Bandwagons: I jump on them late

My roommate subscribes to Netflix, so between that and Hulu, that's all the television I watch as there's no need to pay for cable (except for Food Network. How I miss that channel). Usually, I'll start watching a show, and then my roommate will start watching the same show at a quicker rate because it's easier for her to watch tv and do homework. I have no issues with her copying me, the only downside is that it means I get sick of the show before I ever get very far into the series. Our latest show has been Bones, which has a nice mix between crime solving and humor. I kind of hesitantly liken it to House, but without all the drama involved in the later House seasons. Of course, there's still going to be drama in later seasons of Bones, but I'm hoping it won't annoy me as much as the drama in House did. Bones is a show where the watcher can either sit back and allow the characters to explain everything, or they can try and figure out if the jargon the characters are spouting makes actual sense. Most of the time, I'm content to try and figure out who the murderer is by basic cues, like one person seeming excessively defiant. One thing detective stories always fall back on is that it's always the guilty party who requests a lawyer. It makes sense, but I wish they'd find a way to circumvent the trope. Much like many other crime-solving shows, Bones is not something I find very entertaining to watch all day. I can watch two or three episodes, and then they all seem to be the exact same- find a body, figure out identity of body, figure out murderer. It's a basic formula, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing sometimes. As is to be expected, the longer I watch the show, the less I notice basic things that would have bothered me at the beginning of the show. For example, Emily Deschanel's enormous jawline has been bothering me a lot less.

One critique I have is that they tried to throw Brennan and Booth together from episode one. Some jokes about sexual tension are perhaps normal, but I feel the writers overdid it so much that I almost don't want Brennan and Booth to get together. If they did get together, it would feel like they were getting together because everyone expected them to. The movie, When Harry Met Sally suggests that men and women can't be friends or crime-solving partners without it leading to sexual relations, but I feel that's all over-dramatized and not true, and it irritates me when shows have to throw in the inevitability of their main characters getting together.

Keflings

Today I came home from work and turned on my Xbox 360 intending to play a little Ilomilo before doing homework stuff (which usually just translates into watching stuff online instead). However, while running through the menus to get to the game, I noticed I had downloaded the trial for A World of Keflings because Ilomilo, A World of Keflings, and Raskulls all had associated content. Figuring I'd try the game to see if it needed to be deleted, I loaded it up and played through until I unlocked an achievement, which wasn't terribly long. Deciding that it had been fun enough to justify the purchase, I went ahead and unlocked the rest of the game. Six freaking hours later, my roommate came home and I felt guilty enough about how much time I had just spent on the game to actually turn it off. A World of Keflings is not a game that's going to revolutionize the gaming industry or anything, nor does it deserve game of the year. It reminds me of Warcraft (not World of, just regular Warcraft), but without all the conquesting. You travel to different kingdoms, build different buildings and go on fetch-quests. To me, it seemed like an MMORPG without the online feature but with maybe a little more story. I've never been able to play MMORPGs more than two or three times as I get bored very quickly because I am not good at joining guilds/making friends with strangers which becomes the glue to bind people to a particular game. (Just a quick example, plenty of people are still playing World of Warcraft years after its release because they have friends who they don't get to talk to otherwise.) Now I'm not saying that everyone should go out and download this game RIGHT NOW because it's just that amazing, but I am saying that I was pleasantly surprised by how fun it was. Despite doing the same actions over and over the thing that seemed the most tiresomely repetitive was the music. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't really change from world to world so it was like listening to the same soundtrack for six hours. Now my only goal is to not let the game absorb my weekend because I have cleaning to do.
Obviously this game has nothing to do with Persona 3 like I'd mentioned, so I will just quickly mention that I still haven't beat that dang game. It's taking me a ridiculous amount of time... however, my compendium is 80% full! (The person who introduced me to it usually plays it for a week straight and only gets 50-60% completion on their compendium... which sort of helps explain why this game has taken me 185+ hours and I still haven't beaten it...) The next post I'll try to write about a tv show or movie, just to keep it balanced so I don't talk only about one thing or the other.

A new blog has appeared!

What will you do?

Fight         -->Run Away
Talk               Items

Good choice.
Anyway, clearly this blog will not focus on originality, which is just fine with me. Even the font is unoriginal, but according to font nerds/purists Times New Roman is the one true font that begat all other fonts, so that's what I'll go with. And yes, there are font nerds. It's kind of sad, really...but there has to be a nerd for everything, I suppose.
Most posts will probably be about what movie/tv show I watched or book I read recently, so I'll just do a quick little review of two things I've been watching recently: Despicable Me and A&E's Hoarders. I really like critiquing things I watch and I figure a blog is a good place to practice for all the papers I'll have to write in my literature classes next semester.
When I watch children's movies, I give them a little lenience for having incoherent stories or predictable endings. However, it irks me to no end when the show relies on cheap humor and stupid gags to appeal to children. I'll admit, fart jokes are hilarious. But I'm going to stand on my soap box of hypocrisy and declare that I really hate it when that's the only funny thing in a movie. Thankfully, Despicable Me is pretty well-done, with bits that everyone can enjoy. It doesn't have as much universal appeal as a Pixar movie, and most of its humor lacks too much depth (as far as I can tell... maybe I just haven't watched it enough times), but I'd still define Despicable Me as a good movie. It won't be replacing Pixar's UP as my favorite, but I have watched it 3 times and enjoyed it each time. There are strong similarities between UP and Despicable Me, as both main characters go through a transformation with the help of children. However, I'd say that Gru's transformation is a little more bumpy. His character is this super-villain who is susceptible to cute things, but all it takes is one trip to the theme park (super happy fun land? Whatever it was called..) and he's all buddy buddy with the girls. It was cute, but a little too abrupt for my liking, which is why sometimes I wish movies could be a little longer so they can explore depth of character like books can. But that's why TV series are novels and movies are short stories.
A&E's Hoarders is one of those shows that exploits the weakness of people and lets the general public gawk in horror while comforting themselves that their life isn't as flawed as the person's on tv. Sometimes the show is interesting, and sometimes I found it extremely repetitive and dull. Of course, I'm only on episode 4, but I can't imagine the rest of season 1 being any different. One thing that I do like is that they make the afflicted hoarder decide what they do and do not want. They give them complete control, and they focus on the person, rather than getting results. Only one place was really cleaned fully, and that was a small apartment filled with newspaper/garbage. However, when they let the kids come help, the kids start trashing anything and everything because they understandably lack the patience to deal with their parents' indecision, which seems very contradictory to the show's message. They even state on the show that if the hoarder doesn't deal with everything themselves, they are more likely to start hoarding again, so bringing children seems at times to be counterproductive. I also vaguely wonder about the wisdom of the show to introduce the hoarder's name and location, as I think name would be more than sufficient. It's an embarrassing disorder, and broadcasting the place they live, even though only vaguely, seems a little too personal to me.
I've got a backlog of shows/movies I can talk about, so you can probably expect a new blog or two. My job is nice and lets me watch stuff while I'm at work, provided it isn't too busy, but I'll probably talk about a video  game in the next blog just to switch it up. Have a happy new year!
-Wren