Danny Bhoy live in Toronto - national symbols (flowers). Paramount Global (INTL) has blocked the full video in the UK on copyright grounds so someone has kindly created a video to accompany the audio of this part of his performance.
(ends at 3 minutes)
There is a selection of Danny Bhoy videos on YouTube.
The Paris 2024 Olympics are nearing an end and, once again, the events that have me most glued to the TV coverage are the Park Skateboarding - both women's and men's.
Sky Brown won a bronze medal - again - for Team GB but our only hope in the men's event, Andrew MacDonald (Andy Mac) didn't qualify for the finals because, despite two (almost three) perfect performances, the judges' scores were not high enough to place him in the top eight. To be fair, the standards were very high.
Andy MacDonald and Tony Hawk go way back - see this clip of their 'doubles' routine.
I'm older than Tony Hawk and I'm not an athlete so skateboarding was never a sport for me to try - although I did regularly go roller-skating when I was a teen. Loved it but was never particularly good at it.
Skateboarding aside, the event I'd really like to see included is Parkour. Knowing the way the Olympics is years behind the mood of the people, this won't happen for a while but the perfect debut would have been the Paris games. Indeed, their open ceremony paid tribute to it.
A short review, not a synopsis. There are many reviews of this fantasy novel already on the internet (none of which I've yet read) but here goes with mine, anyway.
Having reviewed the first book - Killing Floor - and the second book - Die Trying - I thought I should continue with the next three books in the Reacher series by Lee Child.
Book 3: Tripwire
The book begins with Jack Reacher in Florida Keys but events lead him north to the New York area, where he has an unexpected reunion at the funeral of a friend with whom he worked in book 2. Also, Reacher falls in love.
As usual, Reacher becomes embroiled in dealing with criminals and their gratuitously violent tortures. Other than that, the book is a page turner and the story telling is more fluent plus there's a nice plot twist reveal towards the end of the book.
Book 4: The Visitor
The murders in this book are less graphically violent, more chilling, indicating a different kind of killer rather than organised crime. Reacher is staying with his girlfriend from the previous book when approached by the FBI to assist with identifying and catching a serial killer which, eventually, he does.
Not sure if I liked the story but, once again, it was compelling reading.
Book 5: Echo Burning
I think that this is the best of the books, so far, in that it deals with the story and leaves out the unnecessary torture and love-making details that I previously found wearing. Reacher's on the road again and this adventure finds him in Texas.
There are several murders but without the graphic violence from earlier books. The way the author brings together the many elements of the story is excellent. Of the likely suspects, I'd narrowed it down to two until near the end when the person behind these will become obvious.
Conclusion: I always felt that Texas was a place I would never want to live (although I have visited once and I know a couple of 'normal' people who live there). This book brings home how vast the state is and confirms that I would not be comfortable living there.
About the Author.
Lee Child is a Brit, born James Dover Grant in the midlands, almost 70 years ago. He worked in TV from 1977 until 1995 when he was made redundant and began writing. Both he and his younger brother, Andrew, also an author, live in the U.S.A. with their American wives.
I found this interesting (Wikipedia): "In January 2020, Child announced that he would be retiring from writing the Jack Reacher series and handing it to his brother Andrew Grant, who would write further books of the series under the surname Child. He intended to write the next few books together with Grant before passing the series entirely over to him." Andrew Grant writes under the name Andrew Child.
Note:
p.s. Please bear in mind that these are my opinions of how good I feel the books are and are not meant to be a synopsis of the stories. As such, feel free to agree/disagree in the comments.
Watching University Challenge a while back, Jeremy Paxman was berating students who spent their time playing video games. That kind of behaviour can alienate people and exhibits narrow-mindedness. I wonder whether he thought that Horrible Histories was a waste of time because it was 'silly'.
I've noticed, since then, that there have been a few questions on University Challenge that have referred to video games. Quite rightly, too. There is a skill to programming games and an incredible amount of research goes into preparing for some storylines. For instance, were you aware that, following the fire that virtually destroyed the Notre Dame, the makers of Assassins Creed offered their services to help with the rebuild?
My son left school with an interest (but not a useful qualification) in History, despite his teacher's attempts to put him off, and he has continued to build on that interest. Games like Assassins Creed helped to fuel this. They have fairly accurately covered many well-known as well as little-known facts over several decades and various locations, such as the Crusades, the French Revolution, Vikings and the Italian Renaissance to name a few. In fact, take a look at this feature from The Gamer.
I'm not a gamer but the related stories that are included with the gameplay can be really interesting. I'm also fascinated by some of the games' fans - see a previous post about Assassins Creed Parkour.
My biggest difficulty with Assassins Creed is where to place the apostrophe. Ubisoft uses Assassin's Creed (single assassin) but I'm aware that this is a brotherhood so, if there is more than one assassin, shouldn't it be Assassins' Creed?
I have now read these two books by author Ian Cummins.
The first book was My Time Again, a story of a 69-year-old man who went to sleep in his own bed in his own bedroom in his own home, with the expectation of waking up the following morning to celebrate his 70th birthday. But... he wakes up in a different room.
As he becomes more awake, he feels that the room is familiar. He also feels physically better than he did the previous day. In a few minutes, he discovers that this is, in fact, his 18th birthday and he is back in his room where he lived when he started university - in October 1970.
By the time he reaches the eve of his 70th birthday (again), he has been involved in numerous events, including some with secret services. But what happens then? Will he return, move to another 'parallel' life, die or something else? Read My Time Again to find out.
Spoiler? Just mentioning the sequel, And Again? implies that he didn't die, because he has another adventure - where? Or, a more accurate question might be when? And, of course, why?
Another time travelling adventure for the septuagenarian! Both books are available from Amazon (and free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription).
Oddly, the first, second and fourth series is on Netflix but the third series was on Sky/Now TV (in the UK).
Should you watch Manifest? Read below and decide.
It started as a mystery - a plane and its passengers disappeared, to arrive five years later. Unlike the people who had been mourning them, assuming them to be dead, the passengers hadn't aged. It was as if they had been in suspended animation for that time. Most noticeable were the twins - a girl aged about 15 (who was not on the flight) and her twin brother (who was on the flight) had remained about ten years old.
The passengers were unaware of anything being amiss until they landed. For them, it was a normal flight, a few hours in the air.
As the story progressed, it became more surreal. "God" was setting tasks for the passengers, who received their 'callings' in their heads, sometimes shared with others, as vague puzzles to be solved. Driving the quest to resolve the 'callings' was Ben (father of the aforementioned twins) and his sister, Mick (Michaela).
There were three other instances of people cheating death, temporarily, which led to the conslusion that the world would end in a finite time.
Skipping ahead to the fourth series, we are now familiar with all the characters. Key to resolving the mystery are: Ben and Mick Stone (mentioned above), Ben's family, especially his son, Cal, and Dr Saanvi Bahl. Additionally, non-passengers, Jared, Drea and Vance, provide help and support with the tasks. Last, but not least, is Zeke, an anomaly.
To quote K from Men In Black, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals ..."
Mob mentality means that a growing number of people mistrust the people from the plane, many think that they are aliens. Others consider that they perform miracles and they form cults (remember, this is America). The Government, which has been conducting illegal experiments on some passengers to see if the callings can be replicated and possibly weaponised, eventually treats them as criminals.
Obviously, without proof, the 'outside world' does not buy in to "the world will end tomorrow" theory. It's down to the Stone family to defeat the odds.
The end of the series will be: (1) the good guys save the world, (2) they got it wrong and life goes on, possibly without them, or (3) the world ends. If you plan to watch it but don't want spoilers, stop reading. Otherwise...
Conclusion.
1. The story would have been better in three series rather than four, which dragged it out a bit. However, those four seasons covered five years so, arguably, it could have been dragged out even longer.
2. I've omitted some of the major plot details, such as Cal's leukaemia and a main player, Angelina. This will leave something to discover for those who plan to watch the series. Zeke is also difficult to classify here so viewers will have his character to look forward to.
3. SPOILER ALERT: The ending was inevitable - but nicely tied up the loose ends. Except for Cal, whose journey was slightly different from the others, most of the passengers who survived did so with their memories intact.
4. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: The flight landed as scheduled, five years before the main story took place. People were reunited. Lives continued, possibly better than they woud have done. Mick found Zeke.
