ENTERTAINMENT THIS WEEKEND

Ah, it's Saturday, and a lot of good NCAA football games, plus 4 Major League Baseball playoff games. I don't cover the NHL, soccer matches, etc., but here is a site that provides details on how to watch sports this weekend on your television. The Nevada at Hawaii football game must have been so inconsequential that it was not even mentioned. But it's playing at 6PM in the 15 Craigside theater, and for free. I remember paying $500/year when I was not living here.

There was a time when I went to movie theaters. Have not since the pandemic began, and am still not ready. But if you do, here are all the films opening this weekend. And I count 29 of them. Four of them seem most prominent (with Rotten Tomatoes rating for reviewers/audiences).

Clerks III (64/93): when you see this kind of discrepancy, I almost always side with the audience.
Halloween Ends (39/56): with Jamie Lee Curtis, said a reviewer, all of this lofty thematic stuff feels very cheap and insincere because, at the end of the day, this is a slasher movie, and not a very tense or effective slasher movie.
TÁR (94/76): Cate Blanchett as a symphony conductor--“TÁR” is ambitious, unusual, forceful, and ultimately frustrating, an emotional epic that’s also a nose-against-the-glass view of classical music and unconventional take on the #MeToo movement in that world.
Cat Daddies (100/?): only limited release, but read this:

Directed, written and produced by Mye Hoang, “Cat Daddies” has been winning major awards and stealing the hearts of audiences at film festivals worldwide. A heartwarming and tender portrait of a diverse group of men whose lives have been forever changed by their love of cats, CAT DADDIES takes us on an inspiring journey all across the United States during the challenging early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when people desperately needed hope and companionship. These nine “cat dads” come from all walks of life.

What I do, however, is watch Netflix and Prime. My selections this week are:

Netflix: Extraordinary Attorney Woo (100/92), 2022.

This is a 16 episode series from South Korea, where it was a huge hit.
I've seen two chapters, and am looking forward to continuing.
Attorney Woo is indeed extraordinary...with Asperger's Syndrome, a type of autism.
She fantasizes about whales.
Can she fall in love?
Of course there will be a season 2.

Prime: Ambulance (68/88), 2022.

This is a movie I saw last night. It is free.
Directed by Michael Bay, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, but Eliza Gonzalez was extraordinary.
I can see why reviewers did not like the film, because it was preposterous and over the top. Too many shots and car crashes... with so few dying.
I can see why the audience enjoyed it, because the younger generation likes action.
One reviewer said it well: It is so dumb and I am so ashamed of myself for enjoying it as much as I did.

Yesterday, we also went out to lunch, at Paesano, a restaurant at Manoa Marketplace, which I regularly frequented when I worked at the University of Hawaii. First opened in 1982 by George Castagnola (here with his two sons), he called it Castagnola. Wow, that was 40 years ago, when I returned from working in the U.S. Senate. His protégé Thomas Ky went on to open six Assagio's on Oahu. Castagnola left in 1990, and the restaurant was picked up two years later by Billy and Nila Rattanasamay.

Whoops, thought I took a photo, but it was a video. In any case, we shared plates of antipasto and osso bucco. Great bread and had a sparkling rose, plus the house red. Fabulous lunch. Brought back memories.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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