I thought I could make a dent in some of my shows
with this vacation, but the internet connection is not the greatest. But just because I can’t take full advantage
of Netflix right now is no reason to despair of my TV habit. After a couple years of hearing my mom rave
about it, I finally got to watch our family friend’s DVD collection of Burn Notice.
The spy story is a close cousin to the heist story,
and I love a good heist. I love watching
a team of colorful characters who normally would have nothing to do with each
other, force themselves to cooperate long enough to get a job done. I love the planning, I love watching the
execution, seeing how they have to improvise, and the little victory dance they
do at the end (I’ve never seen anybody do a dance, but that would be a nice
touch.)
Michael Westen is a burned CIA spy, meaning that
he’s been kicked out, had all his bank accounts and assets frozen, dumped in
Miami, and been left to fend for himself.
To make his way, he takes on clients (generally regular folks) who are
in way over their heads and need his particular expertise to get out of their
situations. He’s got his ex-girlfriend
(and her amazing arsenal of guns and explosives), a friend who used to inform
on him, and his mom (not trained in any spy capacity at all, but she’s more
capable than even she lets on.)
Each episode is very self-contained. They get the job and you get to watch the job
get completed, and always with Michael’s amusing asides, little narrations
explaining why spies do the things they do and how to complete them. You can start anywhere in the series and get
a satisfying story on completing for the client. But you also get to see the larger story
unfold, as Michael slowly solves the mystery of why he got burned and his
entanglements with the conspiracy that’s continually ruining his life.
It’s a lot of fun and is ruining my life by being so
hard to walk away from.
***
I haven’t wasted my entire vacation watching
TV. I’ve spent the rest of the time
finishing four books. Four books in one
week! It’s been a long while since I
made time for that.
A few of them are on the Must Reads list, and I’ve
been happy to knock those out. One was a
sheer impulse read. I found Contrary to Popular Belief by Joey
Green. It purports to expose more than
250 beliefs society holds that are flat out wrong, and they’re pretty
interesting… for the most part.
For example, George Washington is technically the
ninth president of the United States.
However, nobody remembers the first eight because they were presidents
under the Articles of Confederation while Washington was the first president
under the Constitution.
A lot of these would be known if people would just
look them up at the source. Like Noah
and the ark, it wasn’t two beasts of every kind; it was seven pairs of clean
beasts (for sacrifice) two of unclean, and seven pairs of fowl. Put together like that, the ark feels more
crowded than before.
Others are just fun.
Cooties are actually real. They’re body lice that spread typhus. I had no idea. I just thought it was an easy way to keep
elementary boys and girls from touching each other.
And then there were some that made me smack my head
and think, I should have known better. I
had a post a few months back on a cute children’s book I found, How They Croaked. The book said and I passed along that
caesarean sections were named after Julius Caesar, because that’s how he came
into the world. Not true. He was not a C-section baby, and the term lex caesarea (law of incision) pre-dates
from as early as the 7th century BCE. It’s something I should have been more
skeptical about, and I’m glad Joey Green set me straight.
But I don’t feel completely terrible, because I can
fact check him on one page. He said that
in the novel Frankenstein,
Frankenstein names the monster Adam whereas he never names the monster in the
film. Not true. Frankenstein never names the monster at
all. The monster calls himself “the Adam
of your labors” and makes another symbolic reference to his creation as the
Adam of Frankenstein later, but that’s never actually his name.
Okay, so that was just a quibble. It’s still a great little book. I haven’t had as much fun reading a fact book
since Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of
Ordinary Things by Charles Panati—which is still one of the best books I’ve
ever read. That goes in my personal list
of books everybody should read before they die.
***
I’m very fussy about my entertainment and comedy more
than most. There are few things more
unpleasant than sitting through a series of jokes that are supposed to be funny
but are instead lame. And this more true
in writing than anything else.
Terry Pratchett has been the king of satire for
years. I seriously believe to be the
funniest author living still.
I used to have Dave Barry to look forward to. He was half the reason that I still read the
newspaper until he decided to move on and leave the paper soulless. Fortunately, he’s had plenty of books out.
And, of course, there’s Douglas Adams, although his
stories got more disappointing the longer that time went on.
Still, out of everything I read, you’d think I’d
have a bigger pool of humorists to recommend.
That just hasn’t been the case.
Until I found David Sedaris. I’ve been familiar with the name for over a
year. His books took up over a shelf on
the Essay bay in Barnes & Noble and there were constant customers buying his
book. Over my break, I decided to give Me Talk Pretty One Day a shot… and I laughed
till I cried.
Not all of his essays are created equally, but his
writing is so crisp and clear that you move through it fast. The first half of the essays are about his
family life and education, from dealing with a speech therapist in elementary school,
to growing up with his dad’s obliviousness, to the problems with drugs in art
school. The second half is what life was
like moving to France and the woes of learning the language. I’m surprised he never killed his French
teacher.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the rest of his
bibliography.
***
Because I don’t read enough, I’m always on the
lookout for more and webcomics fills a daily need. My latest three discoveries are:
Sandra
and Woo by Powree and Oliver Knörzer. Sandra is 8-10 (I’m guessing) girl who lives
with her widower father, and Woo is her pet talking raccoon. Naturally, she’s the only one he’ll speak
to. I would have loved to see this comic
in the newspapers when I was a kid. I
would have been as attached to these characters as I ever was to Calvin,
Hobbes, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and everybody in the Garfield gang. It is
delightful.
Star
Power by Michael Terracciono and Garth Graham. I put off reading this one, because Terracciono’s
Dominic Deegan became so
disappointing halfway through its run. Star Power, though, has such an
intriguing premise: a superheroine in space, and this time, it’s Graham doing
the artwork.
Run
Freak Run by Silver Saaremael and Kaija Rudkiewicz. It’s a medieval graphic novel set in
Spain. I’m tempted to label this one a
horror, where the main character is an Inquisitor who has a creepier background
than she at first appears.
Well, I'm glad I never used that C-section bit of trivia in conversation. ;)
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