My Summer... Um, Reading List

Do you remember back in school the list of books your English (or Language Arts if your school tried to trick itself into thinking it was progressive) teacher would try to scare you into reading for the following fall? As for myself, I've got exceptionally vague recollections of the fear mongering Mrs. Whomever would try to engulf us with in an effort to get us to read something other than any given cereal box over the summer. I remember one summer I read J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" on the off chance that the doomsday prophecies that would hold true for those who didn't come prepared to discuss what they've read in a few months time.

So I came back the following fall and my (new) English teacher (I'm sorry, Language Arts teacher--I went to that kind of school) didn't so much as ask if anyone bothered to read anything over the summer. I want to say it was because he had his own lesson plan that any reading one of his students may have done over the summer didn't quite fit into. Or maybe he just knew that no one really gave a shit and he knew better than to inquire.

This really has nothing to do with what I planned on writing about. I've got a summer itinerary regarding my cultural enrichment/education. This came about for a few insignificant reasons. First and foremost, my shift at work changed. I was working second shift until midnight at my bread and butter job (i.e. the one that supplies the health benefits for my family and I, not to mention the bulk of my income) with weekends off. While on this shift I'd get home by 12:30 at the latest and would manage to knock off a movie before turning in at the reasonable hour of 3AM. 3:30 if I was feeling ambitious by taking on an epic movie or if I just couldn't sleep. My daughter gets me up anywhere between 9 and 10 (usually closer to 9) and I'd manage to get by on about 6 hours of sleep.

As of a month ago and due to no control of my own I would up on the 6PM to 2:30AM shift with Sundays and Mondays off. The change in climate around work isn't too bad. I come in a couple hours later and its generally more relaxed. The problem is that I'm the type of person who needs their alone time. I like my solitude. I like knocking off one movie a day and filling that unfillable hole better known as my want-to-see list. These reasons and I can't sleep for a good two hours after I get home from work. But getting home at 2:45AM on a good night and having to turn in around 4-ish to get a decent amount of sleep so I can keep up with a perpetually revved-up 21 month-old doesn't let me knock off the movie a night I used to be able to. At least not on this schedule.

So what the hell do I do? Going out and living life at that time of the night isn't really an option, so I go back to what I used to do on the summer vacations when I was supposed to be digesting the literary classics I never bothered with.

I watch TV.

It's not a bad plan. The only TV on during the summer is the reruns of the stuff I'd been watching for the last 9 months or heinous, heinous reality TV. So why not go and watch some reruns of my own? Except I've never seen them before and they're not reruns to me. Here's my summer lineup with half-assed blueprints to maximize my viewing time:

Sadly, I haven't been making as much headway as I'd have liked to since acquiring the 156 episode/5-season set at the end of January. Some nights I'll knock off 3 or 4 episodes and there will be 2-week stretches where I won't see so much as a single episode. Each episode of The Twilight Zone runs at about 25 minutes so I can theoretically kill 3 on a really ambitious night. I also tend to nod off as the gorgeous black and white photography has a way of hypnotizing me. Watching one a night might be the way to go for the summer as I likely won't get to the 4th season with the hour-long episodes. And I've almost knocked off the first season.

Impatient with waiting for the first season to come out on DVD domestically in July, I scored the Region 2 DVD set on Amazon. Only to find out all 3 seasons are coming out domestically in July. Between missing a few episodes on Adult Swim and my penchant for striking while the iron is hot I decided to go full throttle with the 20 episodes at 30 minutes apiece with The Mighty Boosh. One episode a night should have this knocked off within a month. I can only speculate on where my state of mind will be when its all finished as this mindbendingly surreal British comedy show pretty much defies description.


Seeing J.J. Abrams revamping of Star Trek last month gave me the itch I sometimes get for the original series something fierce. I've always liked the original Star Trek series and no other. The Next Generation was lame and I can't even think of what came after that. Maybe it was the wonderfully yet hideously campy and dated sets. Perhaps it was William Shatner's overacting. Or how about the ridiculous premises like a planet of 1920s mobsters or space hippies? Ridiculous, but enjoyable. Star Trek also has the ability to make me feel nostalgic for a period in time I never knew, let alone was alive or cognisant during. The costumes, the sets and the lighting all have a magical way of drawing me in and allowing me to disregard whatever nonsense is going on in my life while I'm watching.

Against all good conscience I rounded up each of the remastered seasons (3 sets in all totaling 79 episodes at about 50 minutes each) that actually redid some of the special effects. Remember years ago when the Enterprise would just kind of float by like an incredibly bored fish? A few years back the transitional shots of the ship were redone with some beautiful special effects that make the whole thing come across more dynamically. Initially I was really weirded out by this but oddly enough these effects actually add to the show. That and the out of print older editions go for like another $100 more.

After receiving the highest possible recommendation from friends and fellow Anglophiles, I picked up the entire series of Spaced last week. It features Simon Pegg and the rest of the Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz crew in a sitcom about a guy and a girl who fake a relationship to land a really nice apartment. More full of pop culture references than Bill O'Reilly is full of shit, Spaced is funny and charming. Currently I'm 5 episodes into Spaced's 14 episode run and will be done shortly. At which point I'll start watching:

The State was a great sketch comedy show MTV aired in the early 90s. It ran for 26 half-hour episodes on MTV and flopped classically when they tried to make the jump to CBS. Like didn't get past the first episode flopped. It featured some of the players that went on to Reno 911! and the brilliant, grossly underrated and short-lived Stella. The complete series set comes out on DVD July 14th and will complete my summer broadcasting schedule. The long, long years of waiting are finally over. Awww yeaaah...!

I've written about the Ventures before and my love of the show. Once getting past what I like to call the stumbling first six episode syndrome (that's the period where any given show finds its tone and eventually its stability. Whenever I start watching a TV show I always give it the first six episodes and if I doesn't grab me I walk away) I voraciously ate it up through the end of the second season. Unfortunately, The Venture Brothers is the kind of show that too much at once is a bad thing. Don't believe me? Watch and entire season of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! in one sitting. Now that I've been able to step back from The Venture Brothers I feel I'm ready to tackle the third season.

I'll post the book report in the fall...