I thought of this entry’s title from a song by the Sherman Brothers that always makes me teary, so working on this post has been an experience. I see the lyrics every time I write/edit this. I may not have thought this through.
Colbert and The Last Show. We downloaded a free trial of DirectTV to watch the last episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Really, it was the last episode of The Late Show ever, unless CBS tries to reboot it when the dumb replacement doesn’t work out for them. It was a lovely finale, with many bizarre and silly twists and turns. I didn’t cry as much as I thought I might, but when I saw the staff all come onstage to dance while Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste, Louis Cato, and Stephen Colbert sang “Hello, Goodbye”…man, oh man. I hope everyone will be okay and have new jobs and not have to worry about what they’re doing next.
And I really hope Stephen will be in front of audiences and cameras again soon. He seems so genuinely happy in front of an audience. I’m sure working on the next Lord of the Rings project will be so much fun for him, but I hope we see his face again really soon, too. And not only on one episode of Only In Monroe.
Belated Mother’s Days and Birthdays. My parents returned from their trip to Washington state, so we finally celebrated Mother’s Day with my mom on Saturday. It was nice to get together with my family, and see my sister’s new puppy. All of her cats even came out and were friendly. My dad gave me some of my grandma’s solar-controlled dashboard dancing ornaments. I realized when we brought them home that we don’t even have window sills in our house! So they’ll probably just live on a shelf as decorations.
My best friend Kat postponed her birthday festivities because she was busy with school and moving, so we spent time celebrating her on Sunday. One thing that’s nice about Sundays before holidays is that you can stay out later without worrying about going to bed on time. This proved true this time for sure, because we stayed at her place until around eleven, playing games and having a fun time. We also got tasty ramen and pizza, and saw…
The Mandalorian & Grogu. I thought it was really cute. I mostly cared about Grogu, the little mechanic guys, and Rotta the Hutt. The guys in armor shooting at each other is less compelling to me, though I do love the way the Mandalorian takes care of Grogu. They take care of each other, which is sweet. This is a good movie if you like all the weird-cute little space critters. There are certainly a lot of those. There’s even a cool “dragon snake” that reminded us of our cat Boo.
Wrapping up my rewrite. It struck me last week that I only have about 2,000 more words left to write, because once I hit 80K, I can just plunk in my already-written epilogue chapter. I’ll read it and edit it so it makes sense with the new draft, but otherwise I won’t have to write this story past Friday. I’m looking forward to taking a break before writing something completely new!
The Boys finale [SPOILERS]. Luis and I have been fans of The Boys since the first season. The edgy, cynical superhero comedy was a big hit and all over the internet when it first came out, and for the first several seasons. This final season, however, didn’t have great buzz. In fact, there were a lot of complaints. We have several as well. We like the show and characters, but the ending felt anticlimactic in several ways.
Tag: Stephen Colbert
Time was still, but hours must really have rushed by.
The whole “cats are bad pets” argument. I was planning to see The Bride! last weekend, but then I saw people sharing and discussing an interview with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal (and it’s not an old interview, because they were promoting Hamnet which is nominated this year for awards.) She said she hates cats and forced her husband to get rid of his two cats if he wanted to be with her. People are entitled to their opinions, but that is abusive behavior, both to her husband’s cats and to her husband. It’s not cute.
Also, cats are wonderful pets. This perception that they’re “mean” is largely because the person saying that hasn’t ever had one, or they met one that didn’t like them so therefore all cats are mean and bad. Cats domesticated themselves and are very smart and loving to the people they love. They will follow you from room to room just to stay in your presence and see what you’re up to. They will fall asleep on your lap for hours, or snuggle with you in bed. Dogs are people pleasers, they’ll love anyone. Cats are more of an honor when they love you, because they’ve made sure you earned it.
So we’re not seeing The Bride! It also helps that it got pretty terrible reviews. We saw Hoppers instead, and it was adorable.
Give me dark mode or give me sunglasses. I’ve become so accustomed to dark mode on my devices that, when my work didn’t have it set up for the CRM we use, I had to find a browser extension so I wasn’t squinting to read things on it. The problem with the extension is that sometimes certain websites still don’t want to play nice.
Like WordPress, which I use to write this. For some reason, it decided the place where I write each post still needs to be bright white. A week ago it was working fine, and nice and black with white text. I hope the extension updates and makes WordPress black again. Now I feel like a vampire as I’m typing because it’s too bright. 🧛♀️
The number of the day is 1 for First World Problem. Ah ah ah!
Messi & Inter Miami in Baltimore! We went to Baltimore and saw a soccer match between Inter Miami (this time with Messi) and D.C. United. The stadium was great. Luis managed to buy us some tickets in the Caesar’s Club level, so there were nice bars and slightly nicer restrooms. I never had to wait in line, whereas the men’s room line was quite long at the end. It makes sense, when you think about it.
We waited until the last minute, almost, to get the tickets because you never know if Messi is actually going to play or if he’s resting/injured. It’s always fun to see him and his team play, and it’s a nice activity to share with Luis. There were quite a few kids this time, too, which was cute. Inter Miami narrowly beat D.C. which was a pleasant surprise. It’s more exciting if they don’t completely trounce the other team. After the game, we went and had some fancy food and drinks at a place called Nola.
Enjoyable books with unlikeable characters. I’m currently reading Where’d You Go, Bernadette? which I fittingly found in our neighborhood’s little free library. There’s a movie based on it that came out several years ago. In fact, when Luis and I saw Stephen Colbert’s show live in 2019, Cate Blanchett was on to promote it and part of the reason I grabbed the book off the little free library shelf is because we saw her talking about it. Take that, CBS. Stephen Colbert is great at promoting things.
Anyway. I’ve been feeling a bit like the kombucha lady with this book. The way it’s written, half epistolary and half narrated, is a little funky. It feels like the author, Maria Semple, was trying a little too hard to be quirky. And yet… I’m still reading it. Sometimes it makes me laugh, and I want to know what’s going to happen next. The character of Bernadette Fox is a frustrating one because she can be so dismissive and strange, and a little racist, but she’s also somehow sympathetic. I find her, so far, more off-putting than likable but I still care enough about her to find out what happens to her.
My favorite character is her daughter, Bee. She just wants to go to Antarctica.
Writing update. I’ve been enjoying the rewrite of my novel. I’ve added a lot more conflict to the characters’ situation. It’s a lot of internal stuff caused by external stuff, if that makes sense. I do get the feeling that, after this rewrite, I might take a long break from writing. It may be partially because it’s that time of year once more where I would rather look out the window at the birds and go frolic outside amongst the living rather than sit and write.
But I could also just be being overdramatic right now and I’ll get slapped by a fresh story idea once July rolls around. We’ll see.
Time keeps on slippin’ into the future.
Snow anxiety. I think it’s difficult for people who aren’t in the U.S. northeast to understand the icy, slippery mess we’ve been dealing with. Giant ice-covered mountains of snowcrete stood at the bus stops and on crosswalk corners for days, unable to be removed because they were so packed and stuck together and heavy. Luis helped me each morning by coming with me to the bus stop and helping me get on without slipping. A nice lady at the bus stop also gave me a hand, which deserves mentioning. But the prospect of going out into this awful situation each day was giving me such anxiety. I wasn’t sleeping well, worried about the mess I’d have to penguin-walk through the next day, and I was having a hard time thinking about anything else.
I told my coworkers how I was feeling, and they were so nice and understanding. One of them even said I was brave for speaking up about it, because many of the others didn’t experience any of this crazy winter storm so they aren’t even thinking about how it could be affecting us.
Fortunately, the sun during the day helps melt things and it’s supposed to become warmer soon. Not soon enough, but soon.
I didn’t get mail at the office all last week.
SNOW UPDATE: The snow is still around and Luis still goes to the bus stop with me to help me get safely on the bus, but it’s not as dicy to walk around, at least. I received a bunch of mail at the office, so that’s good. I’m looking forward to not seeing these snow piles everywhere. He’s probably going to be coming to the bus with me every day this week and into next week, by the look of things. It is nice to have him keeping me company. I’m spoiled.
What’s next for Colbert. As you probably know, if you’ve been reading my site for a while, I’m a big fan of Stephen Colbert. Luis got me to really pay attention to him, so he’s a comedian we’ve been able to share. I’m sad that he is losing The Late Show soon—actually, we’re all losing it because CBS is completely cancelling the show, not just firing him (the dicks)—and I wonder what’s next for him. I’m sure he will not completely go away, but I wonder if he will continue doing political satire or if he’s ready for something else. He is an actor, after all. He could go to Broadway for a while. Write a book. Write a nonfiction treatise on J.R.R. Tolkien. Whatever he wants to do next, I am excited to consume it.
That came out weirdly. But you know what I mean. I want to watch it, read it, hear it, etc. Experience it.
Okay, moving on before this gets too silly. I have a more serious topic to discuss.
Rob Reiner & Catherine O’Hara. I started reading As You Wish, Cary Elwes’ memoir about making The Princess Bride. The forward was, fittingly, written by Rob Reiner. There’s so much of him in that book, and you can tell how much Cary Elwes and the others in the cast just loved him. I’m still very sad about what happened to him. I asked Luis for a copy of The Princess Bride for an anniversary present, since I really want to reread it. A lot of people have been quick to point out that Rob Reiner didn’t write that book. He’d be one of them, too. But he had a massive hand in the movie version, and it’s as wonderful and faithful to the story as it is because of him.
To add insult to my already injured heart, Catherine O’Hara passed away last week. I’ve been a fan of hers since Nightmare Before Christmas when I was little, without knowing who she was yet. She’s in so many things I love, including Christopher Guest movies and Schitt’s Creek. It still doesn’t entirely feel real. When I saw the news online, I shouted, “No!” at my screen.
And it struck me that poor Chris Guest lost two close friends within two months. 😢
Comfortable tenses. I’ve started writing an updated version of the Nerdfighter story that I’m still trying to get to a publishable novel form. The tense my brain hit the ground running* with is present, which I’ve enjoyed playing around with recently. I’ve noticed a lot of romance novels use present tense these days. It’s a tense that makes sense. Hopefully my brain won’t forget about it and start using past tense. That has happened before, and it creates all kinds of confusion when I’m editing.
A lot of writers stress about which tense to use. I think you should write in whichever way you’re comfortable with. And if you’re working on a draft, there’s nothing preventing you from changing your mind and changing tenses. It’s the same with point-of-view, though that can be even more annoying to edit. Finding all the “I”s and changing them to “he”s or whatever.
Write in a way that makes you feel comfortable and true to yourself. After all, cleaning it up is for the editing phase.
* I don’t recommend letting your brain hit the ground
Ain’t there a pen that will write before they die?
I stayed up late to watch Conan O’Brien on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night. I lost about an hour of sleep. I think it was worth it. It’s not the sort of thing I’d do every night, though. That’s one of the main issues with those late night talk shows for me. How are you supposed to watch them on the night-of if you have to get up early the next day?
“You can always sleep through work tomorrow.” – Craig Ferguson
I had to stay up to see Conan though. He’s my favorite of the late night guys, and has been since I was little. I’m so glad he’s still around doing things*, and he’s doing such interesting, unique stuff. He’s in a movie, in a more serious role! And he’s going to be in the new Toy Story movie. (It’s an unnecessary sequel, but still it’s nice he gets to be in one.)
Speaking of movies, though thankfully it’s not a sequel, we saw One Battle After Another last weekend. I think it’s only the second Paul Thomas Anderson movie I’ve seen. One thing that’s funny is that it reminded me vaguely of a Wes Anderson movie, though of course it’s not quite as bonkers or bright or ~arty~. But it does have Benicio Del Toro. Hmm.
I really liked it. The acting was good, the story was good, it didn’t feel like it was over two and a half hours long.
Luis and I are making plans for future vacation times. The world being what it is right now, it’s hard to realistically imagine going out of the country, even though the list of countries we want to visit is long. I have a lot of wanderlust, but we’re planning to stick to closer places at least in the foreseeable future. Of course we’re thinking about going to Disney World again. I told Luis we could go in February for our 14th dating anniversary, but then he suggested we could make a week of it and go to Disney and Universal in October for our 9th wedding anniversary. I’m not going to turn down extra theme park days.
Possibly while wearing a hazmat suit, but still.
We got vaccinated last weekend. I even got a hepatitis booster shot. It took almost an hour for them to give us our vaccines, but once we finally saw the tech, it went by quickly and we feel good. We even made her laugh. A lot of people get so impatient and mean to poor pharmacy teams. I know it’s frustrating to have to wait and sometimes dumb things happen, but there’s no reason to be mean to people who are there to help you. Be mad at health insurance companies; they’re the real ones screwing people over.
For this week’s writing update, there’s not much to say. Roll credits.
Just kidding. But I am taking a break from writing, and it might be driving me a little crazy. I created an outline for a new story idea I have, and I’m going to let Luis read it and give me some feedback before I commit to writing it. I’m restless to write something new, something more out there than the contemporary romance novels I’ve been so focused on. A subgenre I really like is magical realism, especially related to ghosts. I’m playing around with some magical realism ideas and we’ll see if it becomes the next novel I’m working on.
Aside from future novels, I also have to edit the story drafts I’ve already written. I’m excited to dive back into my It’s A Wonderful Life novel, though taking a writing break beforehand—and also having a vacation and Halloween to focus on—will be extra helpful for my brain, I think.
It’s a little bit funny how November is still a writing/editing time for me. It’s just easier to write about the holidays when it’s actually the holidays time.
Until next time,
* Don’t even get me started on all the Colbert and Kimmel stuff. Flames. It- It- Flames. Flames! On the side of my face.
Sara Mazariegos 