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Pick Of The Week: Week 1 (note to self: find better title)
Posted by Miz B
on
Saturday, October 30, 2010
in
PoWs
And here is rendition one (see original post if you don't know what this is). WARNING: WILL CONTAIN POP-CULTURE SPOILERS! I am not going to go around marking them either, but I'll try to keep them as vague as possible for tender young eyes sake. That said, beware!
Without further ado, Pick Of the Week!
Best Book
Side Jobs by Jim Butcher
Hands down the best book I read this month (certainly the most anticipated). It only works if you're a reader of Jim Butcher's series The Dresden Files (you may know it from a small, quickly canceled TV show on the Sci Fi network -I refuse to use that misspelled name they came up with- that had almost nothing to do with the books at all). If you aren't a reader, I recommend you try them out. They are kick. If you do read them, this is a must! It includes all but two of Butcher's short stories (all very good fun), and one small novelette, not available anywhere else, which occurs 45 minutes after the end of his last book, Changes. It's told from supporting character Murphy's point of view, is very good, and gave those of us still holding our breath after Changes cliffhanger a chance to keep from turning from blue to purple and actually passing out. But, since this is Jim Butcher we're talking about, he doesn't actually answer any big questions, instead leaving his fanbase in the dark until the next book comes out in April (don't read the Amazon synopsis unless you're up to speed. It will ruin the whole series for you). Five months, I don't think I'll last. I swear, some books are like crack...
Best Song
"Temple in Me Heart" by The Hipwips
Not as easy as it should be to get a hold of, I thoroughly recommend everything these guys have done! They have 2 albums out right now, both very solid. This is just my favorite song over all. Good music to listen to in the car (and for me, that's high praise).
Best Joke or Funny Moment
This one was a little more dark-humory than I would have preferred, but it's actually quite amusing in hindsight. See, the local Rotary club has been collecting donations for over a month now for outlaying villages in Southern Veracruz which were hit hard by the massive flooding, thanks to the last 2 hurricanes (yeesh!). The unstable ground around swampy Veracruz coupled with the tendency for villages to cluster around rivers would have been bad enough, but the floodwaters also destroyed large parts of the capitol, Veracruz City, and caused huge road damage and the collapse of several major bridges and roadways, essentially cutting off relief and fresh supplies to lots of outlying arias. In a place where accidentally swallowing to much tap water can kill you, that's not good. We did one run to a nearby village about a month ago (when I say nearby, I mean about 50 miles away, which, with the roads here, means 2 1/2 very bumpy hours) and it went very well.
This time, another club collected even more stuff, and added it to ours to dispense. This is where the fun part comes in: somehow, someone managed to pick a village that was not only outside our clubs jurisdiction (and therefore not our problem), but was over 5 hours away (that's one way, mark you) through some of the most trashy roads I have ever seen (for example, we drove for 20 minutes on something oddly soft which I later realized was just a giant pile of sandbags. The actual pavement had been swept away by the retreating floodwaters. One the way there, one of the cars in our entourage (there were 3 SUVS belonging to club members, and one large lorry-type truck hauling all the donations) got a rock tossed up under it and punched a whole in it's oil pan (which is bad, fellow not-car people). After sitting in the sun for 20 minutes taking pictures and wandering around, everyone split up, managed to cram themselves into other cars (sitting on laps was required), and got the car up to the next village, which happened to have a mechanic. We left it there and went on to the actual destination. Hallmark moments ensued, and we managed to get out around 3pm. We made it back to the broken car to find that the mechanic had fixed the hole. Hurray! (see where this is going?) Just far enough away that there was no way to get back, the oil pan broke completely. Since whoever owned the car did not want to leave it stranded in the boonies of Veracruz (I don't know why. Honestly, it probably would have been safer there than parked on the street back in Mina), they decided to tie to to the car in front and essentially drag it home. Look at a topographical map of southern Veracruz and tell me why this is a REALLY bad idea. So, as much hi-jinks ensued(the lorry had gone on ahead, and since you can't really pull a big car with an equally sized car very fast, we were traveling at about 10 miles an hour), including a rather epic wrong turn:
and constant stops to retie the car and move the increasingly uncomfortable overstuffed passengers around, we went.
I was in a pretty good mood until one of my legs cramped up and the car stopped going again. It wasn't until I was helping 10 other people push a broken SUV up a giant hill on a road that would have been deemed unsafe to drive on in the U.S., in the dark, with a stabbing pain up my right side, no painkillers, no water, and no food that I realized this was getting a little silly.
Eventually, after about 2 more hours of this crap, everyone else figured this out too and banded together to force the hold out car owner to leave his SUV in what was laughingly called a 'parking lot' in front of a 24 hour shop in one of the millions of tiny towns on the road, with the promise they would drive out with someone to fix it in the morning. All 20 or so of us piled back into our 2 SUVs (think about it) and made our merry way back onto the not-really-a-road (by now, it's pushing 9:30). We get back into town by past 10, to find our compatriots from the lorry sitting on the side of the road eating a late-night snack and waiting for us. Not only are they annoyed that it took us so long, they want to know if we 'stopped to help the dead guy'. Turns out, we must have driven past about 5 police trucks parked around a gent who, when they went past, was lying on the side of the road covered in 'some sort of reddish stuff'. We make it home by a quarter to 11, only to find that there's a problem with the hot water heater, and all our clothes that were supposed to be washed that day were left in a wet heap in front of the washer. When I find my school uniform in the pile (bear in mind this is the middle of the week and I need to be up at 5am the following morning to got to school), my host mother announces that no-one is doing anything the next day, and to all just forget it and go to bed. We sleep until lunchtime the next day. Like the bumper stickers say, "Never buy a car you can't push".
Happiest/Best Moment I Could Take A Picture Of
Location: Iglesia de San Andres, San Andres Tuxtla, Los Tuxtlas de Catemaco, Ver. MEXICO
This exact moment was cool looking, but actually a little dull. The day around it was fantastic. If I ever get the money (or the opportunity) to retire to some little relatively hard to reach place, I'm probably coming to live in the Tuxtlas, around Lago Catemaco (use a map, you geographically-challenged internet addict, you).
Best Movie
Sarah Jane Adventures, episodes 'Death of the Doctor', Parts 1 & 2
The name says it all. I always consider Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood to exist for the sole reason of keeping the frankly terrifyingly large Doctor Who fanbase from rioting halfway between the end of a season and the Christmas special, but this episode was just good clean fun. Giant bird people that looked like they escaped from Farscape, the return of the infamous Joe Grant. Gratuitous misuse of the long-suffering Clyde, small blue men with difficult names, a rather obvious setup for a continuity issue they're going to run into pretty soon (hint: I don't think that number is gonna take so well. A plot arc would work better!), and that's not to mention the rather prominent cameo of a very specific character whose name is rather prominently displayed in the episode title (To quote Mr. Twain "The report of my death was an exaggeration").
Best Quote
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." - Frank Zappa
Best Obscure Pop-Culture Reference That Most Of You Aren't Going To Understand
I found a way to involve the audience AND make this unnecessarily mean! I'm going to come up with a line, or part of a line, from something. You have to figure out what it is and post it in the comments WITHOUT using Google, Bing, or you're resident nerdy relative. For those of you to culturally illiterate (or lazy) to come up with anything, I will be posting the answer to every weeks question the following week. I'll start with something simple.
"Gym was canceled due to the extreme dead guy in the lockers".
Come on folks, I know at least three of you know this one (and two very specifically don't, for which they should be taken out into the road and pelted with wet Lucky Charms).
Best Dumb Thing
Despite long hours of meditation, I think the subject of 'Best Joke or Funny Moment' was a double header this week. I can't really top that.
Best Random Thing
This won this week, hands down (there is also a picture, but I didn't put it on here, since it's kinda puke-worthy. If you want to see it or to read more, go here).
Looking for these kind of 'accidents' has long been a hobby of mine, although I am not very good at finding them. So far, my favorite one that I found was a 4 car pileup involving an open-top lorry full of ripe avocados. I still have the newspaper clipping in my room back home. For more interesting 'it fell off the back of a truck'-type stories, check out this.
Best Meal
And I'm not kidding, these suckers are good eating (especially the soft bit at the base of the throat).
Best TV Episode
Although there was a solid runner-up this week (Supernatural's most recent installment, "Live Free or Twi-Hard", was sensational -I leave you to guess at their Freak of the Week), I have to give the honor to 'Point Blank', the second season finale of White Collar, if only for finally delivering, with their usual amount of flawless style, TV's first real (in my opinion) use of The Heavy's 'How You Like Me Now' (and in this seasons coolest scene, no less). I hope more of their music is to follow. I love The Heavy, and I've thought their music fit right in to White Collar's aura of glamor, drama and daring heists ever since I first heard them perform on Letterman.
Note: I was going to attach the video of the song on White Collar, but I couldn't find one. Then I was going to attach a recording of their performance on Letterman, but I watched the music video and it was so good it won. You can see their performance from Letterman here (I recommend it. They were the first group on Letterman to get asked to perform an encore ever).
Add to that their stunning cliffhanger (the most shocking I think they're allowed to be on the USA network), and I will definitely be coming back for their premier in January, no matter how bored I was with some of their episodes this season.
So that's it, folks! Comments, questions, criticism and recommendations are appreciated, just click on the little speech bubble with the number in it at the top right-hand corner of the post. Thanks for reading!
Without further ado, Pick Of the Week!
Best Book
Side Jobs by Jim Butcher
Hands down the best book I read this month (certainly the most anticipated). It only works if you're a reader of Jim Butcher's series The Dresden Files (you may know it from a small, quickly canceled TV show on the Sci Fi network -I refuse to use that misspelled name they came up with- that had almost nothing to do with the books at all). If you aren't a reader, I recommend you try them out. They are kick. If you do read them, this is a must! It includes all but two of Butcher's short stories (all very good fun), and one small novelette, not available anywhere else, which occurs 45 minutes after the end of his last book, Changes. It's told from supporting character Murphy's point of view, is very good, and gave those of us still holding our breath after Changes cliffhanger a chance to keep from turning from blue to purple and actually passing out. But, since this is Jim Butcher we're talking about, he doesn't actually answer any big questions, instead leaving his fanbase in the dark until the next book comes out in April (don't read the Amazon synopsis unless you're up to speed. It will ruin the whole series for you). Five months, I don't think I'll last. I swear, some books are like crack...
Best Song
"Temple in Me Heart" by The Hipwips
Not as easy as it should be to get a hold of, I thoroughly recommend everything these guys have done! They have 2 albums out right now, both very solid. This is just my favorite song over all. Good music to listen to in the car (and for me, that's high praise).
Best Joke or Funny Moment
This one was a little more dark-humory than I would have preferred, but it's actually quite amusing in hindsight. See, the local Rotary club has been collecting donations for over a month now for outlaying villages in Southern Veracruz which were hit hard by the massive flooding, thanks to the last 2 hurricanes (yeesh!). The unstable ground around swampy Veracruz coupled with the tendency for villages to cluster around rivers would have been bad enough, but the floodwaters also destroyed large parts of the capitol, Veracruz City, and caused huge road damage and the collapse of several major bridges and roadways, essentially cutting off relief and fresh supplies to lots of outlying arias. In a place where accidentally swallowing to much tap water can kill you, that's not good. We did one run to a nearby village about a month ago (when I say nearby, I mean about 50 miles away, which, with the roads here, means 2 1/2 very bumpy hours) and it went very well.
This time, another club collected even more stuff, and added it to ours to dispense. This is where the fun part comes in: somehow, someone managed to pick a village that was not only outside our clubs jurisdiction (and therefore not our problem), but was over 5 hours away (that's one way, mark you) through some of the most trashy roads I have ever seen (for example, we drove for 20 minutes on something oddly soft which I later realized was just a giant pile of sandbags. The actual pavement had been swept away by the retreating floodwaters. One the way there, one of the cars in our entourage (there were 3 SUVS belonging to club members, and one large lorry-type truck hauling all the donations) got a rock tossed up under it and punched a whole in it's oil pan (which is bad, fellow not-car people). After sitting in the sun for 20 minutes taking pictures and wandering around, everyone split up, managed to cram themselves into other cars (sitting on laps was required), and got the car up to the next village, which happened to have a mechanic. We left it there and went on to the actual destination. Hallmark moments ensued, and we managed to get out around 3pm. We made it back to the broken car to find that the mechanic had fixed the hole. Hurray! (see where this is going?) Just far enough away that there was no way to get back, the oil pan broke completely. Since whoever owned the car did not want to leave it stranded in the boonies of Veracruz (I don't know why. Honestly, it probably would have been safer there than parked on the street back in Mina), they decided to tie to to the car in front and essentially drag it home. Look at a topographical map of southern Veracruz and tell me why this is a REALLY bad idea. So, as much hi-jinks ensued(the lorry had gone on ahead, and since you can't really pull a big car with an equally sized car very fast, we were traveling at about 10 miles an hour), including a rather epic wrong turn:
and constant stops to retie the car and move the increasingly uncomfortable overstuffed passengers around, we went.
I was in a pretty good mood until one of my legs cramped up and the car stopped going again. It wasn't until I was helping 10 other people push a broken SUV up a giant hill on a road that would have been deemed unsafe to drive on in the U.S., in the dark, with a stabbing pain up my right side, no painkillers, no water, and no food that I realized this was getting a little silly.
Eventually, after about 2 more hours of this crap, everyone else figured this out too and banded together to force the hold out car owner to leave his SUV in what was laughingly called a 'parking lot' in front of a 24 hour shop in one of the millions of tiny towns on the road, with the promise they would drive out with someone to fix it in the morning. All 20 or so of us piled back into our 2 SUVs (think about it) and made our merry way back onto the not-really-a-road (by now, it's pushing 9:30). We get back into town by past 10, to find our compatriots from the lorry sitting on the side of the road eating a late-night snack and waiting for us. Not only are they annoyed that it took us so long, they want to know if we 'stopped to help the dead guy'. Turns out, we must have driven past about 5 police trucks parked around a gent who, when they went past, was lying on the side of the road covered in 'some sort of reddish stuff'. We make it home by a quarter to 11, only to find that there's a problem with the hot water heater, and all our clothes that were supposed to be washed that day were left in a wet heap in front of the washer. When I find my school uniform in the pile (bear in mind this is the middle of the week and I need to be up at 5am the following morning to got to school), my host mother announces that no-one is doing anything the next day, and to all just forget it and go to bed. We sleep until lunchtime the next day. Like the bumper stickers say, "Never buy a car you can't push".
Happiest/Best Moment I Could Take A Picture Of
Location: Iglesia de San Andres, San Andres Tuxtla, Los Tuxtlas de Catemaco, Ver. MEXICO
This exact moment was cool looking, but actually a little dull. The day around it was fantastic. If I ever get the money (or the opportunity) to retire to some little relatively hard to reach place, I'm probably coming to live in the Tuxtlas, around Lago Catemaco (use a map, you geographically-challenged internet addict, you).
Best Movie
Sarah Jane Adventures, episodes 'Death of the Doctor', Parts 1 & 2
The name says it all. I always consider Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood to exist for the sole reason of keeping the frankly terrifyingly large Doctor Who fanbase from rioting halfway between the end of a season and the Christmas special, but this episode was just good clean fun. Giant bird people that looked like they escaped from Farscape, the return of the infamous Joe Grant. Gratuitous misuse of the long-suffering Clyde, small blue men with difficult names, a rather obvious setup for a continuity issue they're going to run into pretty soon (hint: I don't think that number is gonna take so well. A plot arc would work better!), and that's not to mention the rather prominent cameo of a very specific character whose name is rather prominently displayed in the episode title (To quote Mr. Twain "The report of my death was an exaggeration").
Best Quote
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." - Frank Zappa
Best Obscure Pop-Culture Reference That Most Of You Aren't Going To Understand
I found a way to involve the audience AND make this unnecessarily mean! I'm going to come up with a line, or part of a line, from something. You have to figure out what it is and post it in the comments WITHOUT using Google, Bing, or you're resident nerdy relative. For those of you to culturally illiterate (or lazy) to come up with anything, I will be posting the answer to every weeks question the following week. I'll start with something simple.
"Gym was canceled due to the extreme dead guy in the lockers".
Come on folks, I know at least three of you know this one (and two very specifically don't, for which they should be taken out into the road and pelted with wet Lucky Charms).
Best Dumb Thing
Despite long hours of meditation, I think the subject of 'Best Joke or Funny Moment' was a double header this week. I can't really top that.
Best Random Thing
This won this week, hands down (there is also a picture, but I didn't put it on here, since it's kinda puke-worthy. If you want to see it or to read more, go here).
"The Taiwanese city of Tainan looked like the set of a slasher movie after a 56-foot sperm whale exploded on its way through town. At the time, the whale was dead, having beached itself earlier, and was being carted via flatbed truck to a research facility for autopsy. As the whale lay rotting in the sun, gases began to build up inside its carcass until they detonated in a flood of whale guts."
Looking for these kind of 'accidents' has long been a hobby of mine, although I am not very good at finding them. So far, my favorite one that I found was a 4 car pileup involving an open-top lorry full of ripe avocados. I still have the newspaper clipping in my room back home. For more interesting 'it fell off the back of a truck'-type stories, check out this.
Best Meal
And I'm not kidding, these suckers are good eating (especially the soft bit at the base of the throat).
Best TV Episode
Although there was a solid runner-up this week (Supernatural's most recent installment, "Live Free or Twi-Hard", was sensational -I leave you to guess at their Freak of the Week), I have to give the honor to 'Point Blank', the second season finale of White Collar, if only for finally delivering, with their usual amount of flawless style, TV's first real (in my opinion) use of The Heavy's 'How You Like Me Now' (and in this seasons coolest scene, no less). I hope more of their music is to follow. I love The Heavy, and I've thought their music fit right in to White Collar's aura of glamor, drama and daring heists ever since I first heard them perform on Letterman.
Note: I was going to attach the video of the song on White Collar, but I couldn't find one. Then I was going to attach a recording of their performance on Letterman, but I watched the music video and it was so good it won. You can see their performance from Letterman here (I recommend it. They were the first group on Letterman to get asked to perform an encore ever).
Add to that their stunning cliffhanger (the most shocking I think they're allowed to be on the USA network), and I will definitely be coming back for their premier in January, no matter how bored I was with some of their episodes this season.
So that's it, folks! Comments, questions, criticism and recommendations are appreciated, just click on the little speech bubble with the number in it at the top right-hand corner of the post. Thanks for reading!
