TV Show - The Politician

Just finished watching Season 1
Premiered:  9/27/2019 on Netflix
Season 1
Number of Episodes: 8
Length of Episode:
IMBd: 7.5
RT Critic's Consensus: While The Politician can't uphold all of its tantalizing promises, it delivers just enough soapy satire in a sumptuous setting to keep Ryan Murphy fans invested -- though its unlikely to win him many new votes.
RT Audience Score: 86 (57 Critics)
cag: Liked it a lot
Wikipedia information

Characters:
Payton Hobart - Ben Platt, adopted rich boy
Georgina Hobart - Payton's loving mom (Gwyneth Paltrow)
River Barkley - Payton's Mandarin coach and friend (who commits suicide in Episode one or two, but conitinues as his "conscience" throughout the season)
Infinity Jackson - The girl who becomes his running mate, whose grandmother is poisoning her and who thinks she has cancer
Dusty Jackson  - Infinity's nana (Jessica Lange)
Ricardo - Infinity's boyfriend
Astrid Sloan - River's girlfriend and Payton's ultimate rival
McAfee and James - Payton's close friends and "advisors"
Alice Charles - Payton's girlfriend
Skye Leighton - Black LBGTQ chick who keeps showing up and is nasty, goes from opponent to running partner to almost-assassin

My comments:  Per Ashley's suggestion, I started watching this today and ended up binge-watching all eight episodes in one sitting.  It was funny, sad, eyeball-rolling, irreverent, goofy, well acted, and wonderfully enjoyable.  It also had an incredible cast of characters from Ben Platt and Gwyneth Paltrow to Dermot Mulroney and Jessica Lange, with Judith Light and Bette Midler tossed into episode eight (to be full timers on season two, I hope!) Episodes one through seven are set in Santa Barbara, California in the homes of the exceedingly rich, while episode 8 is set in NYc.  I liked it a lot.  Season two is supposed to come out somewhere in 2020, being about Payton's New York State Senate  run against the current popular senator played by Judith Light (who happen to be in a three-way marriage, lol!)

Storyline from IMDb: Payton Hobart, a student from Santa Barbara, has known since age seven that he's going to be President of the United States. But first he'll have to navigate the most treacherous political landscape of all: Saint Sebastian High School.

From Wikipedia:  The first season is set at the fictional Saint Sebastian High School in Santa Barbara, California. Payton Hobart is running for student body president against the popular and athletic River Barkley. Payton, under the direction of his ambitious friends McAfee Westbrook, James Sullivan, and Alice Charles, chooses Infinity Jackson, a cancer patient and victim of Munchausen by Proxy disorder, to be his vice-president. Meanwhile, River, under the direction of his girlfriend Astrid Sloan, chooses Skye Leighton, a gender-nonconforming black classmate, to be his vice-president.

24. Hand of Evil - J. A. Jance

#3 Ali Reynolds

audio read by Karen Ziemba

2007 Simon & Schuster Audioworks

9 unabridged discs (10. hrs)

384 pgs.

Finished

Murder Mystery

Goodreads Rating:  3.73

My Rating: 1/Didn't like it at all

Setting: Sedona, Arizona

1^st sentence/s:

My comments:  I couldn't wait until I'd finished this.  I didn't like the first one at all, either, so I don't know why I keep torturing myself with this series.  Perhaps because of the locale.  So what is it I don't like?  Ali.  Goody-goody Ali.  Her stupid blog. And the writing.  Every tiny detail is explained over and over. And people remember details of information from 40, 50 years previously.  Sure.  Also, so much more could be said about this lovely community and it's totally missing.  Blech! (I guess I really, really want to like these and I keep getting disappointed....)

Goodreads Review:  "When Arabella Ashcroft, a member of the family who gave Ali a generous scholarship for her education decades earlier, suddenly asks her for a meeting, Ali wonders what it can mean. Before she can satisfy her curiosity, though, Ali receives another startling call: a friend's teenage daughter has disappeared. Ali offers to help, but in doing so, she unknowingly begins a quest that will reveal a deadly ring of secrets, at the center of which stand two undiscriminating killers...."

Thumb Love - Elise Primavera

Robin Corey Books, 2010
$16.99
40 pages
Rating: A RIOT! 4.5
Endpapers: Blue & white head drawings of people congratulating (etc.) Lulu

There's actually a "blog tour" of this book that you can take. Two Writing Teachers tells about it and has links to all the blog.

First we meet Lulu and her thumb. The next 15-or-so pages are Lulu's "Thumb Sucker's Story." This is followed by her 12-Step Programs to break the habit of thumb sucking. NOT easy. I sucked my thumb until I was ten or eleven, my sister much later. So I could really relate. I was disappointed that the trick that finally cured me wasn't included. I used to fall asleep laying on my hands on my stomach. (Or should I say laying on my stomach on my hands?) It worked. However, that way of falling asleep became such a habit that I still find myself flopping onto my stomach when I can't fall asleep on my side. My back aches in the morning after sleeping like that now. It didn't when I was a kid. But I digress.....

This is a great fun read....at least it was for me. The thumb talks and has opinions, too. Some of the illustrations remind me of Dr. Seuss, fanciful and fun. And for some reason "little Lulu" kept popping into my mind. Again, from when I was a kid? I'll have to look that up. Many different fonts are used, as well as speaking clouds above the character's heads to show their speech.

Such ups and down come with breaking a bad habit! Poor Lulu. But she did it! Highly recommended.