Month: November 2023

The Big Give is Here: Let’s Give to Cure EB and HvH Arts This Holiday Season!

Today is Giving Tuesday! It is a a global day of giving we celebrate on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and kick off The Big Give Christmas Challenge! So it’s time to be thankful for all the good stuff in our lives and focus on our holiday giving.

Damian Lewis is the proud patron of two charities, Cure EB and Sir Hubert von Herkomer Arts Foundation (HvH Arts). In the photo above, you see him with two formidable ladies: On the left is Debbi Clark, the founder and CEO of Sir HvH Arts, and on the right is Sharmila Collins, the founder and CEO of Cure EB.

And here I am kindly inviting you to consider giving to these two charities this holiday season. I am sharing information about both as well as about how to donate via The Big Give Christmas Challenge. Please note that timing is key because donations will be DOUBLED by generous fund matchers for a week starting today!

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Billions: Ranking Our Top 7 Episodes of 7 Seasons

Billions may have ended, but we have not stopped thinking about the stories and characters that we have lived with these past 7 season.

We challenged ourselves to pick our “7 of 7” – our top 7 episodes from 7 seasons of Billions. Did any of our top 7 make your list? What’s your favorite episodes and why?

Damianista

OMG it was incredibly hard to narrow down my most favorite episodes to  seven… but now that I have my seven, when I look at them, I get that I really like cerebral storylines, risky moves, long games, killer closing  scenes, and Karyn Kusama who is the director of two episodes in my top 7 list. And if I am able to figure out a twist in the episode before it is revealed, then I love it even more 😀

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“From the Trader’s Desk”:
Bobby Axelrod – a Man and his Music *UPDATED FOR SEASON 7*

**UPDATED FOR SEASON 7**

In each season of Billions, at least one episode has featured a song and t-shirt of a metal band that are Axe’s favorites. (Even an Axe-less Season 6 featured Mötley Crüe’s “Wild Side“.)

The writers of Billions make purposeful choices with music placement, so we know that these decisions are made to tell a story, shine a light on who the character is, or to set a tone. Gingersnap and I were holding out Season 7 will finally be the year of Iron Maiden but it was not to be. However, I do believe that somewhere out in the multiverse Bobby Axelrod is rocking a “Number of the Beast” t-shirt while listening to “Hallowed Be Thy Name” right before pulling the trigger on a billion dollar deal.

Now that the series in over,  let’s take a look back at a man and his music.

Continue reading ““From the Trader’s Desk”: Bobby Axelrod – a Man and his Music *UPDATED FOR SEASON 7*”

Remembrance Sunday with Damian Lewis

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Today is Remembrance Sunday. Also known as Poppy Day in the Commonwealth countries, Remembrance Day is a memorial day observed to remember the members of their armed forces who died in the line of duty in World War I. It coincides with Veterans Day in the US that was proclaimed first as Armistice Day at the end of the Great War and that honors all men and women that served in the United States Armed Forces. Remembrance Day is observed on November 11 in most countries because the hostilities of WWI ended “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month”, in accordance with the armistice signed that day between the representatives of Germany and the Entente. And, red poppies became a symbol of the day due to the WWI poem In Flanders Fields that talks about red poppies blooming over some of the worst battlefields in Flanders.

So I thought it would be appropriate to travel back to WWI today. But you may ask about what Damian Lewis has to do with WWI. Well, firstly, Damian is playing a WWI soldier in Queen of the Desert but also he participated in a WWI poetry reading in 2014 as part of the centenary commemorations of the Great War.

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It’s Veterans Day! We Salute Major Dick Winters – The Rank and The Man

Today is Veterans Day – a day of honoring all men and women that served in the United States armed forces. And it gives us a great opportunity to salute all war heroes, and in particular Major Dick Winters and Easy Company.

I know a thing or two about war. My day job is to study and understand war. I have written academic articles on war, I have taught on war… and even though I can write about war for pages and talk about it for hours as a scholar, the human cost of war is still incomprehensible to me.

Let me take a moment and look at my own family. My maternal grandmother never knew her father because he was a soldier in WWI in the Eastern Front in Turkey, and he literally froze because of the cold as he fought against the Russians. My paternal grandmother never knew her father, either; because he was also a soldier in WWI and was killed by a shrapnel in Gallipoli as he fought against the Anzacs. Continue reading “It’s Veterans Day! We Salute Major Dick Winters – The Rank and The Man”