Bite Me, Tony

Oh, dear God, please deliver me from this dreadful Prime series that C is currently obsessed with. He has been binge-watching episodes of Zorro over the course of the past week and I've had the misfortune of bearing witness to most of them. A newly-minted Spanish redo of previous Zorro's, this incarnation's constant violence (purely for the sake of violence), idiotic swordfights, horrendous dubbing, and a "plot" that is a bottomless pit of sheer stupidity, is so far over-the-top that it would be campy if the participants displayed the slightest trace of irony or wit. Main characters are repeatedly shot, stabbed, strangled, blown up and beaten, but almost no one stays dead because the show thrives on the chaos these dreadful people cause for our (none-too-bright) hero and his frenemies in the Spanish military. Make no mistake, Zorro receives his share of lethal (for you and me) injuries, but this series moves so quickly from one breathless scene of carnage to anot...

So, the COVID virus came and went with little fanfare and we emerged from our 10+-day isolation period feeling not much different than when we locked down. Thankfully, our vaccines are up-to-date so this episode was little worse than having a mild cold. I did have time to read a couple of books in a remarkably short time (for me), most notably Andre Aciman 's 2007 novel, Call Me By Your Name .   I didn't even know there was a book titled  Call Me by Your Name when the movie first opened at Ft. Lauderdale's Gateway Theater in 2017. At the time, the film was getting tremendous buzz from critics and audiences alike, so it wasn't long before C and I were queuing up outside the theater to see a film that had been described as "startling real" and "blisteringly sensual". To be honest, I have not revisited director Luca Guadagnino 's gay coming-of-age/love story since that singular viewing but I remember liking the film well enough. It quickly became...