A piece of music for the day:

Patrick Doyle's "Fanfare" for Kenneth Brannagh's Hamlet.

Patrick Doyle also composed the music for THOR, SECONDHAND LIONS, and HENRY V. The first and 3rd were also directed by Kenneth Brannagh.

HENRY V's music is probably Doyle's best.

You might be 90s Kid If. . .

I know others have done similar lists but here is my additions to the anonymously created list inspired by Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be A Redneck If. . . ". So here we go.


You Might Be A 90s Kid If. . . 


You remember watching not Time Force, not Jungle, not Samurai, but THE MIGHTY MORPHIN' Power Rangers.


Your favorite superhero as a kid was Darkwing Duck.


You thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a rip-off of the cartoon Bonkers.


One of your first crushes was Bonkers' crime-solving partner Miranda.


You wondered when Rebecca and Baloo would just get together already!


You remember when Disney did not need Pixar to produce quality animated movies.


You went "What the hell?!" when the main character of Disney's So Weird left inexplicably leaving a major story arc abandoned and unfinished. 


You remember when the Internet symbol was an "E" with a comet-thing flying around it.


You remember when Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC were the biggest thing since Jesus.


You wanted to be on a Nickelodian game show.


Mufasa's death was your "Old Yeller" moment.


You remember VHS.


Mark Hamill will always be "Your Joker".


You remember when the Yellow Ranger was asian but was too young and innocent to think anything of it.


Harry Potter was practically a brother to you.


You had a Barney backpack.

Some TV Show finales

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!




NCIS

The lead-up was passable but HOLY CRAP! What an ending! Bomb blast, the team is in the building. The only one confirmed not in the building, Ducky, collapses on the beach with a heart attack.
However, I was seriously hoping something bad would happen to Jamie Lee Curtis' character Dr. Ryan. She is probably a fine actress (only seen her in Christmas with the Kranks and she was good in it) but I can't stand her character on NCIS. She was just annoying and the chemistry between her and Gibbs never came off that strong or enjoyable to sit through.

Maybe its because I really liked Diane Neal's character. She seemed a great fit for Gibbs.

I hope Palmer is alive. If they decide to go Joss Whedon then he is as good as dead.

I'm probably doing another blog post on what the finale means, my favorite season finale, and where they might take.



Big Bang Theory


Touching ending with Howard Wolowitz marrying Bernadette before going off on a (Russian) rocket to the International Space Station as his friends watch the lift-off on the television. What is amazing is how much Howard Wolowitz has grown in the past 5 years, which a recent episode commented on. When the show started he was the group's resident immature pervert and now he is the most mature and well-rounded guy in the group.

Character development's a marvelous thing.






Castle


First, a spoiler . . . RICK AND KATE ARE TOGETHER!!! GIRLISH SHRIEK THAT DOES NOT IN ANY WAY DIMINISH MY MANLINESS!!! Now that we got that out of the way the episode was good. A bit dark like most episodes dealing with Kate Beckett's mother's murder mystery.

Also, Ryan's decision to go to the captain might create a rift between him and the rest of the team, especially Esposito, who seemed to view it as a personal betrayal.






The Veep


After dealing with a pregnancy scare, a secret service firing (Transferring), and all sorts of gaffes the Veep's disapproval rating is 66% and now a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio tells her that he does not want her endorsement -right after she arrived in Ohio and Dan Egan's earlier machinations to get part of the Green Jobs bill into a major bill comes back to bite him. To save the situation the staff tries to pull a series of schemes to salvage her approval rating, including getting her to cry in an interview. It seemed to work but, since this is a political satire-comedy, it collapsed in the last 5 minutes.

The first season of The Veep has been like most good first seasons: spotty with enough goodness to make you want to come back next season. The first few episodes were okay, not great, but decent. As it went on the laughs got more with the funniest being "Nicknames" which had the Green Jobs Bill collapse and "Baseball", where she had a pregnancy scare, a gas leak at a health conference, and a school event.

Now, is it as good as that other political satire-comedy, Yes, Minister? No. In fact the first episode of Yes, Minister had more wit, humor, and intelligence than the entire first season of Veep. But given the sheer brilliance behind Yes, Minister that is not a damning criticism of The Veep.

So I will be back next year to watch Season 2.

Farewell Ray Bradbury.

Farewell Ray Bradbury.

I did enjoy being assigned your stories in school. They were a wonderful distraction from the usual dreary and depressing stories we were typically assigned.

Your prose was poetic and your tales enlightened and entertained, warning against the dangers of excessive censorship in society and of the dangers of dreams.

So, goodbye Ray Bradbury!



Others have also paid tribute to him:
Here is Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, writing for National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302032/thoughts-ray-bradbury-orson-scott-card
"He took seemingly ordinary language and made music with it."


Here are what others have said:

“He was my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career. He lives on through his legion of fans. In the world of science fiction and fantasy and imagination he is immortal.” -Steven Spielberg


"Creative imaginative visionary. A dreamer, like so many of the best science fiction authors. Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), R I P" -Neil Degrasse Tyson on twitter


"Ray Bradbury, may flocks of Angels guide thee to thy rest! #oneofthegreats" -LeVar Burton on twitter




Kip Russel wrote the following as a comment in the io9.com tribute to you: http://io9.com/5916175/rip-ray-bradbury-author-of-fahrenheit-451-and-the-martian-chronicles 

------------------------------

Somewhere in America, a boy tap-dances a on a tuned segment of discarded wooden sidewalk, calling his friends to run over the hills by moonlight...

Out on the Veldt, the animals pause for a moment, as though something unseen had passed through their midst...

Somewhere on Mars, a new silver fire is burning to welcome him...

By the river, a Book stops it's recitation for the day, to remember a fine man who wrote such fine, fine things.

Thanks be, for Ray Bradbury, who taught me that there could be poetry in prose.

---------------------------------

Flying Klan Monkeys

Everyone recognize this (fun) scene from Wizard of Oz?

"The color guard is colored!"

Ignore their use of Ralph Stanley's creepy performance of "O' Death" let's look at the Klansmen in the first minute or so.

Did you see their dance in the first minute or so? See how our heroic trio snuck into the rally? 

Does it seem familiar? 

At all?

No?

How about now?

Go to 0:28 and pay attention to the monkey's song.

What an startling coincidence!

It's as if the Coen Bros. based a scene in their movie on the classic Wizard of Oz!