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 |    My primary Writing.com blog. |
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Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics). Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:  "The Soundtrackers Group"  "Blogging Circle of Friends " "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" "JAFBG" "Take up Your Cross" Thanks for stopping by!  |
To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies  101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure Challengers Moana 2 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 SpellboundThere wasn't a lot that was great in the feature film department this month. Moana 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 were both serviceable sequels, but not as good as their predecessors, and 101 Dalmations II was yet another of the early-2000s sequel cash-ins that Disney did and my kids seem to love, so I end up watching them too. None of them have been particularly impressive. And speaking of not-that-impressive, Spellbound was one of the animated features I worked on during my brief time at Skydance, and - along with Luck - these two were supposed to be the resurgence of John Lasseter as an animation genius after being ousted from Disney and Pixar. Luck was pretty good, but I remember everyone at the company at the time was like, "That one's okay, but Spellbound is going to be John's opus." So I was a little surprised to have liked Luck considerably better than Spellbound. It just felt so... generic. Challengers, on the other hand, while a far from perfect movie, was a really interesting watch. I'm not sure I totally buy into Luca Guadagnino as a "visionary" filmmaker, but he definitely has a clear and specific point of view and I can appreciate that about his movies. I love tennis too, so being set in that world kept my interest, especially when approaching it from a perspective of what a day-to-day journeyman tennis player experiences, as opposed to the celebrities at the top of the game. I actually thought the acting of the two guys (Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor) were weak points of the movie even as others have praised them; but the directing, Zendaya's performance, and the storytelling was excellent. Television A Man on the Inside (Season 1) Arcane (Season 1) Black Doves (Season 1) Formula 1: Drive to Survive (Season 2) Formula 1: Drive to Survive (Season 3) Formula 1: Drive to Survive (Season 4) Law & Order (Season 24) The Rookie (Season 6) Shrinking (Season 2)This was a really good month for television. A Man on the Inside saw showrunner Mike Shur and Ted Danson re-team for another show, this one about a retiree who goes undercover in a retirement community to help a private investigator with a theft she's been hired to solve, and it's delightful. I'm really looking forward to what I hope will be a second season. Black Doves was an interesting espionage thriller starring Keira Knightley that got better as it went, and the second season of Shrinking on Apple TV+ really delivered on a lot of the setup and groundwork that was established in the first season. The emotional character arcs might be as good as Ted Lasso, depending on how the third season goes. The runaway top pick for television this month, though, was Formula 1: Drive to Survive, which I'm officially hooked on. Season 4 was the most dramatic so far (it covered the 2021 season where Lewis Hamilton lost his bid for a record-setting eighth Driver's Championship to Max Verstappen, who has dominated the Driver's Championship ever since. That year the Driver's Championship was hotly contested all year long and came down to the very last race, which ended up being quite controversial with some of the calls that were made. I'll definitely be caught up on Season 5 and Season 6 before the presumed release of Season 7 ahead of the new Formula 1 season starts in March of 2025. I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys sports docuseries; this one is exceptionally well-produced. TOP PICK: Formula 1: Drive to Survive (Season 4) |
It's the end of 2024, which means it's time to review all the reading and listening I've done over the past calendar year. Here's how this past year broke down in terms of titles and numbers: = favorite = also really enjoyedBooks (click to expand full list) ▼ This year, I continued my scaled-down goal of "only" planning to read 50 books and, honestly, I really enjoyed the freedom; maybe even more than last year. Having the eight years of reading 100+ books was a really tough challenge that I enjoyed trying to meet, but it often had me focusing on quantity rather than quality. With the scaled-down goal, it's really allowed me to read whatever I want, without having to worry about falling off my pace. I have the time and space to read more comics and read longer and more complex books without feeling like I'm getting behind if I don't crank out two books a week. I'm almost certainly going to continue with the same reading goal again for 2025. Podcasts (click to expand full list) ▼ I listened to more podcasts this year than the previous few years, but I attribute a lot of that to the fact that it was an election year, and I listen to a lot of news and political podcasts. I think I finally hit my limit though, because after the election I'm kind of sick of all of them.  I still plan on listening to several of them next year because I like to keep up to date on what's happening, but I didn't pick very many of them as my top podcasts of the year as a result. I found myself appreciating the podcasts about little-known issues ("The Economics of Everyday Things" and new entry "Explain It To Me") and movie-watching/commentary podcasts. Part of me feels like this next year might see a change in some of the stuff I listen to regularly, which I like to mix up every couple of years.  Comics (click to expand full list) ▼ This is where my reading really took off this year, in large part because Marvel started sending me monthly galley boxes of all their comics to be published the following month. I'm a couple months behind at the moment, but it's a really cool way to see what the company is working on, and to keep apprised of what's going on in the comics world. While Marvel has struggled a bit lately (for years, its main efforts were to basically capitalize on the films), they're starting to really push into new areas with "event" series like Bloodhunt and Venom War which, while not always successful, are the things I think it needs to do to eventually discover those comic runs which will become iconic in a few years. Scripts (click to expand full list) ▼ I only read fifteen scripts this year, a little less than last year. Like 2023, I still haven't quite gotten my mojo back when it comes to screenwriting, so it makes sense that I haven't been reading a lot of screenplays lately. And also like 2024, I'd like to change that in 2025, but I'm also hesitant to be too prescriptive about what I'm trying to read. If scripts pop up that I want to read, I'll read them. TOTALS: 55 books, 1100 podcasts, 240 comics, 15 scripts According to Goodreads, my book reading resulted in the following stats: Total Pages Read: 17,971 (+1,143 change from 2023) Average Pages Per Book: 326 (-10 change from 2023) Shortest Book: 30 (-48 change from 2023) Longest Book: 845 (-307 change from 2023) That's it for my 2024 reading... time to see what 2025 has in store! |
 Day 2427 Prompt ▼ I enjoy playing card games (everything from traditional games like Blackjack and Poker, to party games like Go Fish and War and Crazy Eights. I even like some collectible card games that aren't played with a standard deck (Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, etc.), although I don't typically play for money outside a friendly low-stakes game playing Thirty-One for quarters during a family get-together. The one thing I don't like about card games are the competitiveness that some players exhibit, or the arguments about skill versus luck. To me, playing cards is a trivial entertainment; it's a game to be played to pass the time. I know that some people see card games as very serious business, or even a way to make a living, but that's just not how or why I play cards. And let's not forget my favorite type of card games... party games like Cards Against Humanity, Apples to Apples, What Do You Meme?, etc. Those are easily my favorites these days, where the purpose is just to have a good time and laugh your butt of with your friends while you play a ridiculous game with ridiculous rules and hilarious if not borderline offensive cards to play for shock value. Day 2429 Prompt ▼ I'm constantly challenging and reexamining my worldview. I think that one of the hallmarks of an intelligent, thoughtful person should be the ability to think critically about themselves and their positions and admit when something needs to be adjusted or even outright changed. That said, I think I have a tendency to refine my worldview rather than change it wholesale. For example, most people tend to be more liberal when they're younger, and become more conservative as they get older. This tends to happen as people establish lives that they've invested in; as you get older, you earn more money and tend to want more conservative fiscal policy to allow you to keep more of your money. As you get older, you tend to view your formative years with more nostalgia, and are more likely to become more socially conservative if you disagree with the direction society is trending toward. I actually find myself more liberal (progressive would probably be a better term, since the main focus of my worldview is making progress on issues that leads to meaningful improvement in peoples' lives) than I was when I was younger. I attribute a lot of this to the fact that I moved from an affluent small town where I grew up, to a major metropolitan city when I went to college and started working. I also started traveling and seeing other cities, other countries, etc. which showed me very clearly that not everyone had the same upbringing I did. I was very privileged to grow up in a place where food, housing, money, security, etc. were all things that were taken for granted rather than hard to come by. But different people have different upbringings, and that affects their options and their choices about where life takes them. The part of my worldview that I think I've probably changed the most in recent years is my default assumption that "the system" is inherently good and worth preserving. I still think that success is more likely to come from reforming the system itself rather than burning things to the ground and starting from scratch (in most cases), but I've really started to realize the systemic problems that exist in society, particularly where it relates to opportunity, equality, and justice. I used to assume everyone was treated the same and had the same opportunity to rise up and live out the American Dream, and I've realized just how hard that is for some people to do given the hand they were dealt at birth, growing up, etc. And I'm much more sympathetic toward arguments and policies that are aimed at leveling the playing field, taking care of those who the system has failed, etc. Day 2430 Prompt ▼ I'm honestly not really sure what the first part of this prompt means, so I'm going to deviate a little bit and talk about certain activities and interests that have played an important role in my life, as well as activities and interests that I'm looking forward to exploring in 2025. Activities and interests that have played a key role in my life up until this point have been media and learning. Media (and I include so many things under that umbrella: movies, music, books, video games, etc.) has unquestioningly had a bigger influence on my life than anything else. I went into the entertainment business because I fell in love with telling stories in different ways. I connect some of my strongest emotions and relate the way I understand the world around me through specific songs and books and movies. I think art in nearly all its forms is one of the most incredible things humans have developed, and our imaginations are what make us unique. It's a rare day that I'm not consuming some form - if not multiple forms - of media to satiate my varied interests. Which brings me to the next piece of it, which is learning. I love learning new things, and I constantly strive to add to the information that I have in my brain. In a lot of cases it's just random facts and trivia that I stumble across and find interesting enough to retain, but I also have a tendency to get really into a particular topic which will then consume a ton of my bandwidth until I feel like I've sufficiently exhausted it. This has been the case for topics as "serious" as religion/philosophy, the film/television business I've chosen as my profession, writing, etc. to topics as fun or trivial as building a computer from scratch, learning how to play tennis so I can enjoy watching the sport more, etc. When it comes to activities and interests in 2025, there are two that I'm looking forward to and they both fall into each category in a way. In 2024, I got back into Dungeons & Dragons in a major way. I found a group that was in need of a Dungeon Master (the person who runs the game for a group of players), so I started playing with them and re-teaching myself how to play the game. It's also my first experience with a regular group in a long time (my previous group was a monthly game at best, and that fell off over five years ago), so planning for a weekly session has motivated me to not just re-learn the rules, but to strive to improve myself as a DM by reading a lot of books and watching a lot of YouTube videos on the topic of how to be more effective at telling a collaborative story. This past year was a bit of a learning curve, not just in terms of getting up to speed on how to play the game again but also in terms of getting to know a new group of players (and these ones have been playing together for years, many of whom have known each other since they were kids), and I'm excited to enter 2025 having hit my stride with the campaign I've built, and seeing where it goes from there. The second thing that I'm excited about exploring in 2025 is my newfound interest in Formula One racing. I started watching Formula One: Drive to Survive on Netflix this year, and got absolutely hooked. I've been reading extensively about the sport above and beyond what's in the show, and I'm awed by all of the work that goes into professional racing. Knowing that I'll be caught up on the past several years of history heading into the 2025 Formula One season, I'm really looking forward to following along and seeing what happens now that I'm better educated on the sport. I'm hoping to maybe even make it out to Las Vegas for the race that takes place there in November! Either way, with my interest in tennis sort of waning in recent years after more than a decade of being really into it, I'm excited to have found a new sport that I'm interested in learning about and following. |
For the past several years, I've been content to do my "usuals" when it comes to running activities. The official contests every month, the "NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon" every November, and a handful of annual one-offs for "The Soundtrackers Group" scattered about throughout the year. It's been a long time since I've run what I would consider a very active group or activity, like back in the day when I ran the "Unofficial Erotica Newsletter Group" , "The Dark Society" , and "The Screenwriting Group" , and participated in half a dozen other regular contests and activities.While I can't say that I'm fully ready to commit to another majorly active group or anything right now, I am excited to start dusting off some old activities and ideas that I've been meaning to get around to for a while now. In particular, I'm really excited to have just launched "The Bradbury" in anticipation of starting that in the new year. I'm also finally going to relaunch "Blog Harbor" with a new format and some new prompts to give people more options for their writing next year.My goal for 2025 is to be much more productive with my writing than I have been in the last several years, so I'm hoping that with enough outlets for writing that interests me, something will catch! |
I'm definitely a binger of movies and television. If there's an entire season (or multiple seasons) of television, or a series of movies that I haven't watched, I will often try to get caught up all at one time so that I can experience everything together. I've gotten so used to the experience of watching something straight through, I'll often save up episodes of a show that still does weekly releases so that I can watch them all at once. The exception are shows that are episodic in nature (like police procedurals or case-of-the-week legal dramas); it's the interwoven narrative playing out over the course of a season that makes me want to consume it at my own pace and in its entirety, rather than experiencing it piecemeal and one episode at a time. The same is true of book series. For more episodic-type stories like mystery/thriller series where each book is a more or less standalone case or incident, I will often take my time to read them and will read other things in between. I really love authors like Michael Connelly, Mark Greaney, and Gregg Hurwitz, so I'll pace myself and read the books in their series a few a time, then move onto something else for a bit before returning to the next installment. But when it comes to books that are a "limited series" (like a trilogy, or the Harry Potter books, or similar), I tend to want to experience the entire narrative all at once before moving onto the next thing. Which sometimes means that I don't start big endeavors for a long time because I know that it's going to take a while to get through them. Now that Brandon Sanderson is finished with the first half of his Stormlight Archive series, I want to get into them... but with each book coming it at over a thousand pages, that's going to be quite the reading effort. Same with Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which is a 4,250-ish page investment. Those ones I'll probably have to break up with something else, if only because I'm not sure I can commit that number of hours to a single property without losing interest. The one thing that I'm definitely getting better at, though, is not being a completionist. I used to feel like if I invested time in something (especially television, which takes less time to consume than books), I had to see it through to the end. And I know a lot of shows build, so it's not uncommon to have to watch a handful of episodes before a show really hits its stride. Or, in some cases, a season or two. And while there are times where I'll power through to get to the good stuff, I'm also doing a much better job of smashing that eject button if I'm really not motivated to watch something. If it doesn't catch and hold my attention in some way, shape, or form, I'm doing a better job of just moving onto the next thing after one book in the series, an episode or two, etc. Which has saved me a lot of frustration and wasted time. |
"Take up Your Cross" | Prompt for 12/19/2024 ▼ This is actually the first year in the past four years that I didn't read the entire Bible. I originally set myself a "read five different translations of the Bible in five years" goal for myself, but this year I kind of hit a wall and just couldn't continue on after successfully reading the NIV, ESV, and NLT in 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively. This was supposed to be the year I tackled the KJV but I decided to give myself a break and take a year off, especially since it was a particularly tough year faith-wise with leaving our previous church and helping start a new one. My favorite books of the Bible are probably Genesis and Acts, and I tend to read my daily pages either first thing in the morning or at night right before I go to bed.. My motivation to read all the different translations stemmed from a desire to better understand it. I figured with different interpretations, it might help me understand some of the nuances of the stories being told. It's been a really rewarding experience, but it's also at times felt a bit surface-level; the Bible isn't exactly a short book and you have to read a big chunk of text every day to get through it by the end of the year. I'm thinking about alternating between a "the whole bible in a year" pace every other year, and on off-years using that time to really focus and drill down into some of the sections of the Bible in greater detail, to appreciate the nuances of the language. I think it's an important practice for all Christians to study and expand their understanding of their faith, and the best way to do that is to continue to read over and study scripture. |
There are way too many fiction books that I still think about years later to even hope to narrow it down, so I'm going to focus the question on nonfiction books that have stayed with me over the years. I really enjoy reading nonfiction and there are definitely bits and pieces of each that I'll absorb, but the list of nonfiction books (entire ones) that really affected me and that I'm constantly revisiting is a much smaller list that includes: Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger by Ken Perenyi. In a similar vein to Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Deception about his life as a hacker, this book by Ken Perenyi is about his experiences as a very successful forger, and the amount of detail he provides about the kinds of scams that he'd pull, or the types of details that went into forging specific types of artwork was really fascinating. It's a book that I think about often when writing criminal characters in my own work, but it's also a book I think about just in terms of how captivating it was to read about the world he was a part of. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner. While they've continued the work in subsequent books and a long-running podcast, this first "Freakonomics" book, when it came out, was mind-blowing. I had never seen someone use the study of economics (something that I attempted to understand in college and was not good at ) to explain, like, normal things. I'd always assumed that economics was some fancy study of larger market conditions that were largely divorced from people's everyday lives, and it was really cool to see these guys take those same principles and apply them to everyday situations to explain them better.Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. I really miss Anthony Bourdain. The guy was an incredible chef, author, and culinary critic. Like Caveat Emptor above, Bourdain's book has a way of transporting the reader into the world of working in professional kitchens, and all of the chaos that surrounds that lifestyle. It's one of those jobs that is almost entirely unique and most people just would not understand or have any visibility into unless they or someone they knew worked one of those jobs. Professional kitchens sound like absolutely bonkers places to work, and this book was a real journey. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. Overall, I've really enjoyed most of Malcolm Gladwell's books, each of which focus on a different subject, but this is the original breakthrough book and still one of the best. Similar to Freakonomics, it applies a thought process usually reserved for academics and "big picture" thinkers and applies it to everyday problems and questions that come up in people's normal lives. More than anything, it's a book about better understanding the forces that impact our world, and I always find books like that both illuminating and interesting. |
Ooh, this is a great prompt. I'm also a little conflicted because I think - for me - I would choose different years depending on whether reliving that year was purely an exercise is going through the same experiences all over again, or if it was an opportunity to change things that would then have downstream effects back in the present day. If there aren't any downstream effects, is it an opportunity to do things differently just for that one year? Hmm ... you know what? I'm going to answer all three! If I could relive one year of my life and it was purely an exercise in experiencing that year all over again, I think I would choose 1999-2000; my senior year in high school. There were so many great moments that year ... I finally felt like I was growing more confident in who I was as a person and I had a solid friend group, I finally got over a girl I had been pining over since middle school and started enjoying life (like school dances) with friends ... I discovered my passion for filmmaking through school projects where I got to make short films for the first time ... as cliche as it is to say, I'd go back to high school because I remember that as a really fun, carefree time in my life. It'd be fun to go back to that time for a bit. If I could relive one year of my life and it was a chance to live just that one year differently, I would definitely choose 2020. Even though it was during the pandemic and during the uncertain time when we were fostering the kids, and I don't love the idea of reliving either of those things, that's also the one year of overlap between us starting to foster our kids and my mom being around before she passed away. We ended up staying home and sheltering in place in our tiny little apartment because we had no idea how long the pandemic would last; we only saw my parents in person a couple of times that year, and we weren't able to be there with her when she passed. If I could live that year again and change something, I would have absolutely moved our family home so we could have all spent that last year together. I would have loved to have spent more time with my mom, given my kids more time with her, and lived somewhere that wasn't a cramped apartment for an entire year. If I could relive one year of my life and it was a chance to change the downstream course of my life, this is where it gets tricky because I love my life. I'm not sure I'd want to actively change it as much as just get a glimpse of what would be different if I had lived my life differently. Most of these are probably career related. In 2004, I was working in the financial services industry and got my first job in the entertainment industry. What if I had stayed working in financial services? In 2005, I was up for a job at Marvel but didn't get it (and it wasn't until 2016 that I made my way there through a different job); what would have happened if I had been at the company a decade earlier? In 2018, I left Marvel for another ill-fated job; what if I had stayed? In 2022, I was offered a job at Apple but I turned it down to stay at Marvel; what if I hadn't? I have a lot of "what ifs" about career choices I've made over the years. Not so many about the rest of my life, which I think turned out pretty good, all things considered. |
It's totally fitting that the Blog City prompt about procrastination is one that I left in my inbox for almost a week before getting around to writing an entry about it... I hear a lot of people say that procrastination causes them to not get anything done, and I don't think that's the case. Procrastination, to me, is the end result of some other causation, rather than an actual casual factor on its own. For example, I've procrastinated on going to the gym and losing weight, but procrastination isn't what caused my lack of progress; the procrastination and lack of progress was the result of multiple casual factors including exhaustion, over-scheduling, insufficient motivation, etc. People procrastinate for all kinds of reasons, but I think the most common ones - at least for me - are laziness, fear of failure, and poor time management and/or lack of preparation. Poor time management and/or lack of preparation is probably the most common reason why I procrastinate. I've been meaning to clean out the garage for months, but that means I have to buy a bunch of boxes and bins, I have to spend hours sorting things out, make a bunch of trips to the dump and donation sites, etc. The fact that there are multiple steps and I have to do something first in order to prepare to do the thing I actually need to do is a huge cause of procrastination. Same with other home improvement tasks like hanging pictures, repairing a small gouge in the drywall, repainting, getting a new bookcase that needs to be assembled, etc. ... if there are intermediary steps, there's a good chance I'll procrastinate until I can devote time to getting the whole thing done all at once, even though my brain knows that smaller incremental steps are possible. Of course, sometimes I'm just lazy. It's been a long week and I don't want to do the dishes right now, so I let them pile up in the sink a bit. Or I could be getting the Christmas decorations down but I'm at a really good part in my current book, so I don't want to get them right this second. A lot of procrastination is the result of times when, if I'm really being honest with myself, I just don't feel like being particular productive. And while that can certainly be a problem if the procrastination is getting to the point where it's causing problems or nothing is ever getting done, that's one thing ... but I'm also realizing as I get older that adulthood is just one never-ending to-do list, and I also think it's okay to not pack every single moment of every single day full of productivity goals. Lastly, the most insidious cause of procrastination for me, if I'm really being honest with myself, is a fear of failure. It's why I haven't written anything substantive (more than a short story, or a poem, or an essay here or there) in years. I'm afraid that the thing I write won't be very good, so I put off actually starting. Heck, I've probably put off exercising and losing eight because a part of be is afraid that I'll put in all that time and effort and I won't be happy with the results. I'm the kind of person who is used to being "pretty good" at most things, so the idea of taking something on where there's a very real possibility of failure because it's outside my comfort zone can be a leading cause of procrastination ... especially when it's paired with the "poor time management and/or lack of preparation" thing I wrote about above. It's easy to convince myself that instead of actually writing, I first need to do more prep: more research, more outlining, more listening to interviews with other writers about their process, etc. It's easy to convince myself that instead of actually going to the gym, I first need some things first: new workout clothes, a better playlist to listen to, more research about what kinds of exercises I should be focusing on. The two things I really need to stop procrastinating about are my writing and my health. I'm really hoping that I can buckle down and make some progress on both in 2025. |
To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies Bad Boys: Ride or Die Canary Black Dirty Harry The Hateful Eight My Old Ass Transformers One WolfsMy favorite movie this month was probably either My Old Ass or Wolfs, both of which were pretty entertaining. Aubrey Plaza was great in the former, and it was a fun take on a coming of age movie, and for the latter, it's always fun to see Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a movie together where you can just tell they're having fun. And the premise of two different fixers showing up to help get rid of a dead body was a fun premise. Transformers One was also a lot of fun and probably the best Transformers movie since the old animated one from the 1980s. The rest of the movies, though, were just kind of blah. Bad Boys: Ride or Die continued the trend of the movies in that franchise getting progressively worse, and Canary Black was an entirely forgettable spy thriller that didn't have a single story beat that hasn't been done a thousand times. Dirty Harry was incredibly dated at this point, although I can understand why it was so popular in the 1970s when it came out. And I'm finally getting around to watching Quentin Tarantino's most recent movies. I actually worked on this one back in the day but never watched the final cut. It was okay except for - like so many of Tarantino's movies - being way too long and self-indulgent. Television Agatha All Along The Day of the Jackal (Season 1) Formula One: Drive to Survive (Season 1) The Old Man (Season 2) Only Murders in the Building (Season 3) What If...? (Season 2)With the exception of the second season of The Old Man (which is really slow), I really enjoyed all the other shows I watched this month. Agatha All Along was super fun, and I finally got around to watching What If...? (Season 2) in preparation for the next season; I'm now officially caught up on all the shows I've worked on at Marvel. Only Murders in the Building (Season 3) was pretty good, but I think the first and second seasons were way better and this one felt like the premise was getting stretched a bit.My favorite for most of the month was The Day of the Jackal (Season 1), which is a really great remake of the prior movies (and the book they were based on). I've really been enjoying it and was ready to put it as my top pick of the month ... but then I watched Formula One: Drive to Survive and got absolutely hooked. It's a Netflix docuseries where each season follows one year in the Formula One season, complete with interviews with the drivers, team principals, journalists, etc. It's a great introduction into the sport and I'm definitely hooked on both this show and the sport in general now. So much goes into Formula One and I find it all fascinating. Highly recommended for anyone who likes sports docuseries. TOP PICK: Formula One: Drive to Survive (Season 1) RUNNER-UP: The Day of the Jackal (Season 1) |
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