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WATCHING / LISTENING 9.29.17

TV:

I can’t even recall what I may have watched this week that is worth talking about. I am watching American Horror Story: Cult, and it is RIDICULOUS. That is not really a compliment but it’s still got my interest. I recently binged the only season I hadn’t watched (Asylum) and it was great, so if you’re going to watch one of the seasons, watch that one. Normally I get about 4 episodes in and am bored. To date, I have only watched Asylum and Roanoke all the way through. Cult still has my attention but we’ll see.

Evil clown cult? Maybe. Hopefully?

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PODCASTS

Started listening to a couple new ones recently.

The Babysitter’s Club Club – two male friends humorously discuss the popular 80s tween book series. As an avid BSC fan back in the day, I am thoroughly enjoying this podcast. While it’s generally funny, it’s also not mean and there seems to be actual respect for the source material there. The book series deserves to have fun poked at it, but at the same time, it was a big deal back in the day, so it’s nice to see that reflected here. Anyway, they are chronologically analyzing each book and there are a ton of episodes. I’m still at the very beginning.

My Favorite Murder – these gals are pretty funny. Seems a little rough production in these early episodes and they ramble on a bit much but it’s a fun listen (I mean… not that murder is fun but… if you’re a true crime aficionado you will probably enjoy this podcast). I listened to the first 2 episodes this week.

Criminal: Episode 71 – Here is the episode description: “Amber Dawn was 20 when she moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Enumclaw, Washington. On her very first night, she began to notice strange sounds. And they didn’t stop.” It’s exactly as unnerving as that sounds!

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WATCHING / LISTENING 9.22.17

TV:

Now that Game of Thrones is over for possibly two years (NOOOO) I must find something else to watch. Hardly anything new starting this fall interests me so I’ve been looking at Netflix and saw they had the first season of Riverdale. Out of bored curiosity I thought I’d try it out and wound up really enjoying it.


It’s a “dark reimagining” (aren’t they all) of the Archie comics which was actually the reason I first ignored it. I mean, how do you update Betty, Veronica, and Jughead (lol) for a modern audience? Well, they managed it! Also I was kind of sold when Luke Perry showed up as Archie’s dad (that makes me feel old though…)

Anyway, it was totally Twin Peaks meets Dawson’s Creek and if that sounds like your jam, you’ll probably like this show. It’s only 13 eps so not a huge time commitment.

The only other thing I’m excited about for the fall season is the return of The Good Place which is about a group of four recently deceased people learning to navigate the afterlife. After the season finale I was pretty stoked to see what they would do for the second season and the first episode which aired this week did not disappoint!

Also who doesn’t love Ted Danson?? Anyway, this show is smarter than you would think and the writing is very clever. I really enjoy it. You can watch this on Hulu.

MOVIES:

Hidden Figures – loved this movie! Was a moving portrayal of the super smart black women of NASA who helped work to get mankind up into space through math, engineering, and computer programming. All the performances were stellar (hah) and it was *mostly* accurate according to Wikipedia.

La La Land – when this first came out I did NOT understand the love lavished upon this movie. And now having watched it I do NOT understand the love lavished on this movie. It is so, so mediocre and I truly believe that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling’s singing voices should have been dubbed (I felt this way about Emma Watson’s in Beauty & the Beast, too). Full of Hollywood navel-gazing I’m not super surprised that critics liked it, but it was not worthy of all the attention. That being said, I was charmed by it by the end. So, I didn’t hate it. 😛

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PODCASTS:

Haven’t been listening to too much lately but traffic has been absolutely abysmal in the mornings so I’ve been listening to the Nerdist Podcast which tends to run longer than some of my other choices:

  • Episode 888: Damon Lindelof – writer on Lost and the Leftovers. I still hate the ending of Lost with the fiery passion of approximately 10,000 burning suns but he was an engaging guest on the show and it was a good listen.
  • Episode 890: James Van Der Beek – what is this my second reference to Dawson’s Creek in this post? Why yes it is. Turns out JVDB is kind of an insightful dude.
  • Episode 896: Michael Cudlitz – character actor known for Southland and the Walking Dead (He’s my favorite character actor at the moment – loved his work on Southland and was excited to see him on Walking Dead). This was a fun episode to listen to because he has been in a LOT of shows.
  • Episode 899: Dominic Monaghan – everybody’s favorite hobbit
  • Episode 901: Tatiana Maslany – star of Orphan Black. She strikes me as a huge dork and that’s a compliment.
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I Watched: BLACKFISH

I’m in the early stages of a free month of Netflix. A couple of weeks ago my cousin and I were talking about SeaWorld for some reason and she mentioned the documentary Blackfish. I had heard of it, but hadn’t seen it. I have, however, been to SeaWorld. The summer of 2004 I had a season pass to the San Antonio park. I went three times.

I had seen the Shamu show and it made me nervous the same way that ice skating and ballroom dancing make me nervous: I always wait for something bad to happen, like, somebody falls or gets dropped. In the case of the killer whale show I expected somebody to get chomped or flattened. I’ve always thought that orcas were too big for captivity and it always made me sad to see them in the small pools (possibly seeing Free Willy as a kid has something to do with this opinion because dolphins, whale sharks, and other ocean animals do not bother me at all to see them in captivity). Or maybe just having a general sense of physics – orcas are big and seemingly intelligent, the SeaWorld pools are small.

Anyway, so I was curious about watching Blackfish.

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The documentary discusses killer whale performance and captivity and is centered around the death of a SeaWorld trainer in 2010 by a whale who had previously displayed violent tendencies, and had been involved, however directly, in two previous deaths, one in Canada and one also at SeaWorld Orlando in 1999. Former SeaWorld trainers were interviewed discussing various aspects of behind-the-scenes life at SeaWorld and various other incidents of killer whale violence.

The film does a good job of getting their point across and I definitely would recommend watching it. However, it is clear propaganda –  an anti-SeaWorld point of view from what I believe are essentially animal activists. The filmmakers have a clear agenda for wanting to shut down SeaWorld and similar parks. At no time did they ever address the conservation efforts that SeaWorld has accomplished, nor did they interview any current employees of the company. I also would have liked to see the point made that the reason for keeping some animals in captivity is to educate and to promote conservation efforts in natural habitats.

Some further reading:

From MySA.com: Ex-SeaWorld trainers dispute ‘Blackfish,’ say phase out whale show
From SouthernFried Science: Blackfish: the Science Behind the Movie
From CNN: ‘Blackfish’ film ignores SeaWorld’s benefits to conservation, research
SeaWorld’s Rebuttal: Truth About Blackfish

There is a lot of information out there – and it’s a subject worth learning more about. I think Blackfish is a good place to start, but you can’t take everything at face value. I am, currently, mostly undecided on this subject, but leaning towards “not a fan of killer whales in captivity” if only, because it seems so sad for such big, intelligent creatures to be kept confined.

(I am totally pro those whale sharks at the Georgia State Aquarium though so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Those guys would have been eaten out of Taiwan’s then-quota of allowable whale sharks caught for food. They may be in captivity but at least they are not lunch.)