Posts Tagged ‘stories’

embrace it!

I’m a huge fan of Jason Katims. HUGE. His shows have so much heart they always stay with me after. He was a big part of making two of my all-time faves, the faves of so many… Friday Night Lights and Parenthood.

AS WE SEE IT:  a Comedy? Drama? Dramcomedy? Comdrama?

AS WE SEE IT  on Amazon Prime has the heart and soul of Katim’s trademark, but with lots of twists and turns. I’ve never seen a show quite like it. And you don’t have to take just my word for it, it has an audience score of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes.

It’s about three Autistic Twentysomethings trying to figure out how to fit in. And it’s actually played by three amazingly-talented actors who are on the spectrum themselves. I know it sounds serious, but it’s not. It’s funny and charming and very real and relatable… we all want to fit in, right?

AS WE SEE IT’s Harrison, Violet and Jack

Wants and Needs —

• Harrison (Albert Rutecki) wants to stop being afraid to leave house.
• Violet (Sue Ann Pien) wants a boyfriend
• Jack (Rick Glassman) wants to take care of his father who is taking care of him.
  (And I want it to already be the second season, so there’s more to watch, haha.)

Mandy (Sosie Bacon) plays the Den Mother/Aid with never-ending compassion who’s running away from her own life — or at least trying to figure it out. I first noticed Bacon in MARE OF EASTTOWN. With talent-genes from her parents Kyra Sedgwick & Kevin Bacon, Sosie shows all of the layers of Mandy in AS WE SEE IT.

Adapted from the Israeli comedy series “On the Spectrum,” AS WE SEE IT is lightness and laughter as Harrison, Violet and Jack face their fears —  frequently with catastrophic results (something else I totally relate to).

As I see it, everyone should give AS WE SEE IT a look… It’s that good!

I was so young when I lost my Mom that it’s sometimes a challenge to hold onto the memories. I mostly remember her through stories my Dad and Niles have told me through the years.

Mom always had a way of making life a little more sparkly. Presents would be wrapped in unexpected ways using comic books, photos, feathers, flowers, glitter, balloons — and they’d be hidden or hanging from the ceiling.

On April Fool’s Day she’d send me to school with a cardboard sandwich in my lunchbox, a note written backwards: “yad sloof lirpa yppah” and three yummy desserts.

On Halloween we cooked an entire orange dinner together: pumpkin soup in a carved-out pumpkin, carrot bread, paprika fried chicken and orange popsicles.

A Contest She Knew I’d Win

One of my best memories is our flower planting contest. I think I was about four.  I definitely remember going to the nursery and buying my own gardening gloves with yellow flowers printed on them and picking out a bright yellow watering can and a rake that was just my size. Read the rest of this entry »

Promising Young Woman is a rollercoaster ride disguised as a thriller-dark comedy-revenge flick? As someone who used to be a Promising Young Woman I related, though Cassie’s situation is wayyyy different from mine — with a different ending, hopefully;)  But, we were both on the road to success before WHAM! Something happened to change everything.

Enough on my situation — let’s get to why this film affected me so profoundly. Like life, it never goes the way you expect it to. Like an old Hitchcock film, it keeps you on the tip of your toes from the beginning to the end. And like any really good film, it makes you think about it for a long time after.

It’s not what you think —

I thought I’d be watching a woman’s revenge vigilante pic, but it’s not exactly that. You’re never quite sure what Cassie (played by the mega-talented Carey Mulligan) is up to — maybe it’s because she’s not sure how far she’ll go herself. Read the rest of this entry »

Niles, my hairdresser-bestie, and I live in the same building. He’s in my “bubble” so we have dinner together a lot. Monday before last dinner on his balcony was like any other since March. His housekeeper, Hortensia, was there cooking, cleaning…

On Tuesday Hortensia’s sister was sick, so she got tested. On Wednesday sis learned she’d tested POSITIVE. So Hortensia tested, and yes, unfortunately: POSITIVE.

Niles got tested and said it was “easy-peasy” at the drive-through set-up at the Veteran’s building, plus he got his NEGATIVE results within 24 hours.

I went to the website,  filled out the forms, watched the video twice (“don’t drop anything”) printed the receipt with my number… so far so good.

On Saturday I was psyched to go. The line was long, but kept moving. It took about an hour to go through. One of the masked guides told me to go to Tent #1. When I got there, I asked the next masked guide if there would be another Tent #1 and she told me there would be. She asked if I’d been there before.

No it’s my first time.

She explained that up ahead they’d tell me what to do… piece of cake, right? Uhhhhh… not exactly for me.

Passing a sign PUT ON YOUR MASK, I eventually I got to a window where a guy asked for my number and then attached a sealed plastic bag with the test kit on one of those extended grabber things and pointed it to me in my car.  After I grabbed the plastic bag, he told me to roll up my window, which I did.

After that something went wrong, because I followed the car in front of me for awhile without stopping and noticed that the driver dropped something in a receptacle and continued to drive on. I had no idea what he was doing since no one had told me to take the test yet and there’d been no place to stop and do what was shown in the video. I continued in the moving car line, a little nervously…

The next masked guide told me to get into Row 3, which I was aware wasn’t Row 1, but I figured maybe I didn’t have to get to Tent #1 after all.

Then, after I’d been there an hour my car line exited out! I FREAKED and pulled over to the side as quickly as I could.  Frantically I opened my plastic bag, but in my nervousness, the white gauzy circle-thing fell to my car floor. Noooooo! (“don’t drop anything.”) I speed-dialed Niles.

Am I supposed to take my test in the car and send it somewhere?!

No– didn’t someone watch you take the test?

No, and Niles —  I accidentally dropped my white gauzy-circle thing!

Read the rest of this entry »

Meet Darby Carter —

Half-hour rom-dramedy at its best — 

HBO Max’s LOVE LIFE by creator Sam Boyd is perfect for pandemic binging. The series follows DARBY CARTER (Anna Kendrick) through her twenties as she navigates her career and romances in NYC. Darby gets lots of input from her impulsive best friend Sara (Zoe Chao), Sara’s likeable boyfriend Jim (Peter Vack), and the brutally honest Mallory (Sasha Compère).

Sara Yang, Darby’s fearless bff —

Sometimes you’ve got to find yourself before you find the one…

In the first five minutes we know we’re on a journey to help Darby, the wounded pleaser, find the love of her life. Darby struggles through her fear of rejection to make romantic connections, short and long — with a couple of broken hearts, flings and hook-ups in her path. What gets in her way? She doesn’t know what a true connection feels like — thanks to her narcissistic mom, weak dad and confusing examples surrounding her. What keeps her going is her unshaken belief that she’ll find what she’s looking for someday…

Augie and Darby… what does it all mean?

Darby’s love life reminds me of mine – catastrophic yet eternally hopeful. LOVE LIFE is a hybrid anthology series that turns the rom-com upside down… definitely worth watching — with unexpected twists and turns and a really good ending. That’s all I’m going to say. Don’t want to spoil it.

(Wish I could star in my own anthology series. Would definitely like to know how it turns out, ahaha.)

Me too, Darby!

Otis and Maeve – mixed messages

SEX EDUCATION, a bawdy, bold and big-hearted British comedy series on NETFLIX, is about a 16-year old boy (Otis) with a Sex Therapist Mom (Jean) who gets talked into going into business with a badass cool girl (Maeve.) Maeve spreads the word that Otis is a sex therapist for high-schoolers. BUT Otis is totally inexperienced and in fact can’t deal with his own sexuality… yet he’s surprisingly intuitive when it comes to dealing with the problems of other teens.

awkward and awesome!

Otis and his Mom – love/hate

It’s a little bit of a parallel universe for me, since I’m someone who hates hospitals (especially the one my Mom frequented when she was dying)… yet now I’ve ironically extended my community service sentence voluntarily because (spoiler alert) I’m actually pretty good at helping others deal with being at the hospital. Go figure.

SEX EDUCATION’s outstanding cast is led by Asa Butterfield, as the nerdy inexperienced sex-pert. Gillian Anderson plays his frank, ff-ingly free and boundary-less mother.  Emma Mackey is brilliantly tender and tough in a break-out role that I would’ve loved to have gone out for before I aged-out of hottie-in-high-school parts. So sad…

I laughed and cringed as I binge-watched all eight episodes. It definitely left me wanting more… much more.

scene from a sex manual

True story. A couple of weeks ago…

I’m in Santa Monica, parked on Wilshire Blvd near 3^rd Street Promenade on the far-far right by the curb, facing the Ocean.  The sun is super bright, blinding me.  So I lean over the steering wheel to block out the sun and read/answer an email. Okay, yeah, I admit, it’s a long email.

SUDDENLY I hear a slow siren, then a Man’s DEEP VOICE over a LOUDSPEAKER.  My head pops up. Whaa?!

OMG! An enormous FIRE TRUCK is heading directly toward me! In my parking lane! On the wrong side of the street! Y I K E S!

My eyes dart from side-to-side. Where’s the fire?!

The bellowing VOICE:

Is everything all right?

What did I do wrong? Read the rest of this entry »