When my daughter and I visited the Haven set, we saw a couple of other actors that we weren’t allowed to talk about because their appearances hadn’t been announced yet. The first was Chris Masterson from Malcolm in the Middle, brother of Danny Masterson from That 70’s Show who was the cameraman on “Shot in the Dark,” the Darkside Seekers episode of Haven last season.
The other was Lara Jean Chorostecki, the Canadian actress who plays Freddy Lounds on Hannibal. While we got to talk to Emily Rose and Lucas Bryant for a while, and I got to hang out with Kris Lemche in the morgue, we didn’t get much of a chance to interact with these two as they were in the middle of filming an intense scene. I did get to say hi to Lara Jean when she wandered back to “video village” between takes, but she was concentrating on her work. Still, it was neat seeing her in person. Like they often say: she is somewhat smaller in person than she appears on screen.
We voted in the mid-term elections this on Saturday morning. These are my first mid-terms since becoming a US citizen. Quite a lengthy ballot, with federal, state and local items. We got to vote for the Justice of the Peace who officiated at our wedding back in ’95, though she was running unopposed. A guy named Sam Houston was on the ballot: how could anyone in Texas not vote for him?
I like to try new recipes from time to time. This weekend I made my first blackened dish. I found a good concoction of spices and made blackened salmon. It was really quite good. As a side benefit, I also confirmed after 19 years living in our house that the smoke detector really does work. Next time I think I’ll do my blackening in the back yard. With advance warning to the fire department.
We watched a movie called The Last Weekend on Saturday. It’s one of those “everyone comes home for the weekend and exposes their dysfunctions” films. Patricia Clarkson plays the mother and Chris Mulkey the father and Tahoe plays Tahoe. They have two adult sons, one of whom writes for a TV series and the other who just got fired by making a typo that cost his company $30 million. You get the sense that there’s something bad going on in the background. Are mom and dad going broke? Does one of them have a fatal disease they’re trying to tell people about? As it turns out, the big family “crisis” is that they’ve decided to sell one of their two vacation homes. Quelle domage! It almost seems like the writer is poking fun at this sub-genre of movies. It’s the Labor Day weekend, after all, not exactly a holiday known for family reunions. But if he’s taking the piss, he’s not doing a terribly good job of it. The characters are self-absorbed and unlikable, starting with Clarkson’s character, who is snarky to the max. There are some moderately interesting subplots, but it all seems too much like first world problems. Not recommended.
