I got my new iPod rebuilt this weekend. Took a while to restore over 6000 songs and make sure the album graphics were there, too. I know I could have skipped that step but I figured if I was going to do it, I should do it right. Along the way, I rediscovered some groups and albums that I haven’t listened to in a long time, including The Buggles, who were favorites of mine back in the eighties, including their lesser-known second album, shown here.
I finished Bad Boy by Peter Robinson this weekend (review almost finished) and decided to dig into the old Travis McGee novels again. I’m going to be traveling later on this week (more on this after the fact!) so they seemed like good airplane fare. I’m going to read them in chronological order, so first up is The Deep Blue Good-by. I’m amazed at how well I remember these books, though I probably haven’t read them in 20 years or more.
Our local contenders on The Amazing Race were eliminated last night, Michael and Kevin, the Korean father and son from Sugar Land. Their ouster came from a combination of Michael’s inability to master the last challenge and two penalties they received for not following the directions. Without one or the other, they might have squeaked through. Brooke and Claire realized their error with the directions (taking a taxi when they weren’t allowed to do so) and went back to fix their mistake.
We went to see Red this weekend. This isn’t the apple dumpling gang. We had a blast watching this flick. Not deep or profound by any stretch of the imagination, just good fun with a great cast. It’s based on a graphic novel, so there is a little over-the-top violence (shredding Bruce Willis’s house with machine gun fire, the street carpeted with empty casings, for example) but the actors play it straight. Even John Malkovich, who plays the loony tunes paranoid who was secretly fed LSD for over a decade. The funny thing about his character is that, though he’s paranoid, most of the stuff he’s worried about he has good reason to be worried about. Mary-Louise Parker plays the audience avatar, the person from outside the CIA world who is confronted with all this wacky stuff and has to keep up. She’s utterly charming. Morgan Freeman (who doesn’t play Red) is his usual reliable, stalwart self, though he does get a good scene where he’s dressed up like Papa Doc Duvalier. And who would have guessed that Ernest Borgnine is 93? He doesn’t look like a day over eighty. Helen Mirren looks like she’s having fun, and Karl Urban (Bones from the new Star Trek) plays the by-the-book “heavy” who doesn’t understand the machinations behind his orders but grows to appreciate them. The only downside to the movie was that we had a cackling hyena behind us. I hate it when that happens.
I wonder how close Dexter and Lumen are going to get. They progressed this week to an awkward handshake (“just like my senior prom,” Dexter notes) and then to a happy hug from Lumen when she thinks things are going her way. And, finally, Dexter decides to bridge the gap between his two worlds and bring Harrison along to meet her. I speculated early on that since she knows the truth about him and since they’re bound to be become close because of circumstances, there’s a chance that they could become an item. Either that or she’s doomed, I figure. Good to see Johnny Lee Miller (Eli Stone) again. He looks like he’s lost weight. That stakeout sure did go south in a hurry, though LaGuerta figures she didn’t do a thing wrong. Deb got to take the shot she missed out on the last time she faced down this bad hombre. LOL at Lumen thinking Masuka was the twisted killer in the photo. Quotable quote of the episode: That’s either a saint or the most boring action figure I’ve ever seen.
