Lit City Blues

This is sneakily an incredibly timely book and I haven't really checked to see if it's getting some of the credit it's due, but I hope it is, because it's an incredibly timely book. Historian Michael Beschloss tell the story of the Presidents who have lead the nation into a major conflict, starting with Madison and the War of 1812 and then going through Polk and the Mexican War, Lincoln and the Civil War, McKinley and the Spanish-American War, Wilson and World War One, FDR and World War Two, Truman and Korea and finally LBJ and Vietnam. For each President, Beschloss describes the circumstances of their 'war' and how the nation found themselves in that war. How the President declared war (or not) and then the effects- both political and personal- on each President as the war unfolded. In doing so, he helps to demonstrate just how far the ability to make war has evolved from the structure originally envisioned when the Constitution was written at the foundation ...

Watched On: Netflix Released: April 22, 2020 Directed By: Kris Pearn Starring: Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Alessia Cara, Terry Crews, Martin Short, Jane Krakowski, Sean Cullen, Ricky Gervais Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer 89%, Audience Score 69% Pick: Family Movie Night! Look, I'm just going to come right out and say it: if you're an adult, you're going to give The Willoughbys a lot of side-eye. You will say things like, "Well, that's fucked up." and "Damn, this is dark." But your kids will probably find it charming and kind of sweet- and once you get through the dark fucked up parts, there's a happy ending waiting on the other side. A stray cat (Ricky Gervais) narrates the story of the Willoughby family. They had been great for generations: loving and adventurous and then the current Patriarch (Martin Short) and Matriarch (Jane Krakowski) of the Willoughby Family came along. Narcissistic and self-centered, they have children: Tim (Will ...

It's May, so that means it's Apraxia Awareness Month! Expect my social media to be full of Apraxia related posts and quotes and all that jazz, but for now, I wanted to take a break from my recent mixture of reviews and virus related things to talk about Medium Spawn and our experience with Apraxia. I think the most important thing people should know about Apraxia is that there's no easy fixes: this is a marathon and not a sprint and from what I can tell, every kid experiences this a little bit differently and there are a million different ways to approach this, but they're gonna involve speech therapy. Lots of speech therapy- and you know what? Speech therapy works! Medium Spawn has so many words now it's not even true and I feel like he's getting more and more with every passing week. We have fewer communications barriers and much less frustration on his part and in general, I feel like he's a lot happier and a lot more active than he used to be. ...

This post has been sitting here for awhile, because life is busy and things are crazy and I haven't actually been at work on Friday for a couple of weeks now. So to acknowledge my delay, I'm throwing in two more bonus pieces of writing: Sympathy and the latest installment of my Reddit Serial, 'The Adventures of Preston and Lark.' Consequence Accidental Serial: So, I accidentally made a loose serial out of a bunch of these Theme Thursdays so here's the suggested reading order. Clarity , Survival , Luck , Vulnerability , (Consequence, see below), Contained and Trust . Ricky Salewitz was drinking champagne. The wooden crate containing the Golden Owl of France was on the seat next to him and he was in first class, alone, flying on the red-eye back to the United States. Another treasure found. he'd keep it for a few months, of course, Put it on display, let people gawk at it whenever he had those dreadful parties Sean always held for the investors- then, he...

Watched On: Amazon Prime (Theater Release On Demand) Released:  March 7th, 2020 Directed By: Erwin Brothers Starring: KJ Apa, Britt Robertson, Melissa Roxburgh, Nathan Parsons, Shania Twain, Gary Sinise Rotten Tomatoes: 49% Tomatometer, 98% Audience Score Pick: The Missus' The Missus has been a fan of Jeremy Camp since before we met-- I remember in the very early days of our relationship listening to some of his stuff and her explaining what had happened to his wife and thinking that it sounded tragic and kind of amazing that he had found inspiration out of tragedy. So, when we first saw the previews for this movie, she had her heart set on a date night to go see it in theaters- but alas, pandemic intervened so we had to settle for an early digital on-demand release on Amazon Prime. I Still Believe begins with Jeremy Camp (K.J. Apa) packing up and taking his a brand new guitar that's a gift from his parents Tom (Gary Sinise) and Terry (Shania Twain) and heading out ...

1. Good gravy, the national media gaslighting over hydroxychloroquine is fucking unbearable at this point. I honestly think some of these people would sooner eat a turd sandwich than admit that maybe, perhaps that President Trump had a hunch about this stuff that might, maybe prove to be correct. (I say 'might, maybe' because it goes up and down: anecdotal evidence keeps building that it does something- but another study that leaked out seemed to indicate it was a load of hockum- but dig a little bit on that study and you find out some things that make you wonder: the sample size was small- 11 patients and apparently they were all carrying co-morbities and were pretty severely ill by the time they started on the protocol.) Do I think hydroxychloroquine + Z-Pak is a thing? I don't know. We need actually randomized clinical trials and a lot more data to even begin to say for sure-- but I think data is going to start to come in over the next month or so that will solidify th...

Like most of the rest of Trek Fandom, I was massively hyped and excited at the news that Patrick Stewart was returning to his iconic role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and was counting the days until it dropped and now that it's all over, let's talk about it. I'll be honest- this isn't going to be a conventional review, because if you want one of those you can look all over the internet to find them. I am a Star Trek fan and, well, kind of a nerd, so this is going to be strictly from that point of view- and yes, I'll try and keep spoilers to a minimum, but no guarantees- so if you haven't watched it yet, go do that and then come back and read the rest of this post. So, what did Star Trek: Picard do well? First, it brought us back to the 'Prime Universe' to see what happened after the Romulan Supernova. Trek fandom had been clamoring for this for awhile- Discovery's vault to the far future not withstanding, many people were over yet another preque...