A MAN ON THE INSIDE

Merry Christmas. But first, from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:

A Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geologist on Monday checks a webcam on the rim of Kilauea caldera. Kilauea began erupting again early Monday, with lava fountains up to nearly 300 feet. The eruption paused in the afternoon but lava resumed flowing onto the crater floor today.

Every so often, the news of the day, or a film, or something just happens that reminds me of me. Such is the case of a new series on Netflix, A Man on the Inside. Rotten Tomatoes, 95 reviewers and 92 audiences. Read this article, which describes the production.

Ted Danson plays an old, retired, engineering professor in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose wife has passed away.

Sort of like me.

Of course you remember him. Sam Malone on Cheers, 275 episodes, where he won two Emmys and two Golden Globes. And 53 episodes of The Good Place, a comedy about a Heaven-esque utopian afterlife, a subject I sometimes treat.

In a San Francisco senior's community, a necklace gets stolen.

Noticed this place is on California Street at Knob Hill, a classy place.

Plus my usual lunch in SFO, something I've been doing since I was in college, is at Tadich Grill, which is now on California. I mean, a lot of things criss-crossing through the whole series.
The son of the person who lost that family heirloom did not want to call in the police, so went to a private investigator, who was reluctant to take on the case.

I happen to live in such a place, where things do get stolen.
I'm particularly vulnerable because I don't bother to lock my door, unless, of course, when I go on a trip. This is partly because there are cameras all over the place, a hundred at least, with high security.

Thankfully, and I've been here for more than ten years, nothing has yet been taken.
More recently I had an in-apartment camera installed, which is noted on my door, to further reduce pilferage.

However, the PI does accept and placed an add, seen by Danson.

Not something he has any particular interest in, but nevertheless, presses forth, and moves into that senior's community. Something to do, because he was bored. Not me, so in this way, there is a difference.

Feels uncomfortable being a spy, for he needs to make friends to find the truth, and thus has to delude them, telling lies. That's what spies do.

That private investigator play his daughter, who visits him a lot.
However, the Danson character has a real daughter, from Sacramento, who without telling him, visits one day when the PI daughter is there, so the original one becomes a niece.

A lot of stuff like that over eight episodes. Each is only 28 minutes, so it took me two nights to watch the series.
The final episode shows that there will be a Season 2. Sure, I'll be back. Worth the RT 95/92 score.

About Netflix, they're trying to horn-in, as Amazon Prime did, on sports. They made an initial run with that edgy boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, and almost blew it. Today, though, there are two outstanding NFL games, ONLY on Netflix.

Mariah Carey opened NFL Christmas Gameday on Netflix, and that was earlier today, with help from Kevin Hart. You can watch that performance here. She is a star, with 19 #1 hits, and the most popular Christmas song of recent, All I Want for Christmas is You.

Later in the day, following the Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers and at the Houston Texans-Baltimore Ravens game, Beyoncé will provide a special halftime show, which will include tracks of her latest album, Cowboy Carter. She'll have "secret" guests with her. Been on NFL before, headlining the 2013 Super Bowl XLVII held in New Orleans, and made an appearance in Super Bowl 2016.

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 suspicio...

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...

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...

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