LOVE:

Schitt’s Creek:

Y’all, I need that butterfly suit.

Ever since Netflix was stupid enough to remove every episode of Murder, She Wrote, I have been lost and cast adrift. My life had less purpose without my evenings with Angela. I relied on her to keep me entertained and to strengthen my sleuthing muscles. I tried a number of other mystery programs, but none of them were as satisfactory as Jessica Fletcher gallivanting around the world with all of her random friends and relatives. There’s this Australian program that’s supposed to be amazing, but it’s meh. So I haven’t been watching anything with my dinner, and that’s been fine, but the mind wants to be amused, and I missed laughing. So, I scrolled through Netflix for a while and stumbled upon Schitt’s Creek, a Canadian comedy that I had heard about in the past, but had never given a moment’s attention. I finally started the first episode, and if I hadn’t needed to make myself sleep, I would have binge watched the entirety of the show. It’s just my kind of humor. It’s about a rich family who suddenly finds out that they’re broke, so they no longer have any of the comforts they were once accustomed to. Instead of their luxurious home in New York, they are forced to move to a town that they bought as a joke, Schitt’s Creek. It’s a dump, poor, and completely devoid of culture. The show’s gags come from the family’s dramatic reaction to their new environment. I was particularly delighted by the first episode that featured the matriarch screaming with terror at the drawers and sheets of her motel room. I have become quite like them in my travels, and I find myself unable to stay in anything of lesser quality than a Hilton Garden Inn. Even that is fairly common these days. Who am I? How did I become this person? Anyway, the show is hysterical, and I love a good laugh.

I finished season two on the train last night, and the conductor came by to tell me that he loved the show, too. I assumed he was going to tell me to tone it down for guffawing all the way through upstate New York.

Mama June — From Not to Hot:

Look y’all, y’all need to know and understand something about me. There are many multiple sides to who I am. This is true for anybody, but I feel I’m something of a contradiction. I stay in five star hotels, schmooze with movie writers, go sailing on the Nile, and chat with Dames. But, I also really enjoy Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Like I like it with the most absurd passion. I wrote about this extensively. When that show first aired, I paid it no mind, I had zero interest, but then somebody I knew was watching, so I resignedly tuned it. MY LIFE CHANGED. It was amazing to see this Georgian family living their best life in a way that I would never consider my best life. I am always amazed at people who enjoy living in ways that I would never dream of living. These were people with a chicken running around their house, they ate out of used margarine containers, they paid no mind to the size of their bodies, and they washed their hair in the kitchen sink. It was all so fabulous. It was fabulous in ways that I can’t really explain to you, reader. I feel like I could have easily become one of them if I hadn’t, you know, been reborn as a Parisian pastry chef and a writer and an amateur Egyptologist. I have a latent hill living person inside of me. So, I really relate to the Boo Boo’s and I find them all endlessly endearing. They love each other so damn much. So, when they went off the air, I was annoyed. Thankfully, Beysus was smiling down on me and decided to bring the family back. Now there is a new show where Mama June decides she needs to have a revenge body to make her old partner hella jealous. It’s beyond fabulous, of course, and more scripted than Simple Life and more absurd than Joan Knows Best. It’s a goddamn national treasure. In the first episode, Alana packed her lunch full of unhealthy snacks, June had three diets, we met a man called Big Mike, Mama got dumped at a buffet, we went to an LA surgeon’s office, there was fried food, there was a VCR, there was dancing, jokes abounded, the lighting was weird, and I HAD THE TIME OF MY FREAKING LIFE. I will watch every episode religiously. Tune in to the WE channel for Mama June – From Not to Hot, dear readers. You will never, ever regret it.

Joanna Lumley Dream:

I don’t dream very much anymore. I mean, I know that I do. Everybody does, that’s the science of sleep. I think it’s probably because I don’t get enough time in bed getting restful REM sleep. I barely get enough to function, even though I have been doing much better as of late. I don’t mind that really, I take umbrage with the amount of time that sleep takes. Or maybe it’s the medication I take for that dumb neurological disorder. I’ll have to research that. I used to have dreams, but they were never the most exciting. I did have a recurring one about bunches of tornados that touched down in my field. I was on my little patio, sipping coffee, calmly thinking, “Huh, that’s interesting.” Well, for whatever reason, that all changed last night and I had the most lovely dream. It’s been hours now since I had it, but the memory is still fairly crisp in my mind. The feelings and the details are all still there. I don’t recall the actual geographic location of the dream, but I know that I was on vacation and I was at a very nice hotel bar. For some reason, I believe it was the Old Cataract in Aswan, but I think I might just be making that up at this point. The interiors were creamy and gold and I was sitting at the bar drinking a martini next to Joanna Lumley. This, of course, was thrilling. Joanna, as I have no doubt you know, is one of my heroes. I admire her endlessly. She is smart, funny, gracious, kind, elegant, brave, daring, and utterly charming. Of all the living people on this world, I don’t think there is anybody else I’d rather meet. So, sitting next to her, with her beautiful blonde hair and her silk pantsuit, sipping a cocktail was the most delightful treat. We were chatting about travel, as any traveler is wont to do in strange and wonderfully exotic locations. The conversation is forgotten now, hours later, but the feeling of being blessed and being decadent was intoxicating. I feel we went on a walk, but that also might be a later invention of my fancies. I wish that I could go back to that dream. I wish that I could stand at the balcony and sip champagne with Joanna and talk about the world and how wonderful it was to be alive. I really needed that dream. It left me in such a state of peace.

TodayTix App:

Whenever I go to New York City, I like to see a show. It’s always irksome because you have to go through the theatre’s box office or Ticketmaster or some creepy scalper who smells faintly of weed. I’m too classy for this nonsense, so before I left, I downloaded the TodayTix app on on the recommendation of Ru Paul. I’m obsessed with his podcast and listen to it religiously. He and Michelle Visage have gone on and on about all the latest shows and how they get their tickets on discount from TodayTix. I was intrigued, so the first day I was in the Big Apple — why do they call it that? — I fired up the app and skimmed through the available shows. I saw one that intrigued me called War Paint, and when I saw that it starred legendary Broadway diva, Patti LuPone, I knew that I had to go. I immediately selected the cheapest available ticket, gave the app my credit card info, and confirmed my order. Seconds later, I got a confirmation email with details on how to claim my ticket. A half hour before the show began, a lady in a red jacket was waiting for me beside the marquee with a smile and pleasant banter. I signed my name on an iPad and the ticket was handed to me and I walked inside. There was nothing remotely difficult about it. It was too easy to buy tickets. I am still delighted reminiscing about it now. If I didn’t download the app, I would never have even know the play was a thing since it was in previews and I hadn’t heard about it. It was a sensation! I saw another show, The Play That Goes Wrong, in previews as well, and had a riotous good time in the very last row. Even if my seats were far from the stage, they were still tremendous and I had such a good time. Bless that app. Download it this moment.

HATE:

Robbed by IndieGoGO:

Over the years, I have supported a number of online campaigns. I have received hydroponic gardens and GPS tags that I could attach to my keychain to find my keys when they’re lost. The products have not always been the epitome of quality, but they serve their function, and it was rather fun to support products that were experimental. My latest contribution was to an iPhone case that looked delightful. It had a screen on the backside of it that was like a Kindle, so you could put your to do list on it, a random picture, or whatever you wanted. In addition, there was enough extra battery in it to recharge the phone at least once. I thought this was all very cool, so I had no issue investing eighty dollars last year. It was supposed to be ready to go in July, but every couple months the developers would send an email about a delay. This kept happening. There were more and more problems, but the updates they sent out were very hopeful about little tweaks they were making to make the product even better. And then, all of a sudden, last week they sent out an email that announced they would be making no more updates and that they would not be fulfilling their orders and they would not be offering any refunds. I was livid. I have spent so much time being patient and supportive, and they left me in the lurch. It is absolutely inappropriate that they would not continue to develop, and it’s absurd that they would not offer some kind of token of condolence for the backers that supported the campaign for so long. I will never use Indiegogo again and I urge you not to. Even if this unfortunate turn of events is rare, the fact that it happened at all, especially so bluntly, is inexcusable. So, if you have any battery cases that have any kind of success, please let me know. I’m so annoyed.