Books:
Methusaleh's Zoo by Steven N. Austad
This is a science nonfiction book about longevity in animals as a means of looking at reasons humans age (and possible paths to stopping that (if you're not familiar: aging in the sense of the body falling apart is now considered a treatable disease (well they're looking for treatments) rather than an inevitability)). The writing is perfectly fine and is (br)e(ez)asy - OMG that word combo so didn't work in print - to read. It's filled with animal factoids but really the focus is on how evolution prevented diseases like cancer in animals that live longer than we do for their size. That last bit is kind of the asterisk of the entire book as studying aging also means comparing various species with different lifespans which may be shorter than ours in absolute years but longer given their metabolisms. Basically, aging in us is the (among other things) failure of DNA to repair itself due to the nonstop free radical attack that comes from heating our own bodies, i.e. high metabolism in general causes body breakdown. As this book points out over and over, current science studies the worst agers of all - mice - rather than, say, bats, birds, or naked mole rats which are incredible agers in that they have metabolisms that are as high or higher than ours yet somehow manage to stave off all of our major killers primarily because their DNA doesn’t, well, go bad like ours does. They don't live forever obviously but they're healthy up until the day they keel over. So in many ways this book (and a lot of aging research as well) is more about maintaining healthspan than lifespan though obviously studying one is de facto studying the other at least for now. I liked the book but in a way its central plea - study animals that are more like us, scientists, and quit it with mice since they're so metabolically different - takes away from it because you know there will be no great reveals at the end of whatever animal chapter you're on because no aging studies have been done on those animals. Also, after a while, it just becomes a litany of longish lived animals with known details about them and with lots of question marks around pegging and tracking age in wild animals and it kind of blends into a sameness. None of that is a reason not to read this book; I mean it's interesting if you're into this kind of thing. But in end it's more a survey of known data which is being used to nudge the needle a particular direction to study evolution's solutions to our problems in animals that labs aren't really setup to study (though some have moved in that direction) and while I didn't mind that as a repeated beat, it also makes the book a bit flaccid. Enjoyable and (br)e(ez)asy to read, though, or at least (br)e(ez)asier to read than that word combo.
TV/Streaming:
Vampire Academy (Season 1):
Mmmm yeah I mean I watched this show - well I'll get to what it’s about in a sec but resentment first - but I was annoyed at it mostly because it so could've been way better if anyone involved in the production at any level had decided to EXPLAIN ANYTHING! It was so frustrating and I'm sure the books this show was based on - a fact I hazily remembered at some point during the first episode - really made the rules and reasons of the world clear but for some reason none of the writers or studio execs seemed to think anyone watching would need any of that, meaning this series is, I guess, only for superfans of the books because those of us who haven't read and have no intention of reading them are clearly not of interest as an audience to anyone involved. SO THERE! The reason I'm annoyed rather than merely DNFish (I didn't DNF btw) is that I otherwise kind of liked the show. So basically - and yes, I am 100% going to get it wrong because as mentioned no one involved bothered to explain anything (though they did manage to evoke this very stompy angry 5-year-old response so I guess that counts for something) - there are these two classes of kinda vampires as in class 1 kinda sucks blood and doesn't go into the sun except with parasols oh and have witchy elemental magic - see what I mean about no one explaining anything? - and are rulers of these little kingdoms tucked away (why? how? no idea) and class 2 doesn’t suck blood, is fine in the sun, and serves as sort of kickboxing guardians of class 1 but seems to get nothing in return. Also, there are other evil vampires who turn that way via various means and are more like Nosferatu than Dracula, i.e. not hot. The ugly vampires are thought of as animalistic but, as it turns out, they're not(ish) adding to the list of things that make absolutely zero sense as there's no explanation as to why some of the ugly ones are crazed beasts and some are casual chatters but there it is. The class 1 royal vampires have a system with their class 2 guardians on the bottom but some others in the middle and there's a Queen. Only not, apparently, because this entire season turns on people running for Queen, as in it's not a monarchy but rather a kinda presidency? A drag race? A PMship? But it's called Queen for some reason? All right so also, apparently, class 1 and class 2 don't get along but the main characters here are a royal class 1 and guardian class 2 who are besties and a whole buncha crap with magic. The story takes place in today's world but no one uses cell phones or even walkie talkies yet they have other tech like cameras, newsfeeds, klieg lights, TV monitors and projectors, etc. so why? No idea. The ugly vampires are super fast and vicious yet the only training the guardians get is in kickboxing as opposed to, you know, machine guns again no idea why, no idea why all the grumbly non-royal/non-guardians don't just leave, in fact no idea why they're all holed up in some gowny Renaissancey world within our real world or how, at the end (and no I'm not spoilering) there's a whole thing with a bus evacuation and for plot reasons the buses won't come back to pick up more people and, um, why didn't anyone just Uber instead of stand around and scream? The writers just don't even bother to dispel such plot holes and, again, perhaps in the books there's an excellent reason why none of that can happen, but I don't consider the homework of reading to be a prerequiste for a watching a TV/Streaming show. The reason this was all so irritating is that there was an admittedly deeply stupid and silly YAish type soap opera with hot people up against a takeover plot, some assassination attempts, etc. you know the kind of action-y stuff that can make otherwise dumb romantic fantasy entertaining because of the collision between the action and characters. And this show totally had the potential for that - think Vampire Diaries or True Blood or any witch show set in the modern world stuff like that - and frankly I was in the mood for something plotty, silly, action-y, and with hot people and if anyone involved had bothered to explain the why and the rules I would probably be writing a different review, more about how ridiculous the romances were but still entertaining. Unfortunately that's not what this is. Will I watch season 2 (will there even be one)? I don't know; the lack of any form of exposition or explanation about any rules was so frustrating that, well, I'll repeat: I don't know. I guess if you read the books or something, you might have a different reaction to this show. If not, move on as there's nothing here for you because no one involved in creating the series is interested in getting you invested in it. NYAH NYAH, showrunner!
Manifest (Season 2):
Well season 2 of this Lost-alike about a mysterious incident where a plane vanishes for 5 years - though to the passengers it's just a normal flight - then lands causing all kinds of turmoil plus some psychic-y voice telling the passengers to perform certain acts remains as entertaining as it was in season 1 and manages to amp up what makes the show fun by introducing some new plot elements and twists. As I mentioned in my season 1 review, this is a very network show as in everyone's very earnest and feely and somewhat untextured good or bad and doing everything for the right reasons and whatnot, you know all the things that have transformed networks from broadcasters to almost noncasters due to the fact that their primary audience is a bunch of advertisers with a very skittish and reactive sense of what America can handle - as if America hasn't already handled of slew of shows like, oh, Game of Thrones what with its complexity or Breaking Bad with its pretty nasty characters or heck let's go all throwback here and pick The Sopranos (not that I’d recommend anyone actually sit through The Sopranos) or anything not on network television. Frankly, it's really strange because I have to imagine the people who work in advertising, as with the rest of the country, refuse to watch network television due to the blandifying effect imposed on it solely by the advertisers, i.e. the advertisers themselves know that their vision of what's non-controversial and acceptable is, at latest, locked in the '80s but really more like the '50s and know, from the low ratings, that the world has moved on and isn't interested in boring character tropes yet insist the networks present them anyway. Am I the only one who finds this to be weird? Like if you know that you yourself wouldn't want to watch the characters or plots on a show for which you yourself are buying ad time... wouldn't you change that? But the whole thing is this strange cycle of skittishness where brands are skittish because they have a belief that if they advertise on a show that generates controversy somehow they'll get all caught up in it and lose customers which they know is idiotic because (a) cancel culture as we've learned is a soap bubble that pops like within a few days and (b) no one's watching the ads anyway so how would they even know your product is on it? To hardly mention no one's suggesting Tide advertise on child porn here; I mean it's just stuff with normal sex, violence, perhaps some current controversy on race and politics, i.e. the crap bajillions of people are talking about all day long without really much of anything happening. Sigh. Anyway, the advertiser imposition of '50s character blandness is this show's only real downside but there's so much nonstop plot happening that honestly it doesn't matter. Plus the fourth and final season moved to Netflix so maybe that will give it some different texture (I'll surely report back once I've seen it). This season there are more conspiracies, more mysteries, more danger to the passengers, and more somewhat interesting questions about what this outside voice is actually up to and whether or not following it is such a hot idea. If you liked Lost I'd say give this a shot because it's pretty much in the same vein though significantly more cohesive (as in no random polar bears) and obviously at this point I have no idea what the payoff will be (if any) but in some ways I'm not sure I care. The journey of this show is completely fun meaning even if the final episode turns out to be dumb, that won't take away from having enjoyed the prior ones.
Movies:
The Fall - You may remember/have heard of (age depending) this total bomb from back in the early aughts (or maybe late '90s - too lazy to Google) by some one-named director who'd made a bunch of REM videos (I think) with a, supposedly, amazing visual style - I noticed David Fincher and Spike Jonze were listed in the credits of this movie reaffirming the "stylish music video" heritage of all involved - and which tanked at the boxoffice (assuming it was ever released - and I like to believe that all these parenthetics in a row are revealing something very evolutionarily impressive about how, despite pointedly ignoring a piece of pop culture, it permeates our memories anyway, I mean enough that I can at least make a vague stab at what I think is the history of this film and all without Wikipedia and well amazing!). In addition to everything else I can't remember, I also can't remember why I added this to my queue though in all likelihood it was on some "overlooked gems" list of the type that has screwed me multiple times before and if so well screwed again. The basic plot is that Lee Pace is a 1920s hospitalized stuntman, probably permanently from a horse falling off a bridge during a train chase or something like that that happened during the credits and which I didn't pay a lot of attention to because I couldn't figure out what was going on and there's a foreign orphaned girl in the hospital and the movie (well up until I DNFed out of being unremittingly bored) was basically the filmed version of the most excruciating fairytale of all time which Lee Pace was making up and telling the orphan girl. Not only can I barely begin to describe how boring it was - oh fine, bad guy screws over 5 other people and they all want to kill him (which I guess is fairytale enough to me) - but the visuals totally sucked. SUCKED! I mean, it was all people in spice-tone capes against windblown sandy backdrops which were clearly on a set and standing/leaning/kneeling in various positions, usually all in a row, and staring at the camera. Does that sound like an exciting visual to you because my INCREDIBLE memory and I'm so impressed I'm yanking this out of my butt is that the REM video that made this director famous enough to get a movie made had the exact same visual and watching it for 3 minutes isn't quite the same as staring at it for two hours, peoples! Really, this thing is so boring and visually unexciting even in the fantasy parts which were supposed to be exciting - I mean what does matte Moroccan color palette scream to you? because to me it’s screams “airport Doubletree” - that I debated writing about it at all but then I thought well maybe someone out there in Media Report land might have made the same mistake I did by tacking this onto their movie list and I'm here to save you the 30/40 minutes of your life you'll be investing before DNFing (if not sooner) and suggesting you just skip it entirely. Not even fun bad, just dull and uncreative except I think the foreign orphan girl made up 90% of her lines because her English wasn't great and that was kind of entertaining for a minute before all the capes started blowing so there's that.