What I Watched: Enola Holmes 3, which is moderately engaging. Variety has a review/synopsis that is spot on. It is a pretty film, if you enjoy looking at the costumes and scenery. (Some perfectly fine shows are not for me because of the darkness of the cinematography; I struggle to see the action.)
“Pop Culture Leftovers‘ Connor Petrey stated, “While not quite generating the magically fluent energy of the original two films, this third entry is still a fun adventure that lacks a bit of the Holmes charm and instead makes the mystery a front for a treasure hunt.”
What I Read: Hench: A Sci-Fi Novel of Heroism and Villainy in the Age of Social Media and Data Science by Natalie Zina Walschots, published back in 2020. (This book is for you folks, @SplinterRIP, @Farscythe, and @HammerZeitgeist.) I feel like someone else has mentioned it, but whatever – an excellent book. I have the sequel, Villain, just recently published in May 2026 on my “to be read” queue. Here is the Amazon blurb:
The Boys meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation in this smart, imaginative, and evocative urban fantasy novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption, told with razor-sharp wit and affection, in which a young woman discovers the greatest superpower—for good or ill—is a properly executed spreadsheet. Anna does boring things for terrible people because even supervillains need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy?
As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off.
With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, this unlikely antihero discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks.
Because the key to everything in this dark comedy is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing. And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance.
It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world.
A sharp, witty, modern debut, this subversive superhero story Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.
What I Listened To: A new band to me, Terra Twin, featuring actor Maxim Baldry as the lead singer. Here are Orange Sky, Parking Lot, and Big Fist:
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? Darling DeadSplinterites, what’s going on? Please do share with us!
Finished S2 of Man On The Inside
It’s a soft boiled detective story that isn’t the usual stuff I tend to enjoy but I liked it. Realizing my mom could have been the “villain” of S1 struck a chord in my cold heart.
Speaking of hard boiled… Enjoying Bosch. It’s more honest than the usual police procedural. I can relate to Bosch a little especially how he deals with the uncomfortable truths… Head on rather sticking ones head in the sand.
Saw Hail Mary. Loved it. Cooperating with aliens instead of killing them and screwing their females? What a concept!
Also watching but not finished First Man. Must be on a Ryan Gosling kick… Neil Armstrong was said (in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff) to be a flying computer. When shit is about to hit the fan he was the one you want him to be the one in command or at the controls. His brilliance saved Gemini 8 from literally going sideways, the Lunar Lander simulator and Apollo 11 actual landing. Chuck Yeager hated him because he was the ultimate engineering test pilot compared to Chuck’s aw shucks stick and rudder skills (Chuck was an amazing pilot but didn’t have the aerospace engineering degree and so there was some envy involved there.)
Kind of emotionally detached when dealing with other humans though. He processed loss very macho like. It was seeing my dad’s generation or my dad deal with the death of his father and the various dogs in our lives.
Did you ever see the episode of The Crown where Prince Philips invites the crew of Apollo whatever (the moon landingcrew) to visit him at Buck House? Philip wants to express Deep Thoughts about the cosmos and mankind’s place in it and the astronauts (so impossibly young and handsome) are just kind of bored and don’t know what he’s talking about.
There’s also a great episode of “Mad Men” where a group of the characters watch the moon landing. I was alive in 1969 but sadly too young to remember watching it, and coming from a family of engineers and proto-engineers I’m sure we did. Well, I think pretty much anyone with access to a TV did.
That was a good ep of MM. I remember Bert dies and Peggy rises to the occasion.
…that does sound like a promising blurb for those books…there was a fun one a while back called “soon I shall be invincible” from the PoV of the recently released villain looking to get back to world domination…but the PR side of that description reminded me of a few books in which the antagonists that get to be protagonists are orcs…those weren’t bad, iirc…not really similar to the hench/villain thing but the first one follows the fortunes of one…wedge…or whatever they call their smallest “unit designation” & that has sort of an orc-in-charge?
…remembered I’d never got to the end of the nero the assassin show…which ends poorly if it doesn’t come back but fine if there’s more where that came from
…also caught an odd thing called 24hrs with gaston…sort of doomed quasi-romance detective-quest with ticking clock in near-future dystopia type thing…not bad if you like that kinda stuff
…either I got confused about how many predator movies there are & somehow suppressed the memory or I hadn’t seen the badlands one before…which I rather liked…reminded me in places of the first predator vs aliens comic I read…not identical in the premise but maybe some of the parallels were in its favor if you happen to be me
…also…reminded that undead/unluck is fairly fun in a manga-nonsense sense
…&…it’s not one punch man or anything but there seems to be one called “my instant death ability is overpowered”?
…& if you liked the harley quinn show where she’s voiced by the lady that was in the big bang theory…there seems to be a kite man (hell yeah) (not an endorsement but part of the show name) spin off?
…oh…& I forget if I remembered to mention last week that the new running man actually is mostly good?
I can recommend three excellent but very random biopics that I stumbled upon during my Recent Confinement:
1. A surprisingly gripping miniseries about President James Garfield called Death by Lightning. A surprising number (2) have also seen it and loved it, and coincidentally I have a Garfield biography which might have been the mini-series’ source.
2. Lucan. Right up my alley. Dissolute Lord Lucan, the 7th Earl of Lucan, was shrouded by scandal and a murder conviction in absentia because he disappeared. One of his best friends and worst influences was John “Aspers” Aspinall, a gambling kingpin catering to the elite of the 1960s and 70s, and also an ardent conservationist who ran his own exotic animal zoo. Lord Lucan was also related to Queen Camilla in more than one way but through marriages/remarriages, not by blood.
3. The Last Czars. Billed as a documentary, it is a soap-y retelling of the reigh of Czar Nicholas II. The s in Czars refers to his heir, the doomed Czarevich Alexis. What makes this special is that melodromatic (and sometimes quite steamy) episodes are interrupted by cutaways from academics, one of whom really chews the scenery. I was cheering for him. ваше здоровье!
We also watched Project Hail Mary. It was touching and hopeful, which is refreshing. Right now we’re watching some Welsh noir called “The Hidden”. Wales looks awful. Everyone is depressed and/or violent. Sun never shines. The coppers are kind of stupid.
Different than “The Hidden” I remember.
thanks @elliecoo hench does look like it will be a good read 🙂
i have bookmarked it for when i finally get my kobo as ive kinda run out of space for physical books….
i could ofcourse get rid of some books ive already read….but that seems wrong somehow