A portrait of Jack Black being outrageous and hoping it will be funny. It worked sometimes but mostly it was hard to watch or just stupid.

Toshiro Mifune makes a great fifties detective, and he’s so good at being ideological and determined. A hard hitting drama from start to finish.

Some near future speculation by Mr. Singularity himself. It was pretty good as ‘net-focused sci-fi goes, but I kind of like Vinge’s more far out speculation. He gets bogged down in making sure all the technology hangs together and doesn’t really show us anything extraordinary about this future.

I can empathize with the “what the hell should I do with my life” part, but not so much with the “oh my God, I must drop everything and spend the rest of my life with you” part. The comic relief was good, and I’m glad I didn’t grow up in New Jersey.

Someone told me the main character reminded them of me, so vanity demanded that I read this book. I applaud Steve Martin for being funny on screen and in letters, but his characterization of a software engineer is a bit ham fisted. I suppose he did the best he could to make a typically boring type of person seem a wee bit mysterious and desirable, at least compared to the complete slacker fuckup alternative. Anyhow, I’ll be sure to go glove shopping in another ten years.