THE BOOK:

NON-FICTION:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
This book is a surprisingly light-hearted look into some of the many ways the dead can serve the living – as crash test dummies, as organ donors and sources of blood transfusions, as control subjects for forensics research, as mulch. Try Shelly Frasier’s wry, sunny, pitch-perfect reading, available unabridged on iTunes.

THE MOVIE:

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Midway through the picture, I started laughing so hard, I began to get the panicky feeling that I was running out of oxygen, teetering on the edge of getting sick. Some people think Sasha Cohen took cruel advantage of the innocent bystanders who strayed into his movie and were played for fools, and I see that side of the argument (for more on this POV, check out George Saunders’ rebuttal to Borat in The New Yorker). But at its best and sharpest (such as in the short fiction of George Saunders), great comedy gets to some tragic truths about social realities most of us would rather not think about: the division between black and white, gay and straight, rich man/poor man. BORAT explores – and explodes – those divisions in an hour and a half of scorched earth comedy that must’ve taken unbelievable guts to create.

THE SHORT STORY:

"There's a Hole in the City" by Richard Bowes
A cool-as-the-Battery-in-the-fall meditation on 9/11.

THE SHOW:

Battlestar Galactica, Season 3.0
Yeah I know. You’re sick of hearing how great it is, and I’m sick of telling you (see Summer 2006 and Winter 2005). Thing is, most shows give you their best in the first season, and then slowly fritter away whatever initial force they had, devolving into lame stunts and weak subplots to keep the story going. But Galactica has gone the other way, gathering steam and emotional weight, and going deeper and deeper into the characters, in the most satisfying way possible, without sacrificing anything in the way of suspense or action.

THE SINGLE:

"Letting the Cables Sleep" by Bush
Off THE SCIENCE OF THINGS, this was an unjustly overlooked masterpiece of feeling and quiet force. Better than the songs you know them for.

THE ALBUM:

Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers – Lucero
A damn near perfect suite of blue collar rock songs, highlighted by Ben Nichols' gravelly voice and smart, moving lyrics about memory, regret, and escape. Pop over to their MySpace page and check out "I Can Get Us Out Of Here," the first single off the disc.

THE GAME:

Tank-o-Box
Could be the best game of the year... if the year was 1984, and you were playing this baby on your Colecovision. The graphics and music are right there with Dig-Dug. Tank-o-Box is so retro, it doesn't even allow you to save your game. Instead, every five or so levels, it gives you a password, so when you start a new game you can skip over levels you’ve beaten. It’s also compulsively playable, the drive-and-shoot game stripped to the essentials. If the guy who made it could port Tank-o-Box over to the iPod, he'd probably be a millionaire inside of a month.

THE COMIC:

The Pride of Baghdad Written by Brian Vaughan, Illustrated by Nico Henrichon.
I’m as boring on the subject of Brian Vaughan as I am on Battlestar Galactica. But give me credit – I tried not to like this book. I have a knee-jerk distaste for talking animal stories, and held PRIDE OF BAGHDAD at arm’s length for as long as possible. Finally, though, Henrichon’s muscular depictions of a wild kingdom gone mad in the smoking ruins of Baghdad, and Vaughan’s predictably humane, nuanced characters, overcame my resistance. Between this and EX MACHINA, Vaughan has attacked the turbulent political complexities of our time in a way no other writer of his generation has dared (except maybe for my bro).

In related news, it appears Vaughan has recently been hired to write for Lost... the best move the show has made since introducing The Hatch in my opinion.

THE ONLINE RESOURCE:

LibraryThing
It’s been around a while, but "The MySpace of Books" is still new to me. I've always found it curiously soothing to catalog things and make lists (ahem, case in point, my tireless RECENT & RECOMMENDED listmaking). And it’s interesting to find folks with similar libraries to my own, and to discover new books that others with like tastes have enjoyed.

As mentioned on the main page, you can check out my own LibraryThing library here.

ANTICIPATED PLEASURE:

CHILDREN OF MEN
I love Clive Owen's abandon-all-hope psycho eyes, and after director Alfono Cuaron’s frosty, razor-edged interpretation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I'd follow him just about anywhere.