Sunday Viewing

December 7, 2014:

Some reviews etc:
Day of Infamy: 73 years ago Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I read the book Day of Infamy when I was in the sixth grade. I rememer being impressed by some of the physical feats performed by desperate sailors trying to save their ships. I did a book report for English class and got a middling grade. My heart was not in it as I was a fanatic Glenn Balch fan who was a popular Idaho author of Teen, horse riding adventure books. As it turns out I was never meant to own or ride a horse.

Very bad joke: I may have heard this on television. Might have been on the Mike Douglas show.
Have you heard about the guy who is half Japanese and half black?
No.
Yeah, ever December 7^th he goes out and attacks Pearl Bailey.
Bada boom, bada bing.

The Librarians: Brand new show on TNT. Bob Newhart, Jane Curtin and John Laroquet are secondary characters in this. The main people are very handsome and young and I have NO CLUE who they are. Everyone else out there who saw the show probably knows them from something that I have never willing subjected myself. Sorry but that is Baby Boomer viewing. The Library is a regular above ground library. The real library is several sub floors down and contains many, MANY magic artifacts such as Excalibur, The Ark of the Covenant, yeah that kind of magic, in storage. The main characters are the handsome 30-ish Librarian guy who clearly is pre Baby Boomer language familiarity wise. The CIA lady is 30-ish, blond, tall, strong, kick ass and knows her weaponry. The next three are summoned Librarians who did not keep their interview appointment and are; middle aged man IQ 195 writing novels while working on an oil rig 5 miles off the coast from his home town, a young Asian man who is a very talented thief and lastly a sweet doomed (brain tumor size of a grape) thing who is a walking computer. Okey dokey with me so far? CIA babe gets a letter saying she has been selected for the position of Librarian appear at the Library at time and date. She meets Jane Curtin who ushers her onto the elevator and they go down, down way way down to the real library. There the Gentleman Librarian is encountered sword fighting and his opponent is Excalibur. Eventually they become aware that they must search out the other three librarians and get them safe because someone is murdering all the other Librarian candidates. Then they go on a quest to recover King Arthur's crown. The bad guys want to bring back magic to the world. I LOVED THIS!!! Next week...dragons!!!

Two episodes of season three Sherlock Holmes: Episode three has not showed up on local PBS yet. A friend very kindly lent me all three seasons of her CD's.

Sherlock returns in The Empty Hearse. Scene opens with him in shackles being beaten by Serbian guard. He whispers to guard about his wife cheating on him and he storms out of the dungeon. The senior official overseeing the beating turns out to be Mycroft. Sherlock returns to London and decides to surprise John Watson who has gone out to dinner to propose to Mary. Sherlock snatches some diners glasses, some ladies menu and evening bag which he uses to give himself a miniature mustache. He presents the wine to John and natters on in a very amusing manner. John does not notice him. Mary returns to the table, recognizes Sherlock. John finally catches on, appears shocked and lunges for Sherlocks neck. Several stranglings and a nose bleed later it finally dawns on Sherlock that he might have gone about the whole thing wrong. Especially not letting John know anything. The remainder of the show is a composite from several points of view of how exactly Sherlock flung himself off the building and survived. Most witty and amusing and extremely well done. That was so well done I have actually forgotten what crime they solved during this episode.

Second episode Sign of Three: This involves John and Mary's wedding, the planning, the request that Sherlock be best man and make a speech, all of which looks to be dismal. And there were several tantalizing investigations along the way. A woman consulted with Sherlock about her dating a ghost, attempted murder of a Queen's Guardsman and attempted murder of John Watson's former Army Commander. The whole damn thing is solved during Sherlocks speech. Bad guy caught, and I am mesmerized by the quality of the writing...genius!!! Oh and John and Mary are preggers.

60 minutes:
Piece on Stradivarius great interview with famous Strad owner and where the current pieces are still made in Cremona from the very same forests as the original pieces. One wonders just how many centuries an original Strad can last. 
 
Piece on Cancer research and genome testing. A very rich genius from South Africa and of Asian descent has spent one billion with B dollars on cancer research, main frames and infrastructure. His approach has been to find genome of each cancer per patient and treat by gene therapy rather than by cancer site and to eventually treat cancer as a chronic disease. Most recent effort is to find genome of cancer tissues frozen decades before genome testing became available. He hopes to find patterns from the earlier cancers. One of his patients was a man diagnosed two years ago with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was told he had four months to live. He got some of the genome based cancer therapy and has lived to this date. There is also the problem that with genome based therapy 20 or 30 drugs developed for those cancers are required to treat them. The FDA is too slow. Conservative physicians view this as a good effort but is not an established treatment modality at present. 
 
Guilty Pleasure: Viola Grace has become one of my favorite authors. Her books are in digital format available from Amazon and she publishes three novellas each month unless she is traveling. Her world is a future earth (Terran First Wave) that is a protectorate of The Alliance. Because there are lots of beings out there who find Earthlings very appealing for many reasons. The Alliance sets Terra the task of finding 2000 talented volunteers to go into Alliance space or perhaps the Nyal Imperium to work, thrive and reproduce with other races. If they are successful, the Earth will be advanced gradually into full membership with the Alliance. The whole range of stories involve the women adapting to their newly discovered psychic powers and finding work in outer space. 

The other universe is The Crossroads. This is a place displaced in the space time continuum where shape shifters can find their true love and there is usually a pretty darn good story involved as well. At any rate Sunday evening her three most recent stories were posted and I dived right in. Thank you Viola.