Skip to main content

THIS HAS BEEN A GOOD MONTH

I liked this month of May.  We completed our 53-day around the world trip, and came home healthy.  I did gain 7 pounds, but by yesterday found out that I had lost 7.5 pounds of that. The World did okay too, if you are not Trump, Netanyahu or Red Lobster.  

For example, that disquieting unified reich matter might have been a clerical error, but Truth Social did carry it, for a while, and any reference to Hitler can't help a presidential campaign.

Red Lobster was one of ten companies going bankrupt this month.  I remember a bunch of new restaurant openings in Florida going back as far as 1968 with Red Lobster.  Many of them, like Outback Steakhouse, LongHorn Steakhouse and Olive Garden seem to be having financial problems these days.  Fast food chains are doing well, and so are high end restaurants.  It is this middle category that is affected by consumer adjustments.

Is it possible we now have a working U.S. Congress?

Did you realize that ethanol is considered to be a drug?  The New York Times this morning reported:

  • Cannabis now tops alcohol as Americans’ daily drug of choice, a study found.
  • If you have difficulty accessing that article, try CNBC, where they too say:  daily or near-daily marijuana use is now more common than similar levels of drinking in the U.S.  Americans are reaching for buds more than booze.
Time magazine has an article about The Apprentice, saying it is almost too real.
  • I've never seen such a vicious movie review, which pretty much condemns Donald Trump.
  • Trump called it GARBAGE.
  • Sebastian Stan as The Donald and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, that despicable lawyer who trained Trump.
  • Here is one quote:
Ali Abbasi The Apprentice, which premiered here in Cannes on May 20, arrives at just the right time. And if it isn’t a great movie, it’s at least a fascinating and thoughtful one, an even-handed film that doesn’t need to resort to extremes to paint an accurate picture of what America and the world are up against right now, in terms of one particular past and possibly future president. Sebastian Stan plays 1970s-and-'80s-era Donald Trump, at the time a socially clumsy, insecure underling in his bullying father’s real estate business. Jeremy Strong plays Roy Cohn, the cutthroat lawyer who’d served as Senator Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Army-McCarthy hearings, and who’d earlier used questionable means to get Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted as Soviet spies, resulting in their 1953 execution. By the 1970s, he was gathering steam as a fixer extraordinaire, and this is where Abbasi’s movie begins.

Having spent almost a whole week in Manhattan at Times Square this month, where most of the Broadway show theaters are located, I thought I'd watch a movie I had recorded a long time ago, 42nd Street, loved by Rotten Tomatoes reviewers with a 96 rating.  You too can see this film, for free, on Tubi.  

What is Tubi?

  • Now known as tubi.
  • Launched in 2014, but bought out by Fox Corporation in 2020 for $440 million.
  • As of September 2023 had 74 million monthly active users.
  • Linked to South Korean entertainment company CJ ENM and Warner Brothers/Discovery.
  • Now also in Canada, the European Union, Oceania and Central America.
  • They have access to 50,000 films/television series, 250 provider and 200 live TV channels for local news and sports.
  • Is a free streaming service.
  • How do they do this for FREE?  Well, actually, there are short ad breaks.  But not too many, and they are really short.
  • Competes against Netflix and Hulu.
  • No sign-up.  But need to activate.
  • Is compatible with Sony, Vizio and Samsung smart TVs.
  • Read this for a good explanation of tubi.
  • While offerings are not the newest, you will wonder, why pay Netflix.
  • Just go to THIS or https://tubitv.com/home.
    • I typed in my favorite movie at the top, South Pacific, and there it was.
    • Typed Casablanca.  Nope, not there.
    • Typed Play it Again Sam, not there.
    • Typed Sound of Music, and got the 2015 version with no actor you know.
-

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo.  We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings  We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo.  So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines.  We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station.  This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site.   It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance.  This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of  ten of those already waiting to enter.  However...

THE BULLET TRAIN

Japan had the first bullet train more than 60 years ago.  It was 10October1964, when the opening ceremony was held in Tokyo in anticipation of Japan's first-ever Olympic Games, which began that day. The  Shinkansen,  meaning  new mainline , with a separate track, arrived when normal train traffic had reached the limit for carrying passengers and freight.   A train trip between Osaka and Tokyo dropped from 6 hours and 40 minutes to 4 hours, shortened to 3 hours and 10 minutes by 1964, and is now 2 hours and 30 minutes.  From the Shin-Osaka Station to the Shin-Yokohama Station only takes a little more than 2 hours. In 1964 the track was 320 miles long.  Today, it's up to 1484 miles.  The original itinerary incorporating Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka now carries 159 million passengers/year.  In this 6 decade period, more than 10 billion passengers have been safely handled.  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT NOT ONE PASSENGER HAS YET BEEN KILLED IN A DERA...