Mary Fioratti » Culture

From Movies to TV Series

Mary — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 03:34:21 +0000

Holly wood sure does love to exploit a winner. They take what seems to work someplace and duplicate, twist it or rework it to get every last dime out of a show. Lately L.A. has been raiding British shows and trying to put an American spin on them. some of those shows never make it to the major networks but they are popping up on the cable channels. I need to look into more of these reworks and see what is original and what is a spin off – or a rip off.

May Your Christmas Be Merry and Bright

Mary — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:20:52 +0000

Years of hearing Christmas carols and piped in Christmas music while shopping have left me a little numb about music this time of year. I just realized that I don’t even the know the words of most carols well enough to get up with a karaoke microphone and do a decent job of singing any of them. How did that happen? You hear them year after year, but you never really listen to the words and try to sing them on your own. Maybe I should learn at least one or two carols – keep them in my pocket until I need them.

Word Play

Mary — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:15:56 +0000

Have you noticed that some people are masters of word play? They take every day, common speech, add a few more complicated words, and spin lies. Without going into politics, it is amazing to listen to professionals who have been trained in word play. Spin doctors are really good at this. They take a situation and twist it around or push it out in a different direction. All the while they are using language to deceive you or achieve some goal, such as sell you a product or change your beliefs. I like the Indian reference to this by saying that those men “speak with forked tongue.”

Dept Store Makeup Counter

Mary — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:10:19 +0000

This time when I went to the mall I decided to take a look at the makeup counters in the big Department stores. Most of the time I avoid that whole area, as all these overly made up women are always looking for someone to pounce on and give them a free makeover. I don’t want a makeover but I do want some new lipstick. I’m not sure there is enough difference in the quality of the lipstick at the mall to make it worth $30 when I can buy good stuff at the drug store for only $12. So I took a look and the women were so busy gossiping among themselves that they never even came over to help me. So fuck ‘em. I left.

Talking Heads

Mary — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:19:30 +0000

Do you have a favorite news braodcaster? There is not much difference in the local news here, but we have 4 channels that do the news every night. I like some of the personalities, but none of them have a full team that I like for the entire 30 minute show.

The anchors on Channel 4 and Channel are the kind of people that I wish were my neighbors. People that I like in a general way and respect. I think they are basically good hearted and well mannered. But the weather forecasters on Channel 5 seem to be more accurate and more informative than the ones on the other channels.

I don’t care about the sports news and usually don’t much attention to the sportscasters on any of the channels. I used to like a guy named Rudy, but he retired and just comes back once in a while as a fill-in. Channel 5 let their main guy retire recently and that was good riddance. But they haven’t replace him with anyone significant. They are all just talking heads with no personalities. Boring.

What Its Like

Mary — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:12:18 +0000

One of my favorite songs by Everlast is called, “What It’s Like” and I was really happy to find it on Spotify today. I added it to my playlist. What I didn’t know until today was that they have several different versions of the song and the only one I ever heard was the clean, radio edit. The Spotify selections included a longer, explicit version. Of course, that’s the one that I wanted to hear!

Reality Check

Mary — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:10:31 +0000

Pencils

Mary — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 02:12:02 +0000

People who work a crossword puzzle and write in the squares with pencil are cheating. I don’t trust anyone who uses a pencil. I bet I don’t even have a single pencil in my house. What would I possibly need one for? I have an assortment of pens and have no use for pencils at all.

Twilight

Mary — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:06:02 +0000

The Twilight books and then movies have been fascinating America for about 4 years now. I have to admit that I like them, too. The different approach to vampires and how to kill them was an interesting twist.

The last movie in the series will be coming out this winter. I cam going to watch the first one a couple of times, then the second one a couple of times, etc. to prepare for the premiere of the final movie.

Anything Good?

Mary — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:21:49 +0000

So by now just about all the TV shows for this new season have had their big premieres. What are you watching now? I don’t know that i like many of them. Why has TV gone to hell? It used to be any night of the week you could flip through channels and find something worth watching. Nowadays there are nights when its not worth even turning the TV on in the first place.