First, a bit about LAST week. Playing for Keeps, the superhero podcast, came to a thunderous end last Thursday. If you’ve been hesitating to start it, wanting to wait until it was done, well, it’s done, so enjoy.
Drew and I went to see Jumper Saturday. It doesn’t have much to do with the book. Among the things we don’t find out are: how people can have a high speed teleporting car race through the center of Tokyo without anyone noticing, what happened to the other Jumper, how many Jumpers are there, why don’t their paladins wear plate armor, why don’t you always make some false jumps to throw off the trail before making your final jump so psycho paladins with machines that can open the jump scars you leave can’t follow you, why don’t Jumpers get wealthy by “jump” starting a new business teleporting people and goods around (as the ‘jumpers’ in Kevin O’Donnell Jr.’s “McGill Feighan” books did). After awhile, the movie ends somewhere in the middle of the story.
I did like the original Stephen Gould book, though. I haven’t read the sequel.
The writer’s strike is over, but we won’t be seeing new episodes of anything soon. Heroes has been picked up for a third season, which means, no more Heroes until the fall.
American Idol is down to their top 24 and I’m not really excited by many. I felt too many of last year’s contestants showed no spark of originality in them at all, the winner included. At least Blake Lewis reinvented Bon Jovi in an amazing way, but that turned out to be a fluke. I’ll still be watching, even though the whole idea of a showcase for amateur singers, somewhat bent last year by two professional backup singers, and now destroyed by people who have been successful professional singers in the past, kinda makes me wonder if the show has lost its reason to exist.
Tuesday is Jericho. Last week, the US Army, Cheyenne version, came and quieted the war between Jericho and New Berm. Because I am borderline retarded, it didn’t occur to me until I rewatched it that the whole series is about 9/11. Well, DUH! you scream. You figured that out from the first commercial break from the very first show last year. Me, well, it took me a little longer.
What if the government was using a terrorist attack in order to have an excuse to turn the US into a totalitarian nation? And instead of waiting for an appropriate attack, made one of its own?
*insert paranoid 9/11 conspiracy theories here*
Just because you’re paranoid, remember, doesn’t mean they’re not after you.
Anyway, moving on to Thursday, and Lost. Last week, we learned that Sayid, in the future, off the island, becomes a paid assassin for evil “Other”, Ben. Wha-HUH? Butbutbut… Yeah, we know Ben can leave the island whenever he wants. The boat people want Ben. Everyone wants Ben. Who the hell IS he? Thursday, you’ll find me in front of the TV.
No more Battlestar Galactica or Doctor Who until next month. Grrr. I want them now.
I finished Perdido Street Station over the weekend. So what to read next… well, Amazon sent me a little letter wondering if I might enjoy reading Iain M. Banks’ “Matter”? Well, of COURSE I would. I also got “Feersum Enjin” again; that book was a victim to my Great Monterey Book Purge and I hope is enriching some library patron’s life back there. I could have sworn I kept back all my Banks books, but apparently not, and I have been slowly buying them all a second time.
In between, I’m rereading some older books. Midway through Julian May’s Pliocene/time travel/psychic elves from space epic, “The Many-Coloured Land”. I was such a big fan of this series back in the day. I even wrote a filk song about it. Oh yes, I was a HUGE filker. All I can remember now is the chorus: “The Pliocene is a lonely place without you, Genevieve.”
I would love to have all my old writings. I think I stored them on those Bernoulli disks I have in a box, but I remember I password protected them, lord knows why, and now I have no idea what the password is. Or how the heck to read a Bernoulli disk. That was formatted for the Mac SE/30. So: because I wrote on the computer, all my songs and unpublished stories are gone, gone, gone. Well, the stories weren’t that great. I’m a better writer now.
Probably going to the Bronx next weekend, so not much gaming or TV watching. Well, there will be Guitar Hero, I think 🙂 And whatever Korean soaps Genj has for us. But there may be something happening with Drew Tuesday which could shake up all those plans, so who knows?
9 thoughts on “Jumper, TV, books, music and stuff this week.”
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Oh, forgot to talk about music. I am a doodie-head. Heard a song — “The Story” — by a fairly new singer named Brandi Carlile. Amazing. Look her up. I bought the song from Amazon.
I too enjoyed the Julian May books- did you read the 5 prequels?
Yup. And her Blood Trillium suff. I see by Wikipedia that she’s written stuff more recently; I think I may need to look it up.
The filming style of Jumper made me feel like i myself was jumping around, which was cool. Also Christensen’s lines were as short as possible, which was ideal for the movie’s overall quality.
I have zero problems with the special effects — they were fantastic, perfect — incredible. But that’s all it was. I don’t mind them changing the original story, most adaptations do that, and books and movies are two different beasts and what works for one may not work for the other. I GET that.
But at least, couldn’t the new story have been exciting or at least complete? Nothing gets resolved! The number one thing you do in a story is resolve SOMETHING at least. I dunno. I guess I want the rest of the movie, and also, have more of a plot than “main character runs away from bad guy”.
Jumper was interesting enough that I didn’t feel like I had been robbed out of my 10$ at the theater. Plus I had no idea about the original Stephen Gould novel so now I got something new to read on my list.
On the subject of new television it sucks that half the shows aren’t coming back until the fall. I swear I hate it when tv executives complain about lower ratings during the summer and claim that there’s no reason to release new programming until the fall. What do they think we’re all out harvesting the crops? I guess it hasn’t occured to them that the ratings drop because there is nothing new. I mean look at how many original cable shows come out during the summer to take advantage of this old fashion and retarded policy.
Oh I went to metacritic.com and look up the TV 2007 Fall category and discovered the show Pushing Daisies. I’d highly recommend it especially to anyone who like Dead Like Me or Wonderfalls. Its sort of like if Tim Burton directed that movie Amelie only he threw in bits of Scooby Doo to keep guys entertained. Sounds weird but it works.
I watched a couple episodes of Pushing Daisies but couldn’t figure out where they were going with it. It was sweet, but not enough to make me remember when it was on. I can only remember when two or three shows a week are on.
I should get a VCR or something I guess.
Oh yeah, read yesterday that the 4th season of Doctor Who will be on American TV the day after it airs in Britain, or at most a couple days later. So that’s something.
That’s great news. I was getting tired of having to download Doctor Who every week after it aired in Britain. The science in it is almost as bad as Eureka but sometimes it just does classic episodes like “Blind” which makes me forget about how a sonic screwdriver can apparently fix anything.
My cable service offers a DVR box for like 9$ extra a month and I use it to catch any show that might be interesting. I’d recommend DVR over a VCR any day of the week though they can both be a pain in the ass to program sometimes.
Blink is the only Dr. Who episode from last season I have watched more than once. But I’ve made up for that by watching it a bunch of times. Well, I watched “Time Crash” a couple of times because it was cool seeing David Tennant and Peter Davison (Doctor #5) together. (“Time Crash” was a very short mini-episode made for a telethon that deals with the Tardis colliding and merging with a past version of itself piloted by an earlier incarnation of the Doctor. It fits in just before the Christmas special in continuity, and the very last scene in the last episode of season 3 would take place seconds AFTER it.)
Any DVR I’d get has to be able to stream videos from my server, as well as record and all that. The Xbox 360 can kinda do that with SOME videos, but it has problems with others, and I have to transfer them to my Vista laptop first because it refuses to have anything to do with Linux.
I might just give up on that and get a Tivo. With my son away in the military for the next few months, probably years, the TV won’t be constantly used for video games so I may watch more of it.