And yet, they're why I kept watching the show for such a long time. The spy stuff was a lot of fun, even if it was out-of-place with the rest of the concept.

She's sent over as a liaison in a case where her brother's an assassin, then kept there by her dad (the head of Mossad) as a spy on the NCIS (they get involved in all sorts of spy stuff thanks to Mark Harmon's shadowy past), and, when her dad leaves her for dead rather than admit involvement in an op and the NCIS guys…

Yeah, I now kinda want to check out his other stuff. I didn't love Savages, but everything else has been gold.

Books: I finished Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog last night, which was kinda what if James Ellroy's Underworld USA was about the war on drugs. But hey, that means it's great. Also, slightly warmer than Ellroy. Great stuff.

Books: So I wrapped up John Scalzi's The End of All Things, the latest in his Old Man's War books. So, so good. I've seen some people complain about it being all conversations…but man, they're riveting conversations. Scalzi knows how to build more character in just a few chapters than most writers can create in…

So…the storytelling and some of the character designs in the first trade of Valentine's Catwoman were kind of a mess, and I was honestly kinda surprised by it. Does it get better in this second arc? I'd like to not have to reread pages to understand why somebody's suddenly moved from one side of the room to the…

Wait, it is? Balls.

Holy crap, I never realized that. That must be why I don't mind it so much.

Seveneves is…such a problematic book for me (though not as bad as Reamde, which I couldn't even finish). The analogs are really thin, a lot of the plotting is either too fast or too slow, and it just…isn't as FUN as stuff like Cryptonomicon or Anathem or The Baroque Cycle. There's a lot of dourness.

I really need to finish that up. That first episode is magic.

Books: I wrapped up Cherie Priest's Chapelwood, which was as much of a delight as Maplecroft was. Storage Room Six is utterly terrifying, and I love that Inspector Wolf came more to the fore in this book. I'd happily see Priest continue on with stories of the Quiet Society after she finishes off The Borden…

It was actually really nice, especially as I'm a huuuuuge fan of the franchise. There's already been the grief of the actual actor dying, we didn't need the added grief of the character dying (as removed as we might be from it).

Oh, man, I hate T4 sosososo much. I've used those exact same words to describe Worthington (I'm so happy people in Hollywood finally stopped trying to make him happen), and Moon Bloodgood's fighter pilot was pretty much the stupidest soldier to ever have lived. Such a bad, bad movie.

It's shelved in sci-fi, but its structure is incredibly YA. I think the only reason it doesn't get shelved there/the publisher has it classified as sci-fi is because half the teenagers who would try to read it wouldn't care about all the '80s references and tune out after 30 pages.

Books: I started up Cherie Priest's Chapelwood, the sequel to Maplecroft in her Borden Dispatches series. The set-up: Lizzie Borden did, in fact, kill her family…BECAUSE THEY WERE MINIONS OF CTHULHU. Despite the potential for goofiness, Priest managed to make Maplecroft a surprisingly creepy book with some great…

Oh, man, Cowboy Bebop is fantastic. It's gotten me back into anime after a looooooong fallow period.

Oh, he's just excellent. I could watch him all day long.

And it hits its apex of video-game-ness with that awful crumbling bridge scene. Such a terrible, terrible movie.

TV: Wrapped up the second season of Rectify. I'm really loving a lot of this show…the characters, the religious imagery, the non-diegetic music. Teddy's gone from having my sympathy to being an utter piece of garbage, but I'll root for his dad any day of the week. I feel like the plea bargain storyline…is a bit…

An usher once followed me into the theatre to take my empty Diet Coke bottle away from me. EMPTY.