Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /home2/thomassw/public_html/blogs/inc/_core/_param.funcs.php on line 2225
Gallery: "media" - Travel Blog

Gallery: "media"

reality TV

02/21/24 08:42

Deprecated: Array and string offset access syntax with curly braces is deprecated in /home2/thomassw/public_html/blogs/plugins/_auto_p.plugin.php on line 521

I love finding shows to stream that nobody talks about, and the latest is Julie Delpy’s On the Verge. It is a smart, funny look at the lives of four women in their 40s. The fact that one of them – Delpy – is French, adds an interesting perspective.

On the last episode I watched, she is attending her son’s soccer practice and the ball keeps rolling over by her chair. She kicks it back, telling the kids to move farther away. Shortly after, the ball comes flying over and hits her in the face. She gets up and lashes the kids with insults. One of her friends, trying to calm her down, says: “You can’t talk like that to children here.”

Watching that scene it hit me: The show is like a realistic Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's puzzling that Netflix cancelled it after one season.

By • Galleries: media

yin and yang

02/19/24 09:02

Yesterday evening, turning from All Creatures Great and Small to Curb Your Enthusiasm, I wondered if there were two more dissimilar shows on television.

By • Galleries: media

say it ain't so

02/06/24 09:26

WLRN has cancelled Sundial, replacing it with an extra hour of Here & Now. Here & Now is a news program produced by WBUR in Boston, Sundial was a lively and wide-ranging arts & cultural program specific to South Florida. Host Carlos Frias, an excellent writer who had been the food writer for the Miami Herald, proved himself to be a gifted interviewer, bringing a joy and an energy to the show that is rare in public radio. He had as guests people as diverse as film connoisseur Rene Rodriguez, Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill, and the Finnish housecleaner and YouTube sensation Auri Katarina. (Carlos’s interview with Katarina was hilarious, the two of them working in sync like a brilliant comedy team.)

“Keep it local” used to be the media’s mantra. Now, it seems, it’s “keep it cheap.” That would seem to be the only explanation for WLRN’s detrimental actions. Management may argue that these are critical times, and people need to be informed. But they also need to be entertained and enlightened – particularly during anxious times – and nobody entertains and enlightens better than those from the creative realms.  

By • Galleries: media

benign neglect

01/19/24 08:52

For a few years now the New York Times has not printed a Travel section to go with the other sections in its Sunday paper. To read this section, subscribers have to go online, a simple effort that I have never made.

But once a year the paper deigns to print a special section listing 52 places to go in the new year. This is the most meaningless form of travel writing (claims someone who, under pressure from supervisors, did his fair share of annual where-to-go lists), based – when no special event or natural occurrence is involved – on nothing more than the whims and prejudices of a group of editors. Why are the Albanian Alps (to cite one of the Times’ picks) the place to go this year as opposed to last year – or next year?

Still, I peruse the special section every year, and this year I was disappointed to see that no place in Poland made the list. Is the country already too mainstream, with none of the edgy caché of Albania? Hard to know. I’ve been visiting Poland regularly for the last few decades and each time I go I’m struck by how attractive it has become, not just for tourists but also for residents. Planning a return this spring, I realize that I should be grateful that the New York Times found it wanting, as there will be fewer Americans – at least fewer Times readers – on the streets.

By • Galleries: Travel, media

a zoom weekend

01/09/24 08:58

Then Sunday evening I zoomed with Scott Simon, who had invited me on his podcast Open Book. We talked about Florida mostly – he had read my “Florida Man” essay in The American Scholar – but also about Poland – two subjects that are rarely paired. The podcast is available on his timeline on X.  

By • Galleries: media