About six months ago I joined the rest of the world and got a Smartphone. In December a hit and run driver slammed into my 2006 Grand Caravan. It was a minor wreck. I called the police and when I was done, I drove home. But that was it for the van. A car that had taken me all over the country. Totalled…as the insurance company that wrote me a check for six hundred dollars called it. Now my world is altered. I have things to think about. Choices to make. I decide that I need a newer car and…
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Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
Thor is a bit dim. Neil Gaiman is a great writer and a great reader. I love listening to his audio-books. Norse Mythology is a collection of tales from the legends of Odin, Thor, Loki, and countless lessor gods, giants, monsters, and whatnots. These are odd stories. Our Heroes are, for the most part, not nice people, not good people, and shocking very much like normal people. They are often hungry, they worry about growing old and dying, they are petty and jealous, and they are not to be trusted. But Neil doesn’t give them the bloody and gory treatment.…
Alien Covenant
For people who thought Prometheus made too much damned sense. spoilers Alien was a great horror movie. Aliens was a great action movie. The next three movies just sucked. Alien Covenant follows proudly in the tradition of Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, and Prometheus. It’s not so much that Alien Covenant sucked, as it just tells the same boring story as Prometheus. A group of Red Shirts land on a planet and die stupid and meaningless deaths. Oh yeah, and David is back and he’s still a bad guy. The setup is a colony ship, the Covenant, meets with an unfortunate…
Pres Trump and The 2nd US Civil War
Donald Trump being elected President is right up there with 9/11 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s shocking and baffling and a concentrated act of pure evil. Or maybe it’s more like the attack of Fort Sumter. The first shot in a new American Civil War. The media, for the most part, are talking about Trump’s plans and how difficult it would be for him to go through with them. They are still thinking of Donald Trump as a normal person, a normal President that will play by the rules. Donald Trump doesn’t have to play by the…
Revival by Stephen King
The genius of Stephen King is his ability to write in such a way that you feel as if he is talking to you across the dining room table. This time he seems to be talking directly to men of a certain age, somewhere between fifty and sixty, who share memories of the same TV Shows and the same popular music, among countless other things. I listened to the audiobook read by David Morse and he does a great job of reading the story of a man from Maine who loses his faith as a boy. We follow our hero…
Buddymoon
David is a struggling actor who is about to be married. Then his fiancee tells him that she has changed her mind. He’s bummed out about it, but his slightly insane friend Flula tries to cheer him up. Seems David had already paid for this cool hiking trip. So, the two of them go for a hike. The actor and his nutty German buddy. David is also up for a big part, as the lead in the story of explorers Lewis and Clark. There is a running gag where our hero narrates a bit of the story of Lewis and…
The Lobster
The first thing we see is a woman take a gun into a field and kill a donkey. Then we watch a group of people being processed at The Hotel. They are given a list of rules. They have their clothes taken away. Then they spend some time talking about what kind of animal they would like to become if they fail to find a suitable partner before the end of their stay. Our hero, such as he is, says he would like to be a lobster. Good choice, he is told, too many people choose things like dogs and…
Westworld 1973
It’s been a while since I watched Westworld. I had forgotten that it was written and directed by Michael Crichton. I was suprised by the many similarities to Jurrasic Park. It starts with oohing and aahing and ends with running and screaming. Westworld was made in 1973 and the big name stars were Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, and James Brolin. It’s a baffling film to watch now. The effects are bad to really bad. The writing is clunky and awkward. The acting is wooden and embarrassed. And it’s a pretty short film, only an hour and a half long. The…
Talk Like TED
Carmine Gallo has found nine things successful TED Talks have in common and he shares his insights on how to use these nine secrets in your own presentations. TED, for those who have been living under a rock, is a conference where famous and not so famous people give short presentations. One of TED’s rules is that a talk can’t be longer than 18 minutes. This is one of the Nine Secrets Carmine shares, keep it short. He also says to have a Tweetable Headline. Keep your title under 140 characters. He goes on to mention several titles that are…
Hulu’s 11.22.63
Spoilers. It’s always a bittersweet experience when a beloved book is translated into a film, or in this case, a miniseries. Stephen King’s 11.22.63 was a very long book with a lot of small details. So it is not really surprising that whole swaths of the book are left out. Right off the bat there is the odd casting choice of James Franco as Jake Epping, a man from Maine who travels back in time to 1958. This is odd, because while everyone remember black racism in the good old days, they don’t always remember the racism against Hispanics. The…