With the passing of Anthony Bourdain last month, I thought I had to write a bit about how his work has influenced my view on “exploring experience”, as this blog’s tagline states. I want to focus on the memories he left behind with the travels he embarked on for his show Parts Unknown — a program I quite liked for how it packaged food and travel as a way to better understand the world and its people. (more…)
Television Archives
Mulling Over Vikings Season 5 Mid-Season Finale
The fifth season of History Channel’s Vikings hasn’t been exactly what I would call “riveting”. The initial post-Ragnar episodes were pretty good as most of them was about Ivar’s ascent and how the Great Heathen Army are getting the best of the English. However, the fifth season has been quite puzzling with how things have turned out and how relationships formed and fizzled in the blink of an eye. The mid-season finale of Vikings Season 5, entitled Moments of Vision, was both beautiful and bewildering at the same time. (more…)
On the “Coherence” of Marvel’s The Punisher
This article on The Verge about how Marvel’s The Punisher on Netflix is a mess with how it tackles gun violence in America caught my eye. Since this blog is full of cobwebs and I recently got rejected by a client for my freelance work, I’ve written something here in response, partially to remind myself that I can still write. Also, I have been watching the show. I like it, and I think I’ve seen more of it than the author of that article. (more…)
Primitive Ain’t Easy: Banished and Living in the Past
One day, while watching my usual string of YouTube videos (covering a wide range of topics), I came upon an interview with someone most people may not have heard of, but had lived through a very interesting period back in the late 1970s that isn’t very well known. It’s a bit unusual, but there have been similar examples since.While I may not really be an expert in this subject, I thought the similarities I saw were enough to write about and share here. (more…)
What I Got from Top Gear
By now, the dropping of now-former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson from the BBC due to a “fracas” with a producer has made the news. Many would think it’s not worth losing sleep over, but Top Gear fans like myself are saddened by this development, even if it had been a long time coming. With Richard Hammond and James May expressing their intent to not film without him, this version of the show seems effectively dead. It isn’t much, but I wanted to write something on what I took from Top Gear — my favorite show… in the world. (more…)
POWER/RANGERS: On Darkness and Deconstruction
Talk about being late to the party. However, I actually took quite a bit of time to sort my thoughts out on what I think about the short film in order to come up with this post. Perhaps it was good that I posted this only now as Henshincon — a celebration of the tokusatsu genre that had been a part of Filipino childhoods during the 90s — gets underway. I myself grew up with Power Rangers and tokusatsu shows imported from Japan (and translated into Filipino), so it seems apt for me to start off a tribute of sorts by looking into someone else’s tribute. (more…)