It's Always Good to Start the New Year with a Laugh

It's always good to start the new year with a laugh.

And it my case, I'm also starting it with a one-month free trial of Netflix.

Signed up, Netflix asks you to rate movies you've viewed in order to provide data for the company's software to recommend movies from their catalog. I did this--this one's a three, that one's a four, and so forth, out of five stars possible.

The day moves on to evening, and I'm sitting on the floor, my laptop connected to our flatscreen TV via a HDMI cable. Demonstrating how to connect the flatscreen to the computer, how to open Netflix, and the cinema I'd added to my "list," I then scrolled down to "Our Recommendations for Thomas" to show my wife this function of the website.

And there is was--having crunched the numbers of my movie evaluations, Netflix told me that it was four-stars-out-of-five certain that Leave It to Beaver was a show I'd really like!

Now, I have nothing against Leave It to Beaver or The Andy Griffith Show or McHale's Navy, but my personal perspective on those shows is "been there, done that."

I haven't heard my wife laugh so completely in a long time, and even though I was somewhat nonplussed, soon I was laughing along with her. We started wondering how the recommendation arose. Did some young hotshot programmer think, "Yeah, he's over sixty, so he'll eat up that old-show stuff." Maybe the thinking is to throw in some leftfield possibilities "and see how he reacts."

Later, when reviewing more shows on Netflix's "personalizing" page, the pop-up mentioned that the site will "get better" at recommending shows for me as I continue to rate more and more titles.

I hope so.

I plan to keep my sense of humor, and we'll see at the end of our free month whether we keep our subscription. Maybe a chance for good laughs is worth $7.99 a month.

Copyright 2013 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

Sixkill, a Review of Robert R. Parker's Last Spenser Novel

Meet Zebulon Sixkill in this Spenser detective novel, Robert B. Parker's last novel before his death.

Having read almost all of Parker's Spenser novels, I read Sixkill curious as to how it compared to the other 40 novels in the Spenser series. I am glad to say that it is not a novel written with diminished capacity but contains the twists and turns, the humor and insights, and the action and introspection one comes to expect from reading the Spenser novels.

Zeb Sixkill is a Cree Native American Indian and is a new character Parker introduced in his last novel. Parker follows a motif used in Early Autumn, an earlier (1980) Spenser novel, and has Spenser fill the role of role model and mentor for Sixkill. This was emotionally fitting for me, knowing that this was Parker's last novel before his passing, to see Spenser, now in middle age, passing on his knowledge and experience to another.

As in other Spenser novels, the author also engages the reader in considering racial, ethnic, gender, and professional stereotypes--and their negative impact on the individual and society. And, as in his other novels, Parker also emphasizes how individual choice impacts previous experience to produce a tangle of opportunities and challenges in life. These tangled skeins of life experience and individual and societal limitations are the essence of Parker's novels, and in Sixkill he continued that tradition of clashing opposites to spin gritty plots and late-night firefights.

Zebulon Sixkill--Cree Indian, football star, alcoholic, and man without a purpose--meets the guide for his hero's journey in this novel. How this meet-up between Spenser and Sixkill rolls out is the joy of this novel, filled with fists, wisecracks, and bloody death. It is fitting that we wonder what Parker would have done with the character Sixkill in future novels. Would Sixkill have been a significant yet peripheral character such as Hawk, a character in many other Spenser novels? Would Sixkill have had the main role in his own series of crime novels, such as the characters Jesse Stone and Sonny Randall? Would Spenser eventually have retired to advise Sixkill as he younger man became a private investigator, allowing the end of one generation and the beginning of a new?

That speculation is appropriate for the last Parker novel. At the last page, sentence, and word, we are satisfied with this episode in Spenser's life and also thoughtful--Parker, as always, simultaneously entertaining and enlightening.

Copyright 2013 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

A Day Out with Mom #23: Adjusting to new realities

"Hello?" Mom answers the phone. "I can't hear. Is this Tom?"

"Hi, Mom. How are you?"

"I can't hear. Is this Tom?"

My brother picks up the living room extension. "Mom, you didn't have to pick up in the bedroom. I was heading for the living room phone."

"I can't hear, Pat."

"I know, Mom," Pat hollers. "Come out here, and I'll put you on the amplified phone."

"I've got laryngitis and went to the doctor," Mom says. "I've been resting."

I tell her that's always best.

"Dad tried to stand on his own and fell," she adds, "but he's OK."

"Were the aides were with him?"

"No, when he was in his room alone."

I tell Mom I'm glad Dad's OK and think that his falling helps reinforce Mom's understanding that Dad is too feeble to come home. We are lucky to have that reinforcement without the pain and suffering of injury.

Grocery shopping and trips to the doctor are going well. The household routine is going well. My mom and brother are working together--probably even better than before my brother broke his leg.

I remember when I first arrived at my parents' mobile home seven months ago--twenty hours after the phone call from the social worker. Three strangers were in the mobile home, my parents sitting with these strangers, my brother in the hospital. Deer caught in the headlights, shocked by the sudden turn on events, at the mercy of the world--that was my first impression and turned out to be an accurate one. The look of relief on the faces of the social workers was my second impression.

After a stay of six and a half months with my family in California, I am now helping my family via internet and phone, also planning on regular visits every three or four months.

It's working and will continue working right up until the moment it stops working--which can be at any moment. I suppose that's the way it is every moment of our lives. The boundaries of "what works" tighten with infirmity, though. My parents cannot manage their lives alone. My brother and I provide "the Kepler boys" assistance.

It isn't always easy, but I know it is much more difficult for many others--children and parents. I'm good with "it's working for now."

It's important to find the good in every moment.

Right now, mine is to hear my mother answer the phone with her independent/dependent response: "Hello? I can't hear. Is this Tom?"

Blind, deaf, and a few weeks away from eighty-nine years, Mom still puts the "S" in spunk.

Copyright 2013 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved