This is what I have been watching....no arguments or fights. Just cake.

The only thing I can say about it that is bad is that they didn't do any pies.

I love pie. 

Apple Pie. Pecan Pie. Blueberry Pie. Peach Pie. Pumpkin Pie. All kinds of pie.

Why can't we live a life of Pie?

WKRLEM: Why is Rory so sad?

He doesn't seem sad. He just seems sort of gay.

Some pigs are more equal that others.

 

Have you seen the new Equalizer? It's actually not that bad. Sure we have some bad lives matter virtue signaling and the white guys are always the villains. The hero is a 50 year old fat black woman but that is fair enough. The original Equalizer was a 70 year old English dude. What makes this one bullshit is that Queen Latifah knocks out 20 year olds doing karate. This is a continuing sore spot with me because I hate when a 100 lb girl beats up 300 lb German terrorist guys. The old school Equalizer didn't do karate. He just shot them.

The thing is that they don't really hit you over the head with the anti-white bias. It's there but you can sort of ignore it. I am afraid it is good as it can be in the current climate.

Also starring Adam Goldberg as the smart Jew on the computer. That seems to be the only part he can play these days.

Not recommended but if you have to watch something because you can't get a streaming service you can check this out.

America is Cobra Kai

I have been enjoying this little TV series called Cobra Kai. It is a sequal to the Karate Kid Movies. They had the bright idea to have the actual stars of the eighties classic movie reprise their roles. You remember. Cobra Kai were the bullies and little Karate Kid with the aid of a mysterious Jap gardener beat them down.  

Why do I say America is Cobra Kai. Well you see this show flips the script from the movie. The bad guy in the movie Johnny is the conservative figure. He calls his kids pussies and has no tolerance for the current fads and bullshit of political correctness. The Karate Kid guy is the liberal who is all about  kumbaya bullshit and was a hero in the first movie. This show makes Johnny the hero. He is the guy we  root for. A blue collar rough around the edges Trump deplorable. That's why I am enjoying this show.

The new series is pretty cool. Lots of eighties references that I love. Check it out

I just caught "I'm Dying Up Here"

I recently started streaming Showtime and I caught a series about comedy called "I'm Dying Up Here."

It tells the story of the "The Comedy Store" in the 1970's where a bunch of big time comedians got their start. Richard Pyor. Robin Williams. Andy Kauffman. Jay Leno. David Letterman. Elyane Boosler. Richard Lewis. The list goes on and on. Jim Carrey is a producer and he got his start there as well.

I am a big comedy fan. Of course I follow most of the younger guys that have podcasts these days. It is a fictionalized account so it is interesting to guess who is who. I binge watched two seasons and I reccomend it. It is well done and entertaining and the seventies details are right on to coin a phrase.

Another terrific TV show to add to your que!

I don't know if you morons watch PBS. I mean we are more a CMT or FX audience at Lem's but some of you might watch PBS. Well Titus at least. But they often have some great stuff at Masterpiece Theater. Downton Abby which just finished its run. Poldark which was remake and nowhere as good as the original from the 1970's. Mr. Selfridge with the nasty hebe from Entourage playing the department store magnet from the beginning of the last century. Plus they have been featuring some excellent BBC detective mystery series.

"Grantchester" starring James Norton and Robson Green as an English Vicar and a local policemen who form an odd couple crime solving duo. Norton is an excellent actor playing against type as he is often a heavy. He was great in the series "Happy Valley" and is about to become very hot because of his turn in the new adaptation of "War and Peace." The vicar Sydney Chambers is a WW2 vet suffering from PSTD who drinks, listens to jazz and gets involved in solving murders. Geordie Keating the detective is also a vet but much more practical and no nonsense. The first series aired last year and was excellent. The second series is airing now on Masterpiece Theater and is well worth a look. I know it is also available on Amazon Prime. Plus it is a great idea to join the PBS website and you can stream the episodes for free along with some other decent programing. We might as well get something out of all the money the government is wasting on PBS.

The show is easy and comfortable but still engrossing. You can enjoy it without having read the books that it was adapted from and still get a lot out of it.

Highly recommended.

Harry Bosch.....rocking good yarn.

I just finished season Two of Harry Bosch which is an Amazon original series. Amazon has started producing it's own content in much the same way as Netflicks. This is the second season of the dramatization of some of the novels of Michael Connelly featuring LA homicide Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. Season One was excellent and the second season keeps up the standard. Great production values and a gritty LA milieu add up to superior entertainment.

The key element to Harry's pysche is that his Mom was a prostitute who was murdered when he was a kid. Something he shares with real life author James Ellroy who is the definitive LA nior writer. I don't know if Connelly stole his life story but he got a lot of mileage out of it. Twenty excellent novels that will leave Amazon a lot of room to develop new series.

Amazon Prime is a great deal. For a nominal fee you get expedited shipping and tons of free streaming video. I heartily recommend it as well as this excellent detective series.

Defining Deviancy Down....below 5-0

You can't watch regular episodic TV anymore. I turn on Hawaii Five O to watch scenes of the scenery and the many hotels that I have stayed at on my visits to that paradise. Hoping to see a little good natured crime stories when the villains get caught at the end of the hour. I know the villains will always be old white guys but that is just a Hollywood convention like the girl who only has to take off her glasses to find out she is beautiful.

The episode started off in a very friendly manner with the marriage ceremony of one of the main characters. Kono gets married to her long time love interest who is a scion of the Japanese crime syndicate the Yakuza who is going straight so he can marry a cop. So far so good right? Ten minutes later she is tied to a chair and being tortured. Some dude is ripping her teeth out with a pair of pliers and throwing the bloody tooth on the floor. Casual brutality. In a subplot. Among shootouts and various mayhem. She frees herself by grabbing a scalpel and gutting her torturer. Then runs off and gets her finance gut shot. All in a couple of minutes.

Things have just become worse and worse. When you watch old school dramas you realize how talented those people were. Just because you can show it doesn't mean you have  to show it. Leave a little to the imagination. Leave the gratuitous gore to HBO and Showtime. Deviancy and filth are the go to level of entertainment nowadays. It is just ridiculous. I have to put this show on the list with Blue Bloods and Chicago PD and all the Law and Orders that I have not watched in years.

Luckily I DVRed a bunch of Hallmark Movies to watch.

I won't be going back to Hawaii any time soon.

Public Morals.....a great new show for you to check out on TNT

There is a great new show about policing called "Public Morals." It is about how NYC used to be in the 1960's.

It shows how the "Pad" worked. The Vice Cops would control things in return for a small stipend that all of the cops in the precinct would share in to supplement their meager pay. It wouldn't be much. Maybe five bucks a week. But in return when something goes wrong you would call up and it was taken care of immediately. You know that there wasn't a problem with the "homeless." They were bums and they were rousted and sent off to the Bowery. Not like today where a homeless douche bag could set up in front of your house and take a dump on the sidewalk and the cops can't or won't do anything about it because they don't want to catch a beef.

It has the flavor of the sixties. The fashions. The cars. The cigars. The food. The style. Burn's old man was a cop and he used all of his old stories in the series. Set on the West Side of Manhattan it deals with Irish cops and Irish Gangsters. With a few Wops mixed in for flavor. Written and directed by Edward Burns it stars a bunch of great actors. Brian Dennehy. Neal McDonnough. Kevin Corrigan. Michael Rapaport. Lots of great scenes of violence and mayhem.  There is one mutt who is direct rip off of Crazy Joe Gallo. Has his look and his attitude. Kills five guys with a knife. You see they didn't always have guns in those days.

I remember those days. When the Cops were Irish and the Crooks were guineas. When you had a problem you went to the guys who ran the neighborhood and took care of it. There was no street crime to speak of. The cops controlled the vice. You could play the numbers or bet a horse without paying a huge tax if you won. They always paid off. If you had a beef and were a legitimate citizen the cops would take care of it. Those were the days.

If you want to see the real community policing check this out.

Highly recommended.

"What if we limited the number of white men in film and TV?"

"Creatively, a bad idea—but so is peppering diversity onto default casts."

I should note my 31% cap would in no way limit the number of awesome projects in development; it would just change the breakdown of their casts. After all, as a woman who wants to have any kind of cultural literacy, I’m expected to engage with white-male-centric stories all the time. And even though they're low on ladies, I love Saving Private Ryan, Lord Of The Flies, True Detective, Toy Story, The History Boys, The Godfather and The West Wing. So why shouldn’t white men get equal enjoyment out of watching stories in which they aren’t represented?

Fantastic TV shows like Orange Is The New Black, Empire, Call The Midwife, Black-ish, Fresh Off The Boat, The Bletchley Circle, and Orphan Black prove that increased diversity can open up new storytelling avenues for everyone to enjoy.

Another example: While I feel fairly confident in saying the white male perspective on World War II has been thoroughly covered over the last 75 years of filmmaking, there are fewer films that explore women on the home front, all-black platoons, or Japanese-American internment camps. If we insist on revisiting that time period over and over again, why not do so from a fresh angle?

Sure it’s true that part of the demand for better representation is about social justice: We as a society have determined that equality makes the world a better place.

But demands for increased representation are also demands for new stories. In fact, we already ask for diversity from Hollywood all the time when it comes to genres, styles, tones, and characters (from comedies to dramas, blockbusters to arthouse films, heroes to antiheroes).

Adding more racial and gender diversity is just one more way to foster fresh storytelling. And that’s inarguably a good thing.