Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Wonderfalls, The Complete Series:
Wonderfalls is another quirky milestone on the Bryan Fuller timeline, after Dead Like Me and before Heroes, Pushing Daisies, and Hannibal. It tells the tale of a lowly retail clerk working in a gift shop at Niagara Falls who suddenly starts hearing cryptic advice from stuffed animals and figurines. This was another one of those poorly managed FOX series that was axed before it had a chance to take root, but the 13 existing episodes create enough of a completed story arc to make them worth watching. Overall, the show is fun and far better than the hugely disappointing Dead Like Me, but nowhere near as good as Pushing Daisies. To maximize your DVD watching time, skip everything else that Bryan Fuller has ever written and just watch Pushing Daises repeatedly.

Final Grade: C+

Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort:
With this Kindle purchase, I was hoping for a light, nostalgic look at the evolution from text adventure games to modern interactive fiction. Unfortunately, the book is written like a dissertation, with the driest possible language that eliminates any sense of fun or excitement from the prose. Struggling to appreciate the material in spite of the language, ironically, felt similar to struggling to find the right command to type in an early text adventure parser. I only made it through one chapter.

Final Grade: Not Graded

Here Comes the Fuzz by Mark Ronson:
This is another successful album from Mark Ronson, who has an unerring knack for mashing together all sorts of styles while abandoning anything that doesn't work, resulting in catchy, unique songs like "Bluegrass Stain'd". I didn't like this quite as much as Record Collection, but there's only a couple weak songs in the mix.

Final Grade: B+

Burn Notice, Season Six:
Burn Notice just kind of chugs along now, with a few fun scenes but not much energy. A few chances to mix up the formula a bit are wasted, and the season ends with yet another meaningless, poorly explained scene that just sets up another season. A side storyline featuring Fiona in prison felt like a poor man's Prison Break. I mostly watched this while doing other things on the computer.

Final Grade: C