5 Seconds of Summer release the highly anticipated follow-up to their chart-topping debut album, which has sold over three million copies worldwide. Included is the new single She’s Kinda Hot.
Two years after the release of Drinks After Work, country superstar Toby Keith is back with a brand new album. Along with the title track, it includes the hit single Drunk Americans.
Demi Lovato has no plans of cooling down as she swings into the fall season with her highly anticipated fifth studio album. The first single, Cool for the Summer, was an MTV VMA nominee for Song of the Summer.
Ten years after releasing The Christmas Sessions, MercyMe returns with a new holiday collection that features reinterpretations of classic Christmas songs as well as original songs. Pentatonix — Pentatonix
Grammy and Dove Award winner Chris Tomlin rings in the holiday season with a mix of festive Christmas classics and original songs. There are also special guest performances from All Sons & Daughters, Lauren Daigle, Kristyn Getty, and more.
Chris Tomlin — Adore: Christmas Sounds of Worship
Grammy and Dove Award winner Chris Tomlin rings in the holiday season with a mix of festive Christmas classics and original songs. There are also special guest performances from All Sons & Daughters, Lauren Daigle, Kristyn Getty, and more.
Country superstar Carrie Underwood is back with her fifth album, her first since 2012’s chart-topping Blown Away. It includes her latest hit single Smoke Break.
The X-Files is coming back to television on January 24, 2016! And October is the perfect month to re-watch the original series. Why? Because the show is creepy. The perfect amount of creepiness to put you in the mood for Halloween. If you never watched The X-Files, you may mistakenly believe that the show is only about aliens and UFOs. While there are a lot of episodes that involve aliens, there are plenty of other episodes about creatures that go bump in the night. If you enjoyed shows such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Twilight Show, you will enjoy watching The X-Files.
The show began airing in 1993 and it was on television for nine seasons for a total of 202 episodes. The show is centered on a pair of FBI Special Agents, Fox Mulder and Dr. Dana Scully. There are many times that it comes in handy that Scully is a medical doctor. Along with keeping you healthy, she can perform autopsies. Mulder is a talented profiler, but he was drawn to the X-files because of his strong belief in the supernatural. As the series progresses, we learn that Mulder’s younger sister was abducted by aliens when they were children. But as mentioned earlier, the show is not entirely based on aliens. Agents Mulder and Scully investigate all sorts of different creatures such mutants, vampires, werewolves, and people with genetic abnormalities and psychic abilities. A theme of the show is that the United States government is aware of a lot of the creatures and people that Mulder and Scully investigate. Even after witnessing strange phenomenon first hand, Agents Mulder and Scully often find themselves being shut down by “someone” higher up in the government. The thought that the government may be keeping secrets about strange life forms is an unsettling part of the show.
If you do not want to watch all 202 episodes of The X-Files, here is a list of the episodes you must watch before the new episodes air on January 24, 2016.
Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, recommends that you watch:
1. “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
The one that introduced Mulder, Scully, their defining characteristics, their relationship, their world.
2. “Deep Throat” (Season 1, Episode 2)
This episode introduces the idea of a government conspiracy/cover-up of extra-terrestrial activity and a mysterious informant, code named Deep Throat
3. “Beyond the Sea” (Season 1, Episode 13)
The episode that sees Scully become the believer after the death of her father overlaps with the case of an allegedly psychic serial killer
4. “The Erlenmeyer Flask” (Season 1, Episode 24)
There’s a shocking death, and from this point forward, the conspiracy storyline becomes the driving narrative of the show
5. “The Host” (Season 2, Episode 2)
There’s something sinister lurking in the sewers in this classic monster-of-the-week episode
6. “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” (Season 3, Episode 4)
In one of the greatest X-Files episodes ever, Peter Boyle guest stars as a morbid psychic.
7. “Memento Mori” (Season 4, Episode 14)
Though it features the usual alien rhetoric, this episode is best remembered as the one in which Scully learns she has cancer.
8. “Post-Modern Prometheus” (Season 5, Episode 5)
A Frankenstein-inspired tale about a lovelorn monster. It’s notable for its beautiful black-and-white cinematography.
9. “Bad Blood” (Season 5, Episode 12)
The signature episode from a young Vince Gilligan, Mulder and Scully investigate a vampire case told in flashback from Mulder and Scully’s POV.
10. “Milargo” (Season 6, Episode 18)
A favorite of the X-Files writing staff, Mulder and Scully contend with an author whose gruesome fiction becomes reality.
Top Ten (written by) Vince Gilligan Episodes: (fan favorites)
1. “Bad Blood” (Season 5, Episode 12)
Mulder and Scully investigate vampires from two very different POVs.
2. “Drive” (Season 6, Episode 2)
A man has a terrible headache and forces Mulder to drive him at high speeds.
3. “Pusher” (Season 3, Episode 17)
A man with psychic abilities is able to make things happen just by saying it aloud.
4. “Folie a Deaux” (Season 5, Episode 19)
A man claims his boss is a giant cockroach.
5. “Small Potatoes” (Season 4, Episode 20)
A man with a tail can morph into other men.
6. “X-Cops” (Season 7, Episode 12)
That’s right. It’s the show Cops starring Mulder and Scully.
7. “Unruhe” (Season 4, Episode 4)
A killer lobotomizes women with an ice pick, but their images show up at a photo booth surrounded by ghosts.
The library has the DVD sets of The X-Files as well as the film adaptations. There are also books and graphic novels about TheX-Files at the library. Check them out today.
With the Cubs’ pennant race, it becomes prudent for fairweather fans like myself to come out of a dozen years’ hibernation to marvel at what has happened in the 107 years since they last won it all in 1908. Here is the highlight reel:
1) Both radio and TV were invented
2) The Titanic was built, set sail, sank, and was re discovered
3) The Ottoman Empire, the Austria-Hungary Empire, the Russian Empire, and Persia still existed.
4) Oil was discovered in the Middle East.
5) The start of World War I was still six years in the future.
My only questions, if the prophecy did come true, A)How many people are calling in sick? and B)Will a newspaper actually print the headline “HELL FREEZES OVER”?
The English student in me cringes whenever someone says, “Let’s read an essay” because in my mind, the term “essay” is still equated with the five-paragraph, three-reasons-why type essays that you had to write in high school. When I was flipping through Allison Gruber’s You’re Not Edith, a book exclusively filled with autobiographical essays, I noticed that instead of the traditional format, her essays read like chunks of a story broken apart for relief, flashback, comedy, and a wide variety of other purposes. I started reading You’re Not Edith and discovered that I was in fact reading an autobiography with much shorter chapters, something that my brain found easier to digest because there were breaks where I could stop if I had to go do something else and I found that I was able to finish this book much quicker than I was other books. Books containing autobiographical essays have begun to grow on me.
In You’re Not Edith, Allison Gruber reflects upon her entire life as she’s experienced it so far. Just like in her life, Gruber takes risks when she explodes her life into these essays for readers to dissect. She pulls no punches as she describes how she tried to use her fascination with Diane Fossey to help her win her girlfriend in high school or how she was diagnosed with breast cancer as she was teaching at the collegiate level. Gruber is a hilarious writer who speaks with shocking candor and isn’t afraid to tell the truth about her struggles with cancer and how she figured that even though she wouldn’t allow others to take care of her, she would still be able to care for Bernie, a little dachshund who didn’t fit her perfect ideal of the Edith dog, but ended up being exactly what she needed.
I encourage you to pick up this book to check out her feelings on weddings, her father’s mental problems, and how she came into her own through music, drama, English, and many other interconnected things.
I don’t know about you, but my attention is always peaked when I start watching a movie and it says, “based on a true story” somewhere in the opening credits. I watch the movie trying to absorb as many of the facts as possible, so that when the movie ends, if I still find the topic and people the movie is about interesting, then I can go research more. My newest “based on a true story” movie is Kill the Messenger starring Jeremy Renner.
In Kill the Messenger, Renner plays Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, an investigative reporter who worked for the San Jose Mercury News, who finds himself entangled in a political and drug war when he at first becomes tricked into helping a younger drug dealer get his charges dropped in trial. Webb inadvertently stumbles upon a huge life-changing story when he digs deeper into the initial story he was presented with and finds a connection between the U.S. government and a Central American war. Through investigative reporting and tracking down anyone that could possibly be tied to this case, Webb finds that a United States intelligence agency has linked themselves to a group of Central American drug smugglers. Webb’s story seems to only be getting better until he is dragged in front of operatives for the agency and is told, in polite terms of course, that if he does not stop, he will be unequivocally endangering his life, the lives of his family, and the lives of everyone he knows. Here is when everything starts going downhill for Webb. This movie can be described as a riveting suspense, an explosive race for the truth, and even a compelling political drama. I was intrigued by the suspense and the cover-ups that happen throughout and how everything you think you know, you actually don’t know at all. Check out this movie and let me know what you think!
If you’re interested in learning more about Gary Webb, the journalist who exposed the CIA, check out the books below. They contain essays written by Webb, while Kill the Messenger by Nick Schou is one of the two books that the move is based on.
This summer, I had to say goodbye to two of my favorite graphic novel series (aside from Marvel’s Secret Wars, which I’m still trying to process) “Fables” by Bill Willingham & Mark Buckinghamand “The Unwritten” by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. I discovered both series in the middle of their publication. Happily, I had a several volumes already published to get me started until I began the grueling wait for new installments.
(Since this post is talking about an entire series, there may be spoilers. Look out for Hawkeye* – he’ll let you know.)
Part 1: Fables
The first TP (trade paperback) of Vertigo’s Fables, “Legends in Exile” was published in 2002, and began with the murder of Rose Red, Snow White’s sister. We learn that the characters in classic fairy and folk tales are alive and (mostly) well and living in exile from their magical homelands, having been driven out by the malevolent “Adversary.” Now, they live in our world (the “mundy” as in “mundane”) using magic to protect their fantastical origins. Now, Old King Cole is the mayor of Fabletown, Snow White is the capable Operations Director and The Big Bad Wolf (or Bigby, as he is called in his human form) is the head of security. Those who do not have human form live on The Farm, mostly free to do what they please. We meet many, many other fairy tale characters through the series, with most carrying some semblance of their personalities we know from the story books. But, as we learn, they are far more complex than we mundies know them.
The first plot arc follows the resistance of and eventual all-out battle against The Adversary to regain the Homelands. Smaller plots are intertwined, introducing us to the motivations, conflicts and loves of the Fables. New and deadlier threats rise, war ensues and families are made (and broken). With such a rich source of characters, Willingham takes many liberties developing their personalities. Heroes are cads, cowards prove themselves to be kings and unlikely romance blossoms.
Issues #1-75 (volumes cover the first story arc of the war against The Adversary. There are also spin-offs and diversionary stories that focus on characters like Jack (of Jack and the Beanstalk, who ends up getting his own comic “Jack of Fables”), Cinderella and the Frog Prince among many others. Some of these stories serve as good character development, other are complete stories. On the whole, most are entertaining, but as the series went on, I found myself skipping entire sections and skimming the rest.
Usually I’m wary of books that have quotes written on them from authors or publishers saying, “best writer” or “visionary of our time,” so when I saw Less than Hero on the new cart, my heart sunk a little seeing, “One of today’s very best writers” written across the front. The premise, volunteers who test experimental drugs for cash who then inadvertently turn into side-effect superheroes, immediately caught my interest though and I decided to give this book a try.
In Less than Hero, S.G. Browne has written an arrestingly witty and sarcastic nod to the pharmaceutical industry and superheroes, which I found to live up to the high praise splashed across the front cover. Llyod Prescott finds himself at the age of thirty living as a guinea pig of pharmaceutical drugs with no real direction in his life. He has a group of other guinea pig friends that he meets up with every now and then to talk about the trials that they are taking part of, a side gig pan-handling for money in a variety of locations across New York City, as well as a pixie of a girlfriend who has already saved his life once before. Lloyd is living a stagnant and regular life that’s going in no real direction until one moment when his lips go completely numb and he is struck by utter exhaustion. Letting out a giant yawn, Lloyd finds himself instantly refreshed, but is astonished to find that the stranger next to him has inexplicably fallen asleep.
Lloyd then does what any other superhero would do: tries to keep it a secret and practices on his girlfriend Sophie’s cat. When this slumbering event happens three times on its own to humans around him, since, Lloyd says, it’s important to create a pattern, he meets up with the rest of his guinea pig buddies to see if they have any weird side effects. They do and they all team up to fight crime! With powers ranging from rashes to vomiting to sleeping to convulsions to sudden weight gain, they head out across New York City to set out their own kind of justice on criminals. Through the book, Browne includes interludes about how they discovered their powers and also newspaper articles about two villains running amok in New York, Mr. Blank and Illusion Man. These two villains exhibit superpowers that Lloyd eventually realizes could actually be prescription drug side effects as well. Lloyd and his rag-tag bunch of superhero friends decide that the only thing they can do is to use their superhero abilities for good and they work on honing their talents, so they may then take on those evil villains.
Browne has crafted a superhero book outside the ordinary that is creatively sarcastic and witty about not just things that maybe might not happen, but about things that could happen in our pharmaceutically drugged society.
You may recognize Bob Odenkirk as the character Saul Goodman from the AMC drama, Breaking Bad and its spin-off, Better Call Saul. But Odenkirk has been a comedy writer for a long time and he has written many things that have made you laugh over the years. He got his start at Chicago’s Second City and went to write at Saturday Night Live alongside Robert Smigel and Conan O’Brien. Odenkirk is the creator of beloved SNL character, motivational speaker Matt Foley, portrayed by Chris Farley. He also wrote for Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Ben Stiller Show, Get a Life, The Dennis Miller Show, and Mr. Show with Bob and David. A Load of Hooey is Odenkirk’s first book of sketch comedy.
A Load of Hooey is in print and on audiobook. I listened to the audiobook and I’m glad that I did. Bob Odenkirk is one of the voice actors, along with David Cross, Jay Johnston, Jerry Minor, Megan Amram and Paul F. Tompkins. Listening to these talented actors made an already funny book even more delightfully funny to listen to. Who knew that you could laugh at Hitler? Bob Odenkirk made that happen. I laughed at Adolph Hitler thanks to the talented writing of Bob Odenkirk. And it is not just hated people that Odenkirk writes sketches of. Nope. He even goes after beloved former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney. And it’s funny.
So if you enjoy watching sketch comedy, need to listen to a book in the car, don’t have a lot of time, (this audiobook is 2.5 hours long) and you want to laugh, I recommend checking out the audiobook,A Load of Hooey by Bob Odenkirk. Or you can read it. But it’s funnier to listen to. But you should check it out, either format.
In The Crimson Field, viewers are introduced to the daily lives of doctors and nurses in a tented field hospital right on the front lines of France during World War I. Right at the start, you are introduced to three volunteer nurses, Kathleen, Rosalie, and Flora as they make their way to a field hospital on the coast of France close to the front lines of fighting. At this field hospital, they are the very first volunteer nurses; a fact that rankles the established medical team already in place. Kitty, Rosalie, and Flora must find ways to deal with the new world that they have been thrust into where they quickly realize that the training that they have received is nowhere near adequate for the job they must do. With their addition to camp, everyone’s lives start to shift and clashes quickly crop up between the way that things have always been done, the hierarchal structure within the camp, and a new way of thinking. While the girls quickly find out that they are underprepared for this new way of life, they also discover that they, just like the others around them, are able to use this as a new start and to break away from everything that held them back in their hometowns.
PBS and the BBC have found ways to make interesting a subject that would have been dreadful to read about in a history textbook. By illuminating such topics as World War I, the day-to-day life of people in front-line field hospitals, and the tensions between the Allied and the Central Powers, viewers realize just how tumultuous life was during World War I and how people had to be aware of even their smallest actions. This PBS television show has a unique way of pulling people into the lives of the characters while simultaneously making the events that they are going through a wide and layered character unto itself.
If you’re looking for etiquette books for situations that go beyond how to behave at a traditional dinner party or how to address your husband’s boss when he comes over for dinner, thenHow to Chat Someone Up at a Funeral: And Other Awkward Social Situations by Mark Leigh might not be the book for you. This book is a hilarious guide to etiquette when you are presented with awkward social situations. While the tips you learn in regular etiquette books about the regular and traditional *miigghhtt* help you in these awkward situations, please consider Leigh’s book the way to go when you find yourself in a situation that is far from normal.
InHow to Chat Someone Up at a Funeral, readers will find tips and tricks on how to deal with over 60 awkward social situations. The author doesn’t care how you ended up in any of these situations, just that you are well armed with advice to help you deal with what’s presented and that you leave with as much of your dignity and your life as intact as possible. The author includes such situations as how to break a curse, how to behave when invited to an exorcism, what to do when you suspect your girlfriend is a serial killer, what to do when challenging a co-worker to a duel, how to act when you inadvertently fart in the presence of the queen, and many, many more. I highly encourage you to pick up this book to learn more about what to do when you accidentally block a toilet at someone’s house, when you need to escape a mountain lion at a dinner party, and just like the title says, when you want to know how to chat someone up at a funeral.
This hilarious book is full of steps and tricks to remember, as well as things you should avoid doing and sometimes even checklists to see if you’re really in that situation or are mistaken about what is happening around you. I really enjoyed the breakdown that the author, Mark Leigh, gives about each situation and the only caution that I would give to readers is that Leigh is from England, so some words he uses may initially be confusing, but I found the content he presented to far outweigh his word choice.
So check out this book today and the next time you find yourself sharing a flat with a gorilla or having to bail out on a bad date with decency, know that the library has the perfect resource to help you out!
Bad Behavior has blocked 2011 access attempts in the last 7 days.
5 Seconds of Summer — Sounds Good Feels Good
Ryan Adams — 1989
Toby Keith — 35 MPH Town
Demi Lovato — Confident
MercyMe — MercyMe, it’s Christmas!
Pentatonix — Pentatonix
Carrie Underwood — Storyteller
