Best of the Week - Last Week of April

I'm sorry, but I have been unable to find the time update my post and my pop-culture consumption has also been lackluster mostly because what is going on over here.

However, I felt the need to update on my best ofs over the past few weeks:

Best Movie I saw: None. I have not watched a movie besides the dreadful Jonah Hex I caught early this morning on HBO. Instead I felt I would mention my new favorite show so far that I'm sure everyone has been watching: The Game of Thrones series on HBO.
Surprisingly, I have not read any of the books. They have been recommended to me in the past, but I felt like I already am a nerd and I didn't need a new nerdy project. After watching two episodes of the series, I may have a summer reading project to begin. I will wait to until the series is finished and then probably inhale the books. The TV show shows a lot of promise and you can tell the care that is going in to the show to bring the books to life. I'm sure the true fans will always gripe, since that is the cross us dorks must bear, but really this is an impressive endeavor and I look forward to seeing where this goes.



Best TV show I saw: Parks and Recreations continues to be the funniest show on TV. The characters have really come into their own and in the last 3 weeks each character has really had their moment to shine. From Ron Swanson's burger cook off, to April and Andy's surprise wedding, I look forward to this each week.
I also really enjoyed the Booster Gold episode of Smallville. I thought it was one of the better, more light-hearted episodes in a long time and realized Geoff Johns should have been writing this series for a while now.



Best thing I read: Yes, I've still been reading, but there has been one book that has consumed me over the past 3 weeks. It is called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This brick of a novel is more an experience than a reading something. Although, I can't actually recommend it blindly to just anyone, there are certain people that I think may love this book. The books is a novel about a 30 year LA party kid who finds a book written by an old man. So that book that I read is really that man's book which is the story about a fictitious movie about a house that has seems to have a passage to a ever-changing, vast black void/passage into another world (or maybe hell). The main story is about what happens to the family that lives in that house and the movie they made documenting the explorations of that dimension. So the book is written in one font with footnotes by the old man (Zambrano), with other footnotes/observations by the kid that found that book (Johnny Truant).
Really the book is about the story within a story within a story and the asides they take and the structure of the novel is like nothing I've ever read. Again, I cannot recommend this because I wouldn't call this an entertaining read, but for anyone into taking on a post-modern project, I think this book mostly succeeds. But at 700 pages deep pages (the amount of words per page on this book is usually much more than a normal book, except in certain sections which are apparent) this is not an easy, summer read.

I also enjoyed a comedy called Everything is going to Kill Everybody by Robert Brockway which was a humorous look at all the diseases, natural disasters and nanobots scientists are creating which will 'most likely' lend a hand into the human race's eventual extinction. It had a very light manner when discussing everything, but over all this is for people that enjoy being afraid about waking up and living their lives. Also, it had just a tad too many dick jokes for my preference. But, overall it was a fun, educational and light read for any science geeks out there.






Best thing I heard: Last week I went to New Orleans, and every band on the street, music in a club and even the songs I had already heard coming out of a jukebox in a bar sounded better than any other song I've heard in some time. From the old jazz band I heard at the Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street, to the funk-based band across the street, to the awesome violin and guitar duet playing on the street to walking into Molly's to hear some old school Faith No More coming out of the Juke Box, I was quite happy in my four days there. Possibly too happy since all I did was walk around the streets, listening to music and eating great food and drinking great drinks that I forgot to do much sight-seeing or take any tours. Oh well, that means I'll just have to go back.