Sherlock Holmes

I love mysteries. When I was younger, I was obsessed with the Encyclopedia Brown books. The thought that a kid could be so smart, and he could help his friends, and even the police sometimes -- I thought it was awesome. Also, the EB books made you turn to the next page for the solution, so it gave you a chance to solve it yourself. I loved that, too.

When I got older, I read the Hardy Boys, and when I got older still, I read the Hardy Boys Casefiles, which was Hardy Boys for adults, with Frank and Joe, but they were grown.

When I got into middle school, I started reading the Sherlock Holmes books, and my love of mysteries grew to a whole new level. I had never encountered a character like Sherlock before. He was maladjusted, you didn't always like him, and he was rarely nice. Being so smart left him being somewhat of a social outcast, and his only friends was Dr. Watson, the only person who was patient enough to put up with his moodiness.

I started watching Sherlock Holmes movies -- a few of the ones with Basil Rathbone, the movie Young Sherlock Holmes, The Great Mouse Detective, the show Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, anything really. I was intrigued by the surely detective. I wasn't always happy with the TV and movie adaptions of Sherlock though -- many adaptions had reduced a lot of his character flaws down, thereby making him a friendly, happy, well-liked, but extremely smart guy. That's just not Holmes. A few good recommendations that were pretty good but weren't by Conan himself would be The Baker Street Irregulars, and the movie Young Sherlock Holmes.

Then, I saw the TV show House. I had avoided it, because I don't normally watch much TV -- a lot of them seem to be the same crime investigation shows with a different cast -- but after a few episodes I knew where'd I'd scene Dr. Gregory House before. He was Sherlock Holmes!! He walked with a cane, he had one really good friend who was patient enough to put up with his characer flaws, he was addicted to drugs, he was maladjusted and cynical, and he was extremely smart and solved cases most people were stumped by.

Now it seems they're gonna try to bring back Sherlock Holmes to the modern public. I saw on Yahoo news, where there's two new Sherlock Holmes movies in the works. One of them is a Columbia pictures comedy that is supposed to star Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrel that I'm hoping will be as good as The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, and not totally stupid. The other one fills me with hope, though. It's a Warner Bros. film, and when I saw who they got to play Sherlock, I thought, Wow, if they couldn't get Hugh Laurie, that guy could definitely do the part justice. They got Robert Downey, Jr. His smart alleck, cynical personality is perfect for the crabby detective, and with what I've heard about Iron Man, this movie will be fantastic, and hopefully be a box office smash.

I'm daring to get my hopes up. Don't let me down Hollywood!

Books and TV

I don't really have much to talk about today, but I do have some news that was pretty cool. My town is not a town that is known for its readers. The only bookstores we have are a used bookstore, and our Wal-Mart, and slowly but surely, our Wal-Mart has been reducing the book section down to Junie B. Jones, other kids books of that nature, and self help books. But it looks like our Wal-Mart is starting to exand their stock a little more. The other day, I am happy to report, I saw Twilight Fall in the flesh...er...page...along with the book that Lynn Viehl advertised a few days ago -- Death Angel. My only let down was that I couldn't find The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu. I frantically checked my money supply. I was going to buy them and have SoaM's first book give away, but sadly, I was broke. So, in a few months, I may have a book give away, if by then everyone doesn't already have those books, ha. We'll see, though -- money is looking tighter this semester.

And in other news, I saw the last episode of Death Note the other day -- God bless you, my lovely DVR -- and I have only this to say: HOLY COW!!! AMAZING!!!

That's really all. I'll try to have something cool to post later this week. I'm stewing ideas.

23, 24, 25...

A word of warning to all those who read this blog, the posts might be a little short and clipped and some not at all after Wednesday. I have to work Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and I have to close on those days too. That means that I'll probably be too tired to post anything long. But enough about problems.
Writing wise, I've still been working on Zhivtor, but as of yesterday it came to a standstill because of college applications and work. But my writing didn't stop. I have the coolest teacher in the world for an English teacher, and he has set aside three days a week for the entire class to write. I just finished one short story that took me a week to do, and I've got an idea for another one. I'm hoping to find a magazine to sell them both to.
Reading wise, I'm halfway through The Outstretched Shadow book one of the Obsidion Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. It's pretty good. It's a little slow at the beginning as it sets everything up, but now it's going at a fine pace and I find myself having a hard time putting it down. After I'm finished with that I want to finish The Elf Queen of Shannara by Terry Brooks.
In movie news, I really want to see the new movie The Number 23. Not only is it a really interesting suspense movie, but it has Jim Carrey, famous comedian, playing the serious role. I love it. And all the info they present is interesting. According to the movie, our lives seem to revolve around the number 23. Examples: Julius Caeser was stabbed 23 times, it takes the heart 23.4 seconds to pump blood through the body, and if you add up 2+3+4 it equals 9. 23 is the nineth prime number. William Shakespeare was born on April 23, and died on April 23, and one famous American basketball player--Michael Jordan--had the number 23 on his jersey. It's interesting, and I might look into it further, just to see how many coincidences I can find.
In tv news, I want to rent the first season of 24, because I hear that it's really good. I don't want to start watching it now, because I usually need to see things from the beginning, and I'd probably be missing out on something. So the next time I go to the movie store, I'm going to rent 24.
So that's it for now. Wish me luck on the job.
Jason