Breathless

tags: mystery, spiritual, supernatural

⭐⭐⭐⭐

From GoodReads

#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz delivers a thrilling novel of suspense and adventure, as the lives of strangers converge around a mystery unfolding high in the Colorado mountains—and the balance of the world begins to tilt….

In the stillness of a golden September afternoon, deep in the wilderness of the Rockies, a solitary craftsman, Grady Adams, and his magnificent Irish wolfhound Merlin step from shadow into light…and into an encounter with enchantment. That night, through the trees, under the moon, a pair of singular animals will watch Grady's isolated home, waiting to make their approach.A few miles away, Camillia Rivers, a local veterinarian, begins to unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring all the forces of a government in peril to her door.At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come together to begin a descent into darkness. In Las Vegas, a specialist in chaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable.On a Seattle golf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements for murder. Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the past begins a trek toward his destiny.

In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless, fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the moment between one turn of the world and the next, across the border between knowing and mystery. It is a journey that will leave all who take it Breathless.

Breathless is one of Dean Koontz books that I skipped reading because at the time the synopsis sounded the same as his other books. I was wrong to presume that Breathless has the same old same old supernatural sci-fi mystery. Good against evil is ever present but the story is more spiritual IMHO. Maybe I'm wrong but that's my opinion. The novel dismisses the belief of man's evolution and I agree with the novel that there is a creator. Grady Adams and his friend Camilla believe that the animals with human like intelligence that suddenly materialized in the woods belong to a new "created" species and did not evolve from some organism. Puzzle and Riddle, the names given to them by Grady Adams, are not only cute like small children, but very intelligent and adapt quickly to humans and the Irish Wolfhound. Although they cannot speak, they have their own way of communicating.

Windfall

tags: Netflix movie, thriller wannabe, worst movie ever made

my rating: gazillion goose eggs００００００００００

from Netflix

A man breaks into a tech billionaire's empty vacation home, but things go sideways when the arrogant mogul and his wife arrive for a last-minute get-away.

"Arrogant mogul" description is inaccurate. I didn't see any arrogance in his character. The tech mogul is matter-of-fact and not flaunting his riches to the envious vacation home occupier.

What an embarrassment! The movie is a major fail in every category.

Acting -The only acceptable performance is done by Jesse Plemons who plays the husband. The other 3 actors  Are. Truly. Awful. They have neither facial expressions nor believable delivery of lines. 

Illogical Script - Extremely inane because nobody who is supposed to be smart to become a billionaire will leave a loaded gun inside an unlocked drawer in an empty vacation house. If you have a gun to use for your safety, you either store it where you reside everyday, not in a weekend home, or carry it with you everyday, or hire a bodyguard. A spare gun in a vacation home should be kept in a strong box if he is stupid to insist one should be kept there. Obviously, the script writer doesn't know anything about guns and its purpose. The stranger who decides to "experience being a a billionaire by squatting in the vacation home" is only there maybe for a week or days which does not serve his purpose. What an idiotic idea. He did not intend to stay there forever, so why did he declare he wanted to live like a billionaire? Since it is a vacation home, there are no food. The occupier still needs to go out and buy them. He can only enjoy the swimming pool, the sauna, the alcoholic drinks, and the house but nothing else. He is only seen drinking beer or some bottled drink. That's it. He never used the pool nor the sauna. Killing the only believable entrepreneur character is the dumbest idea ever. This movie is written mainly for lazy socialists and brainless viewers who envy rich accomplished people to satisfy their wish in "eating" and killing the rich.😠 There are no backstories for all 3 main characters to understand the stupid wife and the equally d'oh! stupid occupier. The late arrival of a Latino groundskeeper is contrived. He starts doing some noisy work outside which is a head scratcher. He is using a leaf blower or some tool that makes loud noise but the property has no green lawn nor trees very near the house. It is xeriscaped, no grass around and the driveway to the house. The ground is pristine. What is he using the tool for? His death is unnecessary and he is portrayed as lacking in common sense too. Rayciss!

Directing and Cinematography - amateurs

Music - amateur, computer generated garbage, annoying, and incongruous to the particular scenes

Entertainment Value - NIL. Watching paint dry or waiting for water to boil is more exciting. Trust me.

The Ballad Of Dood & Juanita

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I love Sturgill Simpson's new bluegrass, country, old Appalachian music album, The Ballad Of Dood & Juanita. The album is very short like an EP, 10 tracks 28 minutes but the songs tell an interesting story that I'm imagining it as a movie, really "cinematic" lyrics. Someone should make a film based on the album and sell it to Netflix just like Sound & Fury. Yeah!

Tracks

1. Prologue 

Come hear a tale, that awful trails of old Kentucky hills

Hear a story from the year they started hiding stills
Back in pioneering days of 1862
About a maiden named Juanita, and a man called Dood
Story of it's time, when time was tough on a man
When all he had to get by was a pail and powder can
Ol' Dude was an eagle eye, Juanita was his love
He was a mighty mountain man, she was his one true love

2. Ol' Dood (Part 1) 

Had a monster of a mule, was a mighty fine steed
Sham, and Sam, a tomahawk, and that flintlock's all he need
Finding food, and finding trouble, and always taking heat
Any man who crossed him was surely gonna bleed
And he'd stretch you up and burn you
For calling him half-breed

3, One On The Saddle, One On The Ground

First time ol' Dood laid eyes on Juanita
He knew then and there that she was the one
She gave him a love every man knows is needed
She gave him a daughter, she gave him a son

One day while Juanita was out in the garden
A bandit rode up without making a sound
Dood was working the plow far away from his rifle
Tried to get to it, but the bandit drew down

Last thing he remembered was Juanita screaming
As the world faded black and Dood crumpled down
When he came to the bandit was nowhere to be seen
His true love Juanita, nowhere to be found

A man and his rifle, a mule, and his hound
One in the saddle, one on the ground

Saw the ball had passed through
Clean as a church fold
And the wounds washed up by Sam, his old hound
So he saddled up Shamrock and powdered his rifle
And put on his old hat, worn, weathered and brown

Told his son to stay strong
Take care of his sister
'Til daddy returned, with mama safe and sound
Then they set out together to go find Juanita
Old Dood in the saddle, and Sam on the ground
Vowing never to stop 'til Juanita was found

A man and his rifle, a mule, and his hound
One in the saddle, one on the ground
One in the saddle, one on the ground

4. Shamrock

Never was a finer breed than the steed who was Shamrock

Plain to see by his confirmation that he came from finest stock

Daddy was black mammoth jack, mama was a thoroughbred mare

Had four white feet on a buckskin coat, blonde mohawk in his hair

Stood about 19 hands, didn't need no kick to go

With ol' Dood up top, deep in the saddle, hollering

Whoa, boy, whoa

Whoa, boy, whoa

Only ever had one rider, anyone else was gettin' bucked

Cross any kind of land, through the rain, snow, and muck

Surefooted as a billy goat, with 33 inch ears

Clog dance on a snake with his front two feet, give coyotes the rear

Kick so hard it'll send 'em up and out the stratosphere

Make a coyote fly so far, it wouldn't land until next year

From the hightop to the holler, no place Sham can't go

With ol' Dood up top, deep in the saddle, hollering

Whoa, boy, whoa

Whoa, boy, whoa

Ain't scared to cross that river, jump clear across that creek

Steed don't need no shoes when his hooves is one foot thick

Leather and tack can't hold him back, he'll bite right through a bit

Rope bridle made of mooring line was the only thing that'd fit

Hot on the bandits trail, fence posting through the snow

Ol' Dood up top, high in the saddle, hollering

Go, boy, go

Go, boy, go;

Go, boy, go

Go, boy, go

Here's the live version

5. Played Out

Still no Juanita after 5 days and 5 nights of searching. The sad part - Sam died.

6. Sam

He was the hound of hounds

He was the wonder of all walkers
He loved howling at the moon
He loved treeing that raccoon

Most of all he was my best friend
And he's gone too soon

7. Juanita 

(ft. Willie Nelson)

Juanita, where'd your mama get that name
There's no senoritas from the mountains where you came
And if I ever saw one
She wouldn't be pretty as you
With black hair so long
And soft eyes so blue

Juanita, I'll search the world 'til you're in my hands
Juanita, I'll find you
I'll find you again

8. Go In Peace

A group of Cherokee found Dood and Shamrock passed out. They recognize him as a Shawnee and they are brought to the Chief where Juanita is safe and sound. She was traded for a horse by the bandit, McClure. Ol' Dood, Juanita, and Shamrock went back home.  

9. Epilogue
Now that mama's safe and sound
All peaceful and secure
He set back out on Shamrock
To find and kill McClure
It didn't take him very long
To track old Seamus down
McClure wanted Juanita back
And wanted to be found

10. Ol'Dood (Part 2)

LOL of the Day - Tom Brady's Unretirement Music Playlist

These past two months I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come. But it’s not now. I love my teammates, and I love my supportive family. They make it all possible. I’m coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa. Unfinished business LFG pic.twitter.com/U0yhRKVKVm

— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) March 13, 2022

I am neither a sports nor Tom Brady fan but I saw a Tom Brady retirement playlist on Freegal 2 months ago which may no longer be applicable if Tom is really going back to play. So I made a playlist to make fun of and mock wishy washy Tom. 😒

Kotaro Lives Alone

tags: anime series based on manga, Japanese, Netflix streaming 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

10 episodes, 27 minutes

The story is about a lonely four-year-old boy Satо Kotaro who moves in Shimizu Apartments to live by himself hoping to be reunited with his parents. He makes friends with his neighbors including a poor manga artist, a young girl working in a club as a hostess, and a kindhearted thug (yakuza?).

The idea of a four year old boy living alone is absurd but anything is possible in anime. Each episode is funny but also sad and heartbreaking and there is a lesson learned by the adults as well as the children at Kotaro's Kindergarten school.

Kotaro made cute bento with onigiri shaped like his favorite anime character Tonosaman

A 10-episode live action series based on the same manga, Kotaro wa Hitorigurashi (Kotaro Lives Alone), was broadcast in 2021 but I like this current 2022 anime more.

Oliver Stone's Ukraine Documentaries

2016 Ukraine On Fire and its sequel that came out in 2019, Revealing Ukraine - 2 documentary movies on Ukraine produced by Oliver Stone. These should be viewed by all people specially the ill informed who are easily led by corrupt politicians, WEF, NGOs, globalists, and George Soros groups with an assist by their lap dog, main stream media. 

Ukraine has a long history supporting the Nazis and still is holding hands with the current Neo-Nazis/thugs. Watch these 2 movies with an open mind and decide for yourself instead of listening to the constant yammering Uniparty elite politicians and media.  

Cleopatra's Dagger

tags: mystery-ish

from GoodReads

A journalist in nineteenth-century New York matches wits with a serial killer in a gripping thriller by the prizewinning author of the Ian Hamilton Mysteries.

New York, 1880. Elizabeth van den Broek is the only female reporter at the Herald, the city’s most popular newspaper. Then she and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park—the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle. The macabre discovery takes Elizabeth away from the society pages to follow an investigation into New York City’s darkest shadows.

When more bodies turn up, each tied to Egyptian lore, Elizabeth is onto a headline-making scoop more sinister than she could have imagined. Her reporting has readers spellbound, and each new clue implicates New York’s richest and most powerful citizens. And a serial killer is watching every headline.

Now a madman with an indecipherable motive is coming after Elizabeth and everyone she loves. She wants a good story? She may have to die to get it.

I was encouraged by Amazon First Reads last month and was eager to read this highly rated First Reads for April 2022. Alas, it is back to normal FR because the novel is lamentable. Why oh why do these authors insist on being woke instead of writing a mystery suspense novel that everybody will appreciate, not just for the stupid virtue signaling millennials and maybe some ignorant older folks.

"Gripping thriller"...where in the book? There is very little suspense because the author was preoccupied writing about clothing and New York City images in the 1880s, Elizabeth family's wealthy privilege which Elizabeth abhors and feels her moral values is compromised🙄🙄🙄, the obligatory and clichéd beautiful, elegant but cold-as-ice mother, etc. etc. I also detested the unnecessary sexual assault to make the assailant a red herring. Writing style is also not very good as she contrived to sound 19th century.

Ugly. Not recommended for normal sane people.

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure

Today, March 2, 2022 on Netflix streaming - The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure

tags: comedy, historical fiction, Korean movie, Netflix streaming

⭐⭐⭐⭐

from AsianWiki

A search takes place over the ocean to find the lost treasure of the Goryeo royal family, which disappeared without a trace.

Kang Ha-Neul has frizzy wiry hair and he screams a lot. There's too much screaming in this movie but I still like it.

Kang Ha-Neul

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The 2014 The Pirates movie with Kim Nam-Gil and Son Ye-Jin is better IMHO. It is no longer streaming on Netflix.

Rewinding The 80s

Some of my favorite 80s teen movies. 

The only Sean Penn movie I've ever seen.

Cooking With Fernet Branca

tags: cooking, dark humor, Italy, satire

⭐⭐⭐⭐

from GoodReads

Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany where he whiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions--including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur known as Fernet Branca. But Gerald's idyll is about to be shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former Soviet republic, as a series of misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity . . .

After reading while laughing out loud the funny Cookbook For Deplorables, I suddenly remembered the hilarious misadventures of Gerree Samper in Cooking With Fernet Branca. I read this book in 2005 and loved his absurd farcical relationship with Marta and vomit-inducing out of this world culinary inventions specially the Liver Ice Cream or Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream. Marta finds the flavor is herb-y but doesn't seem to notice the garlic. She is as weird as Gerald. BTW, Garlic Ice Cream is being sold in California if you want to have a taste. 

I reread it and still love it for its satiric take on travelogues/memoirs such as Peter Mayle's A Year In Provence, which I also loved, BTW. I absolutely agree with Gerald's spot on description of Tuscan bread. I baked the Tuscan-style bread in 2010 for a blogging community baking challenge. Gerald notes:

"There is something radically wrong with Tuscan bread. Frankly it's a disgrace: the one thing to disfigure an otherwise classic cuisine. Even Italians from other regions make ribald remarks about it - like for instance that it's the only bread in the world to emerge from the oven already stale."

The second and third books in the trilogy are equally witty with more of Gerald's acerbic humor and odd culinary experiments

Amazing Disgrace

Rancid Pansies (an anagram of Princess Diana)