June into July

Those Mars rovers just keep going and going… awesome!

I reserve opinion on the Transformers movie, which actually got a positive review already in Reuters. All I can say for now is that I’d be really, really terrified if they wind up making a live action movie of G.I. Joe and My Little Pony and other 1980’s childhood nostalgia.

Watched the series premiere of “Burn Notice” on USA, wherein Secret Agent Michael Westin (played by Jeffrey Donovan, who played a spooky angsty role on NBC’s “The Pretender” and was last starring on USA series as Crazy Cop/FBI Agent Dave Creegan in the American version of British cop series “Touching Evil”). Kind of agreed with NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley’s review – the premiere has its moments, but feels kind of light-weight tv. Or maybe I’ve been watching too much dark espionage/thriller stuff myself such that I’m desensitized…? Oh well. I’ll try watching a bit more to say more or not.

Finished reading Brooklyn Noir, Volume 2. Solidly good read – Brooklyn in its eerie glory. Thumbs down on one of the stories (wherein this prostitute dies in a stream-of-thought style – grim and too stylized for me); otherwise, perfect subway reading.

Soo, you have to get permission to take photos in the City. The regulation intends to pretty much not cover tourists and casual photographers (i.e., families taking pictures with the irritating kids), but the fact that such intent is not written into the reg kind of still makes the reg overbroad (on paper, anyway). Why don’t they just write in the exception? Is it that hard? No wonder I’m not a legislator or a policy person.

The 10th Anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China.

NY Times’ Linda Greenhouse summarizing the US Supreme Court’s 2006-2007 term
. Oh, well. I’m still trying to follow up on the commentaries on the Seattle and Louisville school districts cases, and debating whether I really want to read the decision (way too many pages, my lazy side feels; my political side feels too concerned though to avoid trying to do more reading).

The passing of movie critic Joel Siegel.