#this is SO OLD however old mindy kaling's first book is that's how old this is

[deansmom]

(ao3) pls accept this very old mcdanno fic I never published, in which there are feelings and a kiss. also, soup snakes.

"So, Steven."

Steve smirks a little bit, leaning back against his desk like the smug asshole he is. This conversation has been a train wreck from the start. 

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," Danny raises his voice for dramatic effect to accompany the accusing look he's shooting at Steve. "You and me."

"Have you ever considered that maybe I'm interrupting you because you talk in incomplete sentences when you're nervous?"

Danny glares at him and flails his hands around unhelpfully, "See, this! This is what I'm talking about!"

Steve rolls his eyes, "You weren't talking about anything Danny. We were tailing a suspect and you said, out of the blue, 'do you know what a soup snake is' and here we are.”

"This -" Danny shakes his head and runs a hand over his face, "You know, if you ever let me finish a sentence I wouldn't have to bring things up like that."

Steve grins as he watches Danny start ramping up to a full-blown rant-down (the Williams version of a meltdown). He gets up after a moment and sets a hand on the other mans shoulder, his smile a little kinder. "Hey. I'm listening."

Danny looks up at him and deflates. He brings both of his hands up to his face and groans, "Okay. Okay, so..."

He walks a few steps away from Steve and collects himself before saying, "So Gracie is reading this book, right? And it's been so long since she was excited about a book so I said sure, I'll read it with her, cause y'know, that's what you do, you read books you don't care about just to spend time with your daughter before she starts to hate you."

"Danny," Steve sighs and rests against his desk again, "Gracie could never -"

"Shut up," Danny interrupts with a flail. He's yelling with his hands. "Shut up or I'm never gonna get through this okay?"

Steve stays silent as way of answer. 

It takes another few seconds before Danny says, "So this book. Some actress wrote it and she was on that show The Office."

Danny turns to look out at the rest of the squad room and runs a hand through his hair, "She's got this friend and he's - he's her ex. Best friends though, like, the kinda thing you hope for growing up.

"And Mindy - that's the actress - everybody wants to know why they're not together. So she's got this chapter in this book and she says y'know, it's weird, their relationship, but they're soup snakes."

Steve has to bite his tongue. 

"And - Gracie, you know, she turns to me and she says, 'That sounds like you and Uncle Steve, Danno.'"

On instinct, Steve's body tenses up and he's got to remind himself to breathe. 

"So I'm thinking you know, she's just a kid, she doesn't know things. She's smart but she doesn't, you know - she doesn't know this."

Danny lets his head fall forward so it's resting as close to his chest as it can. "Do you know what soup snakes are, Steven?"

He has to take a moment to get his voice to work before he responds, "Uh... No, afraid I don't."

Danny spins around suddenly, and gestures around, "It's from an episode apparently. The main guy, his ex comes to town and he spends the whole episode trying to explain why he doesn't have feelings for her when he clearly does and he doesn’t want to be friends with her and - it's jibberish. Makes a toddler look like a genius."

He takes a few steps closer to Steve, apparently more determined now, "And he makes this list. The number one reason on it is because they're soup snakes."

Danny pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and pretends his hands aren't shaking. It's harder to pretend his voice isn't shaking though when he starts reading it. 

"I lied to Kevin. Holly and I can never be just friends. I wrote down a list of bullet points why Holly and I should be together, and I'm going to find the perfect moment today and I am going to tell her. Number one: "Holly, you and I are soup snakes." The ... and the reason is... because... in terms of the soup, we like to- that doesn't make any sense. We're soul mates. Holly and I are soul mates."

Steve's heart is pounding in a way that it hasn't since he went through basic training and he's suddenly sweating bullets. "That's, ah..." He licks his lips and tries again, "That's a nice story, Danny."

Danny seems to ignore him, keeping his eyes on the paper, “So, there I am, sitting in my living room with my daughter, my lovely, amazing girlfriend in the kitchen and...” 

He looks up at Steve finally and he looks terrified - like walking into a tunnel terrified.

“And see I’m - I’m having a crisis. Because this?” He gestures in between the two of them, “This wasn’t - it’s not -” 

“Yeah,” Steve croaks out, his voice rough for a number of reasons. 

Danny opens his mouth uselessly, the words on the tip of his tongue and refusing to come out.

Steve takes a step closer, well within his personal space now and swallows nervously, “It doesn’t have to be. I mean, if you...” He lets out a breath, ignoring his stuttering heart, “If you don’t -” 

He’s not an idiot. Despite what Danny likes to think, he’s not a ‘neanderthal.’ He’s got feelings, lots of them, and he knows what they all mean.

He knows that he’s been in love with Danny since the day they met. 

“But it is!” Danny yelps, his hands coming up to rest on the back of his head, “It already is Steven, it doesn’t matter if I -”

Steve sets a hand on his shoulder, effectively shutting him up. It doesn’t matter, not really, because the only thing he can hear is the sound of his heart racing in his ears. 

“Did you break up with her?” He asks, terrified of the answer. 

Danny makes a face that clearly communicates how dumb he thinks Steve is, “What, are you insane? What kind of person do you think I am, huh?? Realize I’m in love with my best friend and keep dating a perfectly nice -”

And, well, that’s enough.

Steve leans down, slamming their lips together in both an effort to shut him the hell up and finally, finally find out what kissing Danny feels like.

Danny groans into it, his hands coming up to fist Steve’s shirt. 

They’ve always been a bit of a disaster together, two halves of different puzzles that shouldn’t fit, but they do, they fit so well, and kissing is no exception.

There’s a literal push and pull and before Steve realizes what’s happening, he gets pushed back into his chair. Danny’s standing there looking absolutely wrecked, the toes of their shoes knocking against each other, and Steve has never seen anything more beautiful.

“You,” Danny huffs, trying to catch his breath, and points at Steve’s chest. “Are an asshole.”

Steve squawks, his hands coming up to grab Danny’s thighs, “Me?!”

Danny glares at him, but still moves so that he’s partially on Steve’s lap. 

Something fizzles out in Steve’s brain with all this physical contact and he’s expecting something, something like a kiss or frotting or - something. 

Instead, Danny pinches the sensitive part of his upper arm, hard, and Steve yelps. 

“Do not interrupt me when I’m talking to you,” he hisses. 

“Talking at me is more like it,” Steve mumbles, unable to take his eyes off of Danny. They’re so close, they’re so fucking close, and he’s got years of pent-up frustration and theories he wants to explore. 

There’s a bead of sweat rolling its way down Danny’s throat and Steve just watches it go, wonders how angry Danny would be if he leaned up and licked it right now. Probably really angry, he seems like he’s really pissed, and Steve’s not sure why. 

Then again, he usually isn’t totally sure why Danny’s mad at him. 

Danny’s hand grabs his chin, forcing Steve to look back up at him, “Steven.”

Steve licks his lips, his mouth feeling suddenly very dry, “Yeah?”

“We are at work,” he reminds him, his tone going a little softer. 

He sounds, for lack of a better word, wrecked. He sounds like Steve feels, which is a little raw and a little off balance and - 

Steve groans, his head falling forward and landing on Danny’s clavicle. Stupidly, some part of his lizard brain can only think about how good he smells. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, his eyes closing. “Yeah, okay.” 

Danny presses a kiss to his temple, softer than anything Steve thinks he deserves, and finally pulls away from him. Steve makes a noise of complaint at the loss of contact and it feels like his chest is going to explode with the quiet laugh from Danny it earns him. 

God, he really loves him. 

He watches as Danny fixes his hair, fixes his shirt, tries not to look like his whole world has been rocked in the last ten minutes. 

Steve doesn’t even try to pretend he isn’t doing exactly what he’s doing. 

Danny catches his eye after a moment and grins, walking around to the front of the desk. 

This is the part of Danny that Steve’s always had to experience from the outside looking in, and now, he’s the center of that look and. Wow. 

“Hey Danny,” he hears himself choke out right as Danny’s about to walk out of the office.

Danny turns around, the door half open, and somehow the bastard looks like he always does, like this is all normal. “Yeah?”

It takes his brain a little bit longer than normal to figure out what it was he was going to say, and when it does he wants to laugh.

“I’m gonna need that report before we leave tonight.”

Danny’s face does that thing where it scrunches up like Steve’s being the most unreasonable dictator in the world and he starts yelling (’I don’t yell at you Steven, I explain loudly’).

Because he’s an idiot, and he’s hopelessly in love with his partner, Steve just grins.

Yeah, he thinks to himself. Yeah, this could work. 

[thisislizheather]

May Musings

I have officially done a year’s worth of these monthly roundup posts.

Is it clear how much I love to write them? I guess I’ll keep doing them until they become a bother. Here’s what went down in May!

I’m still screaming from the rooftops about how great Booksmart was, can’t get over it.

Losing my mind over how good these Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups are.

And look, I tried to try more of the collagen powder but Nathan finished it all (and his hair has been looking pretty good lately now that I think about it) and I’m waiting to get more. I promise to finally take this regularly next month.

One of the regulars in my snack rotation has been these zucchini pizza bites that are surprisingly delightful, especially if you’re adding sopressata and/or jalapeños as part of the toppings.

I saw Jason Mantzoukas walking in Soho and he was so handsome I was afraid to say anything. Like alarmingly handsome. I knew he was good looking, but in real life? Whoa.

I am in love with this font. Someone tell me if it has a name.

I attempted to start season two of Barry, but it’s been so long since I saw the first season that I forgot most of what has happened. Could I have just rewatched the finale of season one and then moved on to number two? Sure. Will I? Now that’s another question.

Someone was singing this on the subway and I’d never heard it before, but Jesus Christ. So lovely.

This was a pretty heavy podcast month for me (kill me for that sentence), I did three of them! The first one is with Nathan talking about the new apartment, the second one is with Irene talking advice and the third one is with Nathan again talking abortion.

I just bought a pair of these heavenly, high-waisted, button-fly Gap jeans and I think everyone should go buy them ($42 right now with the sale), they fit like a dream. I might go back and get another pair in a different colour. Actually, yeah. I’m definitely doing that.

Ate at La Contenta and it was absolutely nothing special. Everything was too salty, overpriced and crowded.

I’ve already made three batches of these banana walnut muffins, they’re so perfect for the morning or for a snack. Ignore that they’re paleo, I promise you they’re good. Definitely not a party muffin, but a good-for-you muffin.

So excited that people will finally stop talking about Game of Thrones. Usually I don’t mind when other people love something that I don’t care about, but with this show it’s just been overkill. We get it. It was a show. Let’s move on?

So excited to hear that there’s going to be a new Mindy Kaling book next summer!

Nobody told me about how smokey it gets when you attempt to make burgers in your kitchen at home? Or was everyone aware of this already but me?

I just bought pink sunglasses (at Nathan’s encouragement) and I just became cool. May 2019. That’s when it happened. (I’d post of photo of them but I’ll be wearing them until I’m cold and dead in the ground, so believe me, you’ll see them on me soon.)

I can’t believe how good this looks. I love it when fall movies just say fuck it and come out in late summer.

I can’t say that I 100% relate to everything in this piece, but some parts of it are so on the money: “Men Have No Friends and Women Bear The Burden.“

I tried the mozzarella sticks at Big Mozz in Chelsea Market and whoa. They’re pretty serious. The tomato sauce that comes with them is insanity, too.

My niece Tianna came to visit New York for the first time! Some highlights: I finally ate a cronut and they’re waaaaay too sweet, and coming from me that should mean something because I love all things dessert. Maybe it’s because we ate it so early in the morning? I don’t know. I really don’t understand the big deal about them, though. We also walked through Chinatown and down to the financial district to get lunch at Manhatta, which was lovely. I forced her to eat my favourite pad thai at Lovely Day in Soho. We shared a cheese plate at The Cellar at Beecher’s, walked around the west village to see the Friends building and the stoop from The Cosby Show, we had dinner at L’Artusi where she had her first steak tartare. We walked through Grand Central Terminal to get to the dog museum (which is cute as hell), we saw and went backstage at the musical Waitress, had dinner at Shake Shack, saw the 9/11 memorial, shopped at Century 21, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, got pizza at Juliana’s (which wasn’t as good as I remembered?), walked with Baby Dog in Central Park to see the Balto statue, perused Chelsea Market and walked along The High Line, went to the galleries on Thursday night where we met Luis Guzman (!), and ate gelato at Grom. This was all within four days. No idea how we did that much stuff, but I slept for 13 straight hours the day after she left, so maybe I’m not as young as I once was.

Above Photo: Tianna, backstage at Waitress in NYC

Above Photo: Tianna on The Brooklyn Bridge

Above Photo: Tianna & Baby Dog in Central Park

I started watching the new version of The Twilight Zone with the assumption that I’d dislike it since the original is so great, however I’ve only seen one episode so far (the blue scorpion one) and I think I really like it. Obviously the classic series is untouchable, but this one is done really well.

I learned about the existence of Book Off in midtown, it’s a store “for the people who don’t want to waste.” They buy your old CDs, DVDs, books, action figures, electronics. It’s amazing.

Season three of Riverdale is over! This is the only show that I watch every week, so it was a big deal for me. And honestly, it was a fun season, despite everyone on earth’s opinions of it. Favourite tweet from the finale?

Strawberries are about to be in season, so I got a huge carton of them from a farmer’s market and made these strawberry oatmeal bars. Pretty good! They also work well crumbled up in greek yogurt.

Another good snack idea? These baked sweet potato fries.

I have made this chicken marsala so many times that I’m taking a break from them. But for the first few times I made it, it was so, so satisfying.

All right, look. I fully expected to love Wine Country on Netflix, but maaaaaan. It is not good. It isn’t funny or sweet or anything. I think I also hate it when Tina Fey tries to be a character actor, it’s always just the worst. Do not watch.

Here’s your semi-annual reminder that Bath & Body Works is having their huge twice-a-year sale starting on June 1st, I think. It’s never advertised in advance, but I’m almost positive that it’s the first week of June. Apologies that this sounds like an ad, I just really like their foaming hand soaps and I’m cheap as hell.

Made the roasted cauliflower, feta, orzo salad from Chrissy Teigen’s cookbook and yes it was really, really good. The only issue is that the portion size is way too big. We had leftovers for days and got pretty sick of eating it, so if you’re doing this for two people, definitely size it down. Also, I had no idea there were different types of feta. French feta is creamier than traditional Greek and maaaan is it good.

Loving this kale salad lemon dressing.

This shall be my June mantra.

And this is just great.

What am I looking forward to next month? I’m planning on seeing Mindy’s new movie Late Night, watching some more of the new Twilight Zone episodes, polishing off my spring list, preparing my summer list, thinking about if I’ll ignore or celebrate National Best Friend Day on June 8th, figuring out a Father’s Day gift for the 16th, I do want to see Toy Story 4 but it feels weird to not see it with a niece/nephew, and I’ll definitely take photos of the new apartment and my favourite items that I bought for the apartment post I promised last month.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, here’s a years worth of other ones like it: April 2019, March 2019, February 2019, January 2019, December 2018, November 2018, October 2018, September 2018, August 2018, July 2018, June 2018 & May 2018.

[aion-rsa]

Peacock: NBC Streaming Service Release Date, Shows, Price, and News

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The streaming service field is becoming more fractured, as more and more media companies break from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu in favor of creating their own streaming services. NBCUniversal—the Comcast Corp. division that owns NBC, MSNBC, USA, and the Universal Pictures movie studio—is next up with new streaming service Peacock.

Peacock will feature content from NBC, Bravo, USA Network, SYFY, Oxygen, E!, CNBC, MSNBC, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Universal Kids, A&E, ABC, CBS, The CW, FOX, HISTORY, Nickelodeon, Showtime, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks, Focus Features, Illumination, ViacomCBS, Paramount, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., and Blumhouse.

Here’s what we know:

Peacock Release Date

Peacock was made available to Comcast’s Xfinity X1 platform subscribers on April 15, 2020. The service will officially roll out to the rest of the country on July 15, 2020. NBCUniversal has plans for an international release of the service but no timeframe has been announced yet.

Peacock Price

What is Peacock going to cost? Well…that’s complicated. NBC is deviating from WarnerMedia, Disney, and Apple by incorporating pricing tiers into its service at launch. Peacock has three potential pricing options: free, $4.99, and $9.99. Here is what you’ll get at each price point:

Peacock Free includes 13,000 hours of NBCUniversal content, including still-airing series a week after they premiere. It will also feature advertisements.

Peacock Premium (with ads) is the $4.99 option and will include everything that the streaming service has to offer (over 20,000 hours of content) including Peacock originals and next-day availability of current TV shows…but also dumb old commercials. 

Peacock Premium (without ads) is $4.99 for Comcast subscribers and $9.99 for everyone else. It will include the full spectrum of Peacock content with no ads. 

Peacock Platforms

Peacock is available to be streamed on the following platforms:

Apple devices including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD.

Google platforms and devices including Android, Android TV devices, Chromecast and Chromecast built-in devices.

Microsoft’s Xbox One family of devices, including Xbox One S and Xbox One X; and VIZIO SmartCast™ TVs and LG Smart TVs. 

Comcast Xfinity X1 and Flex users, as well as eligible Cox Contour customers, can use Peacock Premium included with their service at no additional cost.

Starting the week of July 20, Peacock will be available Sony PlayStation 4 andPlayStation 4 Pro. 

Notable absences on this list include two of the most popular streaming device providers in Roku and Amazon Fire. Just as WarnerMedia was unable to cut deals with either company for HBO Max, so too was NBCUniversal unable to do so with Peacock.

Peacock Originals

NBCUniversal has revealed the first batch of original programming coming to the service:

Available July 15

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home

“Santa Barbara Police Chief Carlton Lassiter is ambushed on the job and left for dead. In a vintage Psych-style Hitchcockian nod, he begins to see impossible happenings around his recovery clinic. Shawn and Gus return to Lassie’s side in Santa Barbara and are forced to navigate the personal, the professional, and possibly the supernatural. Separated from their new lives in San Francisco, our heroes find themselves unwelcome in their old stomping grounds as they secretly untangle a twisted case without the benefit of the police, their loved ones, or the quality sourdough bakeries of the Bay Area. What they uncover will change the course of their relationships forever.” – Read more about Psych 2: Lassie Come Home here.

Brave New World

“Based on Aldous Huxley’s groundbreaking 1932 novel, Brave New World imagines a utopian society that has achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family, and history itself.” Read more about Brave New World here.

Available August 6

Hitmen

Best friends Jamie (Mel Giedroyc) and Fran (Sue Perkins) are trying to make their way in the world with only each other to rely on. They also just happen to kill people for a living. Fueled by their antics and frivolous bickering, each job inevitably gets derailed, leading them into bizarre misadventures, full of oddball characters and unexpected dilemmas.

Available August 13

Five Bedrooms

Five singles meet at, of all places, the singles’ table at a wedding. After several bottles of champagne, they decide to pitch in and buy a house together. Five singles buy a house together – what could go right?  It’s a grand social experiment with one glaring problem: they’ll have to actually live with each other.  All while journeying together through disasters, life-turning crises, and  moments of love, joy and heartbreak. The series stars Kat Stewart (Offspring), Stephen Peacocke (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot), Doris Younane (Frayed), Katie Robertson (Rosehaven), Roy Joseph (Halim), Kate Jenkinson (Wentworth) and Hugh Sheridan (Packed to the Rafters).

Available September 3

A.P. Bio (Season 3)

“When disgraced Harvard philosophy professor Jack Griffin loses out on his dream job, he is forced to return to Toledo, Ohio, and work as a high school Advanced Placement biology teacher. As he comes crashing in to Whitlock High School, Jack makes it absolutely clear he will not be teaching any biology. Realizing he has a room full of honor roll students at his disposal, Jack decides instead to use the kids for his own benefit. Eager to prove that he is still king of the castle, Principal Durbin struggles to control the force of nature that is Jack Griffin.” Read more about A.P. Bio season 3 here.

Available September 17

Departure

Passenger plane Flight 716 shockingly vanishes, and brilliant investigator Kendra Malley (Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife), alongside her mentor Howard Lawson (Christopher Plummer, Knives Out) are brought on to lead the investigation. When battling forces threaten to undermine their work, Kendra must find the truth and stop it from happening again. The series also stars Kris Holden-Reid (Umbrella Academy), Rebecca Liddiard (Run This Town), Tamara Duarte (Longmire), Mark Rendall (Versailles), Peter Mensah (Midnight, Texas) and Sasha Roiz (Suits).

Available TBD

The Adventure Zone 

“Based on the McElroy Family’s wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons podcast and No. 1 New York Times best-selling graphic novel series, The Adventure Zone is a side-splitting and heart-filled fantasy animated comedy series that follows an unlikely, poorly equipped trio and their beleaguered Dungeon Master as they reluctantly embark on a quest to save their world.” – Per THR.

Angelyne (limited series)

“Limited series based on The Hollywood Reporter feature that explored the identity of L.A.’s mysterious billboard bombshell.”

Battlestar Galactica

“Battlestar Galactica returns to television with Sam Esmail producing.” Read more about this reboot here.

Clean Slate

“Old-school car wash owner, Henry (George Wallace), is thrilled that his estranged child is returning to Alabama after 17 years. However, Henry has a lot of soul searching to do when the child he thought was a son returns as the determined, proud, trans woman, Desiree (Laverne Cox).” – Per THR.

Division One

“Division One is a coming-of-age comedy about an underdog women’s collegiate soccer team that gets a new female coach — a former professional soccer player who’s fallen from grace — and must decide whether or not they’re going to take the risk of trying to be great.” The show will be produced by Amy Poehler and soccer star Abby Wambach. – Per THR.

Dr. Death

“Based on Wonderly’s hit podcast, Dr. Death tells the terrifying true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch (Jamie Dornan), a rising star in the Dallas medical community. Young, charismatic and ostensibly brilliant, Dr. Duntsch was building a flourishing neurosurgery practice when everything suddenly changed. Patients entered his operating room for complex but routine spinal surgeries and left permanently maimed or dead. As victims piled up, two fellow physicians, neurosurgeon Robert Henderson (Alec Baldwin) and vascular surgeon Randall Kirby (Christian Slater), set out to stop him. Dr. Death explores the twisted mind of a sociopath and the gross negligence of the system designed to protect the most defenseless among us.”

Expecting

“Ellie, a fiercely independent but perpetually single music manager, has always wanted a family but never found a man worthy of the role of ‘father.’ That is, until her 39th birthday, when she decides to ask her gay best friend and co-worker, Jonathan, if he’ll be her sperm donor. When Jonathan surprises himself by saying ‘yes,’ it sets off a chain of events that turn Ellie and Jonathan’s personal and professional lives upside down as they try to turn their ‘chosen family’ into a biological family. Mindy Kaling will executive produce.” – Per THR.

Hatching Twitter

“Through exclusive access and exhaustive investigative reporting, New York Times best-selling author Nick Bilton draws on hundreds of sources, documents and internal e-mails to tell intimate true stories of companies behaving badly and technology gone awry. The first installment of this anthology series will be based on Bilton’s acclaimed book Hatching Twitter, a tale of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles that accompanied the meteoric rise of the infamous tech company. 140 characters and a few lines of code changed the world, disrupting the very fabric of the way people communicate. This series will explore the real masterminds behind it all, how it was done, and the colossal ramifications the technology will have on our future.” – Per THR.

MacGruber

After rotting in prison for over a decade, America’s ultimate hero and uber patriot MacGruber is finally released. His mission: to take down a mysterious villain from his past — Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth. With the entire world in the crosshairs, MacGruber (Will Forte), Vicki and Piper must race against time to defeat the forces of evil. Only to find that evil … may be lurking within. – Read more about MacGruber here.

One of Us Is Lying (pilot)

“Based on Karen M. McManus’s best-selling novel, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.”

Punky Brewster (pilot)

“In this multicamera/hybrid continuation of the iconic ’80s sitcom about a bright young girl raised by a foster dad, Punky is now a single mother of three trying to get her life back on track when she meets a young girl who reminds her a lot of her younger self.”

Rutherford Falls

“Ed Helms portrays Nathan Rutherford, the eponymous denizen of a small New England town, who is having difficulty facing the inevitable changes to his way of life.”

Saved by the Bell (reboot)

“When California governor Zack Morris gets into hot water for closing too many low-income high schools, he proposes they send the affected students to the highest performing schools in the state – including Bayside High. The influx of new students gives the over privileged Bayside kids a much needed and hilarious dose of reality.” – Read more about the Saved by the Bell reboot here.

Straight Talk

“Straight Talk examines what happens when two opposing ideologies are forced into an odd coupling. The main characters will be challenged by one another, making the moral lines at which they once stood harder to define.”

Peacock Library

TV

Peacock has been designed to mimic the experience of flipping through channels on a terrestrial television. To that end, both the free and premium tiers are launching with curated channels of NBC-themed content. These include channels that contain the best moments from shows such as The Office (“Office Shorts”), Saturday Night Live (“SNL Vault”), The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (“Fallon Tonight”), Late Night With Seth Meyers (“Seth Meyers Now”).

There are also exclusive genre channels like CNBC Make It, TODAY All Day, CNBC Ka-Ching, American Greed, 80s Mixtape, True Crime, Kiss Me Deadly, Peacock Reality, Out of This World, Caso Cerrado and I Love Jenni.

The free tier will include current NBC TV shows one week after they air. It will also include select episodes of Peacock originals. Most importantly it will include the following library content at launch:

30 Rock

Parks and Recreation

Saturday Night Live

Saved by the Bell

Punky Brewster

The Johnny Carson Show

The Carol Burnett Show

Real Husbands of Hollywood

Everybody Hates Chris

Friday Night Lights

Downton Abbey

Parenthood

Monk

Heroes

Psych

The Game

Suits

Sacred Lies

Royal Pains

Battlestar Galactica

Columbo

Hunter

The Rockford Files

Dateline

21 Jump Street

Highlander

Leave It To Beaver

Munsters

Murder She Wrote

Below Deck

Southern Charm

Chrisley Knows Best

Botched

Flipping Out

Million Dollar Listing New York

Pawn Stars

Storage Wars

Real Housewives of Dallas

Jay Leno’s Garage

Shahs of Sunset

Undercover Boss

Top Chef Masters

Hell’s Kitchen

Hollywood Game Night

American Ninja Warrior Jr.

Kong, The Animated Series

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

Fievel’s American Tails andWoody Woodpecker

Betty en NY

I Love Jenni

Reina De Corazones

The Riveras

Preso No. 1, Caso Cerrado

El Baron

El Chema

Larrymania

Perro Amo

Mi Familia Perfecta

Quien es Quien

Victoria

Donde Esta Elisa.

Added library shows for the premium tier include:

Two and a Half Men

Everybody Loves Raymond

George Lopez

Jeff Foxworthy Show

King of Queens

Superstore

Frasier

Cheers

House

The Affair

Yellowston

Law & Order

Law & Order: SVU

Ray Donovan

Swedish Dicks

American Ninja Warrior

DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk

Care Bears

Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot.

Future Peacock TV library titles feature:

The Office

Chicago P.D.

Chicago Fire

Chicago Med

Roseanne

3rd Rock from the Sun

Bates Motel

 Brooklyn Nine-Nine

 Real Housewives of Atlanta

Real Housewives of New York,

Real Housewives of New Jersey

Real Housewives of Orange County

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

Vanderpump Rules

Millionaire Matchmaker

Top Chef

Married with Children

Curse of Oak Island

 First 48

 American Picker

 Ancient Aliens

Cold Case Files

Charmed

Movies

The free tier of Peacock movies available at launch includes:

The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Ultimatum

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park III

Tully

Phantom Thread

The Interprete

American Psycho

The Matrix

The Matrix Reloaded

The Matrix Revolutions

The Blair Witch Project

The Mummy

Joe

Fletch

Fletch Lives

The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury

Fear

Psycho

Do the Right Thing

Howard the Duck

Billy Elliot

The Birds

Willie

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas

The Last House On The Left

I Am Ali

In The Name of the Father

Lone Ranger

The Hitcher

Law Abiding Citizen

The Sting

What Dreams May Come

Fried Green Tomatoes

One True Thing

Gosford Park

Dracula

Dragnet.

The premium tier adds:

Shrek

Lone Survivor

Ted

Identity Thief

Children of Men

Charlie Wilson’s War

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Frankenstein

Kicking and Screaming

Larry Crowne

You, Me & Dupree.

The following films are expected to arrive on Peacock sometime after launch:

Trolls World Tour

You Should Have Left

Croods 2

Boss Baby 2

Spirit

Mama

Won’t You Be My Neighbor

The Purge

Riddick

Ride Along

E.T.

American Gangster

ANTZ

Fast & Furious

Fast 5

Fast & Furious 6

Field of Dreams

The Express

Knocked Up

Bridesmaids

National Lampoon’s Vacation

National Lampoon’s European Vacation

Wanted

Evan Almighty

The Conjuring

Dawn of the Dead

The Dark Knight

Beetlejuice

The Big Lebowski

Scent of a Woman

Meatballs

3:10 to Yuma

Lost In Translation

Brokeback Mountain

Pitch Black

The Graduate

Police Academy

The Great Outdoors

Hostel

The Bone Collector

Robin Hood

The Hurt Locker

The Break Up

Open Water

It Follows

Carlito’s Way

Sinister

Peacock Sports

Peacock is notable in its offering of live sporting events, something that only ViacomCBS’s CBS All Access can compete with among the major OTT streaming services.

Live sports available to free tier users include:

Four exclusive English Premier League soccer matchers on July 15.

Coverage of the U.S. Men and Women’s Open Championships in golf.

An NFL Wild Card Playoff game.

Select events from the now-delayed Tokyo and Beijing Olympics

Premium tier highlights include:

175 exclusive EPL matchups for the 2020-21 season.

Cycling events like the Tour du France.

More than 100 hours of WWE content arriving in August including series like WWE Untold, and Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions. And compilations like John Cena’s Best WrestleMania Matches.

The post Peacock: NBC Streaming Service Release Date, Shows, Price, and News appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3gwuPYF

[savefarris124-blog]

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Words To Live By: “Do more of what makes you happy.”—a ceramic owl I received during a Secret Santa gift exchange.

Owls are wise, and the purple ceramic one given to me by my former assistant manager Paula was especially so. Yet I have a bad habit of taking on too many things all at once, usually in an effort not to disappoint people. This leads to stress because I feel my time is not my own. To decompress I will then take on a side project I enjoy for the hell of it. Ultimately I end up doing everything half-assed and balls drop. So this holiday season I’m changing some things around, including doing less of what makes me unhappy and more of what makes me actually happy.

I really had to think about this. As I get older the highs are less high. Last week my friends and I went to Harry Potter night at Lifted Spirits Distillery, and one thought stuck with me in the days to come—if I had to face a Dementor right now what sort of memories could I call on to summon a Patronus? So much of life seems bittersweet to me, but dwelling on that never did any good. Instead I want to take a moment to acknowledge the things that send pure jolts of unadulterated joy through my body.

I thought this would make a great subject for a blog post. After all people love it when Oprah talks about her favorite things, and Oprah and I are practically the same person. This entry also works on another level. Christmas is coming, and soon after that comes my birthday. Now really, you don’t have to get me a gift. I’m not expecting any gifts. No gifts please. However if you do insist on a gift I have hidden ideas throughout these entries. See if you can spot them!

1) Comedians and Their Audiobooks

Let’s be real; I will never meet my idols. I could pack my things, sell my house, and move to L.A., but I’m quite sure there is a person in Hollywood paid to misdirect wide-eyed rubes like me if we ever get within 50 feet of a celebrity. Probably the mayor or something.

Alas, there will be no brunch dates with Mindy Kaling, no hilarious text chains with Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey will never want to hear about how I took a screenwriting class in college that was mainly devoted to just watching 30 Rock and learning how to be funny. I mean, even if she did by any chance care about that, there is no way she would be interested in the fact that our final assignment was to write a 30 Rock spec script, and mine had a great plot about how Jenna gets a new boyfriend who is just dating her for her fame, how Liz worries about Jenna’s eventual reaction to this news, and how everything turns out okay in the end because once Jenna discovers the truth she is flattered that someone would think she is famous enough to use for status. And surely Tina Fey wouldn’t care that I probably still have a copy of this script of stashed away someplace and I would consider it a privilege to tear through all my belongings until I could find it for her, would she? WOULD SHE?

Where was I? Ah yes, audiobooks. So much better than regular books. I like to listen to them while driving because one day I realized I didn’t recognize half the songs playing on the radio. Now after two years of listening to thoughtful, inspiring books on my commutes I can proudly say I know zero songs on the radio.

I like memoirs by funny people because the comedians read their own works, so it’s almost the same thing as having them in my car. Currently I’m listening to My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper aka Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt aka my spirit animal. Ellie has a way of infusing low-stakes situations with such high amounts of drama so everyday life turns into a picture of pure absurdity. Her personality comes across so genuinely sweet and down-to-earth that you can almost forget that her family built Kemper Arena, meaning she grew up with enough money to try and fail at pretty much anything and still turn out just fine. That was a compliment Ellie; please be my best friend.

2) My Old 90s Christmas Tape

It’s true that the holidays burn me out. I still have slight PTSD from working retail, so whenever the halls get decked and the carols start playing I always look out of the corner of my eye for the person about to yell at me for ruining Christmas. I have morphed into Charlie Brown at the beginning of A Charlie Brown Christmas except it takes more than 30 minutes to solve my problems and my therapist insists on charging more than 5 cents.

There is only one part of the holiday season that brings unquestioned joy, and that is the totally awesome Christmas Tape my mom made for me as a child. Remember the days before streaming when if you wanted to watch something you either had to watch it live or pray Blockbuster had it in stock? Well my mother never let “the man” at Big TV dictate her viewing habits. She let a screaming 6-year-old who wanted to watch Christmas cartoons in July do that for her, thank you very much.

Yes, my awesome mom recorded over 6 hours of your favorite holiday specials onto VHS. You want A Charlie Brown Christmas? We’ve got that, plus the lesser known It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown which comes first on the tape because we don’t care about things like “chronological order” and maybe also because the classic one aired later in the month. From Frosty the Snowman to Inspector Gadget Save Christmas to Winnie-the-Pooh and Christmas Too this tape is made of nothing but pure nostalgia, and my only complaint is that we couldn’t fit even more holiday specials on it. Specials like A Miser Brothers’ Christmas or the epic Pac-Man: Christmas Comes to Pac-Land.

I could end on that heavy hint, but I need to say something more about this tape. Yes I love the specials, but what takes this tape from “nice gesture” to “prized possession that must be saved in case of fire” are the commercials. 90s advertising at its absolute finest. For instance:

This Cool Whip classic that wants you to believe non-dairy whipped topping is the new ranch dressing: 

The toy I’m still waiting for Santa to bring me:

Watch advertisers show that the quality of the product doesn’t matter if you can blatantly market it to children:

And finally I present Macauley Culkin’s entire reality falling apart: 

3) Raw Cookie Dough

Look, I know all about the CDC’s warnings against eating raw cookie dough. The flour could be contaminated with E.coli, the eggs could be festering with salmonella, and spending 12-15 minutes in the oven infuses the dough with enough magic power to grant a wish. Well guess what? I don’t care! That fudge I made for Hanukkah called for uncooked flour, raw eggs gave Rocky the physical edge needed to lose his big fight against Apollo Creed, and I just made that last one up. Remember folks, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Still, because I occasionally listen to medical advice and am also too lazy to whip up batches of cookie dough on a whim, I sometimes like to indulge myself with a treat from The Cookie Dough Café. This wonderful company knows that I demand my vanilla butter sugar in its purest form, and is proud to offer a product both delicious and healthy. I mean it totally counts as a health food if I’m avoiding the CDC death ingredients, right? Right.

4) Sunny Days

I won’t knock the gym. I joined Planet Fitness last year and from then until now I lost 25 lbs. Not a staggering amount over the course of a year, but it does mean that for the first time in a decade I weigh less than what I put on my driver’s license. I don’t mean to humble brag here. I mean to brag brag.

I couldn’t have done that without a place to workout in the wintertime. That being said you will never, ever, ever convince me that a workout in the gym is even a quarter as good as a walk outside. A walk outside offers you sunshine and fresh air. The gym offers you harsh fluorescent lighting and the lingering stench of recycled body odor.

Outside my house there is a walking trail. Sometimes I pass deer grazing and I slowly, slowly creep toward them, pretending that I myself possess the gentle grace of a forest creature. “I am Snow White,” I tell myself. “If life gets too scary I will face it with a smile and song, and the sun will shine down on me and all of my new animal friends that will help me clean my house.”

Inside the gym I pass neon painted elliptical gliders that loudly beep at me if my heart rate falls outside selected parameters. Ke$ha blares from an overhead sound system, and my attempts to drown her out by streaming Disney music are all for naught.

Belle sings, “Little town, it’s a quiet village.”

Ke$ha screams, “He’s going down! I’m yelling timber!”

Belle coos, “Every day like the one before.”

“You better move! You better dance!”

Belle continues, undeterred, “Little town filled with little people, waking up to say…”

“SWING YO’ BUTT ROUND AND ROUND! END OF THE NIGHT IT’S GOING DOWN!”

Belle gives up, and we both grab some of that edible cookie dough to ease our disappointment.

My roundabout point here is that the gym sucks, and half of my time spent writing is an excuse not to go there. Also if someone wants to buy me a trip to Disney World right about now, I won’t say no.

[plusplayerpage]

#pimapicks: ebooks, movies, & mystery

Welcome back to #pimapicks! Last month, I asked for ebook recommendation lists, and got some great ones. And before we get into the ebook lists, let's announce the next challenge, which offers two options: #pimapicks movies and #pimapicks mystery.* Here's last month's post that explains exactly how you can include those terms in your lists to be included in the next roundup (e.g., titling your list "#pimapicks movies: Westerns filmed in Arizona"). Both PCPL staff and customers are welcome to contribute!

Now, time to get into the ebook roundup! Here's a quick link to browse all the lists. We got enough that I'll be able to keep our Browse > Ebooks page stocked with fresh lists for weeks to come!

You'll notice right away that our superstar contributor, who wins Ebook List MVP, is Katherine B., from our Tech Services team! She spends a lot of time processing the coolest newly-ordered books, and fixing their catalog records, so it makes sense that she's noticed a lot of great ebook options in wildly varying areas:

#pimapicks ebooks: Disney Read-Alongs

List created by PimaLib_KatherineB

Need books for your budding ravenous reader but don't want to carry them all? Load up your phone or tablet with these ebooks and save space in your diaper bag.

Finding Dory Read-along Storybook

Moana Read-along Storybook

Rally to the Finish!

View Full List »

#pimapicks ebooks: Sci-fi/Fantasy TV & Book Matchups

List created by PimaLib_KatherineB

Check out these ebooks that inspired television shows.

Airs on STARZAmerican Gods

Airs on CW and NetflixThe 100

Airs on HBOA Game of Thrones

View Full List »

Another staffer, Rebecca, updated a list that might spark your interest as it gets cold, and you long for a summertime romance from the comfort of your recliner. She wins Best for Teens!

#pimapicks ebooks: Teen Summer Reads

List created by PimaLib_RebeccaR

Arguably the worst thing about going on a trip during summer vacation is that you can't take a huge pile of books with you. Luckily, though, e-books weigh only as much as the device you're reading them on, no matter the number. Check out this list to see e-books you can borrow from PCPL to enjoy while on the road, at the beach, or wherever you might be this summer. (Also great for the rest of the year when you're missing those summer vibes...)

The Square Root of Summer

Alex, Approximately

Love and First Sight

View Full List »

And if you're looking for a light read, Jessica's contribution wins Page Turning Nonfiction:

#pimapicks ebooks: Funny Ladies Who Write Too

List created by PimaLib_JessicaP

Women CAN be funny and these are the proof. Enjoy some of these ebooks from our PCPL collection, available to download through Overdrive or OneClick Digital.

The best part about reading this as an ebook? HIGHLIGHTING. You will be copy-pasting like mad for both hilarity and wisdom.Yes Please

I don't really watch the type of comedy that Mindy Kaling writes or stars in, but it works so well in book form.Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and Other Concerns)

Ellen DeGeneres writes about home design? Yes, please.Home

View Full List »

And finally, one of our most popular staff commenters/list creators, Norm, weighed in with his own introduction to ebooks, winning Funniest List:

#pimapicks ebooks: They're Called eBooks, (I Think)

List created by PimaLib_NormS

The fact that I am an old dinosaur has been well documented. However, in the interest of expanding my limited horizons, and in an effort to reach out to the more forward thinking of my legion of fans, I present this list of excellent eBooks in the catalog of the Pima County Public Library. Power up your devices and have at it.

"Mind of the Raven" is a terrific book. These birds are highly intelligent and can do amazing things. Heinrich's research and writing turned me into a big fan of ravens. (Not the ravens of Baltimore, of course.)Mind of the Raven

Seeing Richard Pryor at his peak was the comedic equivalent to sticking your finger in an electrical outlet.Becoming Richard Pryor

This is another of those stories about a delusional, but charismatic messiah, leading his followers to someplace other than Valhalla. Pilgrim's Wilderness

View Full List »

We can't wait to see what people come up with next time for #pimapicks movies and #pimapicks mystery! And here's hoping we get a few customers chiming in as well as staff!

*As people add lists, they'll show up in the searches at those links after a little while (sometimes it takes a few hours to re-index). To answer a few questions that may come up: It's totally fine to update an old list to get included  -- in fact, I already see a Super Sleuths list that qualifies for all three categories so far. And sure, it's fine to combine categories into a #pimapicks mystery movies etc. list like that example, if you want to! Feel free to ask any other questions in the comments below.

#pimapicks: ebooks, movies, & mystery published first on http://ift.tt/2iaLlRL

[shadowlineswriting]

L’Engle

Madeline L’Engle is one of the most interesting authors I’ve come across. She died a few years ago (awful!) but her legacy will last for decades, maybe centuries, to come. She’s written a ton of books, but perhaps her most famous is her Time Quintet, which is the series we’ll discuss today.

It consists of the following books:

A Wrinkle in Time

A Wind in the Door

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Many Waters

An Acceptable Time

That’s the order in which they are supposed to be read, but generally I switch A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters so things are chronological.

A brief overview:

The book is about the Murry family. The father and mother are both PhDs; Mr. Murry is a physicist and Mrs. Murry is a biologist. They have four children: Meg, twins Sandy and Dennys, and Charles Wallace.

Meg takes her responsibility as the oldest sibling very seriously. She struggles a lot with her life because she has no friends and she’s terrible at school. She questions everything and grows frustrated with inadequate answers. Her only real friend is her youngest brother, Charles Wallace, even though they have almost a decade between their ages. Later, we learn that the reason Meg struggled so much with school is because she’s also a genius--she knows the end answers, but can’t show how to get there and has absolutely no common sense, hence the trouble with school. You need her to solve an equation using quantum mechanics when she’s 11 years old? No problem. Need her to remember a song lyric? Better ask someone else.

Sandy and Dennys are the only “normal” people in the family. Even though they have a high level of intelligence as well, they tend to play sports and hang out with friends and play with their dog like normal boys do. In the real world they’re considered unusually smart, but in comparison to their parents and Meg, they’re just average. They like it that way, though. The boys are very sweet and stick up for their family on numerous occasions.

That brings us to Charles Wallace. He actually puts his parents to shame with his intellect. Many people in their little town believe Charles Wallace is mute, but Charles Wallace stays quiet in public because at four years old, he has the vocabulary of a graduate student. He doesn’t like to make people uncomfortable...so, he just doesn’t really say anything. Charles Wallace is very sensitive to his family, especially his mother and Meg, and there are frequently times when he can sense what they are feeling (though he’s quick to say that he CANNOT read minds. He can just...feel them).

One of the reasons I love this series is because you get a strong sense of characterization. However, even though we’re dealing with a family of prodigies, L’Engle writes them in a way that they are still totally human and they act like a normal family. In fact, if they didn’t have such vast vocabularies and discuss the space/time continuum at the dinner table, you’d never know they aren’t normal.

The Murry family go on a ton of adventures in this series. A quick synopsis of each book:

A Wrinkle in Time--This is my favorite of the books so I may get carried away. The book begins with the family being a little depressed because Mr. Murry is gone. And I don’t mean on vacation. He was there one day and simply wasn’t the next. It’s been over a year (possibly two, I can’t remember) since he left. They haven’t heard from him in all that time. No one knows where he is, not even his coworkers, not even his wife. This is very hard on the family, but they maintain that he didn’t leave them leave them and that he’s coming home soon, despite what those pesky neighbors think.

One day Charles Wallace announces that he met and befriended a strange old woman who’s just arrived in town. Her name is Mrs. Whatsit. On a dark and stormy night (that is, literally, how the book begins) she comes in to get shelter from the rain. When she sees Mrs. Murry, almost the first thing she says is, “By the way...there is such thing as a tesseract.” Mrs. Murry almost faints. As you can imagine, the children demand an explanation the next day.

Turns out Mr. Murry was working on a project that involved traveling the space/time continuum only by using your intellect and not a machine or any other earthly help. He figured if you could go from point a to point b without using a straight line, you really wouldn’t need outside help. A wrinkle in time. A tesseract. And it worked. So he’s out in space somewhere and they have no way to reach him.

Except Mrs. Whatsit isn’t an old lady, of course (really, if you’ve ever read any book at all, you should know to suspect the elderly!). In fact, Mrs. Whatsit and her friends Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which take Meg and Charles Wallace on an epic journey across the galaxy to rescue their father. Along the way, they learn that their father really is fighting an enemy--an actual darkness, true evil, that is deepening its hold on their planet. They can’t defeat it, exactly, not as long as bad people are in the world. But they can certainly fight it enough to hurt it.

This story is so fun for so many reasons! It’s about family, for one thing. It’s about learning that faith and science will always be connected, no matter how many people want them to separate. And it’s about what love can do on planes and dimensions you’ll never even see.

A Wind in the Door--This book is TOTALLY different from the first. Charles Wallace is a little older, but he’s suddenly gotten very sick. Meg goes on a journey through Charles Wallaces’s mitochondria to discover the source of his illness and fix it.

Many Waters--This is my second-favorite of the books. Sandy and Dennys accidentally go in their father’s lab while there’s an experiment in progress and are sent back to the time of Noah before the flood. This is one of the most fantastic religious retellings I’ve ever read. L’Engle manages to keep the original power of the story while creatively (and legitimately) filling in a lot of the gaps in the tale. The only thing not really mentioned is the animals, but...I mean, I assume the animals were fine, since we still have them. So who needs that explanation anyway?

A Swiftly Tilting Planet--In this book Charles Wallace is 15. He goes through different occurrences throughout the past to solve a problem the future is facing. It’s creative and fun if you like genealogy!

An Acceptable Time--This is probably the only one I don’t particularly love. It’s about Meg’s oldest daughter, Polly, and her own time travels. However, this book is 150 pages longer than the others and it really shows. The story is good, but very slow, and nothing even really happens until you’re over halfway through. It is also not a story about redemption like the others. So on its own it’s fine, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I just don’t feel it fits too well with the rest of the series.

Anyway, they all stay! And now, some fun facts about A Wrinkle in Time:

For over a decade, this book was #23 on the list of Most Frequently Challenged Books. L’Engle incorporates a lot of science (obviously) into this story but she also incorporates a lot of faith--some subtle, some not-so-subtle, but it’s an essential part of the story nonetheless. Christian audiences generally hate it (some churches even banned it!) because they didn’t feel you could adequately explain faith and science together. The secular world hated it, too, for exactly the opposite reason--they didn’t feel you could adequately explain faith and science together, either, because they believed faith should be left out of the equation, so to speak.

In my opinion, the only people who “get” this book are those who can take faith and science and allow them to live together. Without that foundation, you’ll hate the book one way or another.

A couple of fun quotes to prove my point:

"But it seems the only explanation." "Do you think things always have an explanation?" "Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist." "I like to understand things," Meg said. "We all do. But it isn't always possible."

"And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe it's being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it's a grand and exciting battle. I know it's hard for you to understand about size, how there's very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy...You can be proud that (we’ve) done so well." "Who have our fighters been?" Calvin asked. "Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs. Whatsit said. Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." "Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why of course, Jesus!"

I like controversial books, but I especially like this one.

On a fun note, they’re making it a movie (again) set to come out in April of 2018. The first version of the movie was well done because it stuck to the book and the cast matched their characters perfectly. In fact, the boy who played Charles Wallace really was a genius. He was admitted to UCLA at age 13 and graduated from Harvard Law School--as the valedictorian--at age 18. So that was a nice little touch.

I have hesitations about the movie but that’s only because I love the book so much. Interestingly, this will be the first movie to ever be directed by an ethnic woman who had over $100 million in the budget. They’re going to make the Murrys a mixed family instead of the pale redheads they are in the book, which obviously isn’t a problem but it’s going to mess with the picture I have in my head of them.

The cast is going to be fantastic, though. Chris Pine will play Mr. Murry, Oprah will be Mrs. Which, Reese Witherspoon will be Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who will be played by Mindy Kaling. Also in the movie will be Zach Galifianakis (though his part in the book was female, so I don’t know if he’s literally playing a woman or if they’re changing that character to a man in the movie), Michael Pena (in a role made up for the movie, which is not a good sign), and Levi Miller (who was in the latest version of Peter Pan) as Meg’s boyfriend Calvin. Overall, I’m excited! I have trepidation, but I’m excited.

I don’t love the entire series the way I love the first book, but they do have a special place in my heart!