I finished my review of Djibouti by Elmore Leonard and posted it on Onxy Reviews. I’m still reading Bad Boy by Peter Robinson. Next up is Against All Things Ending, the third of four volumes in the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which the publisher kindly sent me. I also finished reading So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams to my wife. We’re going on to “Young Zaphod Plays it Safe” before jumping into Mostly Harmless. And I’m also rereading Full Dark, No Stars as I put together my Cemetery Dance review of it. So I’m doing a lot of reading, it seems. As usual.
I also plan to make a major stab at a set-in-the-future vampire story this weekend. My buddy Brian Keene tweeted a link recently that filled in a gap in my concept of the story, so now I think I’m armed and ready to go.
As I watched Marty on Survivor the other night, I thought to myself: Self, what’s the dumbest thing you can do in this game? There are some contenders, like James who got sent home with two immunity idols in his possession, but most long-time watchers would agree that giving away an immunity idol is even worse. Witness Erik in Fans vs. Favorites, who handed his over and was summarily voted out. As Jeff Strand, Survivor Guru, wrote: “the editors didn’t even try to hide the results of the vote, they just showed all of the other players laughing at him while they wrote his name down.”
What does Marty do? Hands over his immunity idol. Those who don’t remember Survivor history are doomed to repeat it, I tweeted at that moment. If I were a bookmaker, I would have put very long odds on Marty surviving that move. But, lo and behold, he skated by. Again! Quelle suprise! His logic: either he was going to hand the idol over to Jeff Probst or to one of his fellow players, and by doing the latter he might garner some good will. On the other hand, if he’d played it, it might have gone right back into circulation and he could conceivably have found it again, which is something he didn’t consider, I think. Next week is the merge, so he may have some life left in him after all. I think Dan’s days are numbered.
This week’s CSI was odd. It blended two storylines that were complete opposites in tone. The dinosaur caper was the type that would have made for a good lab-rats outing full episode. The girlfriend’s tone was so pedantic as to be unbelievable, unless it was an over-the-top episode. Paired with that was a story of young girls who were murdered five years ago and someone was trying to ransom off the location of their bodies. Grim and serious. The two didn’t belong in the same episode, in my opinion. Lacked balance.
This week’s The Mentalist was quirky, too. I liked the way Patrick screwed with the head of security, tossing coins in this pockets when he wasn’t looking so he’d trigger the metal detector. Pure fun. The bit he did waving his hands in front of the guy’s face didn’t convince me, though. It seemed like a bit of light hypnotism, but it shouldn’t be that easy. He did something similar to the missing girl’s sister. Gives him too much power, to be able to just wave his hands like that and get information someone doesn’t want to give or isn’t sure they possess. One loophole that I wondered about: they had a full list of the comings and goings of everyone, so they knew the missing girl was still on the compound, but no one bothered to ask when the boyfriend had arrived on the scene. Seemed like a valuable piece of information to me. I liked his call to Hightower (“There’s going to be hijinx”) and his challenge to Lisbon and Hightower is the source of today’s subject line: “These are not taxi doors; they’re ears,” he said—a more dramatic statement than “I’m all ears,” I guess. The little peck on the cheek at the end was pushing it, I thought. He has no boundaries (except for shaking hands).
