Everyone’s A Critic.

I would like to spend my days talking about airplanes, being a pilot, piloting airplanes, using ForeFlight on my iPad as my Electronic Flight Bag, the wonders of Apple, life in Chicago, and the enjoyment of my existence. These are things I strive to talk about, but there’s so much going on in the world I feel like I can’t be silent about important topics.

People following my Twitter feed (the one I abandoned and then fired up again) must think I am nuts. One moment I’m tweeting about my favorite airplane, the next moment I’m sharing a photo from “Star Trek: Voyager”, and then I start going on about the current state of politics in the United States.

There’s just so much crap going on these days and anyone with a higher IQ than the speed limit (which is apparently, yet shockingly, not enough people in today’s society) can see that we are a nation in crisis. To pretend it’s not happening feels unpatriotic. To gloss over all the stuff happening with the Trump Administration and think everything is fine is like sipping a tea on a veranda that is engulfed in blames.

Things are not fine. The guy in the Oval Office thinks he’s a dictator. His children are making wads of money from foreign interests that run contrary to the beliefs of the United States. Facebook has decided to let politicians say whatever the hell they want in ads, regardless of the truthfulness of the content. The CEO of Twitter is more concerned with looking “hip” in his homeless hat than controlling what’s going on with the platform that has run completely off the rails. Children are in cages, farmers are losing money left and right, and the Trump Administration is doing its best to divide the country, instill mistrust in anything to do with the media or governmental process, and make as much as possible for its own self-interests.

This is not what The United States of America is about.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are belching up as many candidates as possible with the apparent theory, “hey, a shitstorm of a primary worked for the GOP in 2016, maybe we should give it a try!” and only God knows why we would want Bernie or Biden as President when they don’t even know where they are half the time.

It’s like too many people have just given up.

We need to end career politicians. Now. Senator Susan Collins of Maine? Get her out of there. Marco Rubio? Ted Cruz? Please, get them out of there.

Don’t even get me started with Mitch McConnell.

Look, we can fix this. It’s going to take decades and it’s going to take a lot of hard work from all of us that Pledge Allegiance to the Flag, but we can do it. We need to work together, talk rationally, and listen intently. Yeah, I get hysterical and emotional and quite frankly I need to knock it off, and so does everyone else.

So talking about things I love? I’d love to. But I want to do my part to make sure we still have a sane society where we can still talk about the things we love.

Hulu has the recent live episodes of “All In The Family” and “The Jeffersons”. For those unfamiliar, ABC recently featured an episode of the two iconic shows performed live Woody Harrelson is a weird casting of Archie Bunker. Marissa Tomei did a great job with Edith but the vibe of the show is off. I’m in the middle of “All In The Family” as I type this, maybe it’ll get better as the show goes on.

Addendum: watching “The Jeffersons”, and I’m really disappointed the doorbell wasn’t copied from the original show. Ding ding ding.

Tonight the family got together for Valentine’s Day and we saw Hamilton at the CIBC Theatre here in Chicago. The tickets were a Christmas present for Chris; it was a delightful coincidence that at the time, the first night available was Valentine’s Day

I knew the history laden musical was all the rage these days but other than that I didn’t know much about the show. It’s the 21st century of a Rock Opera, complete with lots of rap music, 21st century riffs, and lots of remixing and synthesizer sounds. Musically, the show is a delight. But I was mesmerized by the blocking and staging of the show. Rotating stages, clever choreography, moving sets, and masterful lighting augmented wonderful performances by all members of the cast. The cast and crew worked hard to tell a nicely woven story, and I was happy to see them all take the curtain call as one, no highlighting of the “star”, no spotlighting a particular cast member.

I found that refreshing.

The only thing that bothered me about the entire experience was the audience; I’m surprised at the number of people that can’t get through a Broadway show without checking their phone (and its glaring LED glow) or having a conversation with a person near them. There was a low murmur of nearly constant chatter a few rows behind us. The folks that came in nearly 40 minutes late and needed to be seated in the center of their aisle should be shunned, not mentioned, but here we are.

When did we forget how to be a respectful audience member?

Overall, it was a pleasant experience and I highly recommend catching the show if you can.

So Earl and I have been watching NBC’s Manifest. It’s on Monday nights at 10:00 PM Eastern/9:00 PM Central (yay for Central time!)

The show is fairly uneven. If you’re not familiar with the storyline, basically Flight 828, en route from Jamaica to New York, goes through some really rough turbulence and then is diverted to Stewart Airport (after being turned away from JFK). The kicker? When the flight lands it’s 5 1/2 years after it left Jamaica.

I hope they got a meal during that long ass flight.

Anything with airplanes is going to get my attention, so Earl and I subscribed to the dreaded Monday night slot on NBC. I’m always hesitant to watch anything Sci-Fi like on NBC because they start getting weird with the series by either throwing the storyline into a weird tangent (Heroes) or just killing the show without warning (The Event). However, Manifest was cleared for a full season, which is somewhat comforting.

Honestly, it feels like the writers aren’t sure as to what they want the show to be. Is it Sci Fi? Is it supernatural? Is it a soap opera? Is it Dynasty? Twists, turns, ins, outs, so many ways for the story to go.

Not to give too much away in case you want to watch the show when it’s bingeable, the folks on the flight that was lost for 5 1/2 years suddenly have subtle yet very present “callings”. We don’t know what’s causing them, we don’t know what they mean all the time, but as time moves on they become more and more frequent and intense. Psychic stuff? Fortune telling? Who knows.

At times the story is plodding along at a snail’s pace. It’s during these moments that you start to notice that some of the acting is a little wooden or the special effects are a little less than what one would expect in 2019, but because I’m a fan of these types of shows, I am forgiving. There are times when I reach for the iPhone or something because the story is moving along so slowly. There’s romantic triangles and occasionally a bit of family drama mixed in but we are still finding it tolerable.

We never watched “Lost” so we don’t know how much like “Lost” this show is turning out to be. It’s twisty and turny, which is good. I just hope the writers resolve the mysteries before this show comes to an end.

And we don’t know when that will be.

A couple of stray observations (without spoilers):

• None of the men apparently own a razor
• I found it easy to mix up the characters of Grace and Autumn but that could be my thing
• One episode must have been sponsored by Chevrolet because there’s a lot of Silverado going on
• The head mean person will look familiar
• The New York locales look honest and filmed on location
• Did the NYSDMV issue special license plates for television shows, because prop plates on all New York based shows begin with “Q” these days

Apparently after a couple rounds of drinks at the local pub I felt the need to sing “My Heart Will Go On”. Earl was kind enough to take a photo.

I do not remember this incident.

We were flipping through Amazon Prime Video when a curious suggestion came up on the screen. Amazon’s algorithm thinks we should be watching “Women Of The House”, the 1995 follow-up series to “Designing Women”. This show follows the adventures of Suzanne Sugarbaker as she takes her fifth husband’s seat in Congress until Georgia can elect a new representative. Naturally, one would think hilarity ensues.

Let me assure you, it does not.

It made it 13 episodes before it was cancelled. The last four episodes were broadcast on Lifetime, the show having been cancelled by CBS.

Earl and I watched the two-part pilot. We barely made it through the 42 minutes.

The character of Suzanne Sugarbaker has always been written a little over the top, but in this thing she’s way, way out there. She shrieked “Excuse Me!”, try to get someone’s attention, a few times during the first five seasons of “Designing Women”. In the pilot she does it at least half a dozen times and it doesn’t garner any laughs. There’s also some glaring inconsistencies in her timeline: her maid is now named Sapphire instead of Consuela, and she suddenly has a younger brother she calls “retarded”. He is played solely for laughs in the pilot. Suzanne now also has an adopted daughter because like “Golden Palace”, all spin-offs from popular sitcoms in the mid 1990s apparently needed to have a cheeky kid.

Teri Garr plays a spin on Patsy Stone from “Absolutely Fabulous”, under the guise of being a press secretary, Patricia Heaton is some sort of whacked out, super aggressive, yet completely devoid of class and charm version of Dixie Carter’s Julia Sugarbaker and the third actress plays an administrative assistant that must have been inspired by Julie Haggerty’s flight attendant on “Airplane”, minus the chuckles. And in some unexplained twist, they CGIed Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Smith” into the Congressional Chambers and since it was 1995, it wasn’t very convincing.

While “Designing Women” was fairly topical, especially in it’s early years, I have no idea what this show was trying to do. Delta wasn’t handed a very good script but she screams her way through every line and admittedly, it was very tough trying to get through the pilot.

If Amazon suggests “Women Of The House” for your viewing pleasure, don’t bother. Take the time to look at one of the early topical episodes from “Designing Women” instead. You’ll have a much better viewing experience.