- Presenting The Human Centipede Video Game. Warning: will spoil the movie (which in turn may spoil your appetite) and possibly your enjoyment of the original Centipede game.
- Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes really do have great chemistry together. It’s almost enough to forgive their shared bathtub scene in Insurrection. They’re refreshingly candid and engaged.
- Meanwhile, I am not immune to the cuteness of the sloth.
- Juliette Wade on teeth in science fiction [via]
- And finally, ever wonder what happens in Disneyland after dark? (And no, it’s not that Cory Doctorow scales the fence and performs his technomagic in the forgotten recesses of Tomorrowland…although, can you prove that he doesn’t?) [via]
tv
Gales fully spanged
Time to spang my gales and write a quick recap of what did today on my day off. Except I spent the day doing mostly the same sort of thing I did all weekend, which is really nothing much. I watched last night’s Lost series finale first thing on my iPad. (I tried watching it on my laptop, but I wound up with a virus I had to clean up, and ABC’s player app is actually really good.) I don’t really have a lot more to say about it than the very little I said about it here. Except for the AV Club’s write-up, I’ve been pretty much avoiding reviews of the episode, preferring instead just to have enjoyed it. At some point, I think I’ll revisit the commentary, just as I plan at some point to revisit the series in its entirety, but for now, I’m just amazed the show is actually over. I don’t think I’m going to go into crazy withdrawal (thanks Betty), but I will miss the show. It really was like nothing else on television. (And the few shows, like FlashForward, that have tried to be like it have mostly only adopted the superficial elements. It was never about the mystery, but about the characters those mysteries happened to.)
Okay, maybe I had a little more to say about it. But, for now anyway, that’s it.
Other than that, I spent the day mostly just lounging about, reading some, trying to get caught up on Kaleidotrope slush submissions. I think I only have a couple of stories still hanging around since February, but those couple really do need to get read right away. I try to keep my response time down to a month or two if at all possible.
It’s back to work tomorrow, for a grueling four-day week.
Monday various
- It probably should come as no surprise, but I’m pretty much in complete agreement with Noel Murray about last night’s Lost finale. “These are the new myths. Now it’s up to us to misinterpret them.” I liked the episode a whole lot.
- Meanwhile, Terry Pratchett is maybe a little harsher than I would be about Doctor Who and the title character’s deus ex machinations. I’m not entirely convinced there’s real value in rigidly defining science fiction and fantasy this way. (And, unlike him, “Small Worlds” is one of my least favorite Torchwood episodes.) But he makes some good points, while still happy to enjoy the show for what it is. [via]
- Speaking of Doctor Who, here’s an interesting take on The Comparative Lives of the Doctor.
- Here’s a scary thought from the New York Times:
Ask a first grader to identify Bugs Bunny and the response more likely than not will be a blank stare.
- And finally, Neil Gaiman on Ray Bradbury [via]:
So when the wind blows the fallen autumn leaves across the road in a riot of flame and gold, or when I see a green field in summer carpeted by yellow dandelions, or when, in winter, I close myself off from the cold and write in a room with a TV screen as big as a wall, I think of Ray Bradbury . . .
In which I plan a 3-day weekend, watch TV, write this post
Today is Friday. Yep, no doubt about that.
It was a quick week, all things considered, and I keep finding it tough to believe that it’s almost the end of May already. Somewhere, maybe in the week my mom was sick with pneumonia — she’s back at work and feeling better, by the way — I think I lost a couple of days.
I’m taking one of them back on Monday, taking an impromptu three-day weekend. It’s mostly because I have the days and not a whole lot to do with them. (I’m still mulling over the idea of an honest to goodness vacation before the end of the year.) And it may seem a little silly, but the day off will give me a chance to watch the series finale of Lost, which I probably won’t get a chance to watch live on Sunday.
Tonight, I watched the series finale of House, and I just don’t know. I think if the show didn’t have an actor as strong as Hugh Laurie at its center, it would just fall apart. Zach Handlen neatly sums up pretty much everything I felt about the episode, and he does so remarkably well. This part contains a pretty huge spoiler for the episode, so be forewarned. I just think it’s some great and insightful writing:
The truth is, that’s how it works. The benefit we get from decency isn’t something that can be demonstrated by flat algebra. It isn’t a barter system. Having Cuddy show up at the end is too easy, because it’s what we all want when we’re alone and afraid and miserable. We want the person we love but can’t have to show up at our door and change everything, and that’s not how life works, and we deserve better than to be lied to by shows like this that pretend to dig deeper.
You know what else had some really great writing? Last night’s season finale of Community. “Do you try to evolve, or do you try to know what you are?” I’m just saying.
Saturday
Let’s see what I did today.
I mailed out a couple of issues of Kaleidotrope to new subscribers, although I can’t shake the feeling that I did so earlier in the week and just forgot to make a note of it. If that’s the case, a couple of people are getting an extra copy of Issue #6 — an issue which, as it happens, is proving to be maybe my most popular back issue thus far. It’s a good issue, make no mistake. It’s got Heather‘s short story, “Replicate Fade,” for starters, which Locus quite liked. And there’s a story in it from the very recently Nebula-award-nominated* Rachel Swirsky…who, as it happens, also has another story in the upcoming, am-I-really-doing-an-issue-in-July July issue of the zine.
I went to the bank.
I watched this week’s episode of Community, and enjoyed it enough that I decided to re-watch last week’s incredible paintball episode.
I went to see Iron Man 2 with friends. It was just like the first Iron Man movie, only less so…in a more-so kind of way. It’s entertaining enough, but it does feel a little overcrowded with details for sequels and spinoffs and other Marvel properties. They really do seem to be pushing this Avengers movie, as if it were really happening and not just a lot of talk that’s contingent on a lot of other things falling into place. Like the Thor movie doing well, like the Captain America movie getting made, like people forgetting how lousy the Ed Norton Hulk movie was, et cetera. As long as it’s got Robert Downey, Jr., at the heart of it, Iron Man is a lot of fun but I do wish they’d pared down a few of the bit players and cameos. (Except for Stan Lee’s, that is. The man does seem almost clinically insane sometimes on his Twitter feed, but I loved his very brief cameo in Iron Man 2. Excelsior!)
I mowed the front lawn.
I watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who and liked it quite a bit.
And that’s about it. Doesn’t seem like a whole lot when you add it all up like this, but it was a pretty good day altogether.
* The awards are are being simulcast as I write this.