Television - Blog Posts
Covid Findings, a Lay Person’s Account.
Hello,
I have popped back to share my own personal experience, and to help heal myself after watching a snippet of a recent BBC Question Time television programme, which I felt only served to try to shame people who were making their own free choices as a human being.
Just a small snippet, where there first guest did not appear to be able to articulate well what he was saying, and had made an unfortunate mistake in a fact (perhaps a victim of actual disinformation), and a second guest who got all of her valid points across, only to be shamed for it on national television in front of a panel of professionals? I thought that the days of barbarianism were over in the UK at least, yet here they are still today only in a different format on television.
I felt like I had just watched a small snippet of abuse, unfortunately this is spread over an entire length of a program involving many more guests than the ones that I have mentioned. It was painful to watch, and I felt that it was aiming to get the monetary audiences in, not just those present to discuss.
I have never spoken about my own experiences with Covid-19, I wanted to ensure that I was not influencing anyone else’s freedoms, but since the BBC are okay to try and shape peoples opinions that I at least should be permitted to write what I am about to write.
At this point, which is Friday 4th of February, 2022, and after hearing many different peoples experiences as well as re-experiencing the same, slight differing problem over the years myself, I can feel safe in the knowledge that I first came across Covid-19 in whatever form that it was in, in November / December 2015.
I then picked up the same thing in February 2016, and lasted a bit longer until I got it again in February 2020, March 2020, October 2020, June 2021, and January 2022 - the recent episodes in January lasted me two days at most, and was not as rough terrain like previous experiences.
Throughout that time I had no help or understanding as to what was going on, until 2021 when I began to wonder if what I had been troubled with all this time was in fact Covid-19, so I started listening to others experiences and keeping up with what was happening for people globally in the news.
There were a few things that stood out to me along that journey;
* the affect that Covid-19 was having on peoples gut
* the re-circulation of old or dormant virus and associated symptoms
* the ability of Covid-19 to cross the brain barrier
Having plenty of time on my hands during lock down, I certainly kept my eye on the world news for updates and noticed more and more that symptoms of things like long Covid fatigue, matched with those of the known Epstein Barr virus, which is common and can lay harmlessly dormant in the guts of anyone.
I also noticed that fungus was a big player in Covid-19 mortality, as fungus is one of the causes of pneumonia. Various fungus can also be the cause of many rash like symptoms that people experience.
In looking at my own experience at least, fungus and bacteria are not just big players in Covid-19 symptoms, but the main ones, leading me to personally (as a lay person) come to understand that Covid-19 is likely a liberator of whatever lays dormant, and perhaps not so dormant, in the guts of the host that it comes to exploit. This includes the transportation and crossing of some of those things over the brain barrier, which explains why so many accounts of Covid-19 experiences include those of neurological symptoms.
Like any public transport service, Covid-19 is nothing without it’s passengers. Taking care of our general health and reducing susceptibility to the overgrowth, overexposure, and resistance to overcoming various fungus and bacteria that are naturally occurring in ourselves and in the environment, may well help in promoting the permanent closure of Covid-19′s business.
The experiences of people matter, as does the free choice for people to have a vaccine, or to not have a vaccine.
Stay well :)
My Thoughts on the How I Met Your Mother Finale
http://wp.me/p2eq91-9 Spoiler alert: I give away all of the twists in the ending, so if you haven't seen it yet, be prepared for major spoilers. I hope you enjoy my thoughts!
#realityofmusic #ilovemylife #ilovemyjob #life #work #liveaudio #mixing #parenting #divorce #love #money #musician #guitarist #songwriter #singer #father #brother #son #stepson #broadway #concerts #events #television #music #recording #editing #nyc #nightlife #nosleep #youtube #videos #underground #behindthescenes #teenagers #hardrockcafeny #jerseyboysmusical #goldentheatre #rockandrollforever #thestruggleisreal #enjoythejourney (at American Museum of Natural History)
#CNN #heroes #allstar #tribute #day3 #rehearsal #andersoncooper #television #work #ilovenyjob
#chinese #television #show #beanidol #hardrockcafeny #chinatv #nyc #chineseidol #work #iloveny #ilovemyjob
Web Shoutout: Off Camera with Sam Jones
Welcome to Web Shoutout, a series highlighting interesting places in the interwebs about movies and filmmaking! (Check out the previous Web Shoutout here).
Off Camera is a show, podcast, and magazine hosted by photographer Sam Jones. It is an amazing interview show, with various guests from the entertainment industry--mostly from actors.
Off Camera always provides a fascinating look inside their heads. Sam Jones is a brilliant host--naturally inquisitive, respectful, and is always well-researched--and with his help, we are able to truly understand his guests as a human being: what drives them, what influenced them, what makes them tick. His guests include Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jake Gyllenhall, Andrew Garfield, Ellen Paige, Krysten Ritter, Aaron Paul, Cindy Crawford, Aubrey Plaza, Matt Damon, Tatiana Maslany, Imogen Poots, and a lot of others.
If you remember the Actors on Actors interviews that I mentioned a while back, it’s a bit hard to pinpoint the difference between the two because themes vary with each conversations. But if I can summarize, Actors on Actors usually talk about their craft and how they do it, while Off Camera talks about their experiences as a person and why they do what they do. Either way, both are fascinating interviews, and Off Camera is well worth checking out.
Off Camera is a show on DirecTV and U-verse, and is also fully available on their website to watch with a fee. Short excerpts are available on Youtube, but sadly not the full interview. Five of the seven seasons are also available as a full audio interview on Soundcloud.
1. Kristen Bell: "I Grew Up Thinking The World Was Black and White"
2. Dax Shepard Shares Painful Relationship with His Dad
3. What No One Told Ethan Hawke About Being Famous
4. Olivia Wilde Knew She'd Be an Actress
5. Tony Hawk on Talent vs. Motivation
TV Shoutout: Orphan Black
Of course I had to do a Shoutout for Orphan Black, I don't know why I haven't done it yet!
What it is about: A streetwise con-artist, Sarah (Tatiana Maslany), witnessed a woman who looked exactly like her committing a suicide, and subsequently stole her identity as an opportunity to get away from her own life. (And it turns out, the woman was her clone. Oops.)
Why you should watch it: Tatiana Maslany, Tatiana Maslany, Tatiana Maslany, Tatiana Maslany. Seriously.
As already stated, Tatiana Maslany plays the central character, Sarah, who was just one among a set of clones, all also played by her. She was able to play so many different women in one or separate screens, and still be instantly recognizable as different, consistent characters with their own personality and personal lives. There really is no way to accurately explain the kind of acting that she does, other than: just watch her performance. She would, on consistent basis, make you forget that basically half of the regular cast were played by a single actress because each of them were all just that different. Fun fact: Maslany's mother, at one time, actually verbally asked the crew, "When is Tatiana coming back?" all the while watching her daughter filming as another character. She, literally, didn't recognize her own daughter in front of her eyes while acting. That's the kind of acting that Maslany does.
(This is actually a behind-the-scenes video, but I think you can get a pretty good grasp of Maslany as the 3 main clones: Sarah, Alison, Cosima. It's also a very interesting to see the technicality behind it.)
The fun really starts when you see her playing a clone pretending to be another clone (for example, Sarah pretending to be Alison). You can clearly see it was not Alison, but rather Sarah trying her best to be Alison—which is really an almost impossible feat considering they look exactly alike. Really, by that time, you might think that she's just showing off (and you'd still be totally impressed).
Enough about Maslany, now about the actual story. If you're intimidated by the word "clone", don't. The clone thing is just a setting, but the core is really about sisters and family. After accepting their unique bond and condition, they found solace in each other and ended up protecting each other at all costs. Orphan Black is indeed a very suspenseful show as the clones were hunted and monitored, but it is also a very fun one. Characters like Felix, Vic, Donnie, even suburban-mom Alison give plenty of comic relief—not to mention Helena's neverending quirkiness. It's actually a little bit cheesy and soap-opera-esque (in the best way), but it's also suspenseful as heck with a good amount of action and detective work. In short, Orphan Black is the best of both worlds, in terms of (the absurd) masculine vs. feminine dichotomy on TV.
Who should watch it: Due to its inclusion of many genres, I think everyone, men and women will enjoy it, but maybe not for kids because there were some, sparse partial nudity.
Where you should start: If you don't mind missing things out, you basically can start anywhere. Otherwise, you should start from the beginning because it's fun anyway.
Status: Season 3 running.
(all the Felix gifs! Because why not!)
TV Shoutout: Person of Interest
Person of Interest, the best underrated show on TV.
What it is about: A recluse billionaire (Michael Emerson) hires an ex-military (Jim Caviezel) to help people he knows are in danger, from a mysterious source.
Why you should watch it: The series is produced by Jonathan Nolan, brother of movie director Christopher Nolan (Batman's The Dark Knight Trilogy, Interstellar, etc). They do have the same flair and trademark realistic style of filmmaking, but Jonathan is much, much better at portraying character drama.
Basically, there are 2 distinct reasons why Person of Interest is such a great series. One, for it's characters. Person of Interest does an excellent job at developing the characters throughout the series, on a level that you have never seen on a typical procedural. It deals in the grey area of surveillance, organized crime and politics, and there were a lot of subverting tropes that makes it very fresh, and quite a lot genuinely funny moments in a seemingly serious show.
Two, for its portrayal of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (yes, there's an AI in this show). While the show started as a standard case-of-the-week procedural, later it digs more into the nature AI as an all-seeing eye. Very slowly but surely, it turned into a critical discussion on why, what, and how such AI would be like in our world. It portrays AI as a sympathetic but growing entity in a way that, I must again say, is rarely seen on popular entertainment. It might seem unlikely at the start, but Person of Interest has grown into one of the best sci-fi show on television right now, but I can honestly say non-scifi fan would also enjoy it from a pure action, conspiracy, and character perspective. If you don't believe me, just read this
What else? Because of its top notch, Emmy-level acting (that nobody’s bothered to give awards to)? Because of its badassery? Because Amy Acker is enough to melt your hearts away? Because it has Taraji P. Henson (Cookie in Empire, a great show and actress in their own right)? Because of an adorable dog? Take your pick.
Where to start: Person of Interest is procedural, and I know most episodes in most procedural shows are entirely skippable, but I urge you against skipping anything in Person of Interest even though yes, there are filler episodes. Yes, some episodes contribute less than others to the bigger arc, but a lot of seemingly "case/number-of-the-week" episodes (especially the early ones) helps humanizing and characterizing each of the main characters: Finch, Reese, etc., and even The Machine (the previously mentioned AI). Those character-heavy episodes helped a lot to understand and love each of them.
If you so must insist to skip anything, there's a handy guide to episodes that deal mostly about the bigger arc, but only for first season and the beginning of the second. If you've watched those and liked them, then again I urge you to revisit the episodes you skipped and see if you like them too (I hope you do).
I do have to say though, while I liked Person of Interest from the beginning, it had a shaky start and did not feel particularly special until halfway of the first season (after, I believe, its mid-season break at 11th episode). By that time, they had newfound confidence in the concept of the show and had started to actually have fun with it, although it has always been a compelling show. And there were moments, even in the fourth season, where you might feel things slow down, but it was all for a reason and by the end of the season it will all be worth it. In short: it's not mandatory to watch all of the episodes, but it’s strongly advised if you can.
Where it is at: Fourth season had just ended, and it’s very likely that it’ll be renewed for season 5.
Rant: What prevented Glee from being a truly great television.
I have a love/hate relationship with Glee. It's one of my only guilty pleasure in the true guilty-feeling sense (I also love some non high-brow TV shows like Teen Wolf, but my love for them is always unashamed), but Glee is the only show which I might feel like scrubbing my brain afterwards and just pretend I didn't watch them.
I think Glee had bad reputation just because it's set in high school and it features singing pop songs (or in some cases, butchering songs) in ubiquitous environments. It just seemed so uncool for people above 20 y.o. who are finally capable of making well-reasoned decisions in life (unlike 100% of the characters in Glee), but Glee's downfall for me is not even about trademark Ryan Murphy's lightning fast nonsensical plots and antics—I've taken it as part of Glee's charm even though it is an acquired taste—but because for me Glee was always just so damn close to being truly compelling television. In its heart, Glee is about outcasts finding their way in the world, following dreams, overcoming odds, tolerance and equality. And Glee was always great at telling compelling teenage-related stories when it remembered its heart. When it’s bad it’s bad, but when it’s good it’s really good and I think a lot of people missed it because of the stigma that the show carries.
First season was generally loved by critics and fans, and it remained its best season. It was a unique blend of a teenage dream—a dream that we can all fit in, and we can reach greatness—and a brightly-lit, tounge-in-cheek satire. Rachel was the epitome of Glee: talented, driven, and misunderstood. Others fit in nicely too, from a jock who struggled to not be the mean bully that everybody expected him to be, a stuttery gothic girl, a church girl overlooked but destined for stardom, a kid in a wheelchair, a closeted gay, and even jocks and cheerleaders who eventually found home in Glee club and in each other. The interactions between the losers and the popular, and how they later overcame their differences was what Glee is all about. They felt like family and it was all that mattered. Glee was never without its more questionable aspects however, like Will's wife faking her pregnancy, but hey it's Glee we're talking about so it comes with the territory. Things got rocky later on, as second season rolled and it started to pay more attention to elaborate popular songs, and less on actual storylines. It never quite reached the heights of season 1 again, but Glee always had its moments of brilliance. And then sometimes it threw it all away, then found them again, and lost it again, then it came back—you get the gist. Glee always trailed the line between greatness and awfulness, and maybe there's no place it rather be.
Disclaimer: I do watch Glee from time to time but I am in no way religious about it, so I haven't watched every single episodes of Glee but I watched quite a lot of them. And yes, sometimes I skip some episodes on purpose because some of them are just bad and I just can't with it. And I critic because I love them, so please don't be mad at me for being passionate! These opinions are my own, and this rant is always intended to be a mere opinion piece. Also, spoilers ahead.
I have a list in my mind of things that prevented Glee from reaching its true potential. I try to keep them broad and general, because there were always a thousand plots going around Glee at any one time (good and bad) and it's just counterproductive to complain about them all. So here it is:
1. The Rachel Berry Problem. Glee loves Rachel Berry. I have no idea why. I did say that Rachel Berry is the epitome of Glee, and at certain level it was true, but it quickly went out of hand. Glee gave Rachel everything. She was selfish, and everybody shone a spotlight on her, said she was special, pat her in the back, and handed everything to her in a silver platter just because she demanded for it. It happened over and over again it was not even funny, and in the last season she was only worried about her future for a few minutes and guess what: eventually the only choice she had to make was between accepting a Broadway part that she forgot she auditioned for, or coming back to NYADA that accepted her again just because she asked for it. In the end, I don't even think Rachel learned anything at all aside from how amazing she is and how she deserves everything in life.
2. The Asian Girl Problem. I feel sorry for Tina. Remember that storyline in season 2 in which Tina wanted to be the lead but everybody's like, "Let Rachel have it. She's in senior year and she needs it more than you, you can have it next year," but guess what? The time never came. She was always sidelined in favor of the other girls until the end. It always seemed odd to me because she seemed to have, "I'm not gonna put up with your s**t," attitude. She's a true team player and the show rarely rewarded her for it. There was also rarely an episode in which her ethnicity isn't mentioned in one way or another, that you start to think that maybe it's part of why.
3. New kids of season 3: The Glee Project winners a.k.a extras. There was a show called The Glee Project and yes, I watched 2 seasons of them. It was a reality-show/competition type spin-off series that aimed to find the next star to appear on Glee. They were told that the winner would get 7 episode arc on Glee (that's A LOT) and maybe a gateway to stardom. It was not. Technically they weren't wrong, because they pointed out that the show wasn't technically a competition but rather televised casting process. And they get their prizes alright, but they never got the chance to really shine on Glee. Most of their roles involving being a walking label who spouts one or two sentences each episode and smile while other people sing. You definitely started to feel sorry for the winners because they were basically glorified extras. Other non-winner new kids on Glee were also treated barely as part of the group that it becomes useless fare to talk about them.
The reason I talked about The Glee Project was because they quite made a big fuzz about finding new kids but ended up not using them as much at all. Also, by that time I was a bit frustrated with Glee that the thought of having fresh infusion of blood excited me, but sadly I was misguided. It was such wasted opportunity.
4. Old kids of season 3: Living In New York Watching the series finale, it was pretty clear that the show was always about the original kids (unless you're Blaine, because Glee loves them Blaine too). At season 3, it wasn't extremely clear to me what the show was trying to be after the big shake-up of graduating kids. To be fair, I guess the show itself wasn't sure either. I'm pretty sure the only reason we get to NY was because the show was afraid of letting Rachel Berry go.
I think the show suffered because it tried to tell 2 stories at once: the new kids (the ones haven't graduated) and the old kids. The fact that it couldn't choose hurt its chances at telling great stories on either of them, and left me disappointed with both.
6. New kids of season 4: What's up with the triangle? Glee came back with 4 new kids: Marley, Ryder, Jake, and Kitty. Three of them were in a love triangle (or love "square" if you count Kitty's deviousness as real love), and it was unengaging. I shouldn't complain about the new kids when I crave for them in the previous season, but the problem was that these kids weren't very good characters and were downright boring by Glee's standards. I quite like Ryder (played by Blake Jenner, winner of 2nd season The Glee Project) and his dyslexia, but for the most part they were normal kids pretending to be outcasts (trapped in a boring love triangle) and they never really gelled with the show.
7. New kids of season 6: Too little too late, The disappearence of Jane Hayward, and Are we a team with The Warblers? If there was one thing that Glee season 6 pulled off, it was the new kids. They embody the wide-eyed hopes and dreams that the original kids of Glee used to have, and it was fun to watch it all unfold all over again. The only regrettable thing was that we only had such a short time with them (6th season is a shortened season of only 13 episodes, and even then the kids didn't get legitimate storyline until halfway into the season). Roderick-Spencer bromanship was nice, so was Mason's coming of age and Madison's blessing and serenity, but it was a little bit too little too late, especially when we talk about Jane! Jane started off the season with guns blazing and winds blowing: she fought her way into Dalton Academy and The Warblers, lost, but rose again and get herself transferred to McKinley to join the New Directions.... only to not be heard of again. She was such a fighter in the first episode, but she was never given her own storyline to showcase herself in later episodes, not even when The Warblers joined New Directions (her reaction was limited to a quick one-sentence remark).
And speaking off The Warblers, the joint New Directions-Warblers came soooo far from the left field that it had not one iota of believability. If it were given time to build up and develop across several episodes of the season, it would be a marvellous arc, but the actual execution was pretty bad. It took place in exactly one episode, I believe? The Warblers were even barely in frame whenever they were in a group together, that it never felt real that they actually joined. And are we pretending that no former members of The Warblers sang anything at Sectionals and were okay with it? I know that the show is about New Directions, but the show just threw any sort of believability out of the window by that point. The heart was in it in season 6, but the execution was lacking that it left me wondering how a perfect season would be like.
8. Old kids of season 6: We never let go of anything. I was tired of the old kids by this time, I even skipped the wedding episode because I just don’t want to see them again. For me, their arc already ended and there were not much that can be gained by revisiting them. It was only by the time its 2-part finale aired that I understood that the show was never about the new kids, or even the club. It was about several kids and one teacher who happened to find their way to each other's life, and changed each other's life. The finale was pure nostalgia and wish fulfillment, but by that time it wasn't even a negative. It was perfectly sweet and bookended the series nicely. Glee is the world where the people you meet in high school are the only people of worth you'll ever meet in your life: it maybe not the most realistic, but it was the world that it lived in. In Glee, nobody’s ever has to let go, and who doesn't want to live like that?
Glee may have lost its steam. By this time, most people maybe don't know or don't care that the show has shown it last episode (it actually has the lowest rating of Glee's season finales), but for me Glee will always be remembered as that show that was always almost on the verge of greatness. Farewell, and good riddance (I never know which one to choose).
TV Shoutout: Black Mirror
Honestly, I originally intended to write this TV Shoutout in time for the Christmas Special, but I foolishly thought that it airs on the 25th instead of the 16th. But that's okay, because now I can tell you that the special was full of usual Black Mirror greatness. And here it is about the show:
What it is about: Black Mirror is a British dystopian anthology miniseries. The stories for each episode varies but the running theme is humanity and technology, usually set in an imagined 5-or-10-minutes-into-the-future. And for lack of better word, Black Mirror is exactly what the title suggests: our dark reflection of who we are as human being.
Or in shorter words, it's The Twilight Zone for today.
Why you should watch it: Because it is a brilliant satire. It is scifi-esque, but definitely everyone can enjoy it because most times the technologies are incorporated seamlessly into its world, just like ours. In it's heart, Black Mirror is less about flashy gadgets and more about social commentary. What it's not though, is safe or comforting, in the way that some art should not be. It is intended to be shocking and eye-opening. I doubtlessly would not recommend a few episodes (like The National Anthem) for the faint of heart, but it is absolutely worth it. Black Mirror is lovely and funny at times (Charlie Brooker the creator actually did award-winning comedy work), but equally terrifying and heartbreaking, in the best way. Most people who've watched it agree that Black Mirror is one of the best TV series they've encountered, and for good reason. If that does not convince you yet there are more trivial reasons, like the fact that it is beautiful to look at and beautifully directed, and it features familiar brilliant actors from Mad Men, Captain America, Game Of Thrones, etc.
Who should watch it: Those who like great storytelling, sci-fi or not. Those who thought that there's something missing in today's television and demand "more" from their entertainment. Those who think that underneath the flashy and happy exterior, the world is dark and full of terrors. And whether it sounds like Black Mirror is your thing or not, I wholeheartedly encourage you to at least try to watch one of the episodes, because otherwise you might miss one of the masterpieces of modern TV.
Where you should start: It is an anthology (a collection of short stories), so basically you can start at any episode because each episode is self-standing. But if you're squeamish or less tolerable for more "racy" stuff, I do advice you against The National Anthem (season 1 episode 1) at least until you get the hang of the show.
Status: Black Mirror had 2 full seasons (each had 3 episodes) and one Christmas Special (listed as season 3). A full season might be coming in 2015.
Lastly, if I had not succeeded in explaining what Black Mirror is all about, Charlie Brooker the creator/writer might. Here he is talking about the concept and the meaning of Black Mirror:
Backyard Porch in Nashville Idea for a sizable screened-in back porch in the mountain style with an addition to the roof
Landscape San Diego An example of a huge rustic drought-tolerant and full sun backyard garden path with decking in summer.
"Behind the screen"
Kitchen Dining Minneapolis Mid-sized minimalist l-shaped light wood floor, brown floor and shiplap ceiling eat-in kitchen photo with a farmhouse sink, flat-panel cabinets, distressed cabinets, marble countertops, white backsplash, ceramic backsplash, stainless steel appliances, an island and white countertops
Tags: This is my Black licorice and Balsamic vinegar Egg Tart I call it the You're contractually Obligated to Taste This Tart
Go on Bake off. Make sure everything I make is flavours Paul hates. Smash the actual bake though.
When he says I don’t like those flavours, stare him in those souless eyes and say “I know.”
Home Office Built-In Miami Large built-in desk illustration for a study room with a medium-tone wood floor, white walls, and no fireplace.
Once A $1.00 dollar Hoe Always1 corner Store higher but u cant go in so why u on the block valtion viloiet
U dig em my arcade bitch
Basement - Traditional Basement An illustration of a mid-sized, traditional look-out basement with a light wood floor and beige walls.
This is so me it hurts.
unnecessary hetereosexual romances in every tv show
Actual footage of me when someone says they haven't seen Friends (or AHS, or HIMYM, or Psych, or.... you get the idea)
Me: *mentions favorite tv show*
Friend: “I’ve never seen that befo-“
Me:
