Sunday?
There’s no “Sunday!” post and I have stuff to say, so consider this a poor man’s substitute.
So I am one episode away from finishing the fall half-season of Revolution. Without any specifics, I was coming around to Tod Kelly’s view that it’s red meat for Tea Partiers when it sort of turned on its head and now, if it’s political, I think it’s a cautionary tale aimed at Tea Partiers. Now to Rot13 (spoilers to episode 8 or so): Gur vapernfrq eryvnapr ba pnyyvat gur rivy snxr-tbireazrag Gur Cngevbgf pnhtug zl nggragvba. Naq gura V gubhtug, jryy ybbxvat ng vg n cnegvphyne jnl, urer lbh unir n ohapu bs onq crbcyr gung ner pbzvat va naq znxvat qhovbhf pynvzf haqre gur onaare bs cngevbgvfz naq angvbanyvfz. V’q vzntvar gung n ybg bs Ubyyljbbq ybbxf ng gur Grn Cnegl guvf jnl. Vg’f n fgergpu, ohg gura V gubhtug vg jnf n fgergpu va gur bgure qverpgvba nf jryy. We’ll have to see where it goes from here.
Closing in on that, I took a break today and watched Green Lantern First Flight which I thought was good and probably better than the live-action movie (which I think I liked more than just about anyone else, even though I didn’t think it was great) but given some of the positive reviews I was expecting more.
Tomorrow I start House of Cards because unlike some others I can wait for it.
On the reading (or audioreading) front, I am listening to an old Robert Ludlum book, Trevayne (not related to the Bourne series). Before that I finished Brad Meltzer’s Dead Even which was good but not great. (I hated what Meltzer did to some previous characters in some previous books of his I have written, but on the upshot it makes me fear for the characters every time I read one of his books because I have no security at all that things are going to turn out well for characters I can often expect things to turn out well for.
I’m not sure what comes next. Maybe John Sandford and whatever is next in the Prey series. Oh, and a little bit of Discworld, of course.
So what are you reading, watching, etc?
Oh, and after House of Cards, I think I might take the plunge and start watching Breaking Bad.Report
Thank you! We are internetless and so didn’t do it (I’m at work, finishing up homework, right now). You are the bomb.
I’ve been reading a ton! Mostly comics and Whipping Girl and picture books. I just started The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013 and so far the essays are 2 for 2 awesome.
I’m in the middle of the 2nd season of Sherlock. I might rewatch the first season. Hurray for DVD loans when your internet is down.Report
Jaybird called to get an update on the state of things virtual and then made me turn my computer back on (I’m finally done! I want to go home!) so that I could tell you all he’s watching the first season of Sherlock.
So. Now you know. (I think he’s also read a bit more of Small Gods – I’ve gotten way ahead of y’all again and had to slow down again 😀 ).Report
V’z qvfpbzsbegrq jvgu gur Cngevbg’f eryvnapr ba fubpx qbpgevar.Report
With my son’s little brother here for most of the weekend, unexpectedly, I have had more TV watching time (though we did watch the marathon go by this morning) than I expected. So, I started season 7 of Burn Notice, and everyone’s now watching season 1 of The Americans, and I watched an episode of Suits. Still reading Le Carre, and more Naipaul.Report
Suits is one of my favorite shows. Extremely smart and instead of doing the normal criminal law thing it is all about business law and feels very fresh.Report
Saturday, I finished off American Horror Story: Asylum so that I could start season 2 of House of Cards, though I am only one episode into the latter.
I am still reading A Crown of Swords, though I have slowed down a bit. I typically read during my lunch break, but my lunches have been busy over the past week.Report
Not only are these figures just awful (thankfully, subject to license approval) but there’s a few characters missing. Particularly the Companion Doll.
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/hitlist.asp?company=Funko&theme=Firefly/Serenity&searchorder=comReport
My non-spoiler comment on Revolution:
I started out expecting to hate this show, then decided I loved it, now I am having difficulty staying committed. The overall story arc is great and in many ways it breathes some fresh air into the typical dystopian stories. In other ways though I feel they have gotten away from the core premise. In the very first episodes everyone was mostly running around with flintlocks and bows. Now they all have assault rifles. Where did all the dang ammo come from? It feels like the writers are struggling with incorporating the lack of electricity into the story more often.
The other problem I see is that every-single-week seems to be “Oh no, we’ve been captured by the bad guys again! How will we get out of this?” I feel like we need Waylon Jennings to narrate before they go to commercials like he did on the Dukes of Hazard.
“Boy I tell you, the day they passed out good luck, Miles and Charlie must have been out fishing.”Report
A book for you.Report
Did anyone else refer to bending your baseball cap brim into an extreme angle ‘Cootering’ ? Is that just a KY thing?Report
Must be a KY thing. But I remember buddies in college spending HOURS manually bending their new ballcaps’ brims to just…the…perfect…curvature. It looks strange to me when I see caps now with the brims left straight, straight, straight.
https://www.cooterfestival.com/Report
My roommate, from Owensboro, used to wrap the brim of his cap in a rubber band every night. I don’t remember him calling it “cootering,” though.Report
A proper hat cootering means the brim is bent basically in half, no real curve to it. For me I prefer a more subtle curve but I agree the straight brims today are ridiculous.Report
I wish I were surprised that there are people who spend more effort breaking in a cap than right-thinking people do breaking in a glove.Report
Oh I spent HOURS working on ball gloves when I was playing. We would oil them up, put a ball in the pocket and then do all kinds of things to them. Throwiing them into the dirt as hard as possible, sitting on them, you name it. Now our local sporting goods store has a machine that is supposed to do it for you. Bah humbug.Report
I would like at least a little credit for having the good taste to not make the whole “Cootering is a KY thing” thread into an off-color and entirely inappropriate joke.Report
Was it good taste that restrained you, or the slipperiness of the task before you?
Because let’s face it: somehow working an off-color joke into a thread containing the words “cootering”, “KY”, and the sentence oil them up, put a ball in the pocket and then do all kinds of things to them would have taken some pretty slick work.Report
The idea wouldn’t jell.Report
You know, I keep hoping this story will turn on Aaron and Priscilla; that they have to find their love for one another to teach love to the New God.
But I fear we’re, instead, going to walk the path of one of my favorite, and sadly out-of-print dystopian novels, Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick and Samuel Delaney (which is worth reading just for the scene of giant cock roaches worshiping a VW bug).
But yes, I agree with all your criticisms, it’s like the whole show’s been Cheneyed.Report
What I don’t understand is why they don’t realize that anything they do with a gun would look way cooler with a bow and arrow. That said, I think the Patriots are well-stocked with bullets and that’s where they’re getting them from (they’re stealing the guns from the bad guys they kill).
I agree with your broader critique. It was at the bottom of the fall shows I wanted to catch up on, though I did watch it and will continue to do so until they give me a reason not to.
Most concerning to me is the lack of discipline. It feels like they’re just going to continue to punch things up over and over again to keep it interesting when I’d prefer a tighter overall story-arc.Report
The traveling timeframe is hard to follow sometimes too. For instance Neville and his son recently made the trip from DC to Texas in what seemed like a couple of days. And Aaron and Priscilla made it to Oklahoma and then back to Lubbock in record time. Monroe and Charlie got to Vegas in what also seemed like a couple of days. From Texas. WTF?Report
BTW, for anyone watching True Detective (and is anyone else getting nervous that they won’t stick the landing with this thing? Please don’t screw this up, it’s great!):
http://io9.com/the-one-literary-reference-you-must-know-to-appreciate-1523076497Report
Evergreen Backstory.
(hmm… maybe I ought to add that to tvtropes?)
The trait of taking a cool idea, and using it in
as many different genres as possible.Report
Started reading Brandon Sanderson’s Steelheart.
So far, pretty goodReport
I enjoyed that one. Not madly in love with it, but it was darn satisfying. He’s somehow become one of my go-to fantasists.Report
I started that one but got a bad vibe early in. Will probably pick it up again later.Report
Well I gotta read something while waiting for the next Harry Dresden novel…Report