The good things in life

On By EstherIn Actors, Actresses, At the movies, In the news, Real life, TV & media

Let me start with the bad things in life. Specifically Boris Johnson as new prime minister of the UK and a Burqa-ban which has come into effect today in The Netherlands are upsetting me and so, for my own sanity, I keep my news intake to a minimum right now. Instead, I try to focus on the good things in life. For instance: my summer holiday started on Wednesday, the technique of using baking powder to clean my two pairs of  Birkenstock slippers sorta worked (I walk on them all day every day in the summer, I kid you not), today Mr Esther, my daughter and I will go on a day trip to a city near the German border, and tomorrow I am going to meet my ex-coworker’s two week old baby girl! When we exchanged chat messages earlier this week, she said she was very low on bibs for the baby, so I got her these (that 5th item is a shirt and not a bib)…

baby gifts

It’s always good to focus on babies over politics. 🙂

What also makes me happy is the new Picard trailer. I think I have watched it 10 times already. I love Jean-Luc Picard (and Patrick Stewart as well) and I so very much wish for leaders like him in the real world!

I can hardly wait for this in 2020!

Next up: as I love Roman Holiday so very much, I had to watch last weekend’s Hallmark movie Rome in Love, which was about an unknown actress getting ready to film a Roman Holiday remake and she herself falls in love with an American journalist in Rome. Kinda meta, I know. I watched the movie, it was OK, but had nowhere near the charm of Roman Holiday, which I just needed to watch again for the zillionth time. That movie is always the best pick-me-up movie! It got me back to zipping through some Audrey Hepburn movies again and boy was she good and gorgeous! The last movie she did was a small role as an angel in the Steven Spielberg movie Always. I re-watched her scenes in that and was struck by this image of her in the movie at one point…

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The humanity and kindness in her face in that sunset light is just breathtaking.

And there are more goodies to be focused on! On Guylty’s blog the other day she was asking about ‘other gods’ we like besides Richard. In the comments section I mentioned the other (male) gods present in folders on my computer…

I have several side attractions: Colin Firth, Gregory Peck, Hugh Jackman, but I also have some David Bowie, Keanu Reeves, Pierce Brosnan, Simon Baker, James Stewart, Lucas Bryant (yeah, not known), Richard Chamberlain and Viggo Mortensen folders. However those folders are tiny compared to my Richard Armitage folder. Just did a check, I think the largest folder after Richard is Colin Firth with some 400 items. Richard’s folder has 3000 items… 🙂

This triggered me to check out what my more recent actor-crush, Lucas Bryant, has been up to. He’s been pretty quiet of late, not many new roles to speak of, but I did find out that he’s been doing a few M.A.R.V.E.L. Agents of Shield episodes recently. I don’t watch that show but have watched (parts of) the 3 episodes he’s in last night and boy, did he look fine! The camera sure does like him in close-up.

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Last but not least, I watched the newest Suits episode this morning (season 9, episode 3) and in it there was a Louis Litt dream sequence which was so funny! Louis is a judge and a lawyer in that dream and the jury turns out to be made up out of 12 Harveys!

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Gabriel Macht, who plays Harvey on Suits, directed this episode and I wonder if this court scene was the funniest thing he has ever directed and how much fun did he have embodying those 12 Harveys? The eye-scratching middle finger and the one where he holds a cat like that (cats are Louis’s obsession, not Harvey’s!) are the highlights for me. All of Louis’s insecurities, especially with regards to Harvey, are on display here and that just cracks me up. Rick Hoffman as Louis remains a highlight of this show. Oh heck, here’s the whole scene…

I’m so glad there are also so many joys in this world. 🙂

38 thoughts on “The good things in life”

  3. Esther, so many good things here you mentioned and I love your side folder some of those names are just dreamboats and equally nice guys!! The baby bibs and shirt are precious too!
    I haven’t started my Suits watched yet. It is Aug 1 now so I promised myself this month I would start the series from Ep 1!
    Audrey Hepburn was a wonderful woman. Roman Holiday is a fantastic movie and I definitely need a re watch soon. You all are gearing up for your big trip very soon so I would add that to the fabulous list of positives.
    I won’t stray into BoJo territory .. don’t want to ruin your happy times here.
    Patrick or Picard as President any day!!!

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    1. Have fun starting on Suits! When I look back at season one they’re all so young.
      BoJo and anti-burqa laws are so depressing…
      Yeah, we’ll spend the weekend cleaning up and packing.

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  4. Servetus

    Public burqa bans = more evidence that we are reliving the 1930s. I hope you have an enjoyable vacation as I doubt politics will disappear while you are gone.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. Thank you for the link love 🙂 – and for that Suits clip. I had to laugh out loud. So Louis!!!
    Hope you have a great trip tomorrow. I am organising a trip for my son + girlfriend, using a regional discount ticket to get to Groningen for a day trip.

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  6. Servetus

    I just saw a news report that asserted that (a) the police will not enforce the law and (b) max 400 ppl in the entire NL wear face coverings anyway. Honestly — bizarre world we live in.

    Liked by 1 person

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      1. Servetus

        Some police office was quoted as saying it was lowest priority and they did not have personnel available to do it, and the public transport authority was quoted as saying it wasn’t their job. So obviously there are still some sane people in positions of authority.

        I do not get what is so frightening about a woman in a veil. Or what is so frightening (in other contexts) about a woman without one. You’d almost think the woman was the problem and not the veil. Nah, couldn’t be. (/sarcasm)

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        1. Yes, some police and other authorities have been saying that and that is really great and all but still it’s a law now and makes me feel sick to my stomach.It’s not ‘just’ a burqa law but a face-covering law, so no balaclavas or helmets either in government buildings, educational buildings, healhcare buildings and public transport. But basically it’s still about 400 women wearing burqas, because you never see that other stuff anyhow. Great way to isolate 400 women in this country, no? (/sarcasm as well). Some people say it’s a way to help women who are respressed and forced to wear burqas. I say that if you really want to help those women, then do something about the MEN doing that to these women and don’t superficially go after how the women are dressed! If some of these women should be repressed (and I’m sure some are, just like women who are scantily dressed can be repressed!), this will isolate them even more because now they can’t travel on public transport, they can’t go to healthcare facilities, they can’t do any government business (like get their drivers’ license or passport renewed) and they can’t get an education. Great.

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  7. squirrel.0072

    Aujourd’hui, le dilemme est de choisir entre plusieurs sujets graves, sérieux sur l’évolution de la politique dans le monde et des sujets plus légers, divertissants sur les ‘other gods’, sur les vacances…. Je dois admettre que ces sujets diamétralement opposés me rendent mal à l’aise. D’habitude, j’aime blaguer, divertir, prendre des contre-pieds. Mais comme certains fans l’ont déjà spécifié, ici et ailleurs, certains jours, il est difficile de concilier ces deux aspects de l’évolution de l’intérêt des fans.
    L’expression “rire est le propre de l’homme” m’interroge, aujourd’hui, (à l’heure où les médias s’interrogent sur la différence entre l’homme et l’animal). Aristote, Rabelais,… Umberto Eco dans “The Name of The Rose”, et bien d’autres se sont penchés sur la raison et la fonction du rire. Mais certains sujets ne peuvent pas être traités avec le rire comme moyen de dérision.
    Pour conclure,les blogs ne sont-ils condamnés à n’être que du divertissement?

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    1. Thiis blog was never meant to be one for serious political discussion, so in that sense it really is mostly an entertainment blog. It’s my escape place from the serious world I live in most of the time. I’m not one who deals well with conflict and fights and if I made this blog about politics or religion then I’d constantly be embroiled in arguments and conflict and I really don’t want that.
      I get your meaning, though, because for me it sometimes also feels strange to write about this ‘light’ stuff when heavy stuff is going on around me. On the other hand, the light stuff is what makes me happy and move forward and I don’t think we should ever feel guilty about enjoying good stuff even when bad stuff is happening around us. Even in the darkest of times, people have turned to music, literature, the arts to make life a little more bearable. If we would only focus on the bad stuff, then life would become completely depressing, no?

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      1. Esther absolutely and that is what makes your blog so wonderful b/c you embrace your family, and your musical and movie and tv likes and throw Richard in the mix as well. And to occasionally mention politics esp something so serious well that is the real world.

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      2. squirrel.0072

        🙂 Je suis d’accord. Mais je n’ai pas la force aujourd’hui de trouver un sujet qui pourrait tourner en dérision ces informations déprimantes.
        Depuis la promulgation des lois en France, les femmes entièrement voilées, sous une burka, ont disparu des rues. Mais les casseurs masqués font l’actualité. Qui est le plus facile à être interpellé par les forces de l’ordre: une femme voilée ou un “black bloc”?

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      3. Servetus

        I don’t know that it has to be either/or. Everyone should blog about what they want. And one’s own mood is often out of synch with what’s going on the world (I won a huge fellowship on the day in 2003 that the US invaded Iraq, for instance). People deal with this problem as they like. As a part of the community here, I wanted to leave a comment, but I didn’t have anything to say about any of the “lighter” topics, whereas I was somewhat preoccupied with the burqa issue, so I left a comment about that and assumed Esther wouldn’t mind, but also wouldn’t feel obligated to continue the conversation if she didn’t want to.

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        2. You’re right, I don’t mind! I am very well aware that anything I write on here can be subject to comments so if I had wanted to avoid any comment whatsoever on this law, I wouldn’t have mentioned it all. I just get too angry to write out a well thought-through piece about it and then possibly fight about it with readers who maybe don’t agree. I mostly don’t want to angry-blog, so I keep to the good stuff as much as possible here. But angry-comment, on occasion, I can do. 🙂
          And hell yeah, about blogging about what I want to. It’s THE reason why I started this blog, I can just do my own thing here without having to abide by anyone else’s rules, I love that. 🙂

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          1. Esther see your blog along with a few others were my role models for mine in the sense how genuine and honest you are about your life and your feelings and interests. I have been guilty if angry blogging which I am not proud of and have really tried to curtail
            I’m not one for confrontation either although when unprovoked I will fight back 😂😉

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            2. That’s sweet of you to say, Michele, thanks.
              Angry blogging is honest blogging too, btw, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be something bad. And sometimes we need to get really angry to affect change. Believe me, I can get angry and fight if I need to (like I did at my fomer job, for instance) but I prefer not to if not absolutely necessary. 🙂

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          2. Servetus

            I appreciate this a lot about you, that if you don’t want to discuss something you don’t start a discussion — I get really tired of people who start a topic, and then it turns out they didn’t want to actually talk about it.

            Liked by 1 person

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              1. Servetus

                but that’s kind of a different thing — if you start a conversation and then eventually you get to an end point, it’s different than if you start a conversation and then get mad at the people who respond to you.

                Liked by 1 person

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