My Current Interest

               I do not like Ryder.   This is something I am laying out there.   Since book one of the Inn Boonsboro Trilogy I have not liked him.   Now in the third book Ryder is the hero.   After finishing it, I find Ryder to be only slightly more appealing.   I do mean slightly.   With the series over, I still do not like him.                                           Since I do not like one of the main characters so much, you are probably wondering why I read the book at all.   There are two main reasons.   First, I read the first two and I wanted to finish the series.   Second, I was really interested to see what happened with the inn’s ghost, Lizzy.   By reading the ...

             Oh Jeopardy! , how I have missed you.   I used to watch every day.   Then the political campaigns began to heat up.   With all the political ads at every commercial break, I could not watch this show without going crazy.   For over a month I had to leave my Jeopardy! viewing in order to keep my sanity.   Now that the election is over, I am able to watch again.   That makes me very happy.                             Jeopardy! is a long running, and well-known, television quiz show.   I do not know of anyone who has not heard the song to the Final Jeopardy! round.   It is used all over the place.   While there are a lot of different quiz shows, Jeopardy! is a little different because you have to answer in the form of a question. ...

              For some reason there appears to be a belief that nothing and nobody good or of worth comes from the Midwest. I do not know where this mentality comes from, but I have heard it quite frequently in all sorts of media. As a person born and raised in the Midwest, it can be very frustrating to hear the cracks and implications about people from this part of the country. I know wonderful people have come from here. Dick Van Dyke is one of those people and I greatly enjoyed his book, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir .              Raised in Danville, IL, Dick Van Dyke has had quite a lengthy and eclectic career. His most famous work is probably The Dick Van Dyke Show . Having never seen the show, I know Mr. Van Dyke because of Mary Poppins and Diagnosis: Murder . Reading this book, I discovered that these are onl...

               As it is Halloween, I thought it would be fitting to follow up last week’s post of The Addams Family with its sequel Addams Family Values . In many ways I like the sequel more than the original. The camp scenes are hilarious. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.                 The Addams family is back and they have a new member in the family, baby brother Pubert. Wednesday and Pugsley do not take to the new baby at all causing Gomez and Morticia to hire a nanny. The interviews do not go well, which I am sure is not a surprise as this is the Addams family, until one day Debbie (Joan Cusack) shows up at the door. She is hired on the spot, without ever meeting the children. That may have been a mistake on Debbie’s part. She is not really there to be a nanny. Capturing Uncle Fester is her true reason ...