The Good, The Bad, and The Really Bad: Staying Home, Parenting, and Too Much TV.

Stay at home

School, Kids, Staying At Home, Zoom

Once again I send my love and admiration out to all of the teachers, students, and parents who are attending class at home through Zoom and other online magic. The same goes to everyone who is working from home.

To those who are complaining bitterly about our Governors, in my case Governor Gavin Newsom, shutting things down: GET OVER IT. To those who complain and while about how much YOUR kids are missing out: GET OVER YOURSELF. From pre-schoolers to graduate students they are ALL missing out. My kids are doing online college. Yes, they worked hard to get into top universities and now are hunkering down in their apartments with Zoom. You want to complain? Don’t. Get over it.

So many students, and everyone else have had to deal with cancelled classes, graduations, sports, dances, weddings, birthdays, concerts, museum days, vacations, and everything else. SO GET OVER YOURSELF. Most people aren’t complaining. Be like them. Don’t complain. Just do what you have to do and make the best of it.

Spend your energy THANKING the teachers who’ve had to suddenly switch their classes to online. THANK the medical professionals, grocery store workers, farmers, and others who are still working on the front lines so you can be ok during this.

Come to think about it the people who are whining now are the ones who always whined before this all happened. GET OVER YOURSELF.

Also, please don’t go into a massive panic over Zoom. Yes there are hackers and jerks, but that is the exception rather than the rule. My daughter told me that hackers just start putting in random numbers and when they get to a meeting they post porn or start being disruptive. This is rare. More than anything, as in the case of one of my child’s classes, you find bored 18 and 19 year old boys. One came to a statistics class without clothes and from his bathroom. The professor told him to get dressed and get out of the bathroom. Another creeper started to try to pick up on girls and make rude sexist comments about them. The professor shut down all audio and visuals except for himself. All interaction with the professor was then private. None of her other classes have had problems. I’ve had Zoom meetings and they were delightful.

Don’t get caught up in panics. Take a deep breath. It will be ok.

And no whining. You aren’t special.

Be Creative!

Look what you can do with felt pens and your own fingers. Fun stuff.

What Not to Watch on Netflix: Badland

A few night ago Teddy and I thought it would be fun to watch a movie. Badland, a Western, was #4 in popularity on Netflix. Hey, everyone else was watching it so it must be good. It had a good cast that included Bruce Dern, Mira Sorvino, Amada Wyss, Trace Adkins, and Kevin Makely. Holy shit this movie was bad.

Dialogue: Melodramatic at best. It seemed the writer was trying to make an attempt at making the characters speak as if they lived in the 19th century. It came off as stiff, and sort of stupid.

Plot: A Pinkerton Agent is searching for bad former Confederate officers to bring in to be hung by the neck until dead. There is a sort of side story with a Pinkerton boss and his son that really doesn’t make sense but hey, nothing else in this movie does. In the first part he meets with an old Indian friend/rival just because there has to be an Indian friend/rival. Then he kills a bunch of criminals and gets beat up. The Pinkerton hero meets a woman on a ranch, sort of falls in love, saves her ranch, doesn’t kill her war criminal dad. Then he moves on like Shane and rescues some whores and saves the day in a town fill with people who are really stupid. He gets stabbed. The Indian friend/rival saves him, then he goes back to the woman he loves on the ranch.

Acting: Two out of five stars. Most porn actors do dialogue better (this is before the sex.) With such an experienced cast you’d think it would be better. You’d think. I know that none of these actors will be putting this one on their resume. They’ll be begging IMDB to remove it from their listings. I believe Kevin Makely wanted to be good but with that script and direction he didn’t have a hail stone’s chance in Hell.

Directing: This movie was written and directed by Justin Lee. Hey Justin USC and CSU Long Beach both have great screen writing programs. Maybe you should sign up and learn how to write a real movie script. I COULD DO BETTER. Seriously, I could do better. YOU could do better. But hey, he pulled it off getting such a great cast. Then he wasted that cast.

Sets: Looks like they are all cast offs from other old Westerns. Nothing interesting.

Costumes: Just about the worst I’ve ever seen. EVER. It was like he told the female members of the cast to just find something from the local Goodwill store or from the back of their closets. There must be something from the 1970’s you have hanging around. 1970’s, 1870’s same thing.

Out of five stars I’d give this move a 2 at best. Maybe a 1 because it looked like it might be a lot better. It was awful to the point we were laughing and saying rude things at the screen.

But the joke is on us because everyone is watching it on Netflix. Ugh.

 

Movies and TV We’ve Liked

Hawaii Five-0 ended on Friday. I will miss Alex O’Laughlin’s and Ian Anthony Dale’s gorgeous faces. As a side note: I’m not overly fond of most Vampire movies or television series. I absolutely adored Alex O’Laughlin in Moonlight. It might have been because, well, isn’t it obvious.

Know Hawaii Five-0 wasn’t the best and never won any Emmy Awards but it was a fun Friday escape. We got some great drinking games out of it.

Now that we’re all home everyone is watching a lot of TV. Too much, but hey, I’ll be creative and productive later today.

What we’ve watched at my house in the past week:

• Better Call Saul
• Ozark
• Briar Patch
• Unorthodox
• Tiger King
• Expedition Unknown
• 100 Humans
• The Sinner
• Last Tango in Halifax
• The Black List
• Hawaii Five-0
• Pioneer Woman
• My Lottery Dream Home
• Twilight Zone (the original black and white from the 60’s)
• Alaska State Troopers
• The Curse of Oak Island which has been a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME this season #OakIslandCursers. It isn’t quite as bad as Badland but almost.
• Lots of car shows. Lots of prison shows.  Lots of Food Network. Lots of nature shows. Lots of science shows. We finished all of the paranormal type shows we’d been watching.
• Don’t judge me. Put suggestions in the comments if you have them.

Movies we’ve watched in the past week and liked:

• JoJo Rabbit (5 stars)
• Peanut Butter Falcon (4 stars, a exceptionally cute and sweet movie)
• Rashômon (5 stars)

If you get really bored I have over 150 short stories posted on this blog.

Getting Out While Staying In

I’m staying at home but sometimes I do get out for a walk around my neighborhood. I’m fortunate enough to live near a parkway and my home backs up to parkland. I’ve posted before about night walks. Here are some photos of yesterday’s daytime walk.

 

You might be wondering what ever happened to Austin Durant the Vampire Hunter, my brother Aaron the Vampire and the rogue Vampires. Nothing so far. They’re headed out to the hills today to take care of the problem. I’m not going with them. Nope, not today. No no no no. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.

I’ll be visiting Eleora and Tellias the ancient Vampires later today. Someone needs to check in on them and bring them some supplies. They also need the company and a little comfort.

My daughter asked me to do some art for one of her roommates so I’ll be working on that today too. I’ll post photos of what I come up with.

Thank you for dropping by. Feel free to leave a comment, share a movie suggestion, or let me know what you’ve been up to.

Stay safe. Stay chill. Wash your hands. Stay positive.

xoxox

~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman