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1. Pretty day for the most part. In the low 80s. Humid. And dry. We desperately need the rain, that will most likely arrive tomorrow and Monday. Assembled a chair and table today...major accomplishment of the morning. I can now paint. One can write without a table, even draw without a table, but one cannot effectively paint.

I miss painting. It calms me.

Also ate too much sugar...I don't know why I binge things that hurt me. Seems rather self-destructive actually, also gets in the way of the sleeping.

Table that was easy to assemble did have a damaged table -- most likely from the manufacturer. While I should just return it. It's nothing major. And I want the table to paint on. Plus can't really notice it. And the table was only $29.

Chair was a bitch to assemble however.

2. Once Upon A Time

The reboot didn't grab me. Honestly they couldn't pick a story that hadn't been done already...such as I don't know there has to be one out there. Maybe Rose White and Rose Red, where the prince is a bear? It seems to me that the writers have run out of ideas.

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Regarding Marvel's Inhumans -- I forgot to DVR it this week so missed the episode. Which probably states how interested I was in it. Odd it's not on Demand...I did look. But hard to care one way or the other. (Everything else is On Demand).

Televison Round-up Take II

Slowly making my way through my DVR recordings...

1. Wisdom of the Crowd -- new procedural crime series on CBS, Sundays, at 8PM.

I was surprised by this one. Mainly because it actually held my attention and I found the characters along with the gimmick/set-up innovative and somewhat interesting.

Jeremy Piven plays Tanner, a tech innovator (think Steve Jobs meets Joe Walsh), whose daughter was killed a year ago. New evidence has come to light that the wrong man may have been convicted. So he sells his mulit-million dollar business platform, to launch a crowd-sourcing software program that solves crimes via the assistance of social media. The way it works is that they post something similar to "have you seen this person", face and id, to everyone's cell phones. People check it out and respond. (Similar to Amber alerts). They also reach out to people to ask for assistance. In other words, the community helps the police solve the crime via the use of iphones and social media.

It does tackle the legal pitfalls and slippery slope of this concept. Early on someone hacks into the network. And as the police detective assigned to them states -- you can't tap into people's phones, that's a privacy violation, or use information that you've obtained illegally. (So someone on the writing team has researched the legalities of it.)

The cast is interesting, particularly the female characters (which is important to me, mileage clearly varies on this). Also Piven is rather good at playing a vulnerable rich ass, and I've always found him to be an interesting actor. The police detective is played by Richard T. Jones of Judging Amy, Collateral and Godzilla. English actress, Natalie Tena from Harry Potter, About a Boy and Game of Thrones (Osha) is playing the head of the tech team, who is also secretly involved with Tanner.
And Monica Potter (Parenthood) plays Tanner's Congresswoman ex-wife.

So far, the series is fast-paced, uplifting, with emphasis on tech and detective work, low on violence. Which to be honest is a breath of fresh air as far I'm concerned. The action and suspense involves figuring out how to use social media and others to help solve a case. With the interpersonal dramas playing in the background.

I enjoyed it and decided to stick with it for now.

2. Poldark S3

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Will probably stick with it this year. Has the same pacing

3. Trailer for Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams...the sci-fi anthology series adapted from Philip K. Dick short stories premiering on Amazon

As is fitting for a Philip K. Dick adaptation, the Electric Dreams series seems concerned with questions of reality, identity, perception, corporate control, and free will. I hope some of the episodes really dive into Dick’s what-is-even-real paranoia, because getting freaked out about whether I exist or not is my favorite part of reading his work.

4. Runaways Trailer finally surfaces...

This is James Marsters new series, where he plays one of the super-villain parents of the kids, along with Marcia Croft and various others. It's based on the Marvel X-men Spin-Off series created by Brian K. Vaughn, that all sorts of folks wrote for at different points. And is being written by best-selling YA novelist Rainbow Rowell

“This is my favorite Marvel book. When [editor Nick Lowe] first reached out to me a few years ago about maybe working for Marvel, it was the first thing I asked him about,” Rowell tells EW of how the match-up came to be. “The characters and original story by Brian K. Vaughan (Paper Girls) are just so great and so beautifully built. I was really excited because I always felt like there were more Runaway stories and that book should just have kept going.”

Damn. Hulu is making me want to subscribe..but must resist. I might do a free trial in November and binge watch Handmaid's Tale, Future Man and Runaways like I did Big Little Lies and GOT this summer with HBO Now.


[I keep skipping over words or my fingers are, I think them, but they don't appear on the page via typing, and it's getting worse. Hmm.)


6. The Good Place -- not as good as last week, or the week before. Mainly because it was 90% exposition and set up for the upcoming weeks.

Right now, Chidi and Ted Danson's Michael are the only two characters I don't want to smack upside the head, and say, you idiots. This is a choice between being eating alive by spiders or scorpions and well having to put up with clowns on the walls and being annoyed to death. Let me think.

And Tahani's sister better have a one-way ticket to the Bad Place, just saying.

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