I’ve had less than my usual stellar luck with picking shows to stream, lately. I’ve been picking with the intent of having background noise; watching something out of the corner of my eye while I work around the house.

X-Men: Evolution

Normally, I would worry about getting sucked in to an X-Men cartoon. If this had been the one from the 90’s (Apocalypse!), I’d never get any work done. I figured, hey, it’s set in a high school, I can let the teenager crap just buzz in the background, and focus when actual story happens. That’d be fun!

I’m still waiting for the story.

I’ll keep it around in my queue, because I still hold of glimmer of hope that story will happen.

Leverage

I’d watched a couple of seasons of this show when it was airing, and I’d loved it. I figured that coming back to it would give me the familiarity to half-ignore it, and there would be enough for me to keep coming back. That worked perfectly, for the first season. Halfway through the second season, I was bored to tears and yoinked it out of my queue. Even my love for Mark Sheppard and my anticipation of Wil Wheaton’s character couldn’t keep me coming back.

Parker is a badass, though, don’t let anyone tell you different.

Supernatural

I’ve given up using TV as background noise. Though, as my wife has been healing from her injury, she’s caught up on the entirety of Supernatural that’s available to stream, and I’ve gotten sucked in far more than I’d liked.  Great show.

Nikki and I have finally caught up on the second season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Several of the episodes on our DVR were rendered unwatchable by digital interference, but it was available to stream on Netflix, so we watched it there, instead.

I’m going to do my best to review the season without spoilers. Why? I hate spoilers, that’s why.

If I had to sum this series up in one word, I’d choose tension. It showed up in all kinds of varieties: interpersonal, world-ending, engineered, sexual, and my favorite – inner conflict. Lots of doubt, lots of misleading, a healthy dose of misunderstanding, plenty of preconceptions, and one notable case of overreaction to fear.

Strike that, there’s a lot of overreacting to fear.

The characters hurt each other more than they ever have. I wondered, at times, if there was a team left to save.

If I had to pick a second word, I’d pick triumph. S.H.I.E.L.D. succeeds in so many places where they could have failed, making some major headway. The writers timed it well; just when things were about to get overwhelmingly bad, the characters Got Shit Done.

While this season was missing a lot of the team cohesion that took so achingly long to build in the first season, I give it an unabashed thumbs-up. Now I ahve to wait until late September for season three.

Ah, well. I am happy to comply.

Two years ago, I was able to get away from Lansing and take my family to a house in Caseville, MI on Lake Huron. It was amazing, it was relaxing, and it was just what I needed. I wrote two posts about it:

• Family Fun – Part 1
• Family Fun – Part 2

Last month, we had the opportunity to go back to this amazing little beach house – Better at the Beach. It was just as perfect. Well, almost. The polar vortex was going to drive summer temperatures down for just two days that week – the days we would be vacationing. We couldn’t swim, we couldn’t have bonfires at night, but that didn’t stop us from having fun.

Dad had procured a growler of locally brewed beer from Thumb Brewery; I’m told it was delicious. My brother and his fiancee arrived, and flew a training kite for kite surfing to the cheers of the kids inside. Steve and Jo of Pumpkinfest fame came by with good food and great company.

The next day, the wind had died down enough for the kids to fly the kites Dad had gotten them. I don’t need to mention how jealous I was of Aidan’s kite (above), but I didn’t need to, because he shared. When it came time for the kids to have quiet time, Nikki, Killian, and I were kicked out of the house to do some shopping, just like two years earlier.

This year, we toured more places than last. Cottage Outfitters had an extensive selection of things made in Michigan and in Caseville. The upstairs was a gallery of restored, found, and modified furniture. Nikki very nearly picked up a beautiful small table made of woven branches, but it was not to be.

We’d stopped by Caseville Gifts & Books two years earlier, and had picked up some treasures from their enormous selection of used books. We snagged even more this year, along with some for the kids. Killian bought the first Caramon and Raistlin trilogy from the old Dragonlance books, and finished it in a few days. Geek points!

Of course, we couldn’t miss Brew Moon. Because coffee. And macaroons. And no-bake cookies. And coffee.

When it was time to go, we swung by Lefty’s Diner & Drive-In for lunch. This place is FUN. The foot-long coney dog gave me pause, and the jalapeno burger made Killian sweat. If I remember correctly, breakfast there two years earlier had been just as fun.

If you get a chance to go, I recommend it. So do my kids!

More photographic evidence here.

Here’s a quick list of linky-links for stuff I like. Today’s focus: TV.

• Eureka – OMGTHISSHOWSQUEEEE and then the last episode happened. All set to mirror the ending of the series in the fictional universe, and then BAM! Nevermind, everything’s back to normal! No, not normal, better than normal. I loved this series so much that I very nearly nerdraged about the last episode.
• Star Trek: Deep Space 9 – Tread where no Star Trek writer had gone before! Into a linear story line with religious overtones, focused on a single solar system! While many nods were taken from Babylon 5, this is still my favorite Trek. Only one complaint: why did the battle scenes make it look like the ships had no shields? Ablative armor is all well and good, but they keep talking about the shields. Everybody’s still got shields. Where are the shields?
• Wolverine and the X-Men – I really dig the new take on good characters, but only one season? C’mon! Gone the way of Firefly and Tron: Uprising and countless other pieces of serial fiction, cut down before their prime!

Redshirts by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one had a frantic pace that kept me turning the page as the main character actively sought out the source of the strangeness going on aboard his spaceship.

I’ve deleted four sentences now, because each gave something of the plot away, and it’s too much fun to ruin.

I read this over two days, and I have a job, four kids, and a house full of chores. Definitely difficult to put down. Definitely a fun read. Definitely worth your time and money, if you’ve ever watched (or enjoyed!) a crappy sci-fi show.

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Insane City by Dave Barry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this one cover to cover on a plane from Detroit to San Francisco. I’ve got mixed feelings about it.

Dave Barry’s humor was stellar, as always. I chuckled and laughed out loud quite a bit as I wondered how thin a person has to be to be comfortable in economy seating.

The discovery that the main character really did give a damn, and the contrast between causes and real people were both well woven into the story. They weren’t subtle, but they didn’t club me over the head, either.

Unfortunately, there’s always a but.

The amount of terrible coincidences that kept happening to the main character strained credulity, and then tore through it like a crazed orangutan. It went beyond the character reacting with “oh, you have GOT to be kidding me.” I found myself uttering that very phrase every time I got thrown out of the story.

Even for Miami, the insanity was just too focused on one person.

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