100 Books: And Tango Makes Three

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


If you want to read this book first, please do so. I am about to spoil the entire plot of this easy book that can be read by an adult in 6 minutes. I'll wait after the jump.

Summary

So the book starts out with establishing shots of Central Park and its inclusion of a zoo with many animal families. Enter Roy and Silo, two male penguins that hang out together, do everything together including building a nest and do not really pay attention to the lady penguins. After a while, Roy and Silo start to notice other penguin couples are hatching eggs, so they try to do it with a rock. When the rock does not hatch a little fuzzy penguin, the keeper, Mr. Gramzey, gives the two an egg from two other penguins. Roy and Silo take diligent care of the egg until it hatches the baby "Tango," named by Mr. Gramzey because "it takes two to tango." Tango grows into a healthy penguin and hangs with his two dads.

Why was it banned?

It is easy to see the homosexual references the book presents that would make some jerks parents uncomfortable, especially after the book tells us the keeper believes they are "in love." Opponents of same sex marriage and parenting would have issue with the message that the book sends.

Another angle to take would be from biologists on the anthropomorphizing of animals and their attachments. Putting labels like "love" and "happiness" on animal relationships, while well known in children's literature and movies, can lead to folks being eaten by bears. This is a true story, but there is a danger in equating wild animal relationships with human relationships. We are simply different creatures and however our biology dictates behavior, the psychology of a higher human mind does create differences in our behaviors.

Also a biology thing is the ethical question of a keeper giving an egg to animals that are exhibiting differing behavior than the norm. While male penguins in the wild are very caring of their young, who knows what could happen when introducing another penguin couples egg into the mix? I am not equating this to humans, and I know that there are tons of examples of animals caring for another animal's young, but other animals eat other animal's young, too.

Final thoughts

The watercolor-type illustration is good and the writing is tight. I enjoyed the story and found it to be touching and delightful. I wanna see these penguins in real life.

As far as it being banned, I kept thinking while reading this book: Would it change anything if this was a male/female couple raising another couple's egg? I have seen Lifetime movies about that and those flicks always end with a court case. I can see the original parents, Betty and Porkey, causing a long, drawn-out court case to get Tango back. Or what about a female/female couple? Sure, it would be hot penguin action, but would it make as much difference to detractors as two males?

View all my reviews

100 Books: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is a collection of short stories, poems and songs of the "scary" sort. Most only last for a page or two, including many illustrations by Stephen Gammell as well as musical notes for the songs. Divided into chapters, the book includes "jump" stories (to get YOU! as you grab a friend), ghost stories, urban legends, and humorous tales bookended with a great introduction on the history of the scary story oral tradition and a full source page for all the stories. The sources and bibliography read almost like a college paper on horror stories throughout the ages.

Example of the illustrations

For younger students, age 10 or younger, I would steer clear of this book. The illustrations are graphic and disturbing and the written content can lean towards the gross-out scares. The language is tight, often going for the base story without character, but does not talk down to the audience. This book is for young teens who wish to have stories to tell by a campfire, which might be the best way to enjoy this book. Those looking for a little history in the background of urban legends and oral story-telling will get an education as well.

Favorite part: As a kid when I read this, I loved the jump scare stories (who's got my toe?). As an adult, I love the notes section best as it gives more behind the scenes, including the fact that Mark Twain used to tell the "Golden Arm" story on his tours. Favorite story? "Room for One More" because I love a good premonition.

View all my reviews

Podcasts: The New Late Night

I only discovered podcasts within the last year.  Over this time, I have come to one conclusion:  podcasts are now what late night TV used to be.  I remember sneaking downstairs to see a movie star, band or comedian on The Tonight Show (with Johnny) or Letterman.  In college, some of my best memories were being with my friends late night and watching Conan goof around and have fun talks with celebrities.  SNL has always been a staple of my late night viewing, even before I could understand it.  The problem with these programs is as I grew up, I could not find myself in front of them when they were scheduled.  I tried to watch the new Conan show, and almost made it a full week, before life intervened.  Now I find these same experiences with podcasts.  Funny and fascinating people having interesting and hilarious conversations about topics I am interested in and that I can listen to when I choose.  Ah, techanologie.  

After the jump are several of my favorite audio podcasts that I never miss in no particular order.  Alert: most are comedy and get frequent explicit tags.  That's just how I roll.  I know there are many more (and I listen to twice this list probably), so throw down in the comments about your favorite podcasts.

WTF with Marc Maron

Maron was always I could count on to give at least one moment in his comedy routines for someone to say, "WFT did he just say?  Damn, that's messed up."  A great podcast recently covered in the New York Times, Marc Maron specializes in frank talk about his life and his always interesting guests.

Nerdist

Ever have one of those nerdy conversations with your friends when you looked at each other and said, "Man, no one else would understand what we just said." Chris Hardwick and friends have these type of conversations all the time, often bringing excellent guests along for the ride.

Doug Loves Movies

Like movies?  Well, Doug freaking loves them.  Comedian Doug Benson gets some truly spectacular guests together for a live show that discusses, well, movies.  Each show also ends with a fun challenge called "The Leonard Maltin Game" that will leave you yelling at celebrities through your Ipod.

This American Life

Ira Glass lets you into a theme of Americana each week.  Current events are often covered in a thoughtful and reverent way while off the wall subjects are introduced that make you think about the world around you.  For all the NPR fanatics around, you fellas already know what I am talking about.

Webcomics Weekly

Get some webcomic creators together and have them talk about the business and their lives.  That is the basic premise and it becomes truly enjoyable if you read the webcomics these folks write.  Very funny folks having great conversations.

Smodcast

This is the one that got me into podcasts.  I love Kevin Smith and his purely frank take on life.  Partnered with Scott Mosier (or anyone else on the now huge row of the Smodcast network) and you have excellent, funny conversation where two dudes that like to talk and have fun with each other.

The Moth

If there is one thing in this world that can stop me cold is a good story.  Presented in spoken word, various people get up and tell a story, often with a particular theme. The stories never fail to be engaging, to the point where I cannot listen to them in the car for fear of becoming lost in the narrative.

NSFW

Ever watch those Japanese game shows where you are not too sure what is going on but enjoying the hell out of it?  That's this show.  The New Show Full of Win features magician Brian Brushwood and funny man Justin Robert Young and various guests competing against themselves and their audiences for awesome.

WeirdThings

These are the smart kids in the back of the classroom that are planning the hunt for Bigfoot when they grow up.  Episodes generally consist of Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood and  Justin Robert Young throwing themselves into fake scenarios of "weird things" that often descend into madness.

The Onion Radio News

It is The Onion.  I should not have to describe these short, hilarious, fake radio announcements.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour

My newest and most favoritest podcast, The Thrilling Adventure Hour is a live show in Los Angeles done by various performers in the style of old timey radio.  Hilarious enough that I have to stop what I am doing, lie down and close my eyes away from others so as not to endanger them and me.

I... I Give Up: Farmville for Dummies

Yep, I give up.  Both as a librarian and as a reader and as an author and ... hell, I just give up.

This guy does better commentary.

I'm Listening to Tales from Library Land

I do not know how many folks out there listen to me, but those who do, listen up!  There's this bitchy librarian out there that put me up on her site and it got me some traffic, so I am paying it forward.

Check out Tales from Library Land (or TLL if ya feeling saucy and/or lazy, or sazy as i call it) over at wordpress.  You won't be sorry!

Here's a funny video that has little to nothing to do with TLL (yeah, I'm sazy)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Review: To Costume Quest, or Not to Waste Money

Costume Quest is the new video game from Double Fine, developers of the Monkey Island series, Psychonauts, and the Jack Black adventure Brutal Legend.  These people make funny, well put together games that generally only have one or two flaws.  Like an English major with Moby Dick, most gamers heap respect and admiration on this studio without actually buying or playing the games.  Huge pity.  But on to the review.

I love the idea of this game.  Here's the story:  Two kids are trick or treating on Halloween (would have been better as a Christmas release, but hey my mom made us beg randomly throughout the year) and one of them gets grabbed by monsters.  The remaining sibling (you) has to gather candy and friends together to make a rag tag group of monster fighting super friends.  The concept is easy.  Grab a bunch of kid characters on Halloween, make it so their costumes can come to life to do battle in an RPG setting, and heap the humor and quality of Double Fine.  I am for it.  Five and some change short hours later, though, I am let down.  I had a good time and laughed out loud (lol for you kids), but I kinda feel cheated.  

The dialog and humor play against the story and mechanics.  The dialog and flat out wit of the jokes make for  explosive moments of comedy.  Seriously, while playing do not take a sip of pop or you will cover your TV with foam doing spit-takes.  No bad words or sexual situations here, just concepts that would take an adult mentality and experience to understand.  This is not going to be like when you went back and watched Police Academy and started exclaiming "Holy Shit, my parents let me watch this?" when all you could remember was Steve "The Goot" Gutenberg and that guy who made crazy sounds.  The unfortunate thing is, you will not remember this game to look back on it.

Seriously, with all the boobs in this franchise, this is the guy I remember?  Well, done Michael Winslow. Well done, indeed.

The childish nature of the actual game ruins all that great humor.  The story is not well presented, mostly because I forgot what I was supposed to be doing and where I was supposed to be doing it have the time.  There is no map, and the neighborhoods are a maze (one is literally a hedge maze) where you can get lost if you do not keep a few landmarks.  At one point I wandered around for 10 minutes before finding an objective right next to the character that asked me to complete the task.  

The fights are repetitive and without meaning.  Even the inclusion of new costumes as the game progresses gets old, as you know after receiving something new that you will see it a hundred times more.  The enemies are static bruisers, shooters, mages and healers that you can learn to take down with relative ease.  The infuriating part comes with battles being button sequence initiated.  If you miss a proper button push you lose, often from the beginning of a fight.  This is a JRPG dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, with all the strategy and item/avatar customization wiped out.  Even the power-ups are laughably named so because they make a marginal difference.  

Bottom line:  Did I have fun?  Yeah, it was a good time, but for $15 american I feel I should have had a better time.  This game is for entry level gamers with not a lot of time on their hands.  Jump in, play a bit, jump out and take the kids to jujitsu lacrosse practice.  The story is entertaining, but could have been better executed.  All in all, there is fun to be had, but only if you ignore the problems.  I would have felt better if the game was cheaper, so that's my recommendation.  Wait for it to go on sale and pick it up.  

The gave is available only at this time by DLC (downloadable content) through Xbox Live and maybe PS3 store but I dunno cause I do not have a PS3 cause I like babies and America.