Wolverines!

I was going to try posting another album commentary (can't bring myself to call them "reviews") but I got sidetracked so I'll try it tomorrow. I got several albums from a friend who shall remain nameless here but you know who you are and thanks again--I'll be writing some posts up about them soon.

I was in Wal-Mart the other day and happened across their big...what do you call that thing? It looks like a cage, but without a top, and it stands about 4 feet tall and is about 6 feet on a side and it's so full of DVDs they're about to cascade out onto the floor. Anyway they had all these DVDs for $5 each so I perused them for a while and came away with two that I think will be pretty good. One is a collection of several horror films from the 60s. I was quite amused when it was rung up and beeped for the cashier to make sure the buyer was over 18 years old. The other is a collection of Alfred Hitchcock pieces, some episodes from his TV series and some movies. I think they'll both be pretty good, although I'm afraid the horror collection will generally seem quite hokey--I'm not familiar with any of the movies (on first glance) except for the original Night of the Living Dead which I've seen before. Many years ago, at a Christmas party at the pizza restaurant, a co-worker gave me a double-feature VHS tape of that movie along with Reefer Madness.

I was just looking at that film's entry at Wikipedia, and because I typed in an error I came up with a list that has revealed to me that Red Dawn is being remade. Good grief. This time it's going to be a Chinese invasion in the Pacific Northwest. Yeesh. One of the main characters is to be portrayed by Josh Peck, who you may remember as a child star on several Nickelodeon shows such as The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh. Or, if you don't have any kids who ever watched those shows, maybe you don't remember him--which may be a blessing. I'll be forced to watch it just to see how he looks now. I'm pretty sure it's going to be weird watching him in a dramatic role.

I have been becoming more familiar than I would ever have expected with the world of Percy Jackson. The books are quite the mish-mash of Greek mythology, but it's gotten my son interested in Greek mythology so I can't find too much fault with it. I've been looking around on Amazon for some good Greek myth books written for kids. The only book I have on them now is the classic Bulfinch's Mythology, but I never liked that book much because it's too much a combination of tales and commentary, with not enough tales. Also Bulfinch had a terrible habit of mixing Greek and Roman names together which I think is too confusing for a beginner. I read all the myths from library books when I was in elementary and I still wish I had those books now. At one point I even created a large poster-sized family tree of the gods which--get this--was stolen. I couldn't believe somebody would actually steal such a thing, but it happened.