Not Much Going On Here So ...

I haven't had a lot of blogging material lately -- all living in the code and obsessively listening to the Mountain Goats -- so I thought I'd better at least point you to something else to read.  My recommendation is the Onion's AV Club blog, specifically The Box of Paperbacks Book Club (there's no label for that, sadly, I just go here and skim for it).  In this feature, the writer 'purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them.'  Each entry reviews a different book.  

This stuff is right up my alley.  The books are mostly the kinds of science fiction books I tore through as a kid and reading the blog brings up a lot of memories of wandering through the public library and picking up just whatever looked interesting.  By the way, I've also discovered that Wikipedia is an excellent resource for tracking down those books you read as a kid and only faintly remember. (It's not surprising, if you think about it.  If I vaguely remember some book, there's got to be some contributor who faintly remembered it, then made an entry on it.) 

Anyway, I read a lot as a kid (a lot of science fiction and fantasy) and my parents did not appreciate it.  They couldn't understand why I wasted all my time reading novels.  Other people have sometimes suggested that my parents were way off-base because I've done fairly well in the educational rat race.  Of course, now that I'm an astrophysicist, my parents don't look so stupid, do they?  

If reading isn't your thing, Alan Sepinwall, the TV columnist for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, is reviewing every single episode of the late 90s and very doomed TV show Cupid (complete with YouTube links to the episodes) on his blog (here!).  Cupid was by the same guy who created one of my favorite shows ever, Veronica Mars, and, yeah, it's also awesome.  I caught many episodes (maybe half or more of all the episodes ever) in the summer of 2000 when I was living in Taiwan.  They came on at 12:30AM and I got up at 7:30AM to go to work, and one every single day, so watching was a real commitment.  I haven't been watching the YouTube videos, however, terrified both that they're not as good as I remember and that they'll be too good and I'll get overly invested in a show that was cancelled a decade ago.