Escape Reality Into Fantasy

Posted on 08/07/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Last night I finished watching an entertaining TV series labeled “White Collar.” The premise of the story is a unique FBI division that specializes in solving white collar crimes. I had to look it up to determine if it is a legitimate function of the FBI. It is legit, but this story stretches the premise a bit.

Mozzie, Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke, White Collar Characters

In this series an FBI agent is paired with a Criminal Informant. The FBI agent represents law and order while the CI is the opposite. In this case the criminal is a convicted art thief-forger who has been released from jail to work with the agent to solve major crimes. The bad guy gives the good guy insight into how thieves think and act. What this did for the FBI good guy is give him an upper hand in solving crimes. The series has played for six seasons with fourteen episodes, and last night I saw the grand finale. It surprised me, and left me wanting more. I will miss living with these people.

Afterwards, I always like to read more about the actors who starred in the story. In White Collar I was particularly interested in learning more about Matt Bomer who starred as Neal Caffrey the Criminal Informant. Bomer is what I call beautiful. He has exceptional good looks, a charming manner, and is very appealing to women. While investigating Bomer’s acting background I watched an interview with him and Stephen Colbert. Immediately I detected a mannerism in Bomer’s voice which made me suspect he is gay. I continued my search and learned, yes he is gay. Like the ending of the story, this surprised me. I am of a generation that grew up not knowing there was such a thing as homosexuality, and as such don’t really believe it exists even today. When I heard him openly declare his proclivity for men it unnerved me. Why? Who knows why? I just prefer to believe that this anomaly doesn’t exist. Over the years, I have known several men who were openly gay and liked them as human beings. I put my deep rooted teachings aside and dealt with them as people, but it still shocks me when I learn someone is.

Usually, when a series is popular it keeps on going. For instance, the series Heartland filmed in Canada is in its fourteenth season and beginning to film the fifteenth. The same actors who were in episode-one, season-one, are still playing in season fifteen. That means the viewer gets to watch the actors age and grow in their characters. Heartland is smart enough to add new characters throughout. Many of them are kids who need help. A principal character in Heartland is Jack Bartlett the grandfather who has a soft spot for troubled kids. The local social worker brings him new ones to raise on his ranch with his family, two grand daughters, their father. The story line is continuous with new twists intertwined throughput. What helps this series is the magnificent scenery in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Calgary, Canada. The second advantage of the story is the theme of using horses. The relationship between horses and people is amazing and also therapeutic.

Tonight, I begin a search to find a new series that will allow me to escape from reality. Is that normal, or is it sick? My wife often sits next to me and says “this is not interesting for me.” She prefers I find some concert or some doctor who gives information about life. She loves knowledge, so do I, but I also love fantasy, and choose to escape into a great story whenever I can.

Filed under: Aging, family, Movie Review | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

My New Worst Enemy

Posted on 17/08/2020 by Grumpa Joe

I love technical things and TV has become very technical, and I am quickly learning to despise TV. In this world of user names and passwords it becomes mind boggling to keep track of it all. My iPhone is a perfect example of stupidity. It seems that every ten seconds I am pumping in the pass code before I can do anything phone. Why? Apple does it to protect me from guess who? Me. I know I’ll be the first one crying if my phone gets hacked but I think we have gone a bit too far to make this a secure world. The TV service emulates Apple in regard to pass codes, pass words, and all things Apple.

I sit in front of a computer, to use it I must enter a password. Then I want to use a program like Adobe, and I have to enter a password. If I want to access my online banking I must enter my account number followed by a password, then by one of those scrambled letter things which disappear if you take too long to figure out what the distorted letters are. Finally, I make it past the four digit squirrely-thingy and I face answering security questions, “Where was your honeymoon?” Which one I say? in all of this, if you miss three or four times in a row the program shuts you out.

My latest enemy is Amazon Prime a fringe service of Amazon. At first I used it for faster shipping, then I expanded the usage to watching the free video content. I’ve stated several times before that I am hooked on a series titled Heartland. Each season has eighteen episodes and I am at the tail end of season nine( 156/162 episodes). All along I was a happy camper, I love watching the beautiful scenery in high definition color on a big screen. A couple of weeks ago, I began having problems getting a specific episode to work. Why? Only God knows. I have been into all the help screens on my TV, on Xfinity my streaming service, and now on Amazon the competing service to Xfinity. There are user names, passcodes, passwords, and security id’s on all of them. Reading computerese on the help screens easily takes an hour just to find a sentence that will point at some trick they use to get around a problem. I don’t have enough hours left in my life to be spending them on technology that fails.

Last night I resorted to using Chat on Xfinity. When I hear the word chat I expect to speak with a real live human being. Instead I get to type my questions and a computer interprets my question to give me a stupid answer(artificial intelligence means no intelligence, and even less common sense). I’m positive that if I eventually connect with a human it will be a British-english speaking high pitched voice coming at me from India. Nine times out of ten, I apologize to them and ask them to speak more slowly and to enunciate their words because they are speaking to a deaf man. The the fast talking voice will begin interrogating me to determine if I know my name and address, phone number, last four digits of my Social Security number and where I spent my honeymoon before he asks me what my problem is.

This afternoon, I was prepared to spend two hours with my laptop on my lap, and the TV remote in my hand to finally figure something out. I went through the process to connect to my favorite series and everything worked beautifully. Why? Only God knows. The real test will come tonight when I turn on my nightly episode of Heartland. The real question is will I watch on the big TV, or will I be forced to watch on my laptop which by the way operates flawlessly in very few button pushes to get me to my program. Why? Only God knows.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, Technology | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »