GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) Season 2 (Netflix)

Great series (e.g., Deadwood, Breaking Bad, The Wire) get better with each season. Many shows, unfortunately however, go downhill after the first season. Based on Episodes 1 and 2 of the Second Season, GLOW is somewhere in the middle. It's not great. It's not terrible. It has less to do with wrestling and more to do with trying to make statements about and explore relationships between people ... including father/daughter, actor/actor, producer/producer, and many more. It does not do an horrendous job, but it does not do a fantastic one either. In fine, GLOW remains entertaining, principally because the likable characters really are likable and the unlikable characters are so stereotypical they are ingoreable. 

Chelsea's Kitchen and Lo-Lo's Chicken and Waffle House at Sky Harbor and a Cautionary Note

One of the few restaurants (and perhaps the only one) outside security at Terminal 4 with sit-down table service is Chelsea's Kitchen. The service is excellent. The ambience is a bit loud. The so-called taco platters are very tasty (although the short-ribs likely are not one's best choice and some of the vegetables on the vegetarian are a bit iffy), but they are expensive. The Arnold Palmers are terrible, but you do get free refills.

The noted drawbacks is what made Lo-Lo's one's first choice even though it's take-to-a-table and not table service. But that choice was nixed when, with no line, there would be a 15-minute wait for the cashier to return from a break and take your order. Note also the menu is very limited compared to the menu at its real restaurants. In fact, there's no option for just pieces of chicken.

Cautionary Note: If you get bullied into assisting a youngster make a plane transfer at Sky Harbor, and park in the short-term lot because you should be in-and-out in about an hour, and it turns out the incoming flight is 1.5 hours late and the out-going flight is 3.5 hours late, no matter how bad your head is pounding because you are up way past your bed-time, and the airport crowd is just horrible and the seating is uncomfortable, do not forget that there is a 4-hour limit in the short-term lot, after which you can be ticketed and towed. Even if not, to add to the undue expense of Chelsea's Kitchen, your parking charge will be $24 instead of your expect $4, and don't think for a minute anyone is going to compensate you for that. 

Flight Alerts From Southwest Airlines

You can scour the Southwest Airline website and you will not find a place to do Flight Status Notification Alerts. If you do a search, you will find what used to be the Flight Status Notification page but there it will say that SWA has ceased providing the function. However, if you fill it in, it seems to work. In any event, better to use Flight Tracker or whatever your favorite tracking app is. 

Play Download Link to Flight Tracker

PS: Here's the notice you'll see on the SWA website: "Starting in June, the Flight Status Notification feature will no longer be available. Any notifications set up prior will be unable to be modified once this feature is removed.
But don’t worry—you can always check your flight status at Southwest.com/air/flight-status/."

The Failing New York Times 2

While we don't do politics here, we do want to bring to our loyal readers' attention the second instance in a week where the New York Times will bury a letter only later to give it to their columnists. Here is the text of that letter:

To the Editor:

            If Senators Collins and Murkowski truly want to insure that the next Supreme Court justice will adhere to precedent for the protection of women’s right to choose, simply announcing that they will not vote for “too conservative” a nominee, and voting against any such nominee, is not courageous and is not enough. All it takes is a Democrat senator to break ranks, and several very well might, and the withholding of those two Republican votes will have done nothing. But, if Senators Collins and Murkowski truly want to stand up for what they say they believe in, and stand up to the steamrolling that is coming down the road, and stand up to allow the Supreme Court to be at least a semblance of a co-equal branch of government, and to stand up to Trump and Trumpism, there is a simple step for them to take: Change their party affiliation from Republican to Democrat or Independent and conference with the Democrats, which will enable the Democrats to control the Judiciary Committee and the floor and have a fair and reasonable nominating process. While it might be a difficult decision for each of them, and surely it would be a courageous one, if courage ever were needed and a break with one’s party ever were needed, the time is now. Sixty years ago a woman Republican Senator from Maine stood up against a Republican Senator bully. It’s time for the current woman Republican Senator from Maine and her colleague from Alaska to do the same. It's time to Make America America Again, and with a simple switch of party-affiliation, they can put us on the path to saving the Supreme Court (and perhaps even the country while they’re at it).

[Author's Identity Deleted on Privacy Grounds]

Game Night (2018)

Available to stream, although not for free, Game Night is worth paying $5 for on Amazon. It's weird. It's a strange mixture of dark and comedy albeit not really dark comedy ... more like a dark track and a comedy track. Some scenes are really laugh out loud funny. Rachel McAdams is fabulous, and if you liked Catastrophe, you will love the appearance of the wife from there, who is British. The only problem with the movie is that you don't get drawn in enough to worry about what happens to the various characters, particularly given that you actually suspect there is no substantial reason to worry at all. All that said, it is applauded for doing what movies should do: Try to be different.

IMDb Link to Game Night

Secret to Talking to Kids About Marriage Problems

                                 [Courtesy of The New Yorker]

Secret to a Successful Marriage

                                                    [Courtesy of The New Yorker]

The Failing New York Times 1

While we don't do politics here, and we love the press, we have been shocked and appalled recently by certain conduct of the New York Times, which has led us to wonder if it in fact is The Failing New York Times. In the guise of soliciting letters to the editors, what it does with good letters is: Refuse to print them, pass on the ideas presented in them to their columnists, and then allow their columnists to present the ideas as if they were theirs. This most recently happened with our letter setting out that the only way to deal with Trump was the way to deal with any bully. But it's been happening before that over and over again. Here is the text of the most recent letter the NYT received and buried, and which you're likely to see pop up by one of its columnists:

To the Editor:

            Going into the mid-terms and 2020, the Democrats need a terse, unifying theme that directly confronts Trumpism and is aspirational and elevating. This does all that: Make America America Again.

[Author's Identity Deleted on Privacy Grounds]

Warning to Cox TV Customers re Onscreen TV Guide

Cox has migrated to transmit only in HD. The upside of this is that no longer will customers have to deal with 4-digits to punch in channels they want to see. The downside is Cox does not know what they're doing, and has not even told its tech support what it's doing, and if you've customized your onscreen TV Guide, kiss your customization good-bye. There is a work-around that our crack Mighty Advanced Department (MAD) has figured out but it's so tedious that we doubt anyone will go through it. In brief, all your Skipped channels have been reinstated and to get them out of the Guide you have to code them again as Skipped both on the under 1000 lineup and the over 1000 lineup, and it actually gets a little more complicated after that. 

Two Myths About Grilling: Up in Flames

The below link will take you to an article about the supposed five myths of grilling. Three were of no interest to our Culinary and Oven Operations Krew (COOK), but two were:

Myth no. 2: Oil the grill to prevent meat from sticking

Nope, says Goldwyn: Oil the meat instead. That's according to his associate, physicist and food scientist Professor Greg Blonder of Boston University. Actually, it's OK to oil the grates if they're below the smoke point, Blonder says, but if you wait until after that, the oil "cracks, smokes, and caramelizes almost instantly," which can negatively affect the taste of the meet and even make sticking worse. To be safe, oil the meat, which is cold and will therefore keep it from burning and cracking.

Myth no. 5: Sear first, then cook through

Whoa, whoa, whoa -- this is a myth? If I had a nickel for the number of times I've heard this advice, I'd be sitting on a mountain of nickels.Here's the smarter way, according to Goldwyn: Create two heating zones on your grill, one direct and one indirect. (On a gas grill that means putting one burner on high and leaving the other off.) Heat the meat on the indirect side until it gets within 10-15 degrees of the target temperature, then move it to the direct side (over the lit burner). Flip it every minute or two until it's seared on both sides. This is called a reverse sear, and Goldwyn insists it's the better method for cooking thicker cuts of meat.

Link to cnet Article

Dish vs Direct Satellite TV

We have asked Sid, the manager of our Satellite Investigative Department (SID), to assess the relative pluses and minuses of DirectTV vs. Dish. Unless is an NFL junkie and wants NFL Sunday Ticket exclusively available from DirectTV (for a small fortune after the free period expires), while both get high marks in technology and customer service, Dish seems to get slightly higher marks on both (making it a bit surprising that the Dish phone rep did not understand that the Dish TV Guide is customizable) and is much less expensive. Much less! DirectTV does have a prettier and somewhat more informative website and a classier logo.

Link to Excellent Article Comparing the Two Systems

   

Caution When Changing Cable Boxes

Before you upgrade to a new cable box or have to replace your current cable box because it went bad, it is meet to note that wisdom dictates that before your current box is removed, you note certain things that will not be on your new or replacement box, including: (i) The listing of your recurring recordings; and (ii) your closed captioning settings. That will make it easier for you to replicate such matters on your new or replacement box. 

Closed Captioning (at least on Cox)

If you use closed captioning (and who doesn't any more?), here are the settings our crack Closed Captioning Coding Panel (CCCP) determined are the best:

Text Style: Proportional Serif

Text Size: Small

Text Color: Cyan

Background Color: Blue

Background Opacity: Semi-transparent

All others: Default Setting

Growing Republican Support for Trump: Analysis With Some Solace

As everyone in the world knows, we don't do politics here. But we do analyze stuff, and our Statistical Analysis Department (SAD) has been asked why does recent polling show an increasingly higher percentage of Republicans registering support for Trump (up now to 90%). One contributing factor is the shrinking number of people who, when polled, consider themselves Republican. See the below box summarizing Gallup Poll figures, which for technical reasons that are too difficult for SAD to explain likely understate the shrinkage. As a result, the polling excludes those who have left the party thereby giving a greater weight to the [fill in whatever noun you want] who are staying in the party.

Browser Extensions to Increase Your Privacy

[Prefatory Note: As my jacket says, "I don't really care," but I know others do about internet privacy. I'm just glad someone is watching and listening to me. That said, here are some browser extensions to enhance your privacy on the internet]

HTTP Everywhere: Provided the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) HTTPS Everywhere encrypts your communications with many major websites. It rewrites requests to websites to HTTPS, making browsing more secure.

UBlock Origin: This is a wide-spectrum blocker. It blocks ads and tracking mechanisms from malware sites. It also does a good job of keeping up with and blocking sites that deploy bitcoin mining. It's also one of the few extensions that work on Microsoft's Edge browser. Direct links to the browser extension are here because uBlock Origin is hosted on Github and a little hard to figure out how to install:


Disconnect: Encrypts all of your Internet traffic, masks your IP address, prevents wireless eavesdropping, blocks over 5000 invisible trackers and sources of malware, inside both browsers and apps, and allows you to search anonymously on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and more

Ghostery: Gives you control over ads and tracking technologies to speed up page loads, eliminate clutter, and protect your data. Similar to uBlock Origin.

Social Disconnect Plus: Removes all social media contents on web-pages (i.e. the Facebook like button and other widgets) that are used to track your movements across the internet.

The Book Thief (2013)

We promised our loyal readers no more movies on the Holocaust (per the Chicago Style Manual it should be capitalized as a proper noun) or slavery. Alas, sometimes a grandchild takes over the movie selection, and a Holocaust movie is what gets shown. Based on 20 minutes of viewing, The Book Thief likely is an excellent Holocaust movie. It surely has the scenes of idyllic children singing Nazi hymnals along with your night of the broken glass. The Book Thief is very nicely photographed and the cast appears to be endearing where it is supposed to be and repulsive where it is supposed to be. I'm sorry the original Dirty Dancing, the other contender, was not selected instead.  

IMDb Link to The Book Thief

Memory Test and the Arizona Science Center

Memory Test:

Stare at these 13 letters for 15 seconds: VCRSOSTGIFTNT

Stop looking at the screen.

Write down the letters in order.

If you can't remember them, ask a 14-year old the trick. With the trick, "remembering" these 13 letters in order is a snap. Indeed, you can remember them 2 hours later after you get home. Hint: Instead of trying to remember 13 letters, you need only to remember 4 "things."

Arizona Science Center:

The Arizona Science Museum is heavily slanted to appeal to your younger crowd. It also is wise to bring earplugs with you because the din can produce quite a headache. That said, there is some fun stuff like the memory test. And the movies about the ocean (and likely the African wildlife as well) are quite majestic and somewhat informative, the only drawback being the droning quality of Kate Winslet's narration. While these movies are shown on a GIGANTIC screen and in 3D, if you have a 75" or larger television at home, you might find the GIGANTIC screen experience is not quite up to your home viewing experience.