Did you see the final episode of the Sopranos last night? Are you as confused and disappointed as I am? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before: a great series waits to the very last episode, and almost to the last minute of the last episode, to conclusively, utterly, and completely jump the shark.1.
Read the rest of this entry »
BBC America is broadcasting season 2 of Hex now. What a mistake. British fans already know this, but season 2 is an absolute disaster. I’ve already watched it on imported DVDs I got from Amazon UK, and that’s 12 hours of my life I’ll never get back. What was a sexy, scary, mysterious and original show in Season 1 turned into a bad Buffy knockoff in season 2.1. You remember how bad you thought Buffy the Vampire Slayer was going to be until you actually watched the show? Well, that’s exactly how bad Hex Season 2 is.
The departure of Christina Cole and then Michael Fassbender hurt badly. Laura Pyper and Joseph Beattie just couldn’t pick up the slack. However the real fault lay in the writing. Characters didn’t so much grow as careen madly from one personality to another throughout the season. The plot was incomprehensible and seemed to shift every couple of episodes. Every time it looked like the show might be going down an interesting path, it would back off and wander off somewhere else. Unlike the clear story arc of Season 1 (pioneered by shows like Buffy and Babylon 5) Season 2 felt like a random agglomeration of ideas. It was sort of like one of those writing exercises from freshman English where everyone in the class writes a paragraph of a story and then hands it to the next student to write the next paragraph. And the final episode was the absolute worst. I watched it less than a month ago; and I now couldn’t tell you what happened, who won, or why I should care.
Read the rest of this entry »
Epargyreus clarus, Ridgewood Reservoir, 2006-06-09
When we first visited Ridgewood Reservoir back in April, a local told us that there were hundreds of large lizards at the site in the summer. That was hard to believe since New York has almost no native lizard species (in fact, only two, both skinks). You occasionally see an escaped pet iguana; but they never make it through the winter. However today on our fourth trip to the site we found one of the rumored lizards and trapped it in a bottle so we could get a closer look:
Al Ott identified this as an Italian Ruin Lizard, a.k.a. Italian Wall Lizard, Podarcis sicula. Rob Jett also recognized it from a trip to Rome. They’re an invasive species that has been settling small colonies on Long Island for the last three decades or so, and they’re expanding. So far all we have is this one specimen, but I suspect we’ll see more as the summer progresses.
How they make it through a New York winter I have no idea; but apparently they can do that, something few native American lizards can do.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Apple Store is down and it’s a Tuesday. New Macs must be coming out momentarily. Probably MacBook Pros or maybe new iMacs.
