The Confusion and Hollywood

Just finished The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. It is book 2 of the baroque cycle out of 3. Since the book is the middle of the series it is a little odd to write about it since I already introduced the series and I still have another 900 page book before I find out how it all ends up. It's not my favorite Neal Stephenson book (that would be Diamond Age followed by Snow Crash) but still interesting and exciting. Although it is a bit wearing (much like how Eric described the Two Towers movie) since one of the main characters travels around the world and is constantly oscillating between extreme wealth and utter poverty. Anyway, I'll discuss further when I finish the series - this book is definitely weirder than the last but I'm still waiting to see if Stephenson is going to pull one of his crazy seems out of nowhere but pulls it all together endings or not. One interesting thing in the book is he likes to skip some long periods of time that include some significant events and then fill them back in with some back story and go into heavy detail on some minor events. I think it is similar to what Battlestar Galactica occasionally does - such as skipping the year of Cylon occupation of New Caprica and then devoting an entire episode to a single night to build the interpersonal relationships and fill in some of the story they skipped. I guess that all shows do that to some degree, but I don't think that they usually skip segments of time that are as critical to the plot.

Over the weekend I headed up to Hollywood to see The Groundlings, an improve comedy group, with Evan. It was good, funnier than UCB but not as funny as the Laugh Factory. These actors seemed a little more established than UCB - none had majors roles, but they all had minors roles on a variety of shows including Reno 911 and Scrubs. On the way over we passed by Hollywood Blvd and Highland, one end of the red carpet, which was all setup along with the giant oscars which was cool to see, although no celebrity sightings. One thing that particularly stood out to me is that as you drive through Hollywood you see some payday advance places and some homeless people and then a block later there's giant oscars and a red carpet. They do a pretty good job of focusing all the cameras on the strip of road they want you to see - I think it would be really funny if some time a camera man did a 360 and gave people some context as to where this was taking place.

I also saw Reno 911: Miami over the weekend. I don't think it lived up to the show, but was still quite funny.