Book Club

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Friday Filter-TV Review Premiere Week 1

One of my favorite things about fall is all the shows coming back from their summer hiatus.

The next couple weeks shows are beginning again, so I figured I would do my initial reactions to the season openers.

Ellen Season 11

I adore Ellen. A life bucket list item is to get on her show (preferably the 12 day give away). She is truly a role model for life. I usually end up having a marathon every weekend to catch up on her daily shows. It is a constant reminder for me to laugh and live in the moment. She always has the greatest YouTube clips too! She has had some good guests the past two weeks. And like clockwork, I cry every episode and also bust a gut laughing so hard. My favorite story so far is the Homeless to Howard story. Look it up if you haven’t seen it. Just wonderful. I also am loving that she is doing different Deejays everyday. It really spices things up, although I do miss her daily razzing of Tony. I love the message that she ends with every day. “Be kind to one another.” I am so glad she is back!

Dancing With The Stars

This is my favorite reality show out there. I love love love this show. Every season I groan and mumble that I don’t really like the cast, and then opening night happens and I am hooked. To be honest though, I actually did have a lot of favorites before the season stated which is not typical. This will be a tight race because there were so many high marks that first night. I don’t think I can ever recall a 9 in the first night let alone how many 8s there were. I am interested to see how this new format will go with only having it one night. Now that I don’t have Monday night meetings, I can get to the voting apps much easier, but still, I am just not sure. Besides watching the stars out of their element, I come back each week for two reasons. One) I love dancing, and I secretly wish that I had done more of it when I was a kid instead of just choosing basketball. And Two) I love Derek Hough and Tristan Macmanus, who are two of the professional dancers. I have always swooned over Derek, but Tristan may be stealing his place…It must be the darker hair and accent. Also who wouldn’t love a show that Tom Bergeron hosts? So happy to see this back!

New Girl

Ok so I may just say that all these shows are my favorite…I really love this show though because the character Jess really resonates with me. She is a little dorky and awkward, which is basically my life. The season ended last spring with Nick and Jess finally getting together! So there was much anticipation to see what would happen to these two beloved and must be together characters. You are always nervous though to put two main characters together because you don’t want to curse your show and have reached the pivotal point to early. I honestly was not that engaged in the first episode. I think I may have anticipated too much. It was still funny, don’t get me wrong; I laughed. But I always expect a laughter that will make milk come out of your nose, and that just didn’t happen this week. Maybe I was having an off day. Work is hard; Tom was gone, who knows…Anyway, I only assume though that it will continue to get better in the wittiness. Hopefully Schmitt decides on a woman instead of dragging two women along on his journey of love. Winston just may be my favorite character, and he was awesome as usual with his puzzle masterpiece. So I still liked it, I just wasn’t as wowed as I hoped for this season premiere.

There are a whole bunch coming next week! Tom watch out! This lady is takng over the remote…or DVR!

Friday Filters offer a review that are my own opinions. I was not contacted by anyone associated with this work or compensated for my review. My review has not been influenced by anything other than my love for entertainment and art.

Come back on Sunday for “Autumn on My Mind.” Sunday’s episode is about fall activities that you do in your community. You can see the full schedule here.

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Friday Filter- TV Review “The Office”

How do you even start reviewing one of the most popular shows in history?

I am going to go ahead and try reviewing the “The Office.”

This is my favorite Jim prank.

Tom and I just finished the final season this last weekend. We have diligently watched each season. We got behind the last two years because of Tom joining the Army. While he was at basic and deployment our favorite show went on the shelf until his return.

And now we have seen them all!

The Office ran from 2005 until 2013. It is based off the British version, just with an American twist.

It was a show about regional office of a paper company. The entire series was based on the fact that there was a documentary crew that followed the employees around. They just filmed real life.

It showed a 9-5 job and how relationships grow or don’t grow over time in the workspace. It displayed the quirkiness of real people and how they get through each day at jobs they don’t necessarily like. Except Dwight, he loves paper.

It is one of the few shows that cares about the fans, and they ended the show perfectly. You know how you watch season finales and there isn’t any clarity or they leave loose ends? Or you just hate that you spent all this time watching a show for an awful ending…ah hem Lost? Well The Office wrapped everything up nicely so there wasn’t any question where the story lines were going. It was a sweet ending to a marvelous show.

I will admit that I did not watch this show from it’s beginning. I came in several years later. I had seen bits and pieces, and thought it was dull and not my kind of humor. For years, I hated when Tom said, “That’s what she said.”

Tom and met in 2007 after the show had been on the air for a couple years. At that time, I was still against watching it and put my foot down in protest for a hot second. But, Tom is pretty persistent for those of you who haven’t met him. Plus you know when you first start dating someone, and you are willing to try new things that interest that person? Well that was me. He loved the show and eventually convinced me to watch from the beginning.

After the first season, I was hooked.

When you watch consecutively, you fall in love with the characters and are invested. You want to know when Jim and Pam will get together, which they drag you along for several seasons. You want to find out about Dwight and Angela’s secret love affair. You want to know if Dwight ever graduates from being the Assistant to the Regional Manager.

The show is super funny. I don’t know what I was thinking before…denial I guess. Let’s be honest, I was probably being too uptight about it. The good news is I obviously came around.

Jim’s pranks are my favorite. He doesn’t really work; he just tries to find ways to mess with Dwight. He was so creative! Tom’s favorites are the jello calculator and when Jim bought hundreds of feet of red wire and strung it around the office and surrounding areas.

This show meant a lot to us and our relationship. This show really helped us through our long distance while at Clemson and Iowa State. We would wait to watch it together when we were reunited for weekends. We would hole ourselves up and watch hours of it at a time, which is really the best way to watch any series. And each year before a new season would come out, we would re-watch the entire series.

It’s hard to explain the greatness that is The Office. They really did a wonderful job casting. I look at people they auditioned, and I just can’t picture anyone but those picked. Wonderful compilation of people.

The only season I wasn’t fond of was season 8, and mostly because we hated Nellie and Robert California. I think they could have done better. But maybe they were just setting us up for the end and to be pleasantly surprised.

I cried during the last three episodes. The last episode of the series Tom and I were both crying. I was bawling really.

I just felt so connected. When you are with a series this long, it’s like you live in this world. These characters become a part of your life, and they are your friends. I had to say goodbye forever to these characters. There is not an episode of this show that I haven’t seen. That was a hard pill to swallow to know that I wouldn’t see them anymore.

This is why I love T.V. I love feeling all these emotions and being connected to the story. (And in case you were worried, I know that I am really not friends with these people.)

This is our favorite show as a couple by far. It is one that we will watch again all the way through, maybe every year. Yep we love it that much. It’s like getting a hug from an old friend to watch this show; a friend that you like hugging, mind you. And that says a lot since I generally detest hugs…

If you haven’t given this show a chance, I promise watch from the beginning and give it a chance. I am so glad that I did!

Friday Filters offer a review that are my own opinions. I was not contacted by anyone associated with this work or compensated for my review. My review has not been influenced by anything other than my love for entertainment and art.

Come back on Sunday for “Autumn on My Mind.” Sunday’s episode is about fall food and sharing recipes. You can see the full schedule here.

Have a great weekend!

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Friday Filter: Book “The Tenth Circle”

I recently finished Jodi Picoult’s book The Tenth Circle. Here is the “back cover” synopsis from Amazon.

Fourteen-year-old Trixie Stone is in love for the first time. She’s also the light of her father, Daniel’s life — a straight-A student; a pretty, popular freshman in high school; a girl who’s always seen her father as a hero. That is, until her world is turned upside down with a single act of violence. Suddenly everything Trixie has believed about her family — and herself — seems to be a lie. Could the boyfriend who once made Trixie wild with happiness have been the one to end her childhood forever? She says that he is, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a seemingly mild-mannered comic book artist with a secret tumultuous past he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back to protect his daughter. 

This is probably the first book of Picoult’s that I was not particularly fond of personally.

Rewind. It is a good book. As usual, Picoult is a phenomenal writer, who can depict raw emotions as if they are actually happening to you. I particularly did like that it showed parts of the story from the dad’s point of view, which I feel in our society is often missed. Being raised primarily by my own dad, I enjoyed seeing that love and connection in this story.

The story went through a series of events and how a split moment can change a person’s life forever. Picoult showed three different perspectives: the daughter, mother, and father. They were all impacted by this single act, and all chose to react in various ways to protect themselves and what they had left of their family.

This book had it all:  romance, violence, sex, teenage angst, range of emotions, drugs and alcohol, murder, suicide, Alaskan wilderness…covered.

She also put a twist in there by having a comic book in between chapters. Daniel, the father, is a comic book artist in the story, and these drawings were supposedly his. So this added a different layer and lens on the story, since most of the comics paralleled what was happening to their family. And apparently there is a hidden code in those pages. I wasn’t able to figure it out, but maybe another day.

But I just wasn’t feeling this book. Unlike her other books, I wasn’t connected to it. Actually, I think it was the opposite, I was too connected to it. The story lines were abrasive and harsh. They were all a little too real for me. I see these stories play out at work, and the pain and anguish I read just didn’t sit right with me. It stirred up emotions that I really couldn’t do anything with so that was frustrating. It brought up experiences that I had no control over so it was like feeling helpless all over again.

So I wasn’t the biggest fan of this particular story. Sometimes you just don’t like it even if it is good for others.

Picoult is still one of my favorite authors for her realness and the way she brings stories to life. I will no doubt continue to read her work, but this is one that I probably won’t read again for personal reasons.

Friday Filters offer a review that are my own opinions. I was not contacted by anyone associated with this work or compensated for my review. My review has not been influenced by anything other than my love for entertainment and art.

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Friday Filter Film: “Jobs”

We recently watched the new film Jobs.

Jobs (2013) Poster

Ashton Kutcher stars in this motion picture depicting the late Steve Jobs and how Apple began.

The company I went with have mixed reviews about this movie.

I am always fascinated to see the history of things and how timelines evolve. So in that retrospect, this was great. You were able to see how Jobs built this company from his parent’s garage.

The downside was that you got to see how he built the company.

I was not aware of Steve Jobs life apart from being a great innovator in our time.

This movie showed how big of a sleazebag he was. From bailing on his closest friends who helped him with the start up to being a dead beat dad; he was just a big jerk.

But besides not liking him as a person, this was a good movie. I felt the acting was good, (Tom disagreed with me). They did a phenomenal job casting. The staging and costume design was fun to see the progression of the decades.

They stuck to the truth even if it was awful to learn how awful he was as a person. You have to give him credit for changing our world one electronic device at a time. He did push people to invent the unknown and push their limits to create something unimaginable. I would agree with him on his theory that Apple electronics should speak to the person’s heart and be an extension of themselves. If you think about how each of us try to personalize our personal devices, he had that spot on. I may just not agree with all of his business methods, but at the same time I know I am not cut out for real business and the cut-throat tactics. I feel that highlighting the corporate shark aspect and his confidence in his product was the main focus of the film.

There did lack some connectivity in some of the transitions. Sometimes it was hard to follow the timeline and understand where we were and how we jumped to whatever scene. Tom didn’t like the fact that it didn’t show the timeline up until the present. They did just kind of stop the storyline in my opinion, but it was already a long enough movie so it had to end sometime.

Do I think that this may get some award buzz, probably. Like I said, film quality isn’t so bad. It is undoubtedly, in my humble opinion, Ashton’s best role.

Would I ever want to watch this again? Nope.

Anyone else see this movie and have opinions?

Friday Filters offer a review that are my own opinions and are not influenced by anything other than my love for entertainment and art.

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Friday Filter: Book “Think Twice”

I have had this book on my shelf for a few years. I found it in a clearance bin years ago, but never have actually read it. That is how a lot of the books I own came to be mine. I love giving books a chance by their covers!

Think Twice (Rosato and Associates Series #13)

I am glad I finally opened it up I was suckered in on the first page. Scottoline does a fantastic job getting you invested early on in this page turner.

This is a story about identical twins who have no similarities past their looks. Or do they? Bennie and Alice lead very different lives, and one could say it is a classic good vs. evil tale.

Until Bennie is buried alive at the hands of Alice, who attempts to take over Bennie’s cushion life.

Scottoline describes what each sister goes through during the “switch.” It is gut-wrenching to read through the harrowing details that Bennie goes through in order to fight for her life, but also Alice fighting for hers (even if she is the antagonist).

I won’t give too much more because I don’t want to give away the story. It is an interesting read that makes you think about what you would do if you were put into a life or death situation. Fighting for your life, would you want to have your revenge? Would you, a seemingly good person, become evil to save your own hide? Do you think there can be evil in a good person, and good in an evil person? —I love books that make you relate it to real life and your own actions. I always am up for a good pondering.

And what is it about our circumstances that pushes us down these paths? The book subtly talks about nature vs. nurture since these women were separated at birth and were raised very differently. There are parts that elude to jealousy for Bennie having a better life than Alice.

I think it is also interesting to think about the impact that we have on those around us. Most characters in the story did not realize that Alice was impersonating Bennie. I have not had extensive time with twins, but I feel that there are some personality quirks that people should catch on to! Even an ex-boyfriend of Bennie’s didn’t know that Alice was a phoney! Are we in a day and age, that we are really that surface level with those around us? I’m not sure if that was what Scottoline’s intentions were when writing this, but this was the biggest take away for me. It made me really examine what my relationships were like and if I was ok with the perceived status or not. I really try to make genuine relationships, but I also know that there are many that I hold at bay due to circumstances. Intriguing. ..

Also I learned not to keep a Rolodex of your passwords. Haha just kidding, I already knew this.

I will ruin one part for you. The dog does live. I cried when I thought he had died, and then cried again at the end when they revealed he had been saved. Sweet goodness.

Some quick observations about the book:

It is part of a series, which I didn’t realize until I was done with the book. So obviously the book can stand alone, but after looking at some reviews the series may be a good investment! Think Twice is the last book in the series, but it is set up easily for a follow up.

When I say it is a fast paced read, I mean it. There is not a chapter that is more than 3 pages long so it goes very quick. This makes it easy to pick up whenever and get a little nibble if you only have a short amount of time, which was great for my lunch breaks. But that can also get you in trouble at night because I kept telling myself, “Oh I can read another 2 page chapter.” And then 15 chapters later I was still up reading. I finished this book in less than a week.

It follows several characters. Each chapter changes perspectives between Benny, Alice, and Mary. I like this aspect because you get to see both twins and their thoughts, but also Mary who’s perspective really give you a 360 view of the story.

I am going to put Scottoline and the Rosato series on my list of books to hit up. Her last book out “Don’t Go” is about an Army family, so that may be interesting. Inadvertently, I spent about an hour on her website checking out the books and reviews. Exciting!

Sidenote, I just showed my to read list to Tom, and he asked if that was all the books that I have read. Hahaha silly kid. I wouldn’t even know where to begin for that list.

Friday Filters offer a review that are my own opinions and are not influenced by anything other than my love for entertainment and art.