Stranger Things

Alright, you've seen Stranger Things, right? If there one thing I love it's a Netflix original, and this one doesn't disappoint. It's about these three kids who try to find their friends after he disappears walking home from a day of D&D. They team up with a telekinetic girl named Eleven (a terrifying implication, because where are the other ten?) and try to find and defeat the Demogorgon. 

The best part is the pure nostalgia of it. If you were kicking around in the 80s you'll see a lot of things that will bring you right back. The props and set dressings aren't the kinds of things they used in 80s movies, they're the kinds of things normal people really had in their houses. What I call the 'grandma couch'... that brown couch with the wagon wheel and flowers... you know the one; that's the kind of thing you'll see. They've even got Winona Ryder, arguably one of the best parts of the 80s. She's really great and gives an amazing performance but the real stars are the kids. I didn't really have a favorite kid while watching the show because they're all legitimately talented actors. But since I've finished, I've seen this video:

This kid's been a Broadway star for years now and he's seriously got some pipes! His name is Gaten Matarazzo (no relation to Heather Matarazzo from The Princess Diaries). If you look him up on YouTube you can find tons of videos of him singing, and they're all wonderful. Here's my favorite:

It's great. Click it, you'll love it. Let me know what you think down below. 

Haven

One of the shows I've gotten into lately is Haven.  Funny story about that.  The show is loosely based on a Stephen King story called The Colorado Kid.  I got all the way into the third season of Haven wondering when they were going to reference the book before I finally looked it up online.  Turns out I haven't actually read that story.  I was thinking of Blockade Billy THE WHOLE TIME.  If you're familiar with those two stories, you're definitely cackling at me right now. 

So, the show is not about a minor league baseball team.  It's about a town near Derry, Maine where tragic supernatural things happen.  The things are called 'the troubles' and the people who make them happen (usually unintentionally) are 'troubled' people.  I'm not finished with the series yet but it seems that there's only one person who can fix everything but she doesn't know how to, or even who she is.  That's quite the obstacle, as you can imagine.  It's originally a Syfy show but I watch it on Netflix, as I mentioned here.  Check it out.

Coming to America

One of the funniest movies of the 80s is easily Coming To America.  If you haven't seen it for a while, I suggest you go straight to Netflix and add it immediately to your list!  If you haven't seen it ever... I don't understand you.  Maybe you're just really young, or maybe you don't like Eddie Murphy... or maybe you just hate yourself and don't want to be happy.  I don't know.  Like I said, I don't understand.  I'll let you go watch it now while we all WAIT FOR YOU!

Have you really not seen it?

Okay, you've just improved your life.  Let's discuss.  Basically, Eddie Murphy and Arseniooooooooooooooooooooo Hall played every character in the movie, so there's that.  No, that's not true but they did each have four or five roles.  It's also got Darth Vader and the dad from Good Times and Samuel L Jackson in one of his 70,000 credited roles and it's so HILARIOUS!  An actual African prince trying to find a pretty American woman and make her rich for real.  I keep checking my inbox but so far they all want my credit card number.  Oh, well. 

When I was deployed to Okinawa about a decade or so ago, I had this friend who would sing at the top of his lungs to get everyone laughing and it was one of my favorite things about our crew.  Imagine a bunch of construction workers basically digging ditches all day every day and out of nowhere, "She's your QUEEEEEEEEN to-oo BEEEEEEE" as loud and as high as he could sing.  Ray Boudreaux, you're the real MVP of that deployment.  That was definitely my favorite deployment.  One day my friend caught an octopus with a shovel.  Good times.

Anyway, if you didn't watch it when I told you to or if you need a refresher, take the time now to let your Soul Glow with Mufasa and Axel Foley.  Thank me in the comments or by subscribing to the email list.  It's only polite.

Nurse Jackie

Look, Edie Falco is a national treasure, okay?  She's been on two of my favorite shows ever and she is an absolutely amazing actor.  She played Carmella Soprano on HBO's The Sopranos (rated very R) and the title role on Nurse Jackie (almost equally likely to scar a kid for life; NO KIDS).  She's won Golden Globes and Emmys and zillions of awards, and she deserves them all, plus MORE... in fact, if I ever meet her she can also have my lunch money.  Not that she needs it.  But whatever.

Okay, so here's Nurse Jackie in a nutshell:  A crew of hugely talented actors portray the real-life workings of an NYC emergency room.  It's kind of like Scrubs, if all the characters were Dr. Cox.  So, dark and cynical and funny and horrific all at once.  But they can cuss and show boobs and stuff.  You know.  Showtime stuff.  Anyway, it's all finished now and you can marathon it on Netflix.  It's really good.

CoastCon '16

Last weekend I went to CoastCon, just like I said I would.  I had a blast and I intended to learn a few things about gaming but it didn't really work out for me.  The first two days I was by myself and I didn't see ANYONE there that I knew, much less anyone who could show me anything about gaming.  On Sunday I planned on going to a panel called How To Learn RPGs When You're Alone With Nobody to Show You (pretty sure that's it...) but it happened to be right at noon and that was the day I brought The Bookworm with me and he needed some $4 million lunch to pick at and ultimately throw away.  My kids are rarely allowed soda, so he was definitely too preoccupied to eat.

This is my only clear picture from Sunday for some reason

I brought The Bookworm on Sunday to meet Steve Blum and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn because he's obsessed with Digimon and they do voices for the cartoon and the video game. To help him understand what that even means, I made him watch I Know That Voice, which is a documentary about voice actors that I'd seen a few months ago on Netflix.  He wasn't pleased to have to sit still watching some people do voices, or to have the magic kind of explained away, but it helped in the long run because when we got there and he saw the pictures of Guilmon and I told him the Guilmon guy was THERE... he knew enough to be excited.  

When we walked up to the table, Steve Blum could obviously guess which show this little kid was a fan of.  I say which show because he's a busy, busy guy. He's got 612 credits on IMDB for shows like Star Wars: Rebels, Cowboy Bebop, Regular Show and a zillion incarnations of Batman and X-Men.  PLUS he is in the Guiness Book of World Records for doing more video game voices than anyone else.  He's done God of War, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty... know what? Just look it up.  Here's the link.

Anyway, we walk up to the guy and he instantly goes into the voice and my kid grins like a maniac and does that insanely cute little-kid giggle.  It was the greatest!  He signed our video game (my kids and my husband play video games most of the time, so I feel like I can probably hear this dude's voice in my house at any given moment) and he was so charmed by The Bookworm that he very generously signed a couple of extra things for us.

See? Blurry.

In the course of our conversation, my little guy casually dropped the name of another Digimon he likes and the lady sitting next to Steve Blum perked up and cried, "Hey! That's me!" It was Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and she did the voice for him with a big smile.  "Whatever-mon digivolve to... Something-Woman!" Clearly, I have a mind like steel trap. 

So, she does the voice, right?  And my kid FREAKS THE FRICK OUT!!! It was like all those people in the black & white footage fainting when Paul McCartney tipped his hat to them or whatever.  I couldn't even deal.  Best day ever.  Just reliving it makes me exhausted, so I'll end here and leave you with some photos I took from the rest of the Con.  Enjoy, and leave your own stories in the comments section about the time you met your favorite celebrity.

 

25 TV Shows To Catch On Netflix

I'd guess that maybe this is a thing everyone does, but I tend to hoard titles on my Netflix list.  I've got a bit of a proposition for you: I'll show you mine and you show me yours.  These are just the TV shows, and they're the ones I'm currently partway through and enjoying.  Later I'll probably post shows I've completed, shows I'd like to see, movies I liked, movies I'm looking forward to... all that stuff. 

The Twilight Zone +

The X-Files +

Star Trek: TOS +

Star Trek: DS9 +

Star Trek: Voyager  +

Star Trek: Enterprise +

Friends +

Alfred Hitchcock Presents +

Property Brothers +

M*A*S*H +

Broadchurch

Bob's Burgers

Jessica Jones

Peaky Blinders

Supernatural

Keeping Up Appearances +

Firefly +

SeaQuest DSV +

Grace & Frankie

Quantum Leap +

Master of None

Sense8

Merlin +

Haven +

The Gilmore Girls +

Just a bit of advice, definitely check the ratings before you watch if you're sensitive or have kids.  I watch most of them WAY after bedtime, particularly the Netflix originals. There's a + next to the ones I'll watch when the kids are up, but in general they don't care to watch them.  Well, The Villain likes TNG, but that's it.

A really good article about M*A*S*H, easily my favorite show

Steven Moffat

Strangely enough, the only two letters I've written to celebrities so far were not to people I've admired for decades, or who shaped my psyche as a child.  My first one was to Steven Moffat, the head writer for Doctor Who.  I sent off my rough draft without making any sort of copy so I don't really remember it well enough to relate it all to you now.  Off to a great start with this blogging thing, eh?  It was a very short, quick note about how the first episode of this season (The Magician's Apprentice) was the best episode of anything that I've ever seen. 

Now, you'll see in the future that I exaggerate and speak mostly in hyperbole, but honestly I stand by what I said this time.  The jokes were all winners, the surprises all worked for me and we all knew the cliffhanger ending was coming so the only disappointment there was that it came too soon. One of Moffat's strengths is suspense.  The man can build suspense like no other! He plants questions in your mind and makes you think everything is a clue.  If I had a nickel for every time he had me overthinking an issue until I made myself so crazy that the actual answer was a let-down... well, my pocket would jingle when I walked, I guess.  But this episode, the suspense was agonizing (in a good way, of course) but the payoffs were equally huge.  It was so good that I grabbed a pen and wrote my first piece of fan mail the next day. 

Man, now I'm hoping I didn't oversell it so that anyone who hasn't seen it thinks I'm some sort of crackpot after they do! Aaaaaanyway...

I only included this story because, guess what?  HE WROTE BACK! Actually, there's that exaggeration I told you that you could expect.  It was really just TL;DR in postcard form.  An assistant sent it, but he signed it himself, and I'm totally willing to tell myself that that's what happened and it's definitely not a stamped-on signature.  Don't be silly, of course it's not!  Okay, it is.  But I still love my little postcard either way.  Here it is:

So that's my bit of excitement for today.  I thought it was a great place to start.  If you have any questions or comments, leave them below.  In the mean time, go check out Doctor Who, why dontcha? It's on Netflix and it's seriously the best if you like Sci-Fi at all.

***Edit- The Netflix goons took away our precious Doctor! It's not on there anymore.***