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...

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...

My dad was a huge sci-fi fan. Isaac Asimov was his favorite author. We saw every iteration of Star Wars that hit the theatre. I can't describe how amazing it was to see A New Hope on the big screen for the first time. Even the times Lucas fiddled with it don't bother me. Nothing will ever dampen your first love. We also loved Star Trek . I honestly never thought of them as belonging to two separate camps. They were just two stories I loved, two sides of the same geeky coin. I know the arguments that one is science based and the other is more faith based, for lack of a better term. People have put these two works of entertainment up as icons in the ever-going battle between science and religion. If that's so, perhaps I am of a third group, a group that doesn't find science and religion so incompatible. Maybe I'm a minority. My dad and I would gather around the TV set to watch the re-runs every week. It was one of the few fond memories I have with my dad. A lull...

A new month is just around the corner. Soon leaves will be falling along with the temperatures. Pumpkin spice everything is already on the menus. And Halloween candy is already on the shelves. With the fall comes a whole slew of films that I'm itching to see. Here's what's coming out in September that I'll try to catch eventually. On September 15th, Netflix has a series called American Vandal . It's a parody of the investigative/true crime television drama. It takes place in a high school where someone goes through the parking lot drawing dicks on everyone's car. It's sort of Making A Murderer but with penises. It looks juvenile and hilarious as hell. Also on Netflix September 15th is the Angelina Jolie directed First They Killed My Father . This feature length film is based on a memoir about a young girl living in Cambodia in 1975 during the rise of the Khmer Rouge. It might be difficult to watch, since these are children, but it's also something t...

In the continuing quest to break myself out of my reading funk, I found this graphic novel on the shelves at my local library. Being a small branch it doesn't have a lot to offer. Mostly I have to know what I'm looking for and then request it from another branch. I know libraries need to purge occasionally, but it would be nice if they wouldn't purge the first volumes of series. However, maybe it makes it possible to have these standalone novels, so like with everything in life, compromise is the key. This is the story of a young boy. When he was born he was sickly, but his dad was a doctor. Apparently at the time, the medical community thought that x-rays were some sort of cure-all for many diseases, so dad treated his son in what was, at the time, the proscribed treatment. No one knew the consequences. Years later he suddenly develops a growth on his neck. They leave it for years, thinking it's just a cyst and that it would go away. Eventually he underwent two surge...

I have been a Netflix subscriber for many years, and honestly I'm really impressed with the quality of their originals. I've become a fan of Grace and Frankie, House of Cards, The Ranch, Travelers, The OA, Stranger Things, and probably some others I've forgotten. So when I get an alert that they're releasing a new original, my ears perk up a bit. It could still be crap, but I'll at least give it the benefit of the doubt. They just released a feature-length original called What Happened to Monday. It begins by preying on a lot of fears. Overpopulation produces a worldwide food shortage. Switching to GMOs helps alleviate that shortage, but has the unexpected side effect of boosting fertility, which again, puts a stress on the food supply. To counterbalance this, the government enacts a strict one child policy. Any family with more than one child has to give up the extra so that they can be put into cryosleep, suspended animation until the time comes when they are ab...