I'm obviously not a pre-teen or a teenaged girl.  But when a boy whose voice hasn't changed yet sings a romantic song, all I can do is laugh.  A guy who sings soprano can't do love songs.  Justin Bieber, are listening?

That is all.

I'm watching the DVDs of Dexter, season 3.  And I'm yawning. 

Am I supposed to be shocked that Dexter's girlfriend is pregnant?  Fail!  Apparently birth control on television has a 5% success rate.  Just about everyone gets pregnant on TV.  (And may I say that it's really hard to believe that someone as meticulous as Dexter would use a condom incorrectly ever?)  When the writers run out of ideas for a relationship, they trot out the old "gonna have a baby" horse.

Dexter spends three episodes whining to himself about whether he'll be a good father or not and whether he should stay in Rita's life or not, and Rita agonizes over whether she should keep the baby or not.  Yawn.  We know Rita will have the baby and we know Dexter will help raise it.  It's a foregone conclusion.  Main characters in a TV series never get abortions--the Christian right might boycott, you see--and likeable protagonists don't ditch the preggie girlfriends.  It's all been done, nothing new.  The fact that Dexter is covering up a secret life doesn't add another dimension because we still know how it's going to come out.

Oh, and Dexter spends considerable time male-bonding with Jimmy Smits.  Gosh, that makes for riveting TV!

Isn't this show supposed to be about murder and police investigation and black humor?  The stuff that made me watch the first two seasons is conspicuously absent from this season.

Does it get better or should I chuck it?

From my brother's blog.  He's an advertising guy:

You cannot deny that food is extreme now. Extreme is the rule, nearly passé. Juice boxes, pizza crusts, nachos, chocolate beverages. All deliver – according to their packaging and marketing – a maximum explosion of mouth-blasting chow downness with every cheese-filled, bacon-packed, mega-sized mouthful. Today’s edibles are commonly ladled with illusory flavors like Taco Bell’s Volcano Double Beef Burrito and Burger King’s Angry Whopper with Angry Sauce. I have no point of reference for Angry Sauce. Is it extracted from the frothy fat rolls of an outraged Bariatric patient? We’ve become so imbued with flavor extremeness that today’s packaged food must top yesterday’s bombastic caricatures of sustenance in order to be noticed by a bored and spoiled populace of overeaters.

Rest at:

http://paulpiziks.blogspot.com/2009/08/extreme-is-new-regular.html

Michael Savage on NPR, of all places:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103819122

He's reacting to the fact that the UK banned him from entering over there because he's a promoter of hate speech.  He attacks host Neal Conant, then howls about the First Amendment (which has no jurisdiction in the UK, as Neal Conant eventually gently reminds him), then goes on a screed about a writer in the UK.  In the middle of all that, he screams about people needing to be "polite" about free speech even as he insults everyone around him.

Neal takes a caller, who barely gets half a sentence out before Savage calls the guy a "foaming lunatic" and "a nobody."  "I have more important things to do than talk to a person in pajamas somewhere in Iowa," he says.

"Then go do them," said Neal Conant.

Click.  Savage hung up.

This, you may remember, is the same guy who called autistic children brats.  Remember?  "In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent?  They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' "

There's no other way to interpret this.  Anyone who believes a word Savage says is a brainless idiot, a drooling hick, intolerant, stupid, idiotic, and more brain-dead than a dried worm on an August sidewalk.

A friend of mine is a Hollywood/entertainment reporter, which means he gets previews of a lot of stuff for free.  This includes the DVD of CAPRICA, the prequel to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.  He came over last night and we watched it.

Meh.

( Slightly Spoilery Review Behind the Cut ... )

The writing is decent.  It would have been better served on an entirely different concept and show.

TEACHER BOOKED IN CHILD'S DEATH

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/11/us/AP-Girl-in-Suitcase.html

This is one of the things I hate about the news media. This is a terrible thing to happen: an adult kidnaps and kills an eight-year-old girl. And what appears in the headline? Not that it's a murder, but that a TEACHER is involved. Except IT WASN'T A TEACHER. It was a SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. Sunday school teachers are NOT classroom teachers. They are volunteers from within the church. The headline should more accurately read CHURCH VOLUNTEER BOOKED IN CHILD'S DEATH. But, of course, hinting that a classroom teacher has murdered a child is a far more horrifying idea and will grab more eyes for the page.  Never mind that it's pandering, that it's inaccurate, that it's yellow journalism, that a fair number of people will read only the headline and think somewhere out there, a teacher is a murderer.  No, no.  Let's horrify and scare readers instead.

I thought the TIMES was supposed to be better than this.

Watch this video. It takes a moment to get moving, but stay with it:



Imagine running into this on your evening commute.

To me, it's a reminder that despite all the awful news you hear about, somewhere in the world, really wonderful things are happening, too.

Kala and I watched CASTLE because we're Nathan Fillion fans from FIREFLY and wanted to see what he was up to.  The show is a male version of MURDER, SHE WROTE--a mystery writer gets caught up solving real-world murders.  In this case, though, the writer is a smart-mouthed, hard-drinking womanizer.

The show was decent.  A little uneven.  The poker game scene with the other (real) myster writers was priceless.  It got a bit tiresome when ever single male character on the show turned out to be a smart ass.  I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE.  (I kept track because I noticed the tendency early on.)  But the show is fast and snappy and worth staying with.

DOLLHOUSE shows a man usiing a urinal when a secret agent sneaks up on him and grabs his shoulder.  Later, the agent tells the guy to wipe his shoes.

The same episode of DOLLHOUSE shows several men and women together in a community shower, completely unconcerned about the locker room atmosphere.  (We're supposed to think it's cool even as we're titillated.  We're not, thanks.)

A rerun of FRIENDS shows Joey wander into a restaurant bathroom, step up to the urinal, unzip, and hum to himself.

The latest BATTLESTAR GALACTICA shows Baltar shaving at the sink and holding a conversation with Starbuck, who is pooping on a nearby toilet.

Another episode of GALACTICA gives us Admiral Adama in his quarters, brushing his teeth with the foam gooshing around his mouth and dripping into the sink.

I've never seen an episode of ALLIE MCBEAL, but I've heard all about the shared mixed-gender restroom and the conversations held therein.

Can we get out of the bathroom, please?

I'm truly tired of scenes in TV shows and movies that show people peeing, pooping, and plastered with water in the bathroom.  It's not "cutting edge."  It's gross.  Do they think we viewers figure no one uses a bathroom in the future--or the present, for the matter--and we need to be reminded that the characters do?

I especially don't think science fiction shows that have shared-gender restroom facility are particularly "oooooo! futuristic."  I think they're adolescent.  And I think not trying hard enough.  There are many other areas of potential future culture to explore besides the bathroom facilities.

We saw WATCHMEN at the IMAX theater in Dearborn.  The 7:40 showing was totally sold out, but we'd bought advance tickets on-line.  The movie has been extensively reviewed in many places, so I won't give a full review here.  Instead I have comments:

--I liked it a lot.

--I wish it could have been done several years ago.  WATCHMEN is a period piece that becomes rather less relevant as time passes.

--Boy, they really made sure Doctor Manhatten was a . . . big boy, didn't they?  I'm trying to imagine the CGI team who worked on that.  Interesting, though, that it's taken a CGI-animated character (with an admittedly human base) to break the full-frontal nudity taboo for males.  (I don't count the short flashes that have shown up here and there.)  Women have been shown wandering across the silver screen in full-frontal for decades now, but WATCHMEN gave audiences the first real use of male nudity.

--Several of the reviews I read complained that the movie remained so close to the original source material that the movie was practically frozen or even embalmed.  Except these same reviewers howled that the movie 300 (by the same director) wandered from history and/or the original graphic novel and thereby made it less enjoyable.  Certain reviewers clearly want to use their platforms to do nothing but complain.

--The cameos of 80s personas were great!

--Rorschach was well done.  The prison scene was really good, and I like the way the parts with the prison psychologist were re-written.

This is extreeeemely funny! It's audio only, a description of a car accident.






Moral: don't mess with old ladies.

When I woke up this morning, a fresh, slippery coat of snow covered everything.  Wahhhh!  I was hoping the snow-less conditions would last at least a little longer.  Sniff.

Drove on down to the radio station and hooked up with Comrade Sarah and radio host Marjorie Bolgos.  We headed into the little studio, which had four puffy mics poking out from a round table and a producer sitting at a sound board.  I was a little nervous--I've only done radio once before, and that was several years ago--but it was a lot easier with Sarah there.

The producer cued Marj and we were off!  Marj focused on me first, and we talked about THE PLAGUE ROOM, my GHOST WHISPERER book (on sale now!), and media book writing in general.  Then things shifted over to Sarah and bookviewcafe.com (visit the site today!), and then we talked about publishing and writing in general, ending with a bit on autism.  Everything went very smoothly.

A very good interview session.

Sarah Zettel and I will be interviewed on Ann Arbor AM station 1290 AM WLBY this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. on their Lifestyles program.  We'll be talking about science fiction, writing, fandom, and anything else that comes up.  It'll be a call-in show, so people can also help give us something to talk about!  Give a listen!  You know it'll be anything but boring . . .

The boys love TOM AND JERRY.  The cartoon is =funny=.  Even taking into the occasional racist and sexist bits, it's very funny.  I think Sasha especially likes it because there's no dialogue to worry about.  The cartoon has aged extremely well.  Mackie has tracked it on the DVR and watches it whenever he can.

This season of 24 is . . . bad.  It's so bad, it's funny.  It's not the slightest, tiniest bit believable.  I mean, you always had to suspend a certain amount of disbelief to watch the show, but this season, you really have to hang your disbelief by the neck over a lava pit with weights on its feet.  I mean, really!

( Read more... )

Sigh.
 

The same day we connected our new VOIP landline, we started getting sales calls.  THE SAME DAY.  I registered with donotcall.gov before the phone was even turned on, but it takes them a while to get the number on the lists.

I've become a major fan of these people:

http://www.irrationalpublicradio.com/

They spoof NPR (and a whole lot of other stuff) in a style reminiscent of Monty Python.  Extremely funny!  Their podcasts are available free through iTunes, too.  Give 'em a listen!  Hilarious!

Hee!

My cousin Dave sent me this notice of Pixar's next project.  Wow!



Truly inspiring. Of what, I don't know.