The World's Common Tater

Most of my week was still consumed with sports. The World Series is over but soon I will have Kentucky basketball on TV at least once a week. My DVR is doomed.

Movies

I did watch a movie this week. It was an old movie, but I watched the entire movie. And I actually watched it. It wasn’t just on in the background. The movie? Animal House. I had a couple of hours before the baseball game started and the football games on TV were not that exciting, so I browsed the movie channels and found it was on. It had been years since I had watched it, so I decided to watch it again. I enjoyed seeing young Kevin Bacon, Tim Matheson, and Bruce McGill. I was sad that Belushi is gone. I’m sure if it was made today it would be a Netflix movie people would be ashamed to say they watched.

TV

I watched a lot of baseball. There was a game on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday night. My team won the series Tuesday night. The first championship for them since 1995. It was worth all the lost sleep and hours of watching.

I watched all of my regular shows I watch alone: Fear the Walking Dead, Walking Dead: World Beyond, Chucky, Day of the Dead, The Big Leap, Million Little Things, Wonder Years, Queens, The Goldberg’s, and probably more I can’t remember.

I made the decision that I no longer cared to watch Ordinary Joe. It is an interesting concept, but I didn’t care about any of the characters.

I also decided to stop watching Our Kind of People. It has a good cast, but again, I just didn’t care about the characters.

I liked that Million Little Things did a slight time jump(6 months) and set up a new story for Maggie, the best character.

I finally watched the episode of Chicago Fire where Jesse Spencer’s character, Casey, was written out of the show. Even his exit was boring. I like the show and think it might be better now that the most boring character won’t be taking screen time from the rest of the cast.

Books

I only finished one book this week.

The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage by Drew Magary

Drew is one of my favorite writers. I remember in 2018 when this happened wondering why he had gone silent. No articles. No tweets. Nothing. I knew something was up and then it was revealed that he was in the hospital in serious condition. Soon after hosting the Deadspin Awards, Drew fell and hit his head hard enough to fracture his skull and cause a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. He was in a coma for two weeks. The book chronicles his life after the injury.

I thought this was a very good book. It wasn’t as funny as you would normally expect from Drew, but it isn’t a topic that makes funny easy. It was interesting to get the perspective of the people who were with Drew at the time of the fall and in the hospital when he was in a coma. I was fascinated by the side effects of his injuries: loss of hearing in one ear, loss of smell, and loss of taste. There is quite a bit of medical detail, but that is to be expected in a memoir about a medical condition. I’m happy Drew is alive and back to writing.

On Deck

I need to watch The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard this weekend so I can get the extremely overdue DVD back to the library.

Yellowstone is back Sunday night. I love this show. I have to decide if I am going to be nice and wait for my daughter to watch. Last season ended with a cliffhanger and several characters possibly dead. Can I really wait a few more weeks to find out what happened? I doubt it.

The Head of the Class revival is on HBO Max now. I loved the original when I was a kid. I will give this a try to see how it compares.

I am currently struggling to read The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. I loved the first book in the series, but I am having trouble getting into this one. Again, it might be more my mental state rather than the book.