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seeking clarity

Reviews

Golden Sourdough

Speak Cheezy in Long Beach California. Went there recently to try out their sourdough crust pizza. Golden! It was the best sourdough pizza I have tried bar none. The store is a little wonky. It’s almost as if the people there ‘don’t want’ to sell you pizza. Weird. But, after getting past that weirdness and getting our pizza we went to the nearby beach and sat and ate this goodness while watching the waves.

FYI, their square pizzas are the thicker crust, the round pizzas the thinner crust. I prefer the thinner crust.

So, if you’re ever in the vicinity of Long Beach give it a try!

Streaming Review – A League of Their Own (Amazon Prime)

A League of Their Own – Season One – Amazon Prime Streaming Now

Spoilers on deck!

Three words to describe this series? Gay, Gay and Gayer. If you are a fan of the 1992 Tom Hanks film by the same name you might want to read this before you stream the new series based on that film. This new adaptation is decidedly not about baseball. At all. Sure there are plenty of scenes shot at the ballpark but make no mistake this is about the relationships between the women ball players. Who seemingly all turn out to be lesbian.

I’m not complaining or casting aspersions. I enjoyed watching this series. It had some good storylines and I really grew to love some of the characters. As long as you aren’t hoping to see the 1992 film remade into a streaming series you likely won’t be disappointed either. World War II female pro baseball league and Rockford Peaches. That’s about it for the similarities to the film.

This series tackles several difficult issues from the setting of the mid 1940’s. Homosexuality, racism and gender. You even get to see the producers tackle all three in one character! I can’t speak much about the homosexual issues from the 40’s but the race and gender issues have been addressed many times. I thought this series handled those very well and brought up some interesting thoughts. The central theme of homosexuality in this series is something I’m guessing has not been addressed in any entertainment specifically about that time period. If it is historically accurate it is very surprising how prevalent the lesbian activity was in the female pro baseball league. I’m going to assume that this was accentuated specially for this series as we see in many dramatic productions. Dramatic license and everything that goes with that.

There are several storylines but the story centers on Carson and Greta. Carson (Abbi Jacobson) is married and from a small town in Idaho. Greta played by D’Arcy Carden is seemingly from everywhere but speaks about New York City many times. BTW, some may recognize D’Arcy from the TV sitcom “The Good Place” where she stoled the show playing Janet the virtual helper bot. Greta recognizes that Carson is more interested in females than her husband and helps her come to herself. Their relationship has several ups and downs throughout the series. Greta also helps move the story along by introducing Carson to the underground lesbian culture. These scenes are mostly how we discover many of the other members of the team are also gay.

The other major storyline is with Max (Chante Adams), a black girl that is a baseball fanatic and is very skilled. Because of her race and gender she has trouble finding anywhere to play. She is finally successful at finding a team to play on after working hard to make it on to her company team and failing to be given much of a chance. Her Aunt Clance (Gbemisola Ikumelo) is a Trans man and plays a big part in helping Max come to terms with her own homosexuality.

Carson and Greta spend many scenes sneaking around the environs of the team boarding house looking for a place to be together. The sex scenes are mild and are in keeping with the shows TV16+ rating. The show is garnering a lot of popularity among the LGBTQ+ crowd and there is talk of it becoming a cult classic of sorts.

I will admit that the ‘gayness’ of this series keeps me from wholeheartedly recommending the show. I watched it and for the most part enjoyed it but I wanted more of the spark from the original film to be present. The line, “there is no crying in baseball” does make it into the series albeit from a female member of the team and not from the coach as Tom Hanks delivered the line so memorably in the original film.

I give it a Thumbs Down.

Review – Vengeance

I used to review TV/Movies all the time and at one point I even had developed a rating scale. I don’t think I’m going to do that again, it just got complicated. I’m going to try a simple ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ here. I may change my mind later LOL. Just know that there will always be spoilers!

Vengeance – spoilers ahead!

The dearth of good movies post Covid is frustrating to say the least. To big time movie lovers like me it presents a special problem. Sometimes I just have to plug my nose and head to the Cineplex and pick something to see. This is just what I did with Vengeance.

The only draw for this film was that it was written by and starred in by B.J. Novak. You know, Ryan, from the Office TV franchise. The short summary is that this film was somewhat interesting and doing fine right up to the very very end. The ‘twist’ ending really blew this thing up and that is why I cannot recommend it and give it a ‘thumbs down’.

However, if you are a a huge Novak fan then you should probably see this. He is just that good. He carried this film on his back and his writing did not disappoint.

Starting out Novak’s character, Ben, is a caricature of an NYC douchebag wannabe ladies man. Joking with his buddy about how many women they can date at any one time. The story really starts when Novak gets a call that his ‘girlfriend’, Abilene, has died. He barely remembers even dating this girl and definitely did not think of them as boyfriend and girlfriend. The family of said girlfriend demand he come to the funeral as he was so important in her life. Inexplicably Ben actually goes to Texas to attend the funeral. Well, as a writer Ben thinks there might be a story in all this so he heads south.

The story moves from there with twists and turns and funny moments between Ben and Abilene’s quirky small town family. Intrigue sets in when Ben discovers a seedy underbelly to Abilenes’ life and a question about her death being a murder.

That’s really all you need to know. Again, it’s not worth the viewing unless you are a Novak fan.

Thumbs Down