Modern Mysteries

I found a cool show on Netflix called the Inbestigators. It's an Australian kids show where fifth grade students run a detective agency. Maudie is the new girl at school; she's from England and has weird quirks in the pilot, such as crawling through windows. She solves the first case involving stolen bake sale money, and Ezra says they should start a detective agency and use his family's "granny flat" as the office. Ezra's friends Kyle and Ava also join, and the kids take turns recording stories of their cases for youtube. I like that the cast is fairly diverse and they have a variety of mysteries like Encyclopedia Brown. There's some modern stuff that worked well, such as a stolen drone and kids figuring out smartphone passwords due to sticky fingerprints. There's usually one or two red herring suspects, but Maudie usually solves the mysteries. Ezra still feels like the leader of the group since he provides the office and often tries to advertise the agency and buy spy gear for them. Ezra's younger sister Poppy appears a few times and is very cute. I hope the show continues.

Speaking of modern mysteries, I've read a few of the Aunty Lee mysteries set in Singapore. I don't always like the meandering way the author's plots flow, but I do like some of the characters in the books. Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge is apparently based on a real life internet controversy about a British woman adopting a dog and then euthanizing it instead of returning it to the shelter; there was outrage from animal activists and "Justice for Tammy" slogans. The plot of the novel fictionalizes this incident and has the British woman return to Singapore to file a lawsuit against animal activists who criticized her. Aunty Lee's friend Commissioner Raja says that the death threats and doxxing of the "puppy killer" was going too far, but on the other hand, the British woman gets overly defensive and hysterical instead of just apologizing. It's an interesting take on modern internet culture, though I found some parts slow and repetitive to read, especially when I figured out the twist about the murder victim.

Dora the Explorer

There's been a lot of jukebox movies lately, similar to the Broadway musicals built around a particular artist's soundtrack. At first it was musician biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, but now it's just movies featuring music from one artist, like this Blinded By The Light about a Pakistani Springsteen fan in 1980s UK. And the Last Christmas trailer says they'll have more than one George Michael song.

By the way, Last Christmas also stars Henry Golding and Michelle Yeoh, so I'll probably see it for the mini-reunion. Anyway, it's been incredibly hot in Texas this August, with only a brief cooling rain this week. Better escape to an air-conditioned movie again.

I saw Dora and the Lost City of Gold, and it was very enjoyable. The beginning shows young Dora playing with her cousin Diego in the jungle, implying that their cartoon adventures were all in their imagination, though Dora insists that Boots the monkey really can talk. Ten years later, teenage Dora is still narrating her adventures while using a GoPro camera, presumably for a blog. Then her parents send her to America to attend high school with Diego, but thankfully we move past the school stuff once she and other students get kidnapped to South America. I did find it weird and convenient that Dora and the others were rescued by Alejandro, and he later drops the hint "I'm a bad guy" but the kids think he's just being hysterical then. I did become suspicious by that point and was glad I was right in the end. The adventure is Indiana Jones-lite with jungle puzzles and even a magical Incan goddess. I liked that the teens were well educated and could comment on stuff like European colonialism and Inca aqueducts. There's even a great sequence where, high on hallucinogenic flowers, the characters start seeing themselves as Dora cartoon characters. That's a nice nod to the original kids show.

Walk Away

In the wake of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, Beto said some honest and righteous things about Trump, but I was depressed by hearing coworkers act like he's the one stirring up hatred and divisiveness. That he's the one making it "political" and not helping. Then the Republicans went back to blaming the usual scapegoats like video games, ignoring how other countries with video games don't have the constant mass shootings like we do.

Anyway, some liberals want to convince Beto to go run for Senate. NO!! It's too late!! I do think he should drop out of the crowded Presidential race, because he's not doing much good there, but MJ Hegar is already running for Senate, and I think it would be pretty rotten for him to suddenly jump in now. Beto shouldn't have abandoned Texas in the first place, but it's too late for him to backtrack now. I'd rather he just drop out and put his support solidly behind our Texas Dems who are running for Cornyn's seat and Will Hurd's and Kenny Marchant's. Hopefully a lot of Texas Republicans will retire soon. There's been a slowly building exodus at the national level too. If we can get rid of enough of the GOP, we could finally pass some gun control; I hate that the NRA is only weakened but not dead enough for us get something done.

I'm sure other 2020 candidates need to stop running too, and maybe run for their Senate races. But I wouldn't actively lecture them without knowing about their own states, and local candidates. Beto, take this opportunity to drop out and go back home to El Paso. After such a tragedy, it would be perfectly understandable that you'd find campaigning too much and want to do something local. Want to hold more rallies against the continued family separations at the border. There's nothing wrong with you stepping back for a few years like Wendy Davis did until things are more favorable to try another state run. People puffed up Beto's ego too soon, comparing him to Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln. But he needs to stop chasing the White House and do something else. Anything but fucking it up for MJ Hegar.