PEAKY BLINDERS, Series Six (2022)

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(watched: mon/20220711->fri/20220826 via Netflix; created by Steven Knight and starring Cillian Murphy, Natasha O'Keefe, Sam Clafin, Sophie Rundle, Anya Taylor Joy, Amber Anderson, Finn Cole, Paul Anderson, and Tom Hardy; original airing, 20220207->0403)

In spite of a few last-minute and left-field additions (a last minute addition who is, fortunately, an absolutely perfect last minute addition (kind of reminds me of Klein in Ellroy's WHITE JAZZ); wish we'd had him longer (though perhaps my required re-watch of the series will yield a forgotten setup earlier on)) to the cast to set up the abso-fucking-lutely required film continuation, I'm hard-pressed to recall a better, more fitting finale in recent memory (no I haven't seen BETTER CALL SAUL: I'm only now playing catchup with all the things I've missed; just now started watching JUSTIFIED, ten years late and we've been between the sixth and seventh seasons of SONS OF ANARCHY for at least eight years): the loss of Helen McCrory is handled deftly and tragically, Pol's presence in Michael's every seething glare and vow of revenge and in every machination of Tommy as they hurtle towards one another in a hopelessly (for Michael) unbalanced blood feud; Anya Taylor Joy, Finn Cole, Sam Clafin, Amber Anderson, and James Frecheville make a formidable antagonistic force – though Cole's Michael is most certainly in over his head, not only being on the unbalanced side of that Tommy/Michael blood feud but acting as something of a fall guy for the rest of them; and Natasha O'Keefe, Sophie Rundle, and Paul Anderson prove themselves to be three of the finest actors working today, just as they have in every series prior - Arthur always breaks my heart. Highly, highly recommended.

P.S: the only thing I missed was hearing Nick Cave's original "Red Right Hand" rendition, so here it is.

i appear to be calibrated

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The good news is that – well, actually, two pieces of good news: one, my CGM – unlike the night previous – didn't scream at me all night long which means I am, if nothing else, calibrated; and two, the latest issue of MacroParentheticals is out to subscribers. The bad news – though maybe it's good news but if you're reading this... nevermind – is that since I've spent all morning, so far, on getting the newsletter ready for coffee time, my font of biographical ephemera is at a low ebb and this will have to do... oh, right, third piece of good news: yesterday’s antique mall jackpot wasn't a dream.

antique mall jackpot(!)

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Clockwise, from top: Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio (1961); Spidey Halloween basket (1979); DICK TRACY MONTHLY No. 2 (Feb 1948); No. 4 (April 1948); No. 9 (Sept 1948); and No. 11 (Nov. 1948). Below, the opened glory of the two-way wrist radio.

Also picked up SUPERMAN’S METROPOLIS, an Elseworlds riff I had never heard of (and now that I’ve learned it’s the first of a trilogy with BATMAN: NOSFERATU and WONDER WOMAN: BLUE AMAZON, I’ll be seeking those out as well):

Damn fine Saturday.

WHITE JAZZ (Ellroy, 1992)

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(read: 20220809->17; my complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here. )

Another one that's been in the to-read stacks for awhile, but now that my first complete reading of Ellroy's first LA Quartet (all in first editions, I'm proud to say) – I'd read BLACK DAHLIA and LA CONFIDENTIAL previously; this was my first time with both THE BIG NOWHERE (excellent) and WHITE JAZZ – is done, I'm awash with a sense of accomplishing something: what that something is, I haven't a clue – a chance to start over with a re-read, perhaps: age and mileage do, if nothing else, add perspective.

That being said, I remain both tepid (similar to my reaction to each of Ellroy's in-progress Second LA QUARTET offerings – though mercifully devoid of the utter scorn I hold for the second in the series, THIS STORM) and somewhat confused because – in spite of some brilliant moments weaving in and out of this rare (for Ellroy) first-person account by an unfamiliar though nonetheless excellent protagonist (whom I hope Ellroy revisits sometime: it's a shame Klein's been out to pasture for 30 years and never appeared in prior works – though please correct me if I’m wrong) at the center of the machinations of two forces of LAPD nature, I can't figure – other than acting as a coda to the tales of Exley (who's far more of a shit in the books than in Guy Pearce's excellent film portrayal) and Dudley (Cromwell was perfect), and a pivot between the first LA Quartet and the Underworld, USA trilogy (JAZZ features the debut of my favorite of Ellroy's characters, Pete Bondurant, one of the three protagonists of my favorite of Ellroy's works – and one of my favorite books of all time, AMERICAN TABLOID) – why WHITE JAZZ needed to exist in the first place.

Then again, I might have answered my own (long-winded) question. Wouldn't be the first time.

I am a bluetooth device and my blood is sending me push notifications

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Changed my CGM yesterday evening and, as is sometimes the case, alerts woke me up twice in the middle of the night to tell me that I was crashing into hypo-ness but fingerpricking revealed I wasn't, pretzels and sugar gel for zilch. And now, it's doing the same thing this morning: CGM screams, You're at 53 and dropping and oh my fuck you're going to die, while the fingerpricking, the same one I've had since day one of T1D/TFD (this fucking disease) says, Nah, you're fine. 102; carry on. Fuck this fucking disease and the deeply flawed technology it uses to notify me of its fuckeries internal.

obsidian victories

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Victory the first: I think I've figured out how I'll digitally index physical notebooks: while I had once subscribed to the romance of the analog, card-based system, two things have brought me 'round to using Obsidian for that as well.

  • One: my handwriting is, has been, and will always be shit (I've given up) and, thanks to this, I have as much of a chance of losing my brain "data" in analog form as in digital, cloud-based form.

  • Two, that forming connective tissue via effective tagging is far simpler and more facile via Obsidian; now that I've found my way to a more effective tagging system, the benefits far outweight my erstwhile digital resistance.

Current victorious method of indexing physical notebooks: tag each entry NB30 -PageNumber/TIME (PN & T outside the tag) in my Obsidian Daily Notes; if it warrants a separate note (or requires it later) it gets one – though I do try to keep all notes on a single Daily Notes page because while I can abide cluttery, messy pages, I have a hard time dealing with cluttery messy file systems.

Victory the second: my quest for an iOS shortcut to access today's daily note in Obsidian from the homepage is at an end: (Daily Notes Shortcut V1 ). YAY.