Notes from a bibliophile

Last month American Vandal was one of the shows I blogged about that was coming out in September that I really wanted to see. I binged it this weekend and so here's what I thought. First, let me explain what this is on the surface. American Vandal is a mockumentary spoofing the recent multitude of true crime shows (a few more of which are coming to networks this fall). True crime as a genre (across all media) seems to be on the rise, maybe since Ann Rule published The Stranger Beside Me about her friend, serial killer Ted Bundy. Our fascination with true  crime goes much further back, I suppose to when Jack the Ripper was terrorizing Whitechapel, but now with TV and movies, we seem to be reaching a glut in the market. It is, therefore, the perfect time for a parody. The story is about Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro). Dylan is not the sharpest crayon in the box. He's continually disruptive in class, and he and his stoner friends make ridiculously awful YouTube videos. He als...

Well, it's been awhile again. I keep telling myself that I'm going to write more on here, but I never seem to follow through. I have been writing though, it's just not something I'm confident enough to share yet (or ever). But now that that little project is done, and it's almost a new month, I'm going to write about the things that I'm really looking forward to next month. This fall seems to be packed with stuff I want to watch, almost more so than the summer. The first thing I'm anticipating is Bladerunner 2049 . I love the original, and this looks like it retains that film's style and visuals. It's one of the films I've been looking forward to for a really long time. I just hope that Denis Villaneuve doesn't let me down the way Luc Besson did with Valerian . That comes out on October 6th. Also on the 6th is The Mountain Between Us . I love Idris Elba. Kate Winslet's good too, but IDRIS!! It looks pretty intense. Idris is a doct...

This article was originally published on another website, but I'm placing it here for posterity. It's taken me a while to come to grips with the fact that I'm a nerd. It's not always the best niche to find yourself in when you're in high school. So when I saw the ads for Chuck , I was thrilled on a number of levels. First, I remembered the lead actor, Zachary Levi, from another sitcom called Less  Perfect . Second, his character Chuck Bartowski works in retail, and ever since Clerks came out, I love finding anything that shows what a retail worker goes through. And the theme song is by one of my favorite bands, Cake. Sold! Chuck is your basic every-nerd, spending his nights playing Call of Duty and his days working an underpaying job that he's way overqualified for. Change Call of Duty to Sid Meier's Civilization and Chuck is me. Everyone wants to see themselves represented in the media, and that's no different for nerd culture. At the time, we w...

I finally finished a book with no pictures. Holy cow, I sure didn't think I'd do that this year, the way I've been going. But I'm not surprised it's Hornby that's broken my funk; I'm surprised it's a book about music. Anybody with a passing familiarity with Nick Hornby knows he is a music fan. Perhaps that's putting it lightly really. Hornby seems to be a music fan the way people are fans of oxygen. He knows his shit and it works its way into a lot of his novels. I am not a music fan to this level. That's not to say I don't like music; I love it. But I don't breathe it the way Hornby does. I'm not even sure I would be classified as an enthusiast. I'm like the John Cleese character from a Monty Python sketch that says, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." This book is a series of short essays about just that, songs that Hornby likes. Songs that meant something to him at some point in his life. It...