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May. 6th, 2023 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWoke up this morning and realized I wanted to do nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Did make up the bed clean, took a shower, changed clothes, made pancakes, listened to more of "Killing John Wayne" and stared into space for a bit, before watching the last episode of "A Milling Little Things" (the series turned out to be one about a man with breast cancer and his supportive family of friends). He dies of breast cancer in the last episode, after having a son with the woman he met at his breast cancer support group.
It's very romanticized and manipulative. Not realistic at all. Hyper-realism, it ain't.
Be nice if life worked out the way it does in television shows sometimes. Then again, maybe not.
Also watched Grey's, The Company You Keep (which isn't going the way I expected it to, at all - so that's good, it's definitely not predictable), and The Citadel (also not going the direction that I expected it too and far better than expected, two episodes in.).
Of the shows I listed? I only would recommend The Company You Keep and The Citadel - both are good caper/spy romantic thrillers. And very different. With good casts, and above par writing for that genre. (Hot men and badass women.) The other two, are sappy melodramas, which have been around for a long time, and one just ended. (I think the networks have finally gotten tired of the upper middleclass melodrama, which Shondra Rhimes brought back, and various others took advantage of. It's been played out, and seems to be exiting stage left. While I do have a weakness for it? I'm not upset to see it go. It's been kind overdone.)
***
Killing John Wayne goes into a tad too much detail on how each person died of cancer. Wayne - did not die of lung cancer. That he was cured from. No, he died of the far more painful gastrointestinal cancer. He had multiple cancerous tumors found in the lining of his stomach and intestines in his seventies. Susan Hayward died of metasized brain cancer - she had multiple brain tumors, and was undergoing severe seizures. She died around 1975 at the age of 57. Wayne died in 1979 at the age of 72. Agnes Moorehead died at the age of 73 (although various articles state she died at 67 - so she probably was lying about her age) of uterine cancer. Various cinematographers and crew members also died of cancer in the intervening years.
The Conqueror was deemed cursed by Hollywood.
St. George, Utah also had an unprecedented number of childhood leukemia cancers in the US, which most states no longer had during this time period.
I told mother it was hard not to link cancer to atomic testing after listening to this book. But she informed me that it existed prior to that - since half her relatives had died of it. My maternal great grandmother apparently died of uterine cancer. One uncle died of leukemia, another of lung cancer, my mother's father had metastasized testaculer cancer that went to his lymph nodes and brain, actually most of my maternal father's family died of cancer. They all were farmers in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Also have two Aunts who recovered from breast cancer, one blood related, one isn't. An Aunt who died of lung cancer. An Uncle who survived uterine cancer.
Heart disease and cancer are the two big killers in family. Also diabetes, and dementia.
Fun times ahead.
I can't say "Killing John Wayne" is an uplifting book. By the time Wayne dies, his career was pretty much over, and he was a bit of a joke. Doing mainly cancer ads, and trying to fight the liberal left in politics. He viewed the US as a white supremacist country and was quite vocal about it, apparently, and homophobic, also very pro-War. He basically played himself in the Westerns he starred in. It's hard to feel sorry for him. He kind of died because of the choices he made - he decided to do the Conqueror, and he chose to smoke incessantly. He also was given the Congressional Medal of Honor. (eyeroll). All he did was make movies, most of which weren't all that good. I did love a few of them though - The Cowboys, Red River, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Big Jake, The Quiet Man, and True Grit. Also Rooster Coburn wasn't bad. Also his last film - the Ron Howard film, The Shootist, was good.
He was not likable though.
Oh, he tried to get the lead in Dirty Harry, but fellow conservative Republican and Western Rival Clint Eastwood got it instead.
It does do a good job of skewering Hollywood and showing how it changed and why. Also parallels it with the atomic testing at the time, and the Howard Hughes insanity.
Tried to do watercolors today, but just too tired. Made it to get groceries. Got back, tried to watercolor, went to sleep in my armchair instead. For some reason or other, I just want to crash this weekend. Also the damn blood sugar sensor is all over the place, it's either 169 or 74.
I don't think it's stablized yet. Always takes about two days for the new sensor to figure stuff out.
I'm having troubles getting myself geared up to take a trip anywhere. I may just take a week off in August. Or a lot of long weekends.
Did make up the bed clean, took a shower, changed clothes, made pancakes, listened to more of "Killing John Wayne" and stared into space for a bit, before watching the last episode of "A Milling Little Things" (the series turned out to be one about a man with breast cancer and his supportive family of friends). He dies of breast cancer in the last episode, after having a son with the woman he met at his breast cancer support group.
It's very romanticized and manipulative. Not realistic at all. Hyper-realism, it ain't.
Be nice if life worked out the way it does in television shows sometimes. Then again, maybe not.
Also watched Grey's, The Company You Keep (which isn't going the way I expected it to, at all - so that's good, it's definitely not predictable), and The Citadel (also not going the direction that I expected it too and far better than expected, two episodes in.).
Of the shows I listed? I only would recommend The Company You Keep and The Citadel - both are good caper/spy romantic thrillers. And very different. With good casts, and above par writing for that genre. (Hot men and badass women.) The other two, are sappy melodramas, which have been around for a long time, and one just ended. (I think the networks have finally gotten tired of the upper middleclass melodrama, which Shondra Rhimes brought back, and various others took advantage of. It's been played out, and seems to be exiting stage left. While I do have a weakness for it? I'm not upset to see it go. It's been kind overdone.)
***
Killing John Wayne goes into a tad too much detail on how each person died of cancer. Wayne - did not die of lung cancer. That he was cured from. No, he died of the far more painful gastrointestinal cancer. He had multiple cancerous tumors found in the lining of his stomach and intestines in his seventies. Susan Hayward died of metasized brain cancer - she had multiple brain tumors, and was undergoing severe seizures. She died around 1975 at the age of 57. Wayne died in 1979 at the age of 72. Agnes Moorehead died at the age of 73 (although various articles state she died at 67 - so she probably was lying about her age) of uterine cancer. Various cinematographers and crew members also died of cancer in the intervening years.
The Conqueror was deemed cursed by Hollywood.
St. George, Utah also had an unprecedented number of childhood leukemia cancers in the US, which most states no longer had during this time period.
I told mother it was hard not to link cancer to atomic testing after listening to this book. But she informed me that it existed prior to that - since half her relatives had died of it. My maternal great grandmother apparently died of uterine cancer. One uncle died of leukemia, another of lung cancer, my mother's father had metastasized testaculer cancer that went to his lymph nodes and brain, actually most of my maternal father's family died of cancer. They all were farmers in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Also have two Aunts who recovered from breast cancer, one blood related, one isn't. An Aunt who died of lung cancer. An Uncle who survived uterine cancer.
Heart disease and cancer are the two big killers in family. Also diabetes, and dementia.
Fun times ahead.
I can't say "Killing John Wayne" is an uplifting book. By the time Wayne dies, his career was pretty much over, and he was a bit of a joke. Doing mainly cancer ads, and trying to fight the liberal left in politics. He viewed the US as a white supremacist country and was quite vocal about it, apparently, and homophobic, also very pro-War. He basically played himself in the Westerns he starred in. It's hard to feel sorry for him. He kind of died because of the choices he made - he decided to do the Conqueror, and he chose to smoke incessantly. He also was given the Congressional Medal of Honor. (eyeroll). All he did was make movies, most of which weren't all that good. I did love a few of them though - The Cowboys, Red River, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Big Jake, The Quiet Man, and True Grit. Also Rooster Coburn wasn't bad. Also his last film - the Ron Howard film, The Shootist, was good.
He was not likable though.
Oh, he tried to get the lead in Dirty Harry, but fellow conservative Republican and Western Rival Clint Eastwood got it instead.
It does do a good job of skewering Hollywood and showing how it changed and why. Also parallels it with the atomic testing at the time, and the Howard Hughes insanity.
Tried to do watercolors today, but just too tired. Made it to get groceries. Got back, tried to watercolor, went to sleep in my armchair instead. For some reason or other, I just want to crash this weekend. Also the damn blood sugar sensor is all over the place, it's either 169 or 74.
I don't think it's stablized yet. Always takes about two days for the new sensor to figure stuff out.
I'm having troubles getting myself geared up to take a trip anywhere. I may just take a week off in August. Or a lot of long weekends.