Look Around You

In celebration of Beard Season (and guilt), I've decided to make another post!

Look Around You is the most intensely entertaining grade-school-style education program ever to be on the youtubes, so I suggest you give it a stern look, and to mark it down in your copy book. FOR REAL, give it a full episode and you won't regret it. I've seen them before, but I was watching a pretty boring documentary on Maths and couldn't help finding something better to talk about.



The first series is composed of 10-minute episodes on:

• Maths
• Water
• Germs
• Ghosts
• Sulphur
• Music
• Iron
• Brain

While the second series takes the form of six 30-minute popular TV science program, as opposed to an educational narrative. Marginally not as good, but I can be a nitpicker when it comes to quality programs.



I'm also (slowly) working on a couple of other pieces for this blog, including more book reviews and recommended comics. For instance - you should totally read Asterios Polyp!

Venture Bros.! Always Sunny!

Ah, the fall TV season, when I ignore everything the networks put out until they've proven themselves and turn to FX for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. While in recent seasons the show has proven to be a bit more hit and miss than it's early episodes, my confidence in the writing and the cast stands unwavering.

But wait! Extra bonus for us this September as The Venture Bros. has started airing the second half of it's fourth season! This show has proven time and again to be one of the strongest cartoons ever written and with more character depth and development than most of the works of fiction I come into contact with. A show this rich in continuity and with such a feeling of advancement for the characters is so rare that I treasure every time that it's on. Especially since at its most basic level it's just a parody of Jonny Quest. Can't wait for more - in fact, I think I'll just rewatch all of it.

Movies!

So, ever since I started getting my movie rentals for free, I stopped watching movies. I can't really explain it - I mean, I don't avoid movies, and as a child I watched everything that was on HBO - but I probably take in maybe 10-20 new (to me) movies a year. So it probably won't be too often that I review any here, but I actually happened to take in a couple last week.

JCVD (2008)

The title's acronym refers to it's star, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Known for his over the top action film (Bloodsport, Time Cop) as well as his personal problems off the screen, this movie makes an interesting premise: have the actor play himself as he is taken hostage in a bank robbery. JCVD is an out-of-work actor, low on money, and losing custody of his children due to past drug abuse - the whole thing is affecting, self-effacing, and even humorous at times.

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Harvey Keitel is the titled Lieutenant - a drug-and-power abusing, gambling, brutal man. The movie is a fascinating 90 minutes of watching Keitel takes this character to it's extremes, and as he starts to unravel as he is affected by a crime both brutal beyond his own personal scope and which touches upon his character's last shred of faith and humanity.

I would definitely recommend both. Enjoy

What I've Been Watching:

Life After People

History Channel show depicting the decay of our world if humans were to disappear from the planet. It doesn't try to speculate what happened (mass extinction/mass exodus/etc.), it's more of a showcase of both urban blight and the extent and decay of the constraints that modern man uses to manipulate nature. The show is presented as a timeline extending from the disappearance of humans and highlights times when catastrophic events due to the disappearance occur. Each episode also features an actual modern abandoned area and the extent of it's decay, from an amusement park closed barely a decade ago to Hindu temples, similar to Angkor Wat, that were deserted six-hundred years ago. Utterly fascinating.

True Blood

Alright, yeah, I watch some trash tv too, and True Blood is possibly the trashiest. 9/10ths of the characters/cast are insufferable, particularly the leads, and probably half to 3/4ths of the plots are terrible. I couldn't/wouldn't really recommend this show to anyone, but I've kept up with it despite my own problems with it, so that probably says something. I do enjoy extensive mythologies though, and hidden underneath this there may just be one hidden, and they spend 5-10 minutes of every episode taunting me in that they may just delve into it. For the fans, here's my review of this current 3rd season: the only bits worth watching have been anything concerning Eric and Russell -  any time either are on screen, the show is suddenly worth watching. I don't think you'd miss much if you just fast-forwarded through the rest.

Maybe I'm just waiting for the next, actually good, HBO show to start up again - I think Eastbound & Down is coming back on soon.

Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible

Heck Yeah! Each episode, theoretical Physicist/Futurist Dr. Michio Kaku a takes classic Science Fiction scenario/technology and tries to use modern science (and technology known to be on the horizon) to show the possibilities. Check out some vignettes from the show if you want to get an idea what I'm talking about.

Fall in love with the carbon nanotube! Learn how to blow up the planet! Become invisible! Travel through time! Find out why the flying saucer is a silly design for a spaceship!

Dinner Tonight

Lime-cilantro flounder with teriyaki rice. Pretty solid!

...accompanied by a Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin ale, which was an even better decision

Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I just finished this, so I'll get my thoughts down while it's still fresh.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a bit of a phenomenon. For those who haven't heard of it, it's a Swedish mystery novel published in 2005 after the author, Stieg Larsson's, death in 2004,. Two subsequent novels have been published - The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, exhausting the backlog of books left behind after the death. It has slowly caught fire internationally, originally published in America in 2008. By this year it's been making the book discussion group rounds at the libraries, and it has a film being made by David Fincher (of Seven and Fight Club fame). It was even recommended by a few people whose opinions I respect, which is a rare enough thing in and of itself, so I decided to give it a shot.

Ultimately, with all the above, it couldn't really live up to the hype. Don't get me wrong, this was a totally decent novel, and an fine entry into the mystery genre, but there was very little striking about it. Larsson was a journalist for many years before dabbling in fiction, and he dealt often with Sweden's extreme right and racist groups, and particularly with the remnants and current dealings of Swedish Nazis. While touched upon, there ends up being very little of this interesting subject in the novel. The Swedish title of the novel, Men who Hate Women (which I didn't hear until after finishing the novel), gives a much better idea on the content of the book.

In the end: I liked it enough, and I'll probably read the sequels, though I'm in no rush. This is a novel I'd recommend to mystery readers and avid fiction readers - it's got to be better then that next James Patterson novel you're going to read - but this won't be a "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS RIGHT NOW" moment for me. Next on the reading list - The Raw Shark Texts - though I'll probably post some novels that have been important to me before then.

What I've Been Watching:

So, since I can't be bothered to be restrained by television schedules, I acquire any shows I'd like to watch and view at my leisure via a system of shared data many call "the internet". I only really watch while falling asleep at night, so I don't tend to watch a lot unless I find something to obsess over.

Here's what's been on the docket over the past week or two:

Life (BBC version)
Incredible hi-def series of nature documentaries. Filmed over three years and often shot with high-speed cameras, it contains some of the most unique footage ever to be shown. I tend to prefer BBC documentaries because the narration is unquestionable better.

The reptiles episode has been my favorite of the ones I've seen so far - and here's a picture of a Jesus Lizard running on water!

Hard Knocks (Jets)
HBO's fly-on-the-wall series covering an NFL training camp. This year they're covering my team, the New York Jets and their loudmouth, cursing-a-blue-streak, always entertaining coach, Rex Ryan.

Sherlock
Another BBC series, updating the old Sherlock Holmes stories for the modern era. Starring Martin Freeman (Tim from the UK's version of The Office) as Watson, and a man with the most British name I've ever heard, Benedict Cumberbatch, as Holmes.