Books:
Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong by Paul Offit
This was a very interesting and easy-to-digest nonfiction book about the unanticipated consequences of differing types of otherwise valuable science, e.g. synthetic fertilizer which allows us to eat but may ultimately kill us due to its unwanted effects, the change in the definition of cancer from something that's lethal to any type of mutated cell which has led to people undergoing traumatic surgery to remove things they wouldn't have died from anyway, etc. The book itself is very easy to read in that it's a good mashup of history, science in layperson terms, and laying out the social issues and consequences of the science in a way that's very comprehensible. The tl;dr here is I flew through the book and really liked it. I can't say I agreed with all of the author’s conclusions, like he had a section about DDT and Rachel Carson and basically ignored that, even if DDT wasn't as bad as people at the time believed, insects would've eventually developed some kind of immunity to it like they do with all other pesticides thus rendering an effective pesticide useless, and in his section on the dangers of cancer testing (the unnecessary surgeries mentioned above) he doesn't address the flip side which is that ignorance isn't bliss and that lack of information is also lack of choice, i.e. that the real issue isn't knowing about these non-lethal cancers but rather that the medical establishment is handling them badly. But those aren't even nitpicks because they don't affect his central thesis about being unable to trace where science is going to wind up and how science interacts with society at large. I'd say the fact that I'd like to argue a point with the author is very much a compliment because his book got me thinking. The book is very readable because it's broken down into discrete chunks - the seven stories of the title - and each one reads like its own mini science history essay and, on just a basic book level, it was interesting to switch up topics while still keeping with the overall theme of the book. Oh it's also shorter than it looks because the last 20% is the author's source notes. If the subject of science, its history, and its ultimate interaction with society and where it all goes sounds of interest, you'll inhale this book and fly through it like I did.
TV/Streaming:
Black Monday (Season 2):
While this season was marginally weaker than the first, it's really still operating at a level so far above most comedies that it's still great. As a reminder, this is a half-hour show set on '80s Wall Street focusing on the only Black-owned brokerage firm in existence. The humor isn't character-based but is rather nonstop rat-a-tat dialogue, lots of crudeness, and puns with some self-observational humor about whether or not the jokes landed. What makes the show really work is that everyone's motives are pretty devious and there’s some really good underlying plotting going on that provides a credible series of obstacles for the characters to overcome, which they do in the most absurd and ridiculous ways possible, and that blend somehow completely works for me. There are a lot of '80s references and the timeframe, which allows for both familiar '80s Yuppie-ish cliches combined with less familiar (on TV/Streaming at least) late '80s racism issues, adds another layer of interest to the show. I cannot emphasize the absurdity of the characters and situation enough, all of which is clearly self-aware by the writers and cast which is kind of what makes it all so entertaining (or, for those who don’t click with the humor, annoying). To give you a vague sense of what I mean and without spoilering, the opening episode of this season (it involves a bank holdup) is clearly drawing from some kind of Scarface/Miami Vice combo with a bit of Airplane humor thrown in and that referential OTTness followed by some plot twists makes it both entertaining and engaging. Each season has an arc that builds on the prior season and you can kind of see from the final episode of this season where season 3 will be starting. This show is flying a bit under the radar and I totally get how the humor might not be for everyone, but if it's for you and you haven't seen it, well the writing is really strong and has sustained itself across the two seasons I’ve watched so I'd say give it a shot.
Atlanta (Season 2):
So while I really enjoyed Season 1 of this show centered around (ish) becoming a rapper in Atlanta, the second season, while still good, wasn't as engaging for me for two reasons. First, it was super vignette-y; there was, at best, a hazy season-long plot and most of the episodes followed a different character around in a way unrelated to that plot, like one of the side characters goes to pick up a free piano from someone who turns out to be a nutjob. Second - and the piano episode is a good example of this - the show really started pushing the boundaries of believability into the absurd, and I'm not really sure that's how the writers wanted it to read. Like there's an entire episode about one of the characters trying to get a haircut and going with the hairdresser on this ridiculous ride to get him to do the cut only the hairdresser never does because there’s always a delay - he'll do it as soon as they get lunch, he just has to drop something off first, he has to pick something up, etc. etc. - that after a while it made me wonder what I was watching - would you stay in a car with your hairdresser all day long while they kept delaying your haircut? Obviously not, so what is the show? To a large extent, each episode feels like a short play into which the writers shoved the lead characters and then had to contort their behavior to embody the action. In some ways, I feel the show would've been better served - okay not really but you'll see my point - by not even bothering to pretend there were leads and just writing vignettes about various people in Atlanta trying to scrape by. Like the hairdresser episode would've worked just fine without the silliness around the lead character sitting through it; we could've just watched a person in their life doing their scattered thing and called it a day. Of course, that would've made this an anthology series and, I don't know, I tend to find those hard to invest in for the same reason I struggle with short stories which is I don't want to sign up for new exposition all the time. This show is far from bad, but my personal preference would've been for the series to invest in the characters they'd set up rather than taking the audience various places to show us weirdness or create character conflict that ultimately goes nowhere because the next episode jumps time or in some other way disconnects from the prior one. It became hard to get into this season because each week was so in its own world and I wouldn't say the writers did a great job of making the season-long character issues (a conflict of sorts between the rapper and his manager/cousin) make much dramatic sense. I get what the show is (I think), which is talking about a particular type of experience in a particular setting that allows for the exploration of issues around race, culture, and behavior, but to me the lack of cohesion played against rather than to that. I'll definitely watch season 3 and if you're someone who enjoys anthologies about culture with a loosely connected main plot and doesn't mind some verging-on-absurd tossed in then you will probably enjoy this season more than I did because it's certainly well-written, though honestly part of me would argue that the writers cheated because making a season-long story pay off is actually a really difficult part of writing - scenes are easy; scripts are hard - and they totally dodged that.
Movies:
Black Widow (Marvel Universe #24) - This is the backstory movie of Scarjo's kickboxing character and really should've made this movie before she appeared at all because it clarified one point I've never understood which is: what is her superpower? Well now I know - and the Marvel writers' assumptions that all film attendees have spent decades honing their knowledge of everyone involved is, well, maybe it's an accurate assumption actually and I'm the only one who understands nothing because I've read nothing (and, to a large extent, remember nothing from prior films though to give myself some credit here given the amount of plot spewed per square minute, I feel on pretty solid ground blaming everyone but me, which I think also serves as a pretty decent way to go through life and if you don't agree that's your fault (waah waah)). So as it turns out Scarjo is the spawn of some Americans (great TV/Streaming spy series not country-that's-an-experiment-which-seems-to-be-failing), i.e. Russian spies planted in the midwest with the kids not knowing their parents are spies, to hardly mention they’re genetically (I think) enhanced supersoldier spies.
What made this movie work for me was the point that I understood - and I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the filmic intent but heck who knows - that I wasn’t really watching an action movie but rather a family drama about a surly teenager who, like all surly teenagers, has a love/hate though mostly hate relationship with her family and the movie takes place entirely from her POV, like this:
I’m sure there was a very valid plot reason for this setup but, unlike me who’s completely forgotten everything, all the family members in surly teen’s - that would be Scarjo’s - family may or may not have forgotten each other (IF ONLY PLEASE!), the father's in jail (LOSER!), the mother's brainwashed on a farm (EVEN BIGGER LOSER!), the younger sister keeps trying to get the older one to remember her (I JUST REMEMBER I HATE YOU!) and the main teenage daughter wants nothing to do with any of them and has gone off to join a cult that thinks its saving the planet (I AM SAVING THE PLANET, ASSHOLE!).
As usual, the plot setup is barely comprehensible - though, spoiler alert, in the end I was okay with that because the movie itself was short (i.e. under 50,000 hours) and pretty entertaining once it got going - but as far as I could tell the parents do some spy stuff then whisk the kids away from Ohio to... somewhere Russian where Scarjo and her younger sister (ARE DRAGGED AWAY FROM ALL OF THEIR FRIENDS BY CONTROLLING DICKS!) are trained to be supersoldiers. Though I know I'm missing something here because somehow all the female supersoldiers are called black widows (SEXIST PIGS!) whereas I thought, up to this point, that only Scarjo was capital Black capital Widow so... I don't know what's going on, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with Marvel's nonstop gendering. Regardless, the two sisters start off as total besties (OH YEAH SHOW ME THE PICTURES!) and from that point on it was nothing short of nonstop confusion but here's what I think happened.
During black widow training, all the widows are injected with some mind control drugs that wipe out any memories they have (PASS THE DUTCHY, BITCHES!). And maybe not Scarjo? Because she works for the Avengers but how did that happen? And does she remember things? I certainly don’t, but the upshot is most of the movie is spent with Scarjo seemingly having forgotten she had a family only maybe she's faking it (WHO WOULDN'T?!?) because feelings hurt more than being kickboxed in the face (SEE IF YOU’RE STILL SAYING THAT AFTER I KICKBOX YOU IN THE FACE!) Or she's not faking it and did in fact get the mind control drug but is somehow fighting for the Avengers - that would be the enemy of the Supersoldiers - anyway?
Clearly I don’t know, but in the meantime the younger sister is totally brainwashed (ASSUMING SHE EVEN HAS A BRAIN!) until some anti-brainwashing vials explode around her - and where those came from and do they have literally any purpose beyond anti-brainwashing the black widows and why do they exist at all and well you should absolutely feel free to ask literally anyone else, including those who've never seen the movie, for the answer to those questions as you will assuredly get a more coherent response from them than moi. Anyway the vials explode and she's anti-brainwashed and remembers she has a sister and a family and now she wants to anti-brainwash Scarjo only as noted I couldn't tell what was going on in Scarjo's brain (CUT TO: A MONKEY CHASING A SWAN).
So for some reason I’m sure somebody somewhere understands or maybe not, the sisters decide to break their supersoldier father out of prison not because, you know, their father's imprisoned (though for what exactly?) but because they want information about where their mother is and it turns out supersoldier black widow - and btw how come Spider-Man has webbing but black widows kickbox? - mom is, well, getting away from it all and living on a farm and, I think, still working for the baddies (BECAUSE SHE'S A DICK SEE ABOVE!)? In any event there's some encounter between her and Scarjo and she either unbrainwashes herself or was never brainwashed to begin with and then there's some face swapping (don’t ask) and things exploding and more punching and red vials blowing up and unbrainwashing vs brainwashing and, as with all family dramas, it ends with the kids going off on their own to destroy whatever they want and kill countless innocents in the name of the saving them and the parents heading the opposite direction to do the exact same but not before a few hugs and tears (I WANT ICE CREAM!).