A. Philadelphia Is Preparing For Your Real And Virtual Summer Visit!
We Are A Must See, Feel, And Experience From Our Food To Our History!
B. A Let’s Talk Philadelphia Column Quick Note!
Move Over Phillies, Flyers, Eagles, And 76ers!
There Is A New Attendance Leader In The House!
WordPress, our column’s publishing host, has just informed Let’s Talk Philadelphia that we have passed 50,000 readers. That is 2,500 readers a post. That is not monumental, but it is not bad either. Thank you WordPress for sharing this news and seeing our publication as noteworthy and meaningful!
C. Do not forget to read past columns of Let’s Talk Philadelphia if you enjoy history, fashion, television, music, books, movies, sports, fishing, bingo, chocolate, the arts, and creative articles and points of view from people throughout the world!
Check out past columns’ contributors in your reading. Then, send your publishable ideas (two paragraphs, your contact links, and six pictures) to our editor (Tom Palumbo) at tjpalumbo@aol.com. Your column space is waiting!
1. Let’s Talk Philadelphia Does Not Frighten Easily! Unless!
Stranger Things Is A Monster Netflix Hit Both Literally And Figuratively!
Season Four Is Mesmerizing With A Last Season (Five) Now Being Readied!
The amazing numbers set by Netflix’s Stranger Things in season 4 has saved Netflix from losing billions of revenue dollars. Their recent rate hike was predicted to drive 2,000,000 customers away. Instead Netflix only lost 800,000 customers do to fans refusing to let go of Stranger Things until season five is completed.
Here are nine things you should know about Stranger Things and hopefully they will encourage you to tune in at your house or a friend’s house. Researching the actors, directors, and Netflix is, also, encouraged.
1. Hawkins, Indiana, the story’s starting locale, is a quiet country town. However, any thing you have ever seen and more in a monster movie will overwhelm the town and its inhabitants, especially, the children. The research facility just outside town run by Matthew Modine is doing horrible programming on young children and the monsters their labs have created. The facility opened holes in the past to allow town destroyers and monsters that feed on people into the present. Supernatural forces are everywhere.
2. Each episode has three themes. The children, adults, police force, child programmers, and creatures will take you in all directions and, then, creatively connect the themes.
3. The Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross) are identical twins born in 1984. The brothers created and are directing Stranger Things.
4. The latest season (four) of Stranger Things had over 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) hours of viewing. The viewing overload shut Netflix down for fifteen minutes worldwide in the 75 countries that placed the show in their top ten.
5. Netflix spent 30 million dollars an episode for season four.
6. Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) is the highest paid actor on the show at 300 thousand dollars an episode.
7. Winona Ryder, the distraught and caring mother, and David Harbour, the police chief and monster battler along with all the kids, are the adult focus points for the show. Adults that watch the show can relate to all the everyday and extra trauma they go through in Hawkins fighting evil, keeping their families together, and trying to have a love life.
8. Eleven has superpowers. She escaped from the research facility as a young child with no verbal skills. Mike finds Eleven wandering the woods and takes her into his home without his mother, Winona Ryder, knowing. As Eleven quickly grows mentally and physically, she will bond with Mike’s nerdy game’s club friends. Seven friends and Eleven will battle beasts and organisms in the organism’s world, as well as, in Hawkins, throughout the first four years of the show.
9. After completing the 34 episodes of Stranger Things (2016-2022), you will quickly run to your computer’s research mode to find out about season five…why, where, when…and how will it take you to the series’ conclusion.
2. Let’s Talk Philadelphia Travels To The North Carolina Swamps!
Where The Crawdads Sing Should Be Your Next Theater Visit!
What Is A Crawdad And Do They Actually Sing?! Yes!
Where The Crawdads Sing is a book that was written by Delia Owens in 2018. By July of this year and before the film was released, the book had sold over 15 million copies, making it one of the best sellers of all time.
The story takes place in North Carolina’s Barkley Cove, a fictional small town, and in the distant swamps of that area. The phrase Where the Crawdads Sing is said to denote a far off place. Between the ages of 5 and 7 Kya’s (Daisy Edgar-Jones’) family leaves here because of her father’s drunkenness and brutality, and, then, too, the father finally leaves her alone to battle the swamps. The only thing she owns at age seven is a beat up cabin, a boat, a fishing road, a bag of shells, a knapsack of feathers, and her mother’s paints which she begins to handle well.
Luckily, this illiterate waif is befriended by a black man Jumpin (Sterling Macer, Jr.) and his wife Mabel ( Michaell Hyatt) who she trades fish and mussels to for food, gasoline, and church donated clothing at their gas station. As a six year old child, Kya faced abuse and prejudice from the school children (she spent one day there) and townsfolk who called her swamp girl and continually laughed at her.
Many years later, Kya meets Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith) fishing in the swamp. He teaches her to read, write, and consume the knowledge in books. Tate encourages her to sell her paintings that any naturalist would love by putting them in book form and sending them to a list of publishers he gives her. They fall in love and, then, as Tate leaves for college he makes all kinds of promises he can not keep.
Two years later, the again abandoned Kya Catherine Clark, meets Chase Andrews ( Harrison Dickson) the town’s wealthy, star quarterback. A romance blossoms and he promises her marriage after sleeping with her at an out of town motel. Kya finds out he has a girlfriend in town and breaks off their relationship.
Soon after that, Andrews is found dead at the foot of a marsh tower he and Kya often frequented. Naturally, Kya is the number one suspect and heads to a trial with little evidence supporting her guilt. She has Tom Milton (David Strathairn) as her lawyer and stands before a jury of haters as her judges. Then…
Taylor Swift wrote the ending song Carolina for Where The Crawdads Sing. She said this on Instagram about her writing adventure before the movie even started rehearsals:
Where The Crawdads Sing is a book I got absolutely lost in when I read it years ago, she wrote. As soon as I heard there was a film in the works starring the incredible @daisyedgarjones and produced by the brilliant @reesewitherspoon, I knew I wanted to be a part of it from the musical side. I wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story.
See this movie!
You will be mesmerized by the movie as much as Taylor Swift was mesmerized by the book.
3. Let’s Talk Philadelphia Has An Office Of Ryan Gosling Fans Even Without Emma Stone, Kissing, And Dancing!
The CIA Flick The Gray Man Would Have Been Even More Interesting With Emma Stone In It, Though!
Nonetheless, 85 Countries This Week Have Made The Gray Man Number 1 In Viewing…43 Million Viewers Strong!
The Gray Man was written by Mark Greaney in 2009 and bounced around movie producer’s offices until 2020 when Netflix and the Russo brothers (Anthony and Joseph) decided to spend 200 million dollars to make the movie for television and theater release at the same time. Brad Pitt and Charlize Theron were, even, supposed to star in the story and bring the book to theaters in 2016. This never came to fruition.
A Gray Man is someone that can blend in to everything without being noticed. Gosling fit this role perfectly in the movie. So…Gosling, soon to be known as Sierra 6 of the 12 CIA Sierras, was plucked from prison by Billie Bob Thornton in 2003. Gosling was in prison for killing his father who was about to kill Gosling’s younger brother. Out of prison with Thornton and moving ahead 18 years, we see Gosling, after training, is the CIA’s number 1 assassin…quietly killing, of course, only people that deserved killing. He is a master at death by natural causes except for the case that drives the movie.
On the other hand co-star, Chris Evans is a demented agent whose job is to terminate Gosling after Sierra 6 and Ana de Armas botch an assignment, but come upon sensitive information the CIA does not want to be leaked. The venues (cities, lakes, clubs, casinos, estates) are as scenic as the body count is high as Evans and his pack of assassins chase Gosling throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic gave the movie terrible scores. They called the movie a James Bond knockoff. Movie goer ratings were just the opposite as theater patrons loved the settings, acting, and action, especially the action. Advance to your television screen or local theater and see which group you will join.
4. Let’s Talk Philadelphia’s Monthly Music Guest!
Move Over Drake, Lil Nas X Is In The House!
If You Are Gay, Country, Rap, Or Rock Lil Nas X Is Your Listening Pleasure!
This month’s music selection and staff recommendation came down to Elvis Presley’s new album that is number one in 15 countries or Lil Nas X who has been number 1 everywhere (Time Magazine cover, Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30, BillBoard top tens, television music award shows, and late night shows on every channel). Lil Nas X won out on Tuesday when he appeared in the office’s USA Today newspaper in the crossword puzzle. It is really hard to run Lil Nas X downward and connect his name with eight other clues. The office considered the crossword puzzle as a write about him omen.
Montero (meaning Garden of Eden) Lamar Hill is the name his mother gave him. We know him as the 23 year old Lil Nas X. He has only been on the music and everywhere scene for four years. His first single in the rap and country category, Old Town Road, spent 5 months at the top of Billboard’s Top Ten chart. No song since Billboard’s 1958 beginning has every done that.
While Old Town Road was number one, Nas came out as gay. Four gigantic audiences gay, country, rock and roll, and rap would now follow his exploits, every lyric, love life, and cat fights with Drake. This is the video for Old Town Road (www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=old+town+road+video). Paste it into your search bar. It is a hoot as Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Billy Ray Cyrus would say. Billy Ray appears in one of the remixes of the song.
Lil Nas’s Internet presence is monsterous as he followed OTR with 7 and its chart busting songs Panini and Rodeo. His first major album Montero (2021) included three chart top tens with Montero (Call Me By Your Name), Industry Baby, and That’s What I Want. We, also, included the links to these songs below:
Montero (CMBYN): http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Montero+(CMBYN)+video
Industry Baby (nudity alert): http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=industry+baby+video
That’s What I Want: http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=that’s+what+I+want+video
LNX’s awards would take up half this column as he has been honored by Time Magazine, Forbes Magazine, The Grammy’s, MTV, American Music Association, and The Country Music Association. Take a listen, please. You will be surprised by Lil Nas X’s musical and acting diversity.
5. Let’s Talk Philadelphia’s Monthly Two Minute Puzzle!
The Middle Muddle!
Get Your Stop Watches And Pencils Handy!
Or Just Call Out The Answers To No One In Particular!
Ready! Begin!
See if you can change the middle of these words to form a new word. The answer to the first clue must contain an EA somewhere together in a word. The answer to the second clue changes the EA to an EE to form a new word. After reviewing the examples, look at the two clues that follow and see if you can solve the remaining pieces to the puzzle in two minutes time.
Example: Letter starter/Forest creature Dear/Deer
Example: Basketball players/Swarm Team/Teem
1. Pound a drum/Red vegetable
2. Sandwich’s first need/Raise
3. A body part/Listen to
4. A fruit/Someone just like you
5. Really good/To say hello
6. Mountain top/A quick look
7. Not fake/Fishing rod part
8. An accomplishment/Walking tools
9. A Lima/Often follows have
10. Dog pest/To run from
11. Main book activity/Plant growth
12. To rob/Strong metal
13. Not living/Part of a will
14. Pants part/Appear to be
15. There are seven of these in the world/Eye function
See if you can find three word pairs that could be added to this puzzle?
Let's Talk Philadelphia...Thomas J. Palumbo, Ed. 