So this week I was reading The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, AKA This Is Not A Harry Potter Book Even Though It’s About a College of Magic and References Quidditch.
Teaser Tuesday: “The Magicians”
Category: TV Shows
Technical Support, Mandalorian-Style
So a while back I mentioned that, a year or two after everybody else, I had started watching The Mandalorian on Disney+, and that I had hoped my wife would like it, since she had, unexpectedly, been a fan of the late, lamented, sabotaged-by-Fox Firefly, not to mention the film Pitch Black; so there’s a precedent for her enjoying the Space Western* genre. Sadly, she tuned out The Mandalorian almost immediately, other than her recently-noted strong objection to the characterization of the Frog Lady as a “Frog”. But then there was this scene, at the beginning of a recent episode, after the Mandalorian’s has sustained major damage, requiring Baby Yoda** to be dispatched into, let’s call it a Jefferies Tube, so that the Mandalorian*** can talk him through a minor wiring repair. How does that go? About as well as you would think.
Continue reading “Technical Support, Mandalorian-Style”What Does The Frog Say?
Does it say “Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding”? No, that’s what the fox says, apparently. The frog mostly says things that nobody can understand. But at least the subtitles are there to clarify things, so we can definitively answer this question. What does the frog say when she meets the Mandalorian? She speaks frog.
A Review of the Not A Review of “WandaVision”
So a few weeks ago I mentioned that my wife had been watching the Disney+ superhero series WandaVision with me. Sadly, this only lasted for the first three-and-a-half episodes; in episode four, the action shifted to what was going on outside of the retro, sometimes black-and-white world of Westview, starting off with … Oh, wait, hang on. For those who haven’t seen Infinity War and Endgame or, for that matter, all of WandaVision:
Not A Review Of “The Mandalorian” and “WandaVision”
So recently, mainly as a result of a series of mixups about changing out hardware, we became aware that our local cable company had altered their pricing bundles:
Meaning that it was now possible to cancel the cable portion without having the price of the Internet and land line* portions jacked up so high that the price was basically the same as if we hadn’t canceled cable. Given that we don’t actually watch very much cable—many of the shows I used to watch, such as Into the Badlands and Preacher, have been canceled or died of natural causes, while others, such as Doctor Who, Resident Alien, and Battlebots, are on hiatus—we decided to go ahead and cut that particular cord, thus freeing up close to $200 a month. (Yes, I know, everyone else did this five or ten years ago.)
Continue reading “Not A Review Of “The Mandalorian” and “WandaVision””Fear the Wonky Subtitles
So as I’ve mentioned before, ever since, in his old age, Dennis the Vizsla took to noisily exhorting the humans to go to bed already in the evenings, we’ve been watching television with the subtitles on. In addition to helping with sometimes unclear dialog, subtitles can be humorous, grammatically horrifying, or subtly (or not-so-subtly) different from the actual spoken dialog.
Then there’s this, from Fear the Walking Dead:
Continue reading “Fear the Wonky Subtitles”Not a Review of “Mare of Easttown” and “Upload”
So over the last few weeks, with Dickinson between seasons, we’ve sort of been looking for some new programs to intersperse amongst the lighter Big Bang Theory and New Adventures of Old Christine fare—sitcoms that my wife likes to refer to as “dessert”. I had been hoping the new HBO series The Nevers would fit the bill:
Continue reading “Not a Review of “Mare of Easttown” and “Upload””Not a Review of “Dickinson”
So recently we’ve been watching the dramedy series Dickinson on Apple TV+. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Who subscribes to Apple TV+?!” The answer is, nobody; like virtually everyone else who has it, we got a free subscription to Apple TV+ when we purchased some Apple gear last year. Since then, Apple has continually extended the free subscription period, most likely in the hopes that viewers will eventually find a show to get hooked on and will ultimately pay for the service. If that was their plan, it seems to have succeeded, because my wife is most definitely hooked on Dickinson, which is a fictionalized account of the life of the poet Emily Dickinson. Maybe you’ve heard of her.
Teaser Tuesday: “The City & the City”
So the other week I was reading The City & the City, a novel by China Miéville, who, as I’ve alluded to once or twice, is one of my favorite writers.
Te Big Bang Teory
So since we’ve spent the last ten months or so basically never leaving the house (other than to take the animals to the vet when necessary), we have, unsurprisingly, been watching a lot of television. One show that we picked up—which, amazingly enough, we never watched when it was originally airing—is The Big Bang Theory. My wife refers to this show as “dessert”, i.e., a nice little marzipan confection to be consumed after watching something dark, say, an episode of His Dark Materials or I May Destroy You or Lovecraft Country* or, you know, the news.
Continue reading “Te Big Bang Teory”