A Month in Review, Jul 5 to Aug 7

I don't normally blog on Saturday nights, but I'm also not usually this sober on Saturday nights. As much as I adore brew days and was fucking bored today (so bored that I spent a couple hours rearranging kitchen cupboards and cleaning the fridge), not being hammered drunk on Saturday night is a pleasant change. Well, then, don't drink so much on brew days, dumbass!--yeah, yeah, fuck you.

The Month in Music

As big a part of my life as music is, I hardly mention it in the Week in Review posts. My bad. Err, no, not my bad; there simply doesn't seem to be much new music coming out lately that is worth mentioning.

But Avenged Sevenfold's "Nightmare" is worth mentioning. It's awesome; not quite "City of Evil" awesome, but damn close.

And Broken Social Scene's "Forgiveness Rock Record," which was released way back in May, is pretty fucking sweet, too, possibly their best album to date.

To make up for the dearth of music-related content on this blog, I have a new blog post in the works focused entirely on my favourite albums of all time. Coming soon... I hope.

The Month in Books

I did it! I finally finished Steven Erikson's House of Chains, book four of the super awesome Malazan Book of the Fallen series. What do you mean there are another six books to read in the series, not to mention a few novellas and a second interlinked series from a different author? Motherfucker. House of Chains was my least favourite entry in the series to date, but that's like saying that The Two Towers is my least favourite The Lord of the Rings movie. It was still amazing. I have now moved onto book five, Midnight Tides, which introduces a bunch of new characters on a whole new continent while also providing the backstory for a character that was introduced in House of Chains. This series isn't hugely concerned about linear storytelling, which is cool with me. House of Chains was a direct sequel to book two, Deadhouse Gates, and took place more or less concurrently with book three, Memories of Ice. Midnight Tides happened earlier, possibly concurrently with Deadhouse Gates, I don't know; I'm sure I'll find out shortly. I always find it tough to initially get into a new Erikson novel that isn't Memories of Ice, but once you make it around halfway, suddenly it's hard to put the fucking thing down. Problem is, at halfway, you still have a good three to five hundred pages left to read. I'm nowhere near halfway into Midnight Tides yet, but I am reasonably confident that I can now meet my read two Malazan books goal for summer 2010. Maybe I can read three? Forget I said that; that's ridiculous.

It was just over a year ago that a friend gave me two books written by Charles Bukowski to help ease the pain. I started reading Love is a Dog From Hell (1977), one of many collections of poetry written by Bukowski, last year, but as it was a book of poetry, it was easy to pick up and put down numerous times over the course of the year. I finally finished it in July, fitting in a few poems between each chapter of House of Chains as a breather. And then I read Bukowski's novel Women (1978) this week. There is a lot of overlap in content between Bukowski's poetry and novels. His work is very autobiographical, and his poetry is narrative style, not at all flowery and with no rhymes in sight. Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski, not coincidentally a poet and a drunk, is the protagonist of Women, and you can easily picture Chinaski writing many of the poems in Love is a Dog From Hell as the story proceeds. For me, Women was a lot more enjoyable than Love is a Dog From Hell--but I'll always choose prose over poetry--a quick, entertaining read, endlessly amusing despite its blatant misogyny. The lesson I take away is that writing and performing (good?) poetry is a gateway to an endless parade of women, no matter how much of an ugly, old asshole you are.

And now I understand Modest Mouse's "Bukowski" a whole shit load more:
"Woke this morning and it seemed to me
That every night turns out to be
A little bit more like Bukowski
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read
But God, who'd want to be
God, who'd want to be such an asshole?"

The Month in Video Games

If it wasn't for coffee breaks at work (World of Goo--fuck, yeah!), I don't know if I could even call myself a video gamer lately. I've barely touched Mario Galaxy 2 and have tons of Mass Effect 2 DLC to play, but I've been focusing my spare time on TV and books this summer. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Winters are long in Saskatchewan; video games make winters tolerable.

But I did play the Special Edition of Monkey Island 2 with my brother. Monkey Island 2 was a big part of our childhood, so this was a fantastic nostalgia trip for both of us. Awesome.

The Month in Television

I am now almost caught up on Eureka. I had never seen a single episode of the series previously, and frankly wasn't interested based on its silly premise, but with its currently airing fourth season came a Warehouse 13 crossover and a Wil Wheaton guest appearance, so I decided to finally give the series a shot this summer. And it's okay. The premise of a small town full of scientists causing weekly science disasters is silly, and the average episode is at best dumb fun, drawing upon thoroughly cliched and overused sci-fi plotlines. But every once in a while, the writers find a fun twist on those classic cliches and make watching the series worth my precious (ha!) time. In particular, "I Do Over," a third season time loop episode (almost always awesome--think Groundhog Day) was pretty fantastic. And even when the plot is retarded, the characters can usually be counted on to make it at least palatable and sometimes even enjoyable. Like the show itself, the characters are all pretty middle of the road; there are no characters that I love, but there are also no characters that I hate. Eureka is not a series that I would recommend to anyone, but I don't regret my time with it. It's pretty fitting that the Warehouse 13 and Eureka universes are now overlapping, since both shows are so similar in so many ways.

I've also started watching the ridiculous British comedy series Peep Show. I didn't realize that it starred David Mitchell and Robert Webb, also stars of hilarious sketch comedy series That Mitchell and Webb Look, or I probably would have watched it earlier. Peep Show is filmed in a quite unique way, placing the audience right inside the heads of the two main characters, and is awkwardly hilarious--so awkward that sometimes you just wish you could look away and pretend this shit wasn't happening. It is regarded by some as the best British comedy series of all time. I've only seen series one of six so far, so I'll reserve judgment.

Another Big Catch-up

Loved: Futurama (7x4-8), Penn & Teller: Bullshit (8x5,7), Sherlock (1x1), True Blood (3x7)
Liked: Entourage (7x3-5), Hung (2x2-5), Mad Men (4x1-2), Penn & Teller: Bullshit (8x6,8,9), Sherlock (1x2), So You Think You Can Dance (7x12-21), Top Gear (14x3-6), True Blood (3x4-6), Warehouse 13 (2x1-5)
Meh: Entourage (7x2)

That looks like a lot of shows, but other than Sunday nights--really, does every fucking show have to air on Sunday night?--my TV schedule right now is pretty light overall. And I actually have to download all of those Sunday night shows, so it's really my Monday night that is packed. And then the rest of the week is pretty boring. But I prefer this to what is coming in September. Well, then, don't watch so many shows, dumbass!--yeah, yeah, fuck you.

The best thing I watched on TV in July was the fantastic pilot to the BBC's new Sherlock series. Despite having little to no interest in Sherlock Holmes stories, I checked the series out because of creator and writer Steven Moffat, current head writer on Doctor Who. And it was bloody brilliant. Goddamn, that was good! Episode two--or should I say movie two, because each of the only three episodes is an hour and a half--wasn't nearly as good, but not much can be. I don't know who Benedict Cumberbatch is, but his Sherlock Holmes is genius--almost Doctor Who genius. And Martin Freeman always plays a good everyman.

Some Futurama fans have complained that the reborn Futurama is not as good as the first four seasons before cancellation, but those people are ungrateful assholes. I have thoroughly enjoyed every episode so far, and would present episodes six, "Lethal Inspection," and especially seven, "The Late Philip J. Fry," as more than worthy of the Futurama legacy.

For the first time ever, I am watching Mad Men and True Blood as they air this season. So far, so good. Mad Men is rarely a show that I love, with the odd exception (the third season finale, for example); I appreciate the quality of the show more than I enjoy the show. True Blood's third season is definitely shaping up to be better than its second, with last week's seventh episode being a particular gory highlight. I am also watching Warehouse 13 as it airs for the first time, but that's less of a big thing since it's only in its second season, and also it's a much lesser show than those two. Still, it keeps me coming back for more, somehow.

The two stand-out episodes of Bullshit this season (so far; next week is the finale) for me were "Easy Money" and "Criminal Justice." I know tons of people that need to see "Easy Money" for a reality check on the futility of multi-level marketing, and "Criminal Justice" just made me sad. The latest episode, "Self Esteem," was pretty timely as I am currently struggling with serious self esteem issues. Affirmations are bullshit, so here's my personal affirmation: "What the fuck, dude?--get your shit together."

After a slow start, Entourage has improved throughout this current seventh season and is actually quite entertaining again, something it hasn't been in a number of years. Hung also had a slow start to its season, but its last few episodes have been very strong, balancing the drama and comedy very effectively.

In my amateur opinion, Top Gear had a good season this summer. I loved the silly Caravan segment the most, and enjoyed the recurring Reliant Robin gags. I don't tune into Top Gear for the cars nor the car reviews, because, hey, I couldn't care less about cars; I tune in for these three hilarious guys doing stupid shit together, and this season had a lot of good material there.

And that's more than enough talking about TV.