My favorite shows this past year.

1. YellowJackets (Showtime).  Lost meets I don't know--"Alive"--with a generous dash of Mean Girls and all-star performances from the present day actresses (Christina Ricci! Amazing!) as well as the girls trapped in the Canadian wilderness some 25 years ago. Buzz buzz buzz.
2. Reservation Dogs (FX/Hulu). A hidden gem of a series. Ostensibly a comedy, with some laugh out loud funny moments, but really just a sweet, slow-paced, comfortable ride focused on life on the "Res" and the drive to escape for four teens dealing (for 2 seasons now) with the pain of their best friend's suicide and their own family struggles.
3. Severance (AppleTV).  Almost a miracle of a show, with so many mysteries and yet so much heart and warmth among the characters (and horror). 
4. The Bear (FX/Hulu). Gripping, perfect performances. High tension with seemingly small stakes that become literally life or death in the hands of the writers and talented actors.
5. Station Eleven (HBOMax)  This is a show that started in 2021 but ended in 2022 (much like YellowJackets) so it counts in my book. Post-apocalyptic gripping drama with a perfect first episode then a time-shift into the future, with at first mixed results but all the storylines come together wonderfully by the end. I'm planning a rewatch this winter.

 I haven't posted in four months.

I told myself at this time last year that I would post to the blog at least once a week, to help develop a following to market my forthcoming novel, maybe like the following I used to have some ten years ago when this was an indie music blog, back when sharing mp3's was a thing and indie music blogs were my life and I got hundreds of interested page views a day. But  mp3 blogs are not coming back and I'm not going to spend a couple hours a week crafting blog posts. I could have, this year especially, when Covid made work less demanding and travel nonexistent and activities that I used to do in my free time--concerts, visits to Manhattan and Brooklyn, everything--no longer viable. So I had time. But I poured that time into writing my next novel, into my dog Elie, and unfortunately way too much Netflix and Chill, something I always thought was lame but now has become my nightly existence. And now that the beautiful fall weather in Hoboken, NJ, has turned to winter cold and dark at 4:30, even the brief fleeting joys of going to write at one of the many outside bar/restaurants after work each night (often with Elie!) are gone, as it's been too cold and too dark to do much more than stay inside once the work day finishes.

​Biden won the election. And a vaccine is coming. But this is going to be a rough winter after a hellishly bad year and I wish I were in California right now. Maybe always.

On March 2 2020, I was in Huntington Beach. Sitting at a coffee shop several blocks away from downtown. It was a Monday so it was quiet, and it was warm enough to sit outside and write, something I couldn't do in NJ at the time. The coffee shop was very dog-friendly and I sent pictures to my boyfriend about how great it would be if he and Elie were there with me in Huntington Beach, and I could walk down to the coffee shop with Elie every morning and sit outside and write. That was my dream at the time. I remember it vividly. That was a long time ago.