Sunday!
I’ve started reading 100 Bullets
You know what story I was reminded of? The Box
The movie wasn’t as good as, say, the Twilight Zone episode but… hey. What can you do?
Anyway, 100 Bullets takes the moral question asked by The Box and tells the multitude of stories you could tell about people who have been wronged who have been told that, hey, you can kill those who wronged you. Would you do it if you could get away with it?
As for Person of Interest: Season 1
Of course, “terrorist attack” is notoriously difficult to define and so the system spat out pretty much every pre-meditated murder, kidnapping, mugging, and what have you. The system then had to be taught to differentiate between “relevant” data and “irrelevant” data. The “relevant” data was stopped (of course it was) by the FBI/NSA/CIA and whatnot. The irrelevant data? Well, that is the data that has been eating at the conscience of one half of the protagonist team (the guy who built it). The other half of the protagonist team is an ex-special Navy berets ninja played by the guy who played Jesus in Passion of the Christ. Together THEY FIGHT CRIME!
The show itself reminds me of a mix of Batman, The A-Team (seriously, the opening monologue was written by someone told “you should listen to The A-Team’s opening and do something like that), and Burn Notice. Now, we’re not *THAT* deep into the show just yet… but, so far, we’re having a blast watching it.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
You can wear long sleeved shirts
miranda lambert weight loss Up Games for Teens and Girls
snooki weight lossAre We Missing the Point
Oh, “Funny Or Die” broke character and came out with a pretty funny parody of The Box.
The Button (Dir. Andrew Bush) from Mark Little on Vimeo.
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The Box sounds like a direct ripoff of the1945 play La Barca sin Pescador by Alexjandro Casona. I wonder who Casona stole the idea from?Report
Well, that’s the beginning of 100 Bullets. It gets way more complicated than that by issue #100. One of my favorite Vertigo series.Report
I’m only in the middle of book 2. So far, the moral conundrums are front and center and make for surprisingly strong stories. If it gets even chewier (the backstory behind the guy with the suitcase, maybe?), even better.Report
Watching: Person of Interest, Rent, a documentary about Rent, a comedy called Vicious which stars Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi as a 50-years-long couple who mostly sit around their apartment and say mean things to each other, with occasional appearances from other people (it’s scrumptious). Oh, and I think we watched an episode of Babylong 5 together.
Reading: A bunch of comics, and Mary Renault’s then-contemporary-romance-from-a-male-POV, North Face (which has a lot of war bits and climbing bits), and Sanderson’s romp-if-you-like-romps-that-mostly-involve-a-lot-of-magic-theory(-which-I-do), The Rithmatist, and now I’m finally getting around to reading Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar.Report
Rent must be incredibly dated by now. It was probably incredibly dated when it came out in 1996, the East Village was less safe than it is now but it wasn’t has horrible as it was during the 1970s and 80s. Gentrification hit the East Village pretty early.
I remember a lot of theatre kids going wild for Rent when it came out in 1996, myself included. Light My Candle is still a nice song.
My undergrad was apparently the first college to do a production of Rent and that was sometime in the mid-aughts. We were mocked for it by the press because everyone was over Rent by then.Report
Oh, and I think we watched an episode of Babylong 5 together.
The role of Vir was played by Ron Jeremy.Report
I’ll be curious what you think of SoZ. It was one of my free books when I joined the SFBC at 11 or so. It amazed me, but I’d never seen a lot of its technical tricks before.Report
So far I really like it – though for me it’s not different-and-new, it’s more “oh, so that’s where so and so picked up that piece” – a missing slice of sf history I’d been seeing the influence of all along without knowing what I was seeing.
There are some unsurprising problems (given its age) with race and sex, that are less worse than in some other books the same age that I’ve read. I’m curious whether I’ll feel differently about that by the time the book is over – for example if there comes to be an important female character that would improve my feelings – but I sort of doubt it. That said, I know when I read books from the 80s or earlier, especially sf, I do try to remember that “enh, he’s kind of doing it wrong” is far preferable to “no one except white males will do anything interesting in this story at all”.
[I don’t really want to explore this topic further, because I don’t know how to do it without crossing into politics – but since as a modern female person I *notice* it over and over in the books that are kind of doing it wrong and/or just leave people who aren’t white and male out of the story completely – it wouldn’t be accurate to talk about my reactions and completely leave it out…. ]Report
I saw Birdman this afternoon. It wasn’t perfect, I thought it got a bit problematic at the ending but it was original and extremely well done and I like the playing with reality. Some of the stuff about theatre rang true but others did not. There are no non-musical actors I can think of that can draw an audience to a play except movie actors but part of the movie has Edward Norton as a brilliant theatre actor who seriously increases box office sales.
People will go to theatre to see movie actors act on stage.
On a personal note, I always get confused between Raymond Chandler and Raymond Carver?Report
I love Birdman! I guess as an attorney, it would make sense that you do too. 😉
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Different Birdman, Glyph….Report
Can’t possibly be better.Report
I was thinking Burt Lancaster.Report
Think “CHandler has an H becuase he’s kind of like Hammett and The Big Sleep starred Humphrey Bogart.”Report
They are both Californian, womanizing, alcoholic writers with very similar names and somewhat themes including a desire to be seen as hard-edged. They wrote decades apart and one is So Cal the other Northern California.Report
I’ll give you a hint: MadBum is God.Report
If he’d pitched Saturday night he’d be available for 7. It’s pretty clear he was available Saturday. To me it sounded like Bochy went with “Vogey” in part out of loyalty (for which he has a reputation). And Vogey came out of the game down three runs in the 3rd having given up four earned. Yeah, they picked him up with their bats, but what do we think of the decision not to go with MB Saturday?
Is there buzz that MadBum could still go for Game 7? Otherwise I don’t get the thinking. Barring a Bumgarner contribution, the Royals are clearly capable of going back to KC and getting two to take it. I’m dumbfounded, unless I’m wrong to think MB was available Sat. Going into the series I was just assuming he’d be pitching 1, 4, & 7.Report
MadBum has never, as far as I know, pitched on short rest. If the experiment hadn’t worked, it could have been distastrous: pull him after 2 or 3 innings, and even if that results in a win, have to win one of games 5 or 6 with a chewed-up bullpen and hope he’s back to himself for game 7 after more short rest. As it is, we only need one of games 6 or 7 with a rested pen. And if he’s needed for a few innings in game 7, why not? He’s got six months to recover.Report
Oh, and Bochy doesn’t value loyalty all that highly. Sandoval got benched for the 2010 WS because he wasn’t hitting (Zito was left entirely off the roster), and Lincecum got removed from the postseason rotation in 2012 because he couldn’t get anyone out.Report
Sounds good; I’m pulling for them. Glad to see you name in the comment bar.Report