Books:
The Circle by Dave Eggers
So I didn't start by hating this ultimately (well if we count the 20% I made it through before DNF'ing as "ultimate") idiotic and meaningless book about a Facebook/Google/tech-company cum Big Brother and ooo the privacy dangers of the sharing economy. Really if you've seen the Bryce Dallas Howard episode of Black Mirror, you've read this book (and a far better version of it I might add); if you've thought for literally one second about the tradeoffs between convenience and sharing your data, you've read this book only that thought’s one bajillionth as long. What made this book suck, aside from the cipher-y Stepford wife-ish lead, a nonstop unthinking cheerleader for giving up all personal data (and why exactly?), are/is (a) the endless diatribes about tech/privacy that say nothing every single human on Earth hasn't thought of already and (b) the fact that everyone in the book except for a few rebels in the shadows thinks a surveillance state is a great idea. I mean, really? That's how lazy you are Dave Eggers? Instead of coming up with a textured underlying theme you write one no one would agree with except the characters you invented solely to have them agree with it and then peddle this piece of shizz as a kind of cautionary fable? BTW the cover quotes the New York Times as saying the book is “prophetic” and, because I couldn’t believe anyone, non-Janice reviewer or otherwise, would describe it that way, I went and did a search of the review and no version of that word appears anywhere in it. Oh no! Is this some kind of spooky Big Brother controlling the internet and removing words from a review or, like, did the publisher totally lie (also: is lying on cover quotes a thing?!?!?)? Regardless, I knew I'd avoided Dave Eggers for a reason - so who’s the prophetic one here I ask!
Daemon & Freedom (Daemon Series 1 & 2) by Daniel Suarez
By contrast, these books, which also deal in tech themes, are dumb fun Michael Crichton-y action novels about - without spoilering - AI, computer viruses, world domination, i.e. your core big-stakes techno-thriller stuff. They were both published I think a decade or more ago but it didn’t matter in terms of the read. I mean there’s always that anachronistic thing where tech changes in ways an author couldn’t anticipate - like who knew we’d want phones to be huge not small? - or haven’t really come to pass, e.g. Where are my big swipe-y Minority Report air screens? Where’s the chip planted in my head so I can watch porn nonstop while simultaneously giving a brilliant Powerpoint to my sales team? Why can I still not invade other people’s dreams? All those pressing questions aside, I really enjoyed this duology; it’s a straight-up middle of the road airplane/beach read; the writing is serviceable (Andy Weir level (my metric for serviceable-enough writing of plot-driven novels)); the action set pieces are fun; the characters are distinct enough that you know who’s who while also being instantly forgotten the minute you put the book down (I certainly can’t remember a single character in it); the sequel is a notch below the first one but still good and really if you’re just looking for fun entertainment and like this genre, these two fit the bill.
TV/Streaming:
Cobra Kai (Seasons 1-2):
This is a series about the Karate Kid characters 30 years later. I went into this series relatively blind, by which I mean I barely remember the Karate Kid - in fact, I can’t say with absolute certainty that I’ve ever seen it though I’ve done that crane move often enough (yes, the need for it does come up sometimes) that I’ve convinced myself I’ve seen it - and I may actually have done so! The story is a bit of role reversal and redemption in that Ralph Macchio has grown up to be a kind of asshole car dealer and Johnny (the blond antagonist in the original film (assuming I saw it)) is trying to pull his trainwreck of a life together by opening a karate school. The season 1 plot is essentially a continuation of the rivalry as Ralph Macchio tries to submarine the school (to my memory/cultural-osmosis, the movie was about competing styles of karate, one zen, beauteous, and defensive - as evidenced by said crane - and the other ugly, mean, and offensive as evidenced by the logo being a big snake) due its big snaky non-beauteous-zen principles; there are also misfit kids finding personal strength through karate class, some family stuff (estranged ex/teen), etc. and really I thought it was pretty good. It wasn’t the most complex thing out there, like it felt a bit PG-rated, but it was entertaining, the characters made sense, there was the sports competition driving the whole thing and some nostalgia for a movie I may or may not have seen. Sadly, the second season was the end for me. Just awful. The writers clearly had no idea what to do after season 1 and just made it into a Disney+ tween series with a bunch of fake teen drama - she’s into him; oh no he’s into that one; etc. etc. episode after episode snoooooooore. Everything that made the first season somewhat charming - watching one adult playing out a childhood rivalry against another adult who had completely moved on with his life and found himself being dragged back in - just vanished into unwatchable DNFing for I.
The Kominsky Method (Seasons 1-3):
Some Janice rec’ed this show about an actor turned acting coach played by Michael Douglas and his travails with his best friend/agent played by Alan Arkin. That Janice found the overall arc of the show to be meaningful and said it spoke to zie about aging/life and also evoked a particularly nostalgic timeframe that Janice had spent in L.A. So based on all that, I decided to check out this situation slice-of-life single-camera sitcom and watch all of it (there are only around 6ish episodes a season) and it’s --
JANICE, AVERT YOUR EYES!
-- godawful. Everything about this show feels old; it's not that the actors are old (they are); it's that the writing is so old. The acting class - which we’re in A LOT - feels like something peopled by sitcom ideas from the ‘90s at the latest. They're all notions of characters - the angry one, the stonery dude, etc. - rather than actual characters and honestly that's a compliment because they're barely consistently that. The show has so little to say about anything other than every cliche aging complaint you can imagine - like it really leans into the prostate jokes with multiple episodes across the seasons devoted to night peeing - that it instead spends gobs of time each episode with the hammy acting class actors doing scenes and then being criticized/lectured-at by Michael Douglas. There's no content here, nothing. You’re watching cartoon sitcom characters perform scenes from actual plays or sometimes sitcoms or movies and get criticized for it. Who deluded themselves into that thinking that could be, say, 35% of a show? Chuck Lorre, apparently! There was a token Asian in there and a token Black girl (angry token Black girl it will come as no surprise since we’re locked in the ‘90s) and lots of "jokes" around non-gendered pronouns but beyond that, it's a sea of White, which is also what makes the show feel old. There are romances in it but the writers don't even bother to have them make any sense and have zero compunction about selling all the characters down the river for their idea of a joke; for example, Alan Arkin's daughter has a storyline as a <yawn ‘90s> drug-using middle-aged Hollywood brat who goes into rehab and tries to make amends. And then in season 3 the writers totally pretend none of that happened and turn her into a money-grubbing idiot because… well because… can we blame COVID? And while I won't spoil what happens at the start of season 3, there was actually a continuing setup there - by which I mean the writers had set up situations in season 2 for a number of characters that would naturally be affected by what happened in the first episode of season 3 - but mmm mmm. I’m genuinely struggling to understand what prevented the writers from playing the characters and situations they had at the end of season 2 because any/all of it could’ve just continued. I mean, yes, it was all a cliche, but at least it would have been a consistent cliche as opposed to, say, what they did to Jane Seymour's character in the same episode which was so horrifically idiotic that I won’t discuss it and will thus spare you the pain of knowing. I didn’t DNF mostly out of morbid curiosity to see how bad it could possibly get - worse than I imagined, really so much worse, like pick your most obvious joke then repeat it for 11 hours straight and you’ll have an idea. To put the review in a stupid rhyming context that would likely have made it onto the show as “comedy” if the writers had thought of it and found a way to jam it in: as mentioned, the Janice who recommended this wasn’t recommending it as something amazing but rather as something that spoke to zie so, while it didn’t speak to me, perhaps it will speak to thee! Kominsky!
Movies:
Another Round - This is a Danish movie about well, I mean I know what it's about top-level - 4 guys in midlife experimenting with an alcohol-based philosophy (read: a lot of getting into differing stages of drunk) to get them out of their various ruts - but I really have no idea what it's about at any other level, by which I mean you normally get some sense, certainly by the end, of what the filmmaker was hoping to say but I haven't got an 'effin clue! Weirdly, this is what made it watchable for me. The characters get drunk a lot which, unsurprisingly, sometimes works out for them in their situations/relationships and sometimes not; the film is character-driven which isn’t to say there’s no plot but rather it’s about how the four guys change and what happens in their professional and personal lives as a result, meaning the driving force of the film is wondering where it’s all going to wind up, and this is ultimately why I really liked it. Because I was unable to pin down the filmmaker’s perspective on what the characters were doing - was he saying they should be drunk all time? or no that it’s a bad thing? or an okay thing but only sometimes? or change is good no matter what? or is alcohol is a metaphor for, I don’t know, midlife? or mortality? - it really kept me guessing which also kept me interested. I think this is the kind of film that, because it has enough meat to it that it’s worth discussing afterwards, would be particularly fun to watch with a group so you could have that discussion while also recapitulating the movie, i.e. getting drunk while talking about it. I couldn't figure out where it was going, how it was going to unfold, or what it ultimately meant but, without spoilering anything, I can say definitively that I could watch an entire movie solely filled with Mads Mikkelsen dancing NO JOKE!