I enjoyed Simon Pegg’s Man Up (Patti Abbott recommended it, my review is here). But Absolutely Anything is a completely different movie. A band of space aliens called the Galactic Council have to decide whether to destroy Humanity or allow it to develop (the aliens are voiced by the MONTY PYTHON team of John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, amd Michael Palin). They have a “test” that allows how their decision should be made. The aliens choose one Earthly at random and give them the power to do absolutely anything.

Simon Pegg, a struggling teacher, discovers he suddenly has amazing powers. Simon is in love with Catherine West (Kate Beckinsale) who is struggling with her job at the BBC. Simon tries to win Catherine’s love by using his new powers, but he only messes things up. Simon also gives his dog, Dennis, the power to speak. The voice of Dennis is Robin Williams. This was Robin Williams’s last film role.

There’s a lot of silliness in Absolutely Anything. Kate Beckinsale is the best thing about this occasionally comic movie. But, set the bar low. GRADE: C+

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz studies millions of GOOGLE searches to come up with his conclusions. For example, Stephens-Davidowitz challenges the prediction that Kinsey made in the 1950s that 10% of the population were homosexuals. Based on GOOGLE searches, the estimate is closer to 5%. Stephens-Davidowitz shows why polling for the 2016 Presidential Election was off by about 2% and undercounting Trump supporters. The chapter on sex is an eye-opener. If you’re interested in what GOOGLE searches tell us about what people are really concerned about, Everybody Lies answers those questions. Brilliant book! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Foreword Steven Pinker ix
Introduction: The Outlines of a Revolution 1
Part I Data, Big and Small
1 Your Faulty Gut 25
Part II The Powers of Big Data
2 Was Freud Right? 45
3 Data Reimagined 55
Bodies as Data 62
Words as Data 74
Pictures as Data 97
4 Digital Truth Serum 105
The Truth About Sex 112
The Truth About Hate and Prejudice 128
The Truth About the Internet 140
The Truth About Child Abuse and Abortion 145
The Truth About Your Facebook Friends 150
The Truth About Your Customers 153
Can We Handle the Truth? 158
5 Zooming In 165
What’s Really Going On in Our Counties, Cities, and Towns? 172
How We Fill Our Minutes and Hours 190
Our Doppelgangers 197
Data Stories 205
6 All the World’s a Lab 207
The ABCs of A/B Testing 209
Nature’s Cruel-but Enlightening-Experiments 221
Part III Big Data: Handle with Care
7 Big Data, Big Schmata? What It Cannot Do 243
The Curse of Dimensionality 246
The Overemphasis on What Is Measurable 252
8 Mo Data, Mo Problems? What We Shouldn’t Do 257
The Danger of Empowered Corporations 257
The Danger of Empowered Governments 266
Conclusion: How Many People Finish Books? 271
Acknowledgments 285
Notes 289
Index 319

This is the New England Patriot’s eighth Super Bowl and they’re 4 1/2 point favorites. The plucky Eagles, without their elite quarterback Carson Wentz, face a tough struggle today. Most Bills fans instinctively root against the Patriots. This game might have been truly compelling if the New Orleans Saints were in it instead of the Eagles. My heart will be rooting for the Eagles, but my head says the Patriots will win. Again. What do you think will happen at the Super Bowl today?

A couple guys playing grab-ass is not a plot for a movie. Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is a horny 17-year-old who falls for the graduate student his professor father hires to help him during the summer. Oliver is seven years older and “experienced.” Both men run around with their shirts off a lot. Elio specializes in giving Oliver smoldering glances. But, in these coming of age movies you know the drill. There’s nothing novel, no surprises, no suspense, and no unpredictability in Call Me By Your Name. Like the glacial Phantom Thread the pacing of Call Me By Your Name would be envied by snails. GRADE: D (for dull, dull, dull)

When I was a kid, I loved The Mysterious Island–both the book by Jules Verne and the movie (1961) by Columbia Pictures. So, of course, I’m admitting partiality to Jonathan E. Lewis’s wonderful Strange Island Stories. Yes, H. P. Lovecraft’s iconic strange island story, “Dagon,” is here. But there are also many stories I was not familiar with like Jack London’s “Good-by Jack” and Robert Lewis Stevenson’s “The Isle of Voices.” Jonathan E. Lewis provides a variety of strange island stories so there is something here for every reader’s taste: mysteries, horror, adventure, etc. If you’re looking for an entertaining anthology of stories, Strange Island Stories fits the bill. I can also recommend Jonathan E. Lewis’s earlier anthology, Ancient Egyptian Supernatural Tales. You can read my review of that volume here. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction
GHOSTS AND SHAPE SHIFTERS
“Monos and Daimonos” by Edward Bulwer 12
“Hugenin’s Wife” by M.P. Shiel 20
“The Far Islands” by John Buchan 30
“The Ship That Saw a Ghost” by Frank Norris 47
“The Gray Wolf” by George MacDonald 60
“The Camp of the Dog” by Algernon Blackwood 66
“Island of Ghosts” by Julian Hawthorne 123
BIZARRE CREATURES AND FANTATIC REALMS
“The Fiend of the Cooperage” by Arthur Conan Doyle 152
“Spirit Island” by Henry Toke Munn 164
“The Purple Terror” by Fred M. White 186
“Friend Island” by Francis Stevens 200
“In the Land of Tomorrow” by Epes Winthrop Sargent 211
“The Isle of Voices” by Robert Louis Stevenson 248
“Dagon” by H. P. Lovecraft 265
“The People of Pan” by Henry S. Whitehead 271
HUMAN HORRORS
“The Sixth Gargoyle” by David Eynon 294
“Three Skeleton Key” by George G. Toudouze 302
“Good-by Jack” by Jack London 313
“The Isle of Doom” by James Francis Dwyer 322
An Adriatic Awakening” by Jonathan E. Lewis 332

Notes for Further Reading 347

Lee Child’s The Midnight Line is the 22nd book in his long-running Jack Reacher series. As usual, Reacher is just wandering around looking for trouble. He finds a West Point graduation ring in a pawn shop in Wisconsin. Reacher immediately wants to know how it got there and who it belonged to (Reacher is a West Point graduate, too). The search takes Reacher to a criminal called Jimmy Rat. After Reacher beats the shit out of Jimmy Rat’s seven biker friends, he’s off to South Dakota to follow the next clue. Much of The Midnight Line is set in Wyoming. The Midnight Line isn’t as good as Make Me, but it’s about as good as Night School. Are you a Jack Reacher fan? GRADE: B

Jonathan L. Howard takes us into an updated version of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE with After the End of the World. The world has been “folded” and this new Reality features the Nazis winning World War II and now embarking on a science project to make the alternations in Reality permanent. Who can stop the Nazis? The great-granddaughter of H. P. Lovecraft and a “dreamer” named Daniel Carter. Yes, these are the two characters from Howard’s first Lovecraft pastiche, Carter & Lovecraft from 2015 (you can read my review here).

The Necronomicon plays an important role in this thrill ride. If you put Raiders of the Lost Ark and At the Mountains of Madness in a blender, the result would be something very much like After the End of the World. GRADE: B

I found Phantom Thread to be a pretentious bore. Daniel Day-Lewis–who claims this is his final film performance–plays a obsessive-compulsive dress maker named Reynolds Woodcock. Woodcock meets a clumsy waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps) and transforms her into a model. Woodcock’s sister (Lesley Manville) runs the House of Woodcock with an iron fist. Alma falls in love with Woodcock, but Woodcock only has room in his life for his Art. So, Alma comes up with a surprisingly innovative strategy to earn Woodcock’s love. It felt like Phantom Thread was four hours long. If you love fashion and dress making maybe you’ll enjoy this movie. GRADE: C

Kevin Young’s brilliant expose, Bunk, shows that con-artists and tricksters have been with us as long as the United States has been around. I enjoyed the stories about P. T. Barnum and his clever shenanigans. Young describes dozens of different con games and hoaxes played with variations over the years. I enjoyed his chapter on Clifford Irving’s hoax about his book about Howard Hughes. And then there’s Bernie Madoff who ripped off billions of dollars from his trusting investors. Kevin Young’s meticulously researched material on the plagiarists and phonies and spin doctors presents the patterns of deception we’re contending with today. I found the stories fascinating and informative. If you’re interested in how we got into such a mess with Fake News and Alternative Facts, Hunk lays it all out in detail. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
BOOK ONE A HISTORY OF THE HOAX,
ONE The American Museum On the madness of crowds,
CHAPTER 1 The Age of Imposture, 7
CHAPTER 2 The Freaks of Dame Fortune, 17
CHAPTER 3 Splitfoot, 45
CHAPTER 4 Bearded Ladies, 63
TWO Neverland On race & other popular delusions,
CHAPTER 5 Cowboys & Aliens, 95
CHAPTER 6 Blood Nation, 117
CHAPTER 7 Lost Boys, 139
CHAPTER 8 The Time Machine, 161
THREE Mysteria A sideshow,
CHAPTER 9 The Heart Is Deceitful, 189
CHAPTER 10 Eve Black, 211
BOOK TWO THE HOAXING OF HISTORY,
FOUR The Vampire’s Mirror Of imposture, forgery & monsters,
CHAPTER 11 Butterfly Books, 233
CHAPTER 12 Spruce Goose, 253
CHAPTER 13 Bakelite, 271
CHAPTER 14 The Vampire’s Wife, 285
FIVE Hack Heaven Of the journalist & the liar,
CHAPTER 15 Glass Ceilings, 305
CHAPTER 16 The Gingerbread Man, 327
CHAPTER 17 In Bad Blood, 243
CHAPTER 18 Burning Down, 359
SIX Unoriginal Sin On plagiary, murder, bad poetry & other crimes,
CHAPTER 19 Blacker than Thou, 381
CHAPTER 20 Professor Plum, 391
CHAPTER 21 Ghostbusters, 397
CHAPTER 22 Michael Brown’s Body, 411
CODA The Age of Euphemism,
Acknowledgments, 449
Notes, 451
Annotated Bibliography, 509
Illustration Credits, 535
Index, 539

While watching Steven Spielberg’s The Post I thought about how fragile our democracy is. If Katherine Graham had listened to her male “advisors” and decided NOT to publish The Pentagon Papers, the Nixon Administration would have silenced the Press and become more malignant. I enjoyed the strong performances of Meryl Streep (Katherine Graham) and Tom Hanks (Ben Bradlee). I had not realized that while The Pentagon Papers crisis was occurring, The Washington Post was in a financial crisis of its own because The Post was going public and selling stock. That adds another stressor into the mix. I still think All the President’s Men is the best movie about journalism, followed closely by Spotlight. The Post is a good, solid movie about a crucial moment in U.S. history. GRADE: B+