Also, Nolan’s films seldom work for me.

Recent simple pleasure is the maritozzi from Doppio Pasticceria . They use chocolate cream and the brioche is faintly orange blossom flavored. (I love orange blossom, which I did not know until I had it in several dishes in Sevilla and Granada, including the Flor de Azafran gelato at La Fiorentina in Sevilla.)

Summer is half over and I have not gone to the beach. It’s scheduled for the end of the month. I’m tired of people and want to run away. I won’t, because the bank stubbornly requires that I pay my mortgage and I need a job for that. But if I win the $1.5 billion lottery, that could change. 😛

This and that

I DNF’d both Six of Crows and Hell Bent. I’m sure Leigh Bardugo is a good storyteller, but I think she is not for me.

This weekend was the Flower Mart. I wandered around and admired all of the plants for sale at the various stalls – potted herbs, starter kits, hanging baskets, planters large and small – but did not buy anything. Because I kill plants. Even ostensibly unkillable plants like airplants. Seriously.

Saw a preview of Life’s A Dream at BCS. I think I need to read the play, because I liked the plot but did not love the set decoration, costumes, and directorial choices.

Was asked to sign a petition to get the Baltimore Baby Bonus onto the ballot for a city charter amendment. It would give parents at least $1,000 upon the birth or adoption of a child. How would this be funded, I asked: how the city would fund it would be up to the city council. And hey, that’s like, less than 1% of the city’s annual budget, so why not? I believe in UBI, but this ask kind of made me cringe. I need to unpack my hesitation. Some of it is financial, given how many basic city services have been reduced or removed over the last three years. And some of it is not: who is behind/funding this initiative?

Watched Queen Charlotte. I have some unsorted thoughts about the nonfictional queen and the British monarchy and the weekend events in the UK. Setting those aside, I feel pretty ambivalent about how the series handled marital rape and female autonomy (both bodily and otherwise). The juxtaposition of the unhappy marital lives of Queen Charlotte and Lady Danbury for vastly different reasons was striking. And I’m reminded of what I quoted from Lady Danbury from S2, “After passion cools and fate intervenes, who else is a woman left with but herself?” It very much applies to all of the older generation ladies of the series so far, the queen and both ladies.

Easy breakfast/brunch snack

I saw a video on social media around the holidays for an easy breakfast or brunch snack: cheese biscuits. You flatten a selection of pre-made biscuit dough, pop a chunk of cheese in the middle, then pinch it all around and shape into a ball and bake.

You could make a savory roll, but I’ve made them with blueberry-goat cheese and cranberry-cheddar. They store well and heat up in the microwave or toaster oven, so leftovers work as portable breakfast at the office.

In today’s episode of Get Off My Lawn

Listening to a podcast. Host keeps mentioning the guy-er. I’m all ???. Until he says it’s a refernce to Yeats’ “widening gyre”. Except he said the name as “yeets”.

Yates. And the soft g for gyre.

I feel old.