Tell Me You’ve Never Seen Quigley Down Under In Different Words

Tom Selleck’s future plans after ‘Blue Bloods’ revealed — and it involves ‘Yellowstone’ creator:

From cop to cowboy?

Tom Selleck is getting candid on the future of his career after the axing of “Blue Bloods,” saying he’d love to star in a Western helmed by “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan.

The 79-year-old revealed he isn’t ready for retirement in an interview with Parade published on Friday, dishing on his dream role.

“A good Western’s always on my list,” the legendary actor shared. “I miss that; I want to sit on a horse again.”

Sheridan recently worked with Sam Elliott on the “Yellowstone” spin-off “1883,” and Selleck explained that’s a trio he’d like to join.

“Sam was great in [1883], Sam’s always great. We go way, way back. I love him dearly. I’d love to work with Sam,” he told the outlet.

Selleck has been in many westerns. Including two also starring Sam Elliott: The Sacketts and The Shadow Riders. So way back with Sam Elliott goes forty-five years as does Selleck’s experience with Westerns. Which is further back than Blue Bloods and even Magnum P.I. (the original, when the Cylons did not look like humans).

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Book Report: Small Lofts edited by Paco Ascensio (2002)

Book coverI got this book in Sparta in October as part of a minor bag-day binge along with a couple of other loft design books. I mean, I liked the HGTV show Small Space, Big Style (example) about how people decorated their small apartments in the big city (often New York). So I thought I would really like this book. But….

The book is Euro-centered with a couple of “lofts” in South America and in the United States. But the aesthetic is basically European: Lots of white walls (finished walls for the most part) with minimalist furniture in them. Many of them are not “lofts” in revitalized industrial or warehouse buildings but rather repurposed other businesses. Some of them exceed 1000 square feet, which is not especially “small”–not that I think lofts must be small, but the book title has the word in it (although perhaps not in the original language–this book is a translation, which might explain its non-American focus and preferred aesthetic).

So, I dunno. Not my bag. My style is more Ethan Allen than Euromoderne, and I fully expect my lofts to have unpainted red brick walls (or maybe painted cinder block) and I presume that they will not be on the first floor. I dunno why: probably because that’s what I have in my head as a loft based on its origins, not that it’s a condo by another name to appeal to people too cool to own a mere condo.

So it was almost a quick flip through, but I definitely have some quibbles with the book. First, it had some blatant copy errors: One, the verb fomd which I could not actually guess what they meant. A pair of chapters covering two halves of the same building were out of order, so that the second of the two referred to the other chapter following it. And so on. Secondly, some photo captions were in something like six point font–I mean, it was tiny. I don’t want to go all old man here, but I had to angle the light just right on the book and damn near squint to read them–I even tried my beautiful wife’s cheaters and they didn’t help much. Third, the book lapses into the argot of interior design–which I suppose is fitting since this is clearly an inspiration book for designers, but, c’mon, man, if every liminal space is diaphanous, what does that even mean to distinguish it from every other instance of transition and example of natural light?

So I was not impressed by the lofts depicted nor the book itself.

Which likely will not put me off on reading the other loft design books I got in October. A man has to make his annual reading goals even if it’s just browsing pretty pictures.

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Book Report: What’s So Funny About Getting Old by Ed Fischer and Jane Thomas Noland (1991)

Book coverThis collection is a collaborative effort by two people who worked for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune before Lileks was there. Ed Fischer was a cartoonist, and Jane Thomas Nuland was books editor. So this collection is about aging, one page a cartoon and the facing page a quip, a gag, a little story, or a little poem by Ms. Noland.

So: I dunno, about the same as you’d get from, say, a collection of Saturday Evening Post material (ye gods, have I reported on three? 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, yes indeedy–but in my defense, this blog is coming up on 22 years old now, so I am reading other things in between). Not as quotable nor retellable as what you would get out of a collection of jokes or Reader’s Digest every month, but amusing. Presumably, a lot of these were given as birthday gifts for someone turning 40, 50, or 60 back in the day where people photocopied cartoons to tack onto their cubicles or tape to the walls of their workspaces.

So an hour or so browsing, one more book on the annual list, and not a great expense–it was stuffed into a $3 bag amongst other gleanings in Sparta in October.

It’s funny to think, though, that this sort of thing (and Reader’s Digest) might have been the equivalent of TikTok for the pre-Internet generation. A series of short, unrelated things for amusement that passed right through the eyes and through the brain, presumably, but not retained. I guess the main difference is the lack of infinite scroll, so eventually you come to the end of the book or the end of the magazine and have to get up and do something in real life for a bit before picking up another one. Or maybe not; perhaps I am tweely pronouncing whatever little thought comes into my little mind at any time.

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I Heard It There First

I have been listening to KCSM, the Bay Area’s jazz station, streaming during the workdays recently to shake things up as WSIE has a pretty limited playlist.

As such, I heard the National Weather Service trigger the emergency broadcast system, and it was not a test. And it was not something we hear when the sounders go off here in Missouri: It was a tsunami warning.

Fortunately, it did not wipe anyone off the beach:

National Weather Service cancels tsunami warning for U.S. West Coast after 7.0 earthquake.

I feel a little like a world traveler and haven’t left my office.

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Movie Report: Payback (1999)

Book coverAfter watching Shanghai Noon a couple of weeks ago, I had to go back and watch this movie again to see how many times Lucy Liu said, “Hubba hubba.” Ah, gentle reader, I was mistaken: She says, “Hubba hubba hubba” only once, so it was not her preferred phrase, and she was actually only echoing another character who said it more frequently.

So this is a Parker film based on a book by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake), but he did not want any films to use the name Parker when he was alive, so the main character in this film is Porter, and he’s a thief who steals from other thieves. The film starts after Porter and an associate, Val (he of the “hubba hubba hubba”), rob a Chinese triad of a payout that Val said was going to be $300,000, but it turns out that Val was lying, and Val wanted the entire $140,000 to buy himself back into a criminal syndicate–and he convinced Porter’s wife to shoot Porter, whom she thought was having an affair with a prostitute. So the film begins with a back-alley doctor removing the bullets from Porter and his vowing to get his share of the money back.

So Porter returns to the city, commits some petty crimes, and begins climbing the ladder to recover his money. Val has turned it over to “the syndicate,” so Porter has to deal with them as he ascends to the levels where someone can give him his cut of the cash. Meanwhile, a couple of corrupt policemen stand him up and threaten him with arrest or worse if he doesn’t turn the money over to them when he recovers it. And the syndicate, although it has told him that he’s crazy to try to recoup the $130,000 that they think Porter wants–and he corrects them that he only wants his share. The aforementioned Lucy Liu plays a sadomasochistic prostitute whose best customer, maybe, is Val and who is connected to the gang that Val and Porter ripped off–whom Val points at Porter so they can kill him for him.

At any rate, the whole Parker thing was he had a code that he only stole from bad people, or at least it worked out that way (from what I remember of the books). Aside from a couple of petty crimes at the film’s beginning, that holds true. And he has a soft spot for the prostitute whose picture with Porter spurred the whole movie (taken before he was married, we are told eventually), so that kind of humanizes him. He’s not the worst villain of the lot, for sure.

So I have enjoyed the movie at least thrice now (in the theaters, when I got the DVD, and just now, but I might have seen it another time or two in the last 25 years). And since we looked at Deborah Kara Unger (who played Porter’s wife briefly) when we talked about Highlander: The Final Dimension and we looked about Lucy Liu when we recently reviewed Shanghai Noon, I guess we should take a look at Maria Bello who plays the prostitute upon whom Porter is sweet.

Continue reading “Movie Report: Payback (1999)”

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I Am Not Sure “Traditional” Is The Word You’re Looking For

Young men leaving traditional churches for ‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity in droves:

As more and more Protestant churches unfurl Pride flags and Black Lives Matter banners in front of their gates, young men are trending toward more traditional forms of worship.

A survey of Orthodox churches around the country found that parishes saw a 78% increase in converts in 2022, compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019. And while historically men and women converted in equal numbers, vastly more men have joined the church since 2020.

Pop Protestantism, perhaps. But such are not ‘traditional’ in any sense of the word.

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Book Report: Hannah’s Hope by Karen Kingsbury (2005)

Book coverSo after reading Gideon’s Gift and Sarah’s Song, of course I ploughed right into this book simply so I could spell plough the British way yet again. Also, what better time to finish the set than when rushing through them all at once (Heigh, Brian, how’s the ‘Bucky and the Lukefahr Ladies’ series coming? you ask, and I salute you for your British spellings as well as I avoid the question).

This book is better than the previously mentioned books because they don’t have a wrapper prologue nor, really, a bifurcated story, although some of it is told in flashback, but not a whole lot. The titular Hannah is a freshman in an exclusive high school in Washington, D.C., who keeps very busy with extracurricular activities because her parents are away for most of the year–her father, a former Senator, is the ambassador to Sweden and her mother is quite the social butterfly. Hannah lives with her maternal grandmother in a big house and does not have much in terms of companionship outside of those activities. Her driver, though, prays for Hannah all the time, and when he asks her for what he should pray for, she asks for a Christmas miracle–and later, when her parents tell her they won’t be home for Christmas, she narrows her miracle into hoping her parents will be home for Christmas. To take her mind off of the daughter’s loneliness and to keep her from pestering them during the party season in Sweden, the mother reveals a secret: the ambassador is not her real dad–the mother had been with a surfer type out in California in her salad days before returning home with a 4-year-old daughter to marry into her position in society. So Hannah reaches out to Congressmen and the press to help find her father who enlisted in the Army a decade ago and might be in Iraq. He is, but he’s going on One Last Mission, a dangerous one, because the other helicopter pilots have wives and families. So there’s a bit of tension as to whether he will Make It Home Alive, much less in time for Christmas (and the mother jets back from Sweden to quell the noise her daughter has made).

So it was a more straightforward narrative without the double-effect, the half-the-story-in-flashback, method used by the other two books I read. It did have some head scratchers that made me go, “Really?” like the fact that the mother brought the box of mementoes from her California fling to Sweden with her instead of leaving it in the mansion which was their pied-à-terre in the United States–ah, well, it served to move the plot, such as it was, along.

The best of the three I read and more on par with a traditional Christmas novel. No real unreal ending where the mother and the biological father rediscover their passion for one another–that would be a different kind of book, ainna?–but still the best of the lot (unless the second in the series was the best).

So now I have most of the month of December left. Will I read a Christmas novel by a different author? Can I even find one in the stacks even though I stock up on them through the year? Stay tuned!

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Book Report: Sarah’s Song by Karen Kingsbury (2004)

Book coverAfter I read Gideon’s Gift, I was a bit divided over whether to plow through the other two volumes that I own in the Red Gloves series (which only has four books in it, so I have 75% of the whole series). I mean, yeah, they’re short and quick reads, but Gideon’s Hope was just a touch off, even for a Christmas book. Still, I finished Walden in the interim (which I suppose I could write up even though I cannot count it as a complete book as the version I read is in a three book omnibus edition) and have plucked at a couple of other books, but I picked up this book for a single-night read.

And because I thought Gideon’s Gift was a bit….off, I went into it looking for things that were wrong. Which I found, even if they weren’t wrong.

The book has a similar double-story going on and a bit of a contrived frame. An elderly woman has held on for one more Christmas so that she can share her special story (and song) with someone who needs it. She is Sarah, obv., and a worker in her old folks home, Beth, is the one who needs it. Beth has decided to leave her husband because…. well, the modern “because,” which is because she wants to get her groove back, to eat, pray, love, and just because she’s not living her best life with her husband. In short, she’s bored. But she agrees to not leave until after Christmas so as to not ruin the holiday for their little girl. So Sarah tells her the story of her youth, her love, and her song: She loved a local boy in her hometown, but she wanted bigger things, to be a singer, so she went off to Nashville, works as a secretary/receptionist at a recording label while trying to make it, got picked up by a womanizing country star who takes her on tour with promises of making her a star, but he’s not faithful to her, so she returns home only to find the boy has moved on, so she writes a song which captures her feelings for him which her Nashville bosses discover and make a hit, and he hears it on the radio and comes back to their hometown, and they live happily for five plus decades. After she finishes the story and sings the song for Beth, she gives Beth the red gloves and dies like Yoda. And Beth reconciles with her husband. Happy ending! Except, I suppose, for Sarah, although I guess she goes to heaven to be with her husband after fulfilling her last mission on earth.

Ah, twee.

The first anachronism I found was in 1940, teens (Sarah and her friend) were listening to records in their bedroom. That seems a little early for that particular trope. Also, the girl goes to Nashville in 1940 for a “record deal” which seems a little early for that particular development as well. And as she is struggling in Nashville, she is calling her parents long-distance twice a week. C’mon, man. In 1940, inexpensive apartments did not have telephones in them, and even in the 1980s, we weren’t calling someone long distance twice a week. That was expensive. Some of us can remember it. One presumes that many of the people who read Karen Kingsbury novels would know it, too, if they stopped to think of it.

But probably this book is not designed for thinking. It’s designed for quickly reading and feeling, and I’ve quickly read it and felt that I was not really the target audience. Not for any Christmas novel, actually, but yet I read them around this time of year when I can find them in the stacks.

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Enumeration

It’s like the twelve days of Christmas, except:

2: Number of lamps my mother-in-law sent over because they weren’t working.
1: Number of lamps more broken than when they were received.
1: Number of electric shocks received (so far).
0: Number of lamps repaired.

They’re old touch lamps, and they were not working (as reported to me). I took one out and put a bulb in it. It was permanently on, apparently. So, no problem. I would just replace the socket with a turn switch socket.

Except! The socket is not easily interchangeable; the base and insulation sleeve of the existing lamp are designed for a lamp which does not have a switch, and the base attached to the threaded tube doesn’t seem to come off easily. When I gripped it with a pliers to turn it to try to loosen it, I broke the base attached to the lamp. Almost enough to fit the turning switch into it, but not quite.

So what to do?

Leave it partially assembled on my work bench for months or years is the way to bet.

By the way, the design above is available for purchase along with many other designs you can see on Nico Sez. They make great Christmas gifts, I hope, as everyone is getting a Nico Sez shirt for Christmas.

UPDATE: Uncharacteristically for me, after walking off a bit of frustration, I went back and determined that the base, broken as it was had to unscrew from the threaded tube somehow. So I gripped it with the pliers, a couple of different pairs, actually, and it broke off until I managed to actually break off the threaded part as well. The base from the replacement socket threaded right on, and within minutes I had the socket wired up and I’d similarly taken apart the other lamp, broken off the other base, and replaced its socket as well.

Sometimes, you have to break something to fix it. Advice I need to remember sometimes along with what would a professional do? (which is often to make additional cuts or holes in the wall to make things easier trusting in their ability to patch drywall or make those fixes in addition to whatever I’m trying vainly to fix without the additional steps).

When I announced my triumph to my beautiful wife, she said her mother would have wanted the touch functionality repaired, as she would have a hard time bending and turning the switch by the bulb. Oh. Well, I guess we have two new lamps for Christmas.

UPDATE 2: Moments later, Facebook weighs in with its assessment of my electrical repair skills:

Thanks, I need that vote of confidence from dubious algorithms.

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