July Playlist

Hello!

This month has been an odd one.

It had so much promise at first, but then the second week came in, and my body decided to throw us a curve ball and it’s been a slow but steady ride back to normal since then.

I was up late at night on the 10th, and I was busy doing some of stuff but I was very hot, I had sweat everywhere and I was sitting straight in front of my fan and I wasn’t feeling like it was making a difference to how my body was reacting, and then suddenly I started to feel really sickly, like I could throw up on my laptop and I knew something weird was going on, so I called for my mom and she realized some of the same things I had but when she took me to the bathroom, and we quickly found out I had some kind of stomach bug, and it ruled my body for four and a half days.

Originally, we couldn’t figure out how I could have gotten this because nobody has had this bug, my parents never came down with it either! The one thing we did agree with was my intake with store-bought brownies–I had a strong craving for anything to do with brownies!–and I had them throughout three days prior. I have had issues with brownies in the past but never this serve! So, we all made the decision to throw them out because nobody was going to eat them to test out our logic, and I was pretty sad about it, but I wasn’t going to continue eating them if this was going to be the end result everytime.

Last month, I was so happy to know I read for thirty days, and I had wanted to do the same thing with July but then this sickness came around and I ended up missing out on five days and I’ve been trying to get back on track with both Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows and Shield-Maiden: Under the Dark Moon, the final books of their series, and a part of me was fine with going slow with them but I want to finish these stories just as much. I’m still reading the fourth book of the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I’m currently at a crossroads with it, so I hope I can get back into it soon!

I have started working on my Garden Tour posts. I began writing up the first daft at the very beginning of July, but then I have been sadly avoiding it these last few weeks, but I think I’ll be back to it once August rolls around. I would like to release the first part before the end of summer, but I don’t know yet.

Let’s get into the July playlist now. Here are my Top 20 songs and like always, if you want to check out the entire playlist, click here to be transported to the Spotify playlist.

Chocolate & Ice Cream by Plumb
Love On The Brain by Cold War Kids featuring Bishop Briggs
You’re The One I Want by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (Grease)
Run With Me by Watt White featuring Loch
In Another Life by Crown The Empire featuring Courtney LaPlante
My Head & My Heart by Ava Max
Don’t Pray For Me by Within Temptation
Snakes and Ladders by Power-Haus featuring Sohodolls (Tom Evans Remix)
Trap God by Hollywood Undead
Wild One by Malinda
Stay by Lauren Babic
Her Body Is Bible by Fletcher
Mr. Crow by Andrew Higgins
Yes Girl by Bea Miller
From Today by Coldtrain
Karma by Alicia Keys
All Star by Smash Mouth
Write On Me by Fifth Harmony
300 Violin Orchestra by Ender Guney
Heartbreaker by Pat Benater

I have one more thing to mention; while I was recovering, I allowed myself to watch more movies like my ultimate favorite Shrek and I finally got a chance to check out “Last Night In Soho” (2021) on HBOMax, it stars Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Davis, and Diana Rigg. It was an amazing film! I knew it would be somewhat suspenseful, but it went over my own assumptions, and I just loved it! The most recent was Into The Forest. It came out in 2015 and has Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood as the main characters. I thought this would equally by as interesting as far as being thriller-y, but it wasn’t – although it wasn’t too cheesy (considering it is like when we were in lockdown for COVID!) but the ending was very weird, even my dad had some words about how the whole thing! I think we thought we were getting a totally different movie to what was delivered but it wasn’t too awful though. This film was on “The Movie Channel” or Showtime!

I truly hope you’re doing well out there and enjoying the summer weather too!

What were you listening to in July?

REVIEW | Becoming Cary Grant

Recently, I watched a very interesting documentary film called Becoming Cary Grant that premiered on Showtime on June 9th. The film is about the life of actor Cary Grant, who is known as one of Hollywood’s leading men from the 1940-50’s working with such directors like Alfred Hitchcock.

Cary Grant was born in Bristol, England in 1904. His given name was Archibald Leach, which while he was on tour in the U.S. he mostly used the nickname “Archie” with his last name as his persona. It wasn’t until he moved on to making big budget movies that he finally changed his name and became an American citizen.

He had been married four times, and only had one child, a daughter named Jennifer with his third wife Dyan Cannon. He was a very private person, as you find out watching the film how sheltered he’d become throughout his time in Hollywood and then you also find out how he became such a bad husband to his wives as well. The documentary draws the story of his life using reenactments, sections of his unpublished biography (read by actor Jonathon Pryce) and then the home videos Cary himself captured throughout the later years of his life.

I find the film to be very interesting, I was thoroughly entertained but before I ever started watching it I kept getting him confused with Clark Gable. They’re both similar between their slick black hair and sturdy roles except for the fact that Clark always had some facial hair! If you like the stars of the 1930’s through the 1950’s, I think you could enjoy this as well!

Have you seen Becoming Cary Grant yet? If you have, what did you like about it?

REVIEW | Disgraced

Last time I reviewed a basketball themed documentary because it was still March Madness, well on the 31st, I watched another one that was similar, but instead of a happy ending this one wasn’t…

Showtime premiered Disgraced and it was about an incident that happened at Baylor University in 2003 involving the entire basketball team. A college student and basketball player Patrick Dennehy, was shot and killed by another team member who was supposedly was his best friend. Patrick and the one who shot him, Carlton Dotson were again supposedly paranoid about another teammate Harvey Thomas and his friend and cousin, Larry Johnson after having them over. The story goes that both Harvey and Larry had guns on them and were using them to scare the boys from accusing them for any wrong doing.

Later, after feeling extra paranoid of their situation, they in turn buy their own set of guns and told their other roommates that if Harvey or anybody else came looking for them to not let them in. So clearly, this raises some flags I would say! I guess though, they went to their coaches and asked if they should go to the police, their main coach Dave Bliss, said to keep things “in house” meaning don’t tell anyone as I imagined. This is where things began to get very strange because within a few days later Patrick Dennehy ends up missing and it’s within these days that people are now looking into the team and the coaches of Baylor University.

I was very much amazed by the amount of things discussed or in some cases, not talked about it within the mystery of how Patrick is dead and how Carlton, who was like a brother to him, would kill him. I mean, if they were as paranoid as they said to be, the mental statuses of Carlton kind of makes sense. You’ll learn more about what I mean when you watch the film. My thing was what the coaches did though, assistant coach Abar Rouse recorded the head coach, Dave Bliss as they began to create a cover up for the rest of their team on how much they knew about the situation of their players. Now a lot of people would think this was wrong and that he should have went to the coach and told him about his feelings about it, but like everybody said he was literally backed into a corner and Bliss even told him “I can hire and fire assistant coaches at will” now would you want to tell him after hearing that? I wouldn’t, I’d probably record him too honestly!

The film was very interesting and like my dad told me too, they’re not the first ones to have this type of scandal and sadly, I don’t think they’ll be the last either.

So did you watch Disgraced yet? What were your thoughts on the documentary?

REVIEW | Perfect In ’76

The month of March is a time for beloved basketball fans and the most dreaded time for anyone who loathes it as well. March Madness is exactly that, it is madness! I’ve sadly just realized that it’s not all about college basketball though, for high schools around the United States have their sectionals, regionals, and state championships all in this time too! I don’t know why I am just now figuring that out, but I am.

Showtime took it upon themselves to use it to feature a number of specials on the network for any basketball fans, and since I go back and forth with loving and hating it, (yes, there was a time where I’ve hated basketball!) I found a documentary that I thought would be cool to watch despite the fact that it would premiere on the weekend of my papaw’s passing. I recorded it and hoped that maybe I would leave it to the weekend after so I would (hopefully) get through it in one piece. I barely made a day!

It was called “Perfect In ’76” and was narrated by a fellow Hoosier and musician John Mellencamp and the whole thing discusses the perfect season of Indiana University’s Hoosiers in 1976, it included some of the former players on the team and announcers whether on local TV news stations or radio. It also had the infamous coach Bobby Knight talking about not only the undefeated season in ’76 but also the near-perfect season of the year before when they were beat by Kentucky in the NCAA championship.

One of the things that they first show is Indiana’s landscape of both city life with the campus in Bloomington and rural country sides that is probably the most known feature about the state. The first thing that John explains to the viewer is that “Basketball was invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana” and included that children were raised on basketball and IU was at the heart of it all. Everything about this scene was true, at least in my family.

My family is a fairly large basketball family, it ranges from IU, Butler, Purdue; my sister’s fiance is actually a fan of North Carolina, so he’s the only non-Indiana team in our family, which according to a number of my family members my papaw seemed to hate them with a passion. He was probably not happy how the 2017 NCAA championship ended. Anyways, this man would tape (well, most of the time it was my nana setting it up) almost every game on television so he could watch it whenever he was at home. We’ve had bookshelves and cabinets full of VCR tapes of basketball games around that house! I remember the late 90’s and we’d have family in the living room watching the game and all of us grandkids on the floor not exactly understanding what all the excitement was about basketball, later on majority of my family played basketball in school, I think everybody but my cousin Amy did it outside of elementary school.

Back to the documentary though, I watched it not really understanding some of the stats – I don’t know all of the correct terms and what the difference between a “forward” and “guard” but I have never had a problem with watching it! So whenever they were discussing the different players and Bobby Knight wanting a better offense when he first became the head coach of the team. I think it all went in one ear and our the other. I really liked it though, it was interesting! We all think of Bobby Knight as this angry dude who threw a chair across the court and got escorted off, but to see him like this especially in the last scene where they’re all sitting in the diner and he makes a speech to his former players and gets choked up a bit about how amazing they were and how he always appreciated them. It changes what we see in this person that has such an intimidating persona.

What I really found sort of hilarious, is that literally four days before I watched this Indiana University actually fired their current coach Tom Crean and everybody in my family about had a field day with this news because my papaw called it a long time ago! A month earlier, Bobby Knight had called into a radio and expressed his feelings against his former bosses and I couldn’t contained myself, I had to laugh at that! Gave it a few years and Tom will probably do the exact thing same and we’ll be back rolling our eyes at him.

Have you seen this documentary yet? Do you love (or hate) basketball? 

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REVIEW | Roadies

I’m back with another review, this time it’s for a TV show. And no, it’s not Game Of Thrones. I promise you’ll get something like that soon! It won’t be like a proper review like this, but it’ll be close enough!

Anyways, I am going to be talking about the series Roadies this week! It premiered on June 26th on the channel Showtime. I had plans on actually watching it that night. In case I forgot about it I was going to record it, but the more I kept looking into my timer schedule on my DVR, the more I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do anything but watch something totally different. And then I remembered about our On-Demand and so I found it in the “free” slot and decided to download the first episode just three days before it aired. So by the time, this post goes up I’ve probably already watched the second. Sorry!

Since bands and singers go on tours all over the world, they need a crew to help them conduct the production part of the concert. We, as fans, only see the ending result. Roadies are the crew behind the artist or band making sure everything comes full circle. In the first episode, they really captured the essence of what these people do on a daily basis.

I’m a bit concerned about the actual gigs, because I wonder if they’ll have a different opening with every episode? This one they had a band called The Heart And The Hand and they’re, again, a real band. It’s the main band that is mostly made up of actors, which is sort of sad honestly. However, it does shout the question, will there be a different opening in every episode? And apparently the answer to that is yes.

One of the things that I generally liked about it was the fact that had a lot of funny scenes in it. It’s not as serious as I expected it to be but it’s very realistic. I can see the tour and production managers fighting back and forth about different things. I don’t know about emailing a new financial advisor that he’s a “douche-boy asshole” is such a good idea though! I can see almost everything that happened in the first episode “Life Is A Carnival” and I am very excited to see what else goes on with this mix of characters.

I actually liked the whole story; I always think to myself if people in the entertainment industry are going to be able to tell a good and I guess telling a true story about another person or group of people and then how are they going to really show it with a bunch of actors? No, seriously I think about this all the time! They’re adding the actors to the picture, you’ve got Luke Wilson and Carla Gugino who play tour and production managers, while Imogen Poots has the role of aspiring film student, who helps set up the stage. It is a very interesting mix!

So I think I should probably be very honest in this post and say why I’m really watching this show. The reason is because Machine Gun Kelly (using his real name Colson Baker) is in this series and he’s actually acting, he’s playing a real character which I didn’t know that, but makes sense now! My second reason is my Uncle Rick was at one time a real roadie. He helped put together a Motley Crue stage set up. My mom still has the shirt he gave her! And when I saw FFDP I watched the crew set up the equipment and change up the lightning; I thought it was really cool so I figured I’d give it a shot.

Have you watched Roadies yet? If so, what do you like or dislike about it?