Month: April 2026

M3gan 2.0

The creators of M3gan are totally Portal and Portal 2 fans. I had a feeling when I watched M3gan, but after watching the sequel M3gan 2.0, I’m convinced.

The robot villain-turned-ally M3gan has a distortion in her robot voice that’s very reminiscent of the voice of GlaDOS, the robot villain-turned-ally of the Portal video game series. M3gan’s character arc from M3gan to M3gan 2.0 matches GlaDOS’s from Portal to Portal 2, and M3gan singing pop songs inappropriately matches GlaDOS unexpectedly singing the closing theme to both Portal games.

As for the movie itself, it’s great and about as good as I remember M3gan being. Among other satisfying action, comedy, and storytelling beats M3gan 2.0 features, the villain printer company Xenox having super advanced AI is hilarious.

Expedition Unknown (Seasons 1-16)

Occasionally, host Josh Gates portrays himself as a dumb, annoying American in a foreign country. Overall, however, his bits are charming–he once realized he didn’t have physical currency to buy ice cream and helped sell ice cream to make up for it–and he comes across as a genuinely enthusiastic archeologist.

Tracking Tasmania’s Tiger (S4 E9)

Cryptids are animals frequently seen but not yet proven to exist. I knew there was a word that encompassed Big Foot, the Mothman, the Chupacabra, and the like.

Viking Secrets (S5 E1)

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are derived from Odin’s Day (Woden’s Day), Thor’s Day, and Freya’s Day.

The Secret, Cracking the Secret, The Secret Solved (S5 E4, S7 E9, S7 E12)

In these episodes, Josh Gates follows clues to real-world buried treasure as depicted in the The Secret: A Treasure Hunt. This book, published in 1982 by Byron Preiss, contains twelve paintings, each depicting clues corresponding to locations across North America in which Preiss buried a box holding a ceramic key. Each key corresponds to a gemstone that Preiss would award to the finder. Only two keys were found before Preiss died in a car crash in 2005, taking the locations of the remaining keys with him.

Josh Gates follows modern enthusiasts of The Secret, who believe they’ve cracked the clues to the remaining boxes. Adding to the difficulty of following the clues, however, is the changes to the cities and landscapes that have occurred in the nearly 40 years since the book was published. Despite this, Josh and his fellow treasure hunters find a key! The Secret is one of Expedition Unknown‘s more fascinating stories and with an amazing conclusion. More often, Josh finds little to advance the mystery he attempts to solve by the end of an episode.

I wonder if Ernest Cline took inspiration from The Secret when he wrote Ready Player One? The characters’ fascination with the 80’s makes it seem plausible.

The Hunt for the Golden Owl (S6 E9)

In this hunt very similar to The Secret, a book On the Trail of the Golden Owl by Max Valentin provides eleven clues to the location of a golden owl worth half a million dollars and hidden somewhere in France.

Escaping the Rock (S10 E7)

Expedition Unknown made it all the way to episodes that premiered in 2022 without mentioning COVID-19! This episode contained the first obvious signs: Josh making inappropriate video calls to interviewees that he would usually visit in person.

I was on the fence about COVID-19’s affect on Deadliest Catch. On one hand, the show documents one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, so why would the people willing to do it care about a flu virus? On the other hand, the ship captains and some of the crew have extremely unhealthy habits, so I understand their concern. It’s nice that Expedition Unknown let COVID-19 affect the show as little as possible, given how ridiculous that would look juxtaposed with the adventurous and dangerous risks they take on a per episode basis.

Chasing the Mysteries of Moses (S10 E12)

One of the show’s interviewees explains the origins of the modern alphabet: ancient semitic graffiti inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Wanting to write something themselves, the semitic graffiti artists drew a rough depiction of an ox on top of a house. The ox upside down creates the shape of an “A.” The word for ox and house to the semitic people was “alpha” and “bet.” Crazy!

The Hunt for Petra’s Lost Tombs, Petra’s Secret’s Revealed (S14 E1-2)

Another of Expedition Unknown‘s more interesting stories, this pair of episodes explores ancient Nabataean ruins, much of them carved in stone. The Nabataeans knew how to control water in the desert, their ancient settlements featuring stone and ceramic plumbing and water ways. They also had the technology to carve grand buildings out of solid stone cliff faces. Despite their achievements, we know almost nothing about them, including the purpose of their most impressive buildings. They existed within a few centuries of 0 AD.

The Man-Eating Lions of Kenya (S15 E2)

I thought there was nothing to learn about two lions, called the Ghost and the Darkness by those tormented by them, that killed as many as 130 people over 100 years ago and that Josh Gates had no business investigating whatever he was investigating, but this episode was surprisingly interesting. Josh and the investigators he accompanied analyzed the skulls and DNA of the lions and discovered they were brothers with genetic tooth problems. Jammed into a hole in one of the lion’s teeth was also hundreds of hairs, revealing what the lion ate and how its diet changed over time. Humans proved easy prey and soft food for lions with sore teeth.

Vanderbilt’s Lost Steamship (S16 E6)

Josh and the investigators actually found the ship wreck! Usually, Josh finds a different ship or a different airplane crash. Or it starts raining, and the crew’s plans are ruined forever.

Frankenstein

I listened to the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley on Audible. It was interesting.

After discovering the “epistolary novel” in Who Was Jane Austen? Sorting Fact from Fiction, I was eager to read one of the classics for an example of one. Frankenstein is told through the narrator Robert Walton, a sea captain on an Arctic expedition. The introduction of the novel is a series of letters Walton writes to his sister. The rest of the novel is a novel that Walton writes for his sister, relating the story Frankenstein tells him, the story Frankenstein’s monster tells him, and Walton’s own experiences of the two.

In some ways, Frankenstein seems like a deeply flawed novel, at least by modern standards. Arguably, Walton is discardable, and his presence negates the need for Frankenstein and his monster to ever interact or make peace with one another by telling each other their story. Walton serves as the link to reader in telling the two stories.

The melodramatic writing could also be seen as a problem. Today, melodramatic writing is mocked and discouraged, but Victor isn’t shy about telling the reader/Walton repeatedly how dearly he loves his dear friend Henry and his dear childhood friend Elizabeth and how wretched he is without them. His monster is equally verbose is recounting his wretchedness. Both of them go into detail about how pitiable they are, Victor suffering from mental breakdowns and the deaths of his closest friends and family and the monster lamenting what an outcast he is. While Frankenstein (2025) suggests that Victor is the asshole playing the victim, both of them put on quite the pity party for themselves in the book. Walton himself also tells his sister repeatedly how much he pities Victor and wants to help him. The book ends with Victor dying and the monster proclaiming he will burn himself to death on a pyre. It’s such a bleak book with such a bleak ending it’s laughable.

Perhaps its flaws are why Frankenstein has been adapted so many times and in so many different ways. When I think of “Frankenstein,” I think of the image of Victor screaming with maniacal enthusiasm, “It’s alive!” something I can’t imagine the Victor in the book ever doing. Mary Shelley never even says that electricity resurrected the monster, but that’s primarily how adaptations portray it. To name some other changes adaptations have made

  • Frankenstein is a mad scientist and the bad guy.
  • The monster is a mindless beast and the bad guy.
  • Frankenstein actually creates a bride for the monster.
  • The monster falls in love with Elizabeth.
  • Robert Walton is discarded as a narrator.
  • The monster is called Frankenstein.

It’s as if everyone who made an adaptation of Frankenstein saw the seed of a great idea but poorly executed and proceeded to bring what they saw to light. It’s kind of amazing how many different great ideas people imagined from the same source material.

Eragon

I reread Eragon by Christopher Paolini (for at least the third time since it was release in 2002) in preparation to read the latest novel related to the Inheritance Cycle Murtagh. Reading it more than 20 years later, the writing has qualities that feel rushed and amateurish. Dialogue and actions for multiple characters are sometimes crammed into single paragraphs for example. A lot of traveling, training, and other things can happen in a few paragraphs. Scenes can end and focus can change quite abruptly as well.

I don’t remember watching the Eragon movie multiple times, but for some reason, reading this book reminded me so much of it. Perhaps that’s only because of my ruthless mocking and criticism of it. I distinctly remember my brother screaming, “Murtagh, I’m on fire!” in response to a prison scene where a flaming Urgal (or was it just a person?) smashed through a flimsy wooden jail that was somehow sturdy enough to imprison Murtagh. I also remember how Saphira flew away as a baby and returned as a full grown dragon capable of fluent telepathic speech.

I suppose I don’t blame the movie’s creators for not emphasizing the injury Durza gives the protagonist Eragon at the end. This injury serves as a major obstacle for Eragon in the sequel Eldest, but Eragon does end rather abruptly, placing more emphasis on a memory/nightmare montage Eragon has than his grievous injury. Eragon doesn’t even see the end of the last battle.

Still, they screwed themselves, dooming the Eldest movie to never be created. Although, an Eragon TV series is in development for Disney+ now. We’ll see if it actually manifests (which would be neat), but that’s another reason to reread the Inheritance Cycle.

Who Was Jane Austen? Sorting Fact from Fiction

Following how much I liked Pride and Prejudice, I listened to Who Was Jane Austen? Sorting Fact from Fiction, a series of essays written and narrated by Stephanie Insley Hershinow.

What I found most interesting was that Pride and Prejudice may have originally been written as an epistolary, a series of letters exchanged between characters. I’d never heard the term before. This theory makes a lot of sense considering how much of Pride and Prejudice focuses on reading and writing letters. Epistolary novels were common at the time, Frankenstein and Dracula being late examples, but when I think about the concept of them now, they seem much more rare and experimental. House of Leaves actually fits the extended definition of an epistolary: collections of any type of documents. Perhaps the letters, in-depth movie analyses, lists, and editor footnotes that compose House of Leaves aren’t so experimental after all, although people in the 18th century would probably shocked by the bizarre formatting and content.

Jane Austen was among authors who moved away from the epistolary format at the start of the 18th century. Perhaps she could be considered an experimental writer!