Monthly Archives: May 2022
As an intro with nothing to do with the post, yesterday I started reading The Big U (1984), by Neal Stephenson (one of my favorite authors). It’s his first novel and one I’ve been meaning to read for a while. As with his second novel, Zodiac (1988), his first is a social satire with a distinct technological flavor. Unlike most of his later work, these aren’t science fiction. That began with novel #3, Snow Crash (1992), still one of my favorites.
I mention this because I’m eager to get back to it, but it’s TV Tuesday, and I want to commemorate the ending of not one, not two, (…etc.), but four TV shows that recently aired their last episodes.
Two I was glad to see go, but I am in mourning over one of them.
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5 Comments | tags: Black-ish, Bull (TV series), Grace and Frankie, Grown-ish, Kenya Barris, Mr. Mayor (TV series) | posted in TV Tuesday
I learned a very long time ago that, when it comes to movies, it’s the little ones from the filmmaker’s heart I find most interesting and worthwhile. This seems ever truer in an era of endless, empty sequels and mind-numbing blockbusters with no more depth than an amusement park ride. Nothing wrong with amusement park rides, they can be fun, but they’re rarely memorable, let alone creative.
Sorry to Bother You (2018), written and directed by Boots Riley, is exactly the sort of thing I mean when I say my main ask of a story is to take me someplace new.
A bonus for me is that it stars LaKeith Stanfield, whose work I’ve found so delightful in the surreal (and outstanding) TV series Atlanta (which also nails the “take me someplace new” thing).
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9 Comments | tags: LaKeith Stanfield, science fiction, science fiction movies, SF, SF Movies | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
I’ve been awaiting the sophomore season of Netflix’s Russian Doll with both anticipation and dread. Anticipation because I thought season one was outstanding, one of the best shows of 2019. I only mentioned it briefly in a post back then (and gave it a solid Wow! rating). I meant to write a whole post about it but never did.
The dread came largely from how complete the story arc of season one was. It was hard to see more story there. Dread also came from how good it was — a very hard act to follow. Maybe best not to try?
Season two finally came out last month. My best reaction is something along the lines of “Huh?” but the phrase “muddled mess” keeps running through my mind.
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10 Comments | tags: animation, anime, Futurama, Hulu, Japanese anime, Netflix, Russian Doll (TV series) | posted in TV Tuesday
Back in 2020, I posted about my surprise rediscovery of Agatha Christie. The initial discovery is lost in memory, a hand-me-down from my dad. I favored heroic action figures back then, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Clint Eastwood. I enjoyed Christie’s Hercule Poirot but filed the rest of her work under ‘dowdy British library murder mystery’ and ignored it.
A mistake. My surprise discovery of 2020 was that Agatha Christie was a fascinating genius who rightfully earned the title Queen of Mystery.
Last week I watched a recent adaptation of Death on the Nile (1937), one of the more well-known Hercule Poirot novels. I had high hopes, but I can only give it a weak Eh! rating.
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8 Comments | tags: Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, Jack Reacher, Kenneth Branagh, Lee Child, Tom Cruise | posted in Books, Movies, Mystery Monday
It started when I watched Jack Reacher (2012), starring Tom Cruise. It was pretty good, and it’s as much fun seeing Robert Duvall in something as it is Christopher Walken. Plus, the bad guy is Werner Herzog! As it turns out, casting Cruise as Reacher is… interesting, but I’ll come back to that.
The movie is an adaptation of the 2005 Lee Child novel, One Shot, the ninth book in his Jack Reacher series. I enjoyed the movie enough that I thought I’d check out the book — my library had it (as well as the others in the series).
I’ve been binging on them ever since. To the point I’ve now read 16 of the 24 Lee Child Jack Reacher novels.
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19 Comments | tags: Jack Reacher, Lee Child, Tom Cruise | posted in Books, Mystery Monday, TV
At one point I had the idea that I was going write a bunch of For The Record posts — position papers that attempt to be final words on a topic (at least until new considerations came into play). Other one about guns (back in 2015), I never really followed through.
In a sense, all posts, are final words (until further consideration), so all posts can be seen as FTR. The question is whether it makes any sense to mark an expressed opinion as more official or duly considered rather than off the cuff or casual. That was my thought, anyway.
So, seven years later, FTR take two: Free Will
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37 Comments | tags: causal determinism, determinism, For The Record, free will, physical determinism | posted in Philosophy
There have been good science fiction movies and TV shows going at least back to Metropolis. Of course, there is always Sturgeon’s Law, so we’ve also had ten times as many that were bad in one way or another. A few were memorably awful; a few are remembered as classics.
When it comes to fantastical material, I’m convinced books are best. Animation is a distant second, and live action can often be a mistake, depending on the material. Too much realism in visualizing the fantastic collapses the wavefunction of our imagination.
But our imagination is the best part, and it needs exercise!
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8 Comments | tags: Aldous Huxley, Discworld, Idiocracy, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books, Thorne Smith | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
Not that anyone should care, but it’s Friday the 13th today! More to the point, it’s Friday, and I’ve been remiss about Friday Notes this year. The one last January is the only one I’ve posted so far. Big part of that is having, at long last, reduced my note pile enough that I don’t feel so (word) pressed.
Some of it is the ongoing problem of ennui. The eleven-year blog anniversary is approaching, and that tends to ignite old questions about why I bother to do this. By now I’ve left some sort of small scrawl on the internet wall and explored many of the topics that drove me to blogging.
On the other hand, the pile isn’t by any means gone, so let’s get to it…
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17 Comments | tags: Discworld, James Webb Space Telescope, Jerry Seinfeld, JWST, Seinfeld, tesseract | posted in Friday Notes
I’ve lived with a Beagle, a Keeshond, a Belgian Shepard, a Great Dane, and a Black Labrador. I’ve dog-sat a German Shepard, two Black Labs, and the delightful Bentley, an American Bully.
I’m not bragging or claiming expertise (many have much more and far broader experience living with dogs). Just saying I’ve spent some solid hours with dogs pondering what the world looks like to them, how they perceive things.
It’s often struck me that, while humans may imagine and believe in gods (or not), animals live in a world where apparent gods walk among them. Dogs, and some other animals, live with their god(s) — depend on them and are subject to their every whim.
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10 Comments | tags: crows, Discworld, dogs, Thomas Nagel | posted in Brain Bubble
We live in an era of unprecedented change. My grandparents’ generation saw the rise of the automobile. My parents’ generation saw the rise of space travel. My generation saw the rise of the digital world and social technology. The current generation is seeing the rise of the robots.
A bit over two years ago I posted An Uprising of Robots. (We haven’t picked a collective noun for robots, but my submissions are an uprising of and a clank of.) That post featured Atlas, the Boston Dynamics humanoid robot, and Spot, the four-legged “dog” robot (seen in the image here).
Since I posted that, Spot has become a hit on YouTube and has entered the work force, so here’s a Wednesday Wow starring Spot, the $75,000 robot dog.
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6 Comments | tags: Boston Dynamics, robot dog, robotics, robots, Spot (the robot) | posted in Wednesday Wow
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