Category Archives: movies, tv, music, books, …

Occasional reviews and other thoughts about entertainment

best of 2009: coming to a screen near me

I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.

I haven’t posted in the challenge lately because I don’t have good picks for the topics from the past week and a half. But I do have something to write about today.

December 30 — Ad. What advertisement made you think this year?

I don’t pay attention to advertisements all that much. I usually ignore them on television and I skip over ads in magazines and generally ignore them on the Internet. But I do try to see promo spots for new and favorite TV shows and I try to catch the preview for the next episode of shows I’m watching. I don’t mind spoilers all that much (I can’t really complain too much about them: I often skim the ending of a book after reading some of it…might sound nuts to you but it’s what I’ve been doing for decades. I read slowly and I’ll get to some good part and want to know now what will happen, not wait ’til I reach it. So I start skimming and suddenly, I’ve skipped to the end. Rest assured, I still go back and read the whole book. But that’s not the point here, is it).

My best of 2009 advertisements are fun things: commercials for TV shows. Some were just well done — Dexter comes to mind — and some were welcome announcements that a good show was returning would soon be back, such as My Boys and Eureka. And then there were the ads promoting a new show, USA Network’s White Collar. They intrigued me and I am a fan of the show now. So they worked :-).

But I have to say, the best promotional ads for the past few years have been most of those for USA Network’s show Psych. The cast there clearly has fun doing their ads and “psych outs” and they are always a hoot. I will stop fast forwarding and even back up a recorded show just to see their ads. Doesn’t hurt that I find the show a lot of fun, too.

Hmm, I have more to write but I think I’ll go relax with a bit of TV now….

best of 2009: music

I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.

Today we come to December 10 — Album of the year. What’s rocking your world?

There’s an implication that I should be writing about music that was released this year or failing that, music I discovered this year. Trouble is, I haven’t been listening to new music that I can name. Sure, I’ve heard new songs this year, and some have been great, but I have very poor memory for music and artists and I can’t name them now.

Recently though, I rediscovered and renewed just playing music and that is rocking my world.  Last month, I finally installed an MP3 package (aka Amarok) on my work system and I’ve started putting my CD collection on the machine.  And I’m playing it.  I’ve also started listening to more albums in the car.  This might all seem like nothing to you, but it’s a change in my world and it’s a good one.

The music is mostly old.  But if  you must know, the albums I’ve started with are: True Stories by Talking Heads, Life’s Hard and Then You Die by It’s Immaterial, The First Songs by Laura Nyro, Everything’s Different Now by Til Tuesday, The Bobby Darin Story, and a lot more.  I have a lot of CDs to convert to MP3.  But no worries…getting there is more than half the fun.

best of 2009: devoted reading

I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.

Ever since I saw the list and started just thinking about trying this challenge. I’ve been wondering what to say for today’s question:December 4 – Book. Gwen fleshes this one out by asking: “What book – fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?

I read for pleasure, to relax, not specifically for inspiration or insight. Even the occasional non-fiction book I read is for fun (math can be fun, people). That doesn’t mean I don’t connect with my reading material, but it’s not my goal. So what this boils down to is that I’ve picked a book I think is great, but that’s not because it moved me on some deep level. It’s because it was a pleasure to read and I was sorry when I finished it.

I’m a big fan of the TV series Dexter, about a serial serial-killer killer. At some point, a year or two ago, I learned that the show is based on novels by Jeff Lindsay. This spring I read the first three books of the series: Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, and Dexter in the Dark . The middle book is my best of 2009.

The first book is very good and was exciting to read. I like the book on its own and also enjoyed comparing it to the show. But the second book was a thrill to read. It’s very dark and very disturbing, which is not what I usually like, but it’s so well done, I didn’t care. I don’t think I was inspired or enlightened by this book (if I was, I need help :-), but It isn’t just mind candy, read and forgotten immediately. It stuck with me a while, as a good book should.

You know….just writing this post makes me think about reading it again.

best of 2009: not high art, but …

I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.

So today we have: December 3 — Article.…. Gwen asks for the one that “blew you away.”

Gotta confess: I don’t read that much onscreen. It feels wrong and bothers my eyes a lot…plus I don’t like to read sitting up most of the time and I don’t have a computerly setup to use to read lounging around. I read news stories and work related sites at the office and I look at links sent by friends for fun stuff. But I don’t travel the web a lot, going from site to site, blog to blog. I’ve been doing it more and more lately, but still not a lot.

I thought of a few articles that stood out this year, inspiring me, making me think and act and laugh and cry, but they just weren’t the single standout webpage find of 2009.

The one thing that did blow me away was finding a video of something I think about often, but hadn’t seen for way too long. It’s the opening credits of the TV show Cupid, the original version starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall. I loved that show. I know it’s not high art and these days I don’t think it’s the best show ever made. But I enjoyed it; no, I savored it, and to this day I miss it. I bought the Pretenders album Viva el Amor! and memorized the song Human which was used in the opening. And one day at work this summer, I was looking at a Youtube link someone had emailed and in a moment of inspiration I searched for and found Cupid. Ahhhhhh. Now if they would just collect the series on DVD, I’d buy it in a second.

Here’s the link to the page on Youtube, though you might not enjoy this as much as I do :-):

Youtube - Cupid - Intro

Youtube - Cupid - Intro

musically squeaking

I’m not musical. I can’t carry a tune, I can’t count music, and I’m tone deaf. I’m not just saying this: I learned enough to read sheet music in school, but I can’t reproduce it picking on a piano or even in my mind, unless it’s a song I already know. And even then, the beat will be off and if I’m “singing” it, the tune will be off to anyone who hears me. I’ve been asked to stop singing along sometimes because I’m so bad. I also can’t dance very well, probably related to not getting the beat. And I have horrible music memory. I’m good at video trivia, often considered the reference among my friends when trying to think of who played what part in a movie or tv show, even ones I haven’t seen. But I generally can’t recall titles or artists for songs, and it takes me a while to learn a song.

But I enjoy music. I listen to a varied assortment of musical styles and artists. I like concerts. I love movie musicals, even the old kind where they all just burst into song. And I sing along with my albums and the radio when I’m alone. I also know how to pick out the notes on a keyboard. I never studied piano and I can’t play with both hands and all that. I just pick out tunes. One of my treasures is an old toy piano someone gave me in college so I could “play” songs.

I haven’t studied music and I don’t know what makes a well written piece musically. I tend to initially judge a song by the melody and ignore most lyrics at first. I still prefer a song to music without lyrics, though. I can’t explain why I prefer one song or one artist over another very well; I just know I do. I’ve been told I’m wrong, too. But I’m not wrong. I really do like this song and not that song. It’s not wrong. Maybe I have no taste, but I’m not wrong. :-)

It’s a little weird, my lack of music ability. One of my aunts is a concert pianist and other family members have a lot of talent, too. I used to be upset about not having musical ability, but it is what it is. And I enjoy it in the ways that I can. And if I want to sing out, I sing out…at least when I’m not bothering anyone else.