On screen 2017

Just about all the films I watched this year. I can also include 13 episodes of MST3K The Return, but you can look those up. Still enjoying TCM, and the occasional live tweeting on #TCMparty. Still trying to watch one film a week, but scheduling and all the TV series' on Netflix make that difficult. As always, would like to get to the theater more but streaming makes things too easy.

1) Sour Grapes
2) Sing Street
3) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4) Miss Sharon Jones!
5) The Birds
6) Blazing Saddles
7) Casablanca
8) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
9) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
10) Get Out
11) The Golden Vision
12) Vacation From Marriage
13) Crossfire Hurricane
14) The Quiet Man
15) The Commitments
16) The Sidehackers (MST3K)
17) The Giant Gila Monster (MST3K)
18) Trainspotting 2
19) Double Indemnity
20) Young Frankenstein
21) Turnabout
22) Palm Beach Story
23) Lilies in the Field
24) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
25) Obit
26) Breakfast at Tiffany’s
27) Mali Blues
28) Moana
29) Yankee Doodle Dandy
30) Spiderman: Homecoming
31) Baby Driver
32) Raiders of the Lost Ark
33) Marnie
34) Singing in the Rain
35) Sharknado 5
36) The Philadelphia Story
37) Holiday
38) The Animal Kingdom (1932)
39) For Pete’s Sake
40) Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
41) Kingsman: The Golden Circle
42) A Star is Born (1937)
43) Star Wars (with Columbus Symphony)
44) The Big Sleep
45) Lion
46) Madame Satan
47) Casablanca
48) Wee Geordie
49) The Last Jedi
50) In the Good Ol’ Summertime
51) Madame X
52) Eegah! (MST3K Live)

The last week of the year

Hope you all had a fine holiday. Despite my car accident (no one was hurt) it was a very good one. My lovely wife spoiled the heck out of me. If you ever come to the Westgate Cavern you will find out why. The teenager is doing well, as long as he has his iPad to play Badfinger and the Rolling Stones' "Child of the Moon"

I, too, listened to some music this year. Here's what kept me going. Really, really liked the first two - so I'm calling it a tie for the year's best.

Algiers - The Underside of Power
Nicole Atkins - Goodnight Rhonda Lee
Alvvays - Antisocalites
Neil Finn - Out of Silence
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Hitchcock
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - The Nashville Sound
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings - Soul of a Woman
Little Steven - Soulfire
Lorde - Melodrama
Willie Phoenix and the Soul Underground - Garage Blues Band
St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION
Harry Styles - Harry Styles
Tinariwen - Elwan
Waxahatchee - Out in the Storm

Next up, the movies watched list, and car buying.

Quiet ideas in my head

The street I live on is 99% quieter than the last one and it is taking time to get used to. No longer are there people doing 60 in a 25. No more 2AM sirens, although there were helicopters during the day on Thursday. When you deal with fifteen years of noise, you do not necessarily miss it but it is a new normal.

The tree has been up for a week, we all have stockings over the mantel now.

Stockings.

Mantel.

Our bedroom is cold so we got a space heater. We're getting a rug for part of the upstairs space as well. There will be more enhancements, upgrades and replacements coming as they do. Still sorting out the basement space. Have a few pieces of relevant art going down there and an idea for another that could be a commission piece, but who knows?

Christmas Eve is a week away. It's gone so fast amidst the daily chaos of our times. And in all of the good that did happen, there have been a few sad losses in a non-political way, too.

Space, is strange to accept

For years I had lived in small apartments with a bunch of stuff and another person, and their stuff. Then I lived in a small house, with my stuff and her stuff and the kid's stuff. Then it was the same house with my stuff, and the kid's stuff and another person who came over having to live with all that stuff that was not her's.

So here I am now, in our new home, with double the space so no one is really on top of each other. There's still stuff, but it's not as visible. There's a room where the stuff is and you do not have to look at it if you do not want to. And again, this is all my stuff.

When I sit in the basement, which is about 40 feet long, I freak out that there is nothing piled up that I can see. Stuff is arranged, in its place and not giving off a cramped feeling. Everything is so...open, and that's been hard for me to deal with after living in such tight conditions for the past forever.

Our bedroom is on the third floor, the whole floor. My wife was drying her hair while sitting on the floor this morning.

"We should get a chair so you don't have to sit on the floor."

"Maybe"

It's a chair, a necessary chair that would not take up much space.

It would be more stuff, but also a piece of furniture that would be used.

Stuff is weird.

All over but the unpacking

We're more or less in the new place now. More because it's here, less because we're still figuring out the logistics of placement. The muscle memory of coffee making has changed due to the shape of the kitchen and remembering where the scoop for the beans is, where did the scale go, where does the French Press go after it's used.

In time, we'll get that.

Just figured out how to get the answering machine back up (yes we still have one) and will work on the surround sound in the next day or two.

Artwork has to be hung up, but where? Some of the new arrivals have to be matted and framed.

The basement is awesome already, and we have plans to make it incredible.

It's so darn quiet on this street too. For me, that takes some getting used to.

Meanwhile, the GOP has passed one of the cruelest tax reform bills in decades and the long term consequences will be felt by all of us, unless we're uber-rich. And I suspect they will run out of places to hide soon enough.

So please, I do not want to read one complaint. You were all warned. Numerous times. I see the tweets and instagram posts you click like on. Do not go there.