Weighing In...

Weighing in on cultural/celebrity/internet goodies...

#1: The Sopranos Series Finale: If you were stupidly watching The Sopranos only for mob violence, well, yeah, Sunday's episode likely pissed you off. If you watched this likely-to-be-called-best-TV-drama of all time and never noticed that what made it better than any other mob story ever was the tragic hero/family dynamic...well, clearly you were stupidly watching. So stop crying. Of course Tony wasn't going to get whacked...

#2: Paris Hilton: Says acting dumb was an act. Agents dump her. Nuff said.

#3: The Today Show: Other than always being amused when they say, 'Tomorrow on Today', I sometimes catch a great interview--like one I saw the other morning. I have a thing for reading war memoirs (shout out to my boy Hagburg who let me read his handwritten journal from his time in Iraq). I caught an interview the other morning with Matt Lauer and a former Navy Seal by the name of Marcus Luttrell. The sit-down focused on Luttrell's experience in a firefight during his tour in Afghanistan from which he emerged as the sole survivor. He wrote a book about it (I've already requested it from the library). But the real gem is the interview--follow the link and watch the actual video (scroll down a tiny bit and click 'Launch' where you see his face): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19173935/ What he says toward the end of the interview is heartbreaking, and a head's up that my generation will have to carry the burden of many stories from many a heart-broken veteran.

#4: Books (of course): Just read a book called Feed by M.T. Anderson. It is on the Summer Reading list for our 10th graders and since they're tested on these books within the first week of school, I figured I'd better read all the books. Feed is set in futuristic America--people no longer have external computers, instead they now have 'feeds' in their heads. With these feeds they can do everything we can do with PCs now, and more. The characters are constantly bombarded with ads and banners (think pop-ups in your brain), and are always IMing one another. It is definitely an interesting concept--but ultimately, I didn't like the book. I hated the main character and I felt that some of the writing was all over the place, and the futuristic 'English' was just ridiculous. Now I am reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire. Yes, the same Wicked that was made into the hit musical. It is the true tale of the Wicked Witch of the West. I haven't seen the musical, but the word on the street is that it is significantly different than the book. So far it is very interesting, and totally different than what I thought it would be about.

That's all for today...

Lisa "Logging Off" Cillessen