The Beatles-The Early Years. [easyazon_link identifier=”1408704781″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years[/easyazon_link] follows in the footsteps of James A. Michener, we start the story of the Beatles in the 1840s or so. I’ve never been that into the whole Roots thing and have little interest in what John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s great grandparents were up to. I do like the idea that the Beatles are towering historic figures worthy of such treatment, but on the other hand, it seems a bit silly. As the Beatles themselves liked to say, they were just a band that got very…
Author: Jon Herrera
Writer, Photographer, Blogger.
Between The World and Me
Morpheus: The body cannot live without the mind. [easyazon_link identifier=”0812993543″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Ta-Nehisi Coates[/easyazon_link] lays his book out as a letter to his son. He talks about race, life, death, and how the world he grew up in and the world where his son now lives are slightly different places. But still very dangerous places. If you happen to have dark skin in a world run by people who think they are white. He views the entirety of human history through the viewpoint of a black man who may have his body taken from him at any moment for no reason.…
Masters of Sex Season 3
spoilers. It makes a certain amount of sense that the poster for [easyazon_link identifier=”B00U3UKXSG” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Masters of Sex[/easyazon_link]season three hints at a happy polyamorous threesome. And as this season opens up, it does seem that Old Doc Master’s long suffering wife has come to accept his mistress as a member of the family. But as we zip throuh this first episode with shock after shock falling in rapid succession, we find that the happy trio doesn’t share a bed and that Bill continues to do his best to make everyone around him miserable. The show is spilt between an…
Trump wants to be Hitler
“Make their hate your hate.” -He’s Alive, The Twilight Zone On the one hand Donald Trump is the best thing to happen to American politics in decades. A man who speaks his mind. A man who points to problems and offers solutions. A man who is personally successful, but doesn’t feel like a spoiled brat who had to sell stocks once to get by in college. On the other hand. Trump is a nutcase. Hitler was also a fringe lunatic that many rational people ignored. Until he inspired the murder of millions and came as close as anyone since Alexander…
The War of Northern Aggression
Take down that confederate flag. South Carolina to remove battle flag from the Capitol grounds. It’s a good start, and only a hundred and fifty years or so after the South lost the war. I grew up in Texas, one of those proud states that was on the side of the Confederacy. I must have been in my twenties before I met some Yankee who told me the Rebels were not the Good Guys. My mother and older sister read Gone With The Wind on a semi-annual basis, rebel flags were a common sight-and obviously still are, and everyone I knew seemed…
Atari:Game Over
I bought my first computer in 1982 for $1500. It was an Atari 400. Like countless others at the time, I would have bought just about anything with an Atari logo on it. So it was a bit of a shock when we all looked up one day and found Atari gone. [easyazon_link identifier=”B00UV3HPX6″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Atari:Game Over[/easyazon_link] tells the story of the death of Atari and the burial of what many have called the worst video game of all time, ET. This documentary looks like someone’s college project shot with a cell phone. But then, it is an Xbox production,…
A Few Thoughts on Self Publishing
When I was in the 7th Grade my English Teacher gave me a paper bag filled with back issues of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Great magazine. Lots of great stories. And lots of crap stories as well. Those below par stories that helped to fill the magazine out inspired me to become a writer. For the next few years I would bang out bad short fiction and send it off to the three or four Science Fiction/Mystery magazines that published monthly digests. Then something happened, I got a handwritten rejection letter saying they were looking forward to my next story.…
Minions
If you’ve seen the Trailers for Minions, you’ve pretty much seen all the good bits of the film. Yes, I know, it’s a kids film about a bunch of small yellow creatures that live to serve evil, so what did I expect? I remember being completely surprised and delighted by Dispicable Me, so maybe that was what I was expecting here. I may have had my hopes a little high. Minions is the compressed history of life on earth, starting with a very Spore-like bunch of life forms fighting in the primordial ooze. Spore is a very cool game based…
Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys
I recently caught [easyazon_link identifier=”B000ICXQF6″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]12 Monkey[/easyazon_link]s on Showtime and watched it for the first time in many years. In 1995 Terry Gillian made one of his better trademark weird and brilliant films. 12 Monkeys tells the story of a man forced to volunteer for a dangerous mission into the past. The future is a post pandemic wasteland where wild animals run loose and the survivors have to live underground. Terry Gilliam is a master of using Practical Effects, this means his post apocalyptic world is made with things from the real world and not from a computer. The…
Terminator Genisys
More Terminator on Terminator Action Spoilers and Such I love [easyazon_link identifier=”B00153ZC8Q” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]The Terminator[/easyazon_link]. It’s a damn near perfect film that did a pretty good job of tying up its loose ends. But not so good a job that it didn’t end up with a few too many sequels. So it’s a bittersweet experience to watch the clumsily re-shot scenes from The Terminator and hear familiar dialogue spoken in odd voices. The redo of [easyazon_link identifier=”B0037NVM2C” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Judgement Day[/easyazon_link] as the opening credits roll was a pale imitation of Linda Hamilton’s raspy, hate filled voice from T2. But then, this isn’t that…