It looks like the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat may be in danger.
I got the following email from my local library:
The Michigan eLibrary (MeL) and MeLCat are made possible with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). You most likely have heard about the Presidential Executive Order calling for the elimination of non-statutory components of IMLS, and earlier this week all IMLS staff were placed on administrative leave.
The Continuing Resolution that was approved by Congress and signed by the President on March 15, 2025 includes full funding of IMLS through September of this year. With no IMLS staff, it's unclear how the approved funding will be executed, but from what we know at this point in time, there are no changes or interruptions.
Please continue to enjoy use of these services. We are watching the developments closely and will keep you informed of changes as we become aware of them.
This is a service I actually use a lot since returning to the US. (Of course, it would be just my luck that right after I return to the US, they would get rid of this service.)
So, I just called the office of my local representative (link HERE) to let them know that this was a service I enjoyed using, and that I hoped it would continue to stay funded.
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
I was substitute teaching again today, and the instructions the teacher left was to play an episode of MacGyver. (Usually the instructions are to put on a movie, but this time it was a TV show.)
Some of the students had never heard of MacGyver. (Of course they hadn't. This show was way before their time.) Other students recognized the name MacGyver from Simpsons references.
As for myself, I actually had never seen an episode of MacGyver before. I definitely knew about it. Several of my friends from the church youth group were fans, and I remember some discussion about it. But I had never seen it myself. Mostly because my parents exercised tight regulation on my tv viewing when I was young.
In fact, I didn't even realize until I looked it up just now, but MacGyver was actually a 1980s TV show. I always thought it was from the 1990s, I guess because I remember my friends talking about it in the 1990s. But it turns out it started in 1985, and ran until 1992 (W).
Anyway, the episode that the students (and me) were assigned to watch for today was Season 2 Episode 21: "D.O.A.: MacGyver". And because this was the lesson plan for 4 of the classes I was covering today, I ended up watching it 4 times.
If you know anything about MacGyver, you know that his schtick is that he's an action hero who fights crime using science. This is why teachers generally approved of the show. (I mentioned before that many of my church youth group friends were fans of the show, and I also remember the youth pastor himself talking approvingly of the show.)
It struck me upon watching my first ever episode that this was a pretty clever idea by someone. Basically the show seems to play like any other 1980s action tv show, but the episode included a couple brief references to fixing things with some sort of science or mechanics. It's a very small part of the episode, but it's just enough to get the show recommended by teachers and youth pastors. And then the rest of it plays out like a normal action show. Clever marketing.
D.O.A.: MacGyver plays like a pretty by the numbers 1980s action TV show. In fact, it's SO by the numbers that they include not 1 but 2 TV tropes commonly used in that era: MacGyver has amnesia and can't remember who he is, and also as MacGyver begins to remember his past, they sprinkle in clips from past episodes. That's right, it's both an Amnesia Episode and a Clip Show Episode.
But as much as I love to poke fun at 1980s TV shows, you do have to admit that it's very watchable. I mean, you do really have to admire what they were doing in action TV shows in the 1980s--they managed to pull off 22 action episodes a year, on a tight budget, and ended up with a lot of action sequences and stunt work that were actually pretty good.
The ending of this particular episode, however, was anticlimatic. I'm not sure how typical that is (as this is so far the only MacGyver episode I've seen.)
Also, I didn't realize it until I went to the IMBD page, but the girl in this episode is played by Nana Visitor, who I, as a huge Star Trek fan, know from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. (I thought she looked recognizable when I was watching the episode, but didn't realize who she was.)
Bonus: Someone made a fan trailer for this episode:
Once again, you can blame substitute teaching for this one. I was substitute teaching today, and the lesson plan was to resume playing this movie. The students had already seen the first 12 minutes yesterday, so I played it from 12 minutes to the 48 minute marker. And I had to do this 4 times in 4 classes today, so by the end of the day I was well acquainted with those 40 minutes.
This is a movie I've already seen. (I saw it in the theaters when it originally came out.) So it was another rewatch, or half-rewatch.
Although I didn't rewatch the whole thing (I missed the first 12 minutes, and the whole second half of the movie), it did strike me that the movie is operating on a few different levels.
1) It's a philosophical movie--the old "What if our reality was just a simulation?" hypothetical
2) It's a commentary on reality TV
3) It's a comedy
4) It's a suspense movie--as Truman keeps trying to escape his reality, and as he keeps getting thwarted, you get sucked into the suspense of "Will he be able to get out this time?"
It works realitively well on all of these levels. The suspense scenes work great. The humor is good.
It is, however, a bit repetitive, especially in the beginning. The first 50 minutes of the movie are essentially Truman discovering that his reality is manufactured. And then discovering it again. And then discovering it again. (He seems to realize fairly early on in the movie what is going on, but then the movie just has scene after scene of him rediscovering this.)
The movie is also completely unrealistic, even if you grant its premise. (Even if you grant that society would tolerate a TV show making a prisoner of someone like this, and even if you grant that the show has the budget to do all the things that they do, there were still a lot of scenes were I didn't believe that this is a realistic portrayal of how people would actually act in this situation.) So as you're watching this movie, you have to constantly shut down that voice in your head that keeps saying, "But real people wouldn't act like that."
This was one of Jim Carrey's first serious roles, and he plays it mostly well, but he's still a little bit over the top in some scenes. Would this movie have been better served with a different lead actor?
It also occured to me (on the 3rd time watching) that this movie might also be operating as a commentary about how difficult it is sometimes to escape from your hometown and get out into the wider world.
This is yet another movie I half-watched because I was substitute teaching, and the teacher let this movie as the lesson plan.
I showed the first 55 minutes of this movie 3 times to 3 different classes. I never saw the second half of this movie.
I had actually been familiar with this movie before. I'd been vaguely interested in the history of McDonalds ever since I learned in high school that the franchise started out as just one hamburger restaurant opened by the McDonald Brothers.
My thoughts after half-watching it: the story is vaguely interesting, but not compelling interesting. (I suspect the second half of the movie, in which Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers come into more conflict, was probably more interesting than the first half, which is just setting up that conflict. But I'd have to watch the entire movie before I said for certain.)
Furthermore, the movie moves at a very slow pace. To be fair, the movie is intentionally designed to be a slow-burn, so you can't really fault it for doing what it sets out to do. Although when I watched the first 55 minutes for the 2nd and 3rd time, I had the opportunity to observe that the editing is not very tight. The camera lingers on the scene 2 or 3 seconds after the dialogue finishes. The pacing of the movie could easily have been tightened up without really losing any of the story if someone had wanted to, but I guess the director didn't want to.
Between the story being only mildly interesting, and the film moving at a slow pace, it was a hard sell for the 8th grade students, and all 3 classes of 8th graders that I showed this movie to were visibly bored. Still, it was mildly interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing the whole thing one day.
Admittedly this entry is less of the random fact variety and more of the "Did you know this bizarre show exists" variety, but... did you know this really bizarre show exists? I've found out about it recently because my kids are really into it. It takes Sesame Street characters and re-imagines them as superhero robots. To quote Wikipedia:
The series focuses on "mecha" versions of three legacy characters: Mecha Abby Cadabby, Mecha Elmo, and Mecha Cookie Monster, all reimagined as mechanical beings with the power to enlarge to giant size in addition to unique built-in tools and gadgets. The trio usually solve a problem using a three-step formula: plan, test, and solve. Later episodes would add a fourth main cast member in the form of Elmo's pet dog Tango
I've seen this movie once before (in its entirety) back when I was young, so this is actually a rewatch. (Or rather a half-rewatch).
I saw this movie when I was around 10 years old, on the Disney channel. (Back in the 1980s, the Disney Channel reran a lot of old Disney movies.) I remember I really wanted to like it, because the commercials for it (which ran on the Disney channel) made it look really fun--a fantasy story about Leprechauns and Ireland--but the actual movie itself was very slow paced and hard to sit through.
Recently, however, my children have become obsessed with leprechauns after learning about them during their first Saint Patrick's Day here in the U.S. And so I was trying to think what children's movies contain leprechauns, and this is the only one I could think of.
My kids lasted only 30 minutes before they got bored. Which was about what I expected, quite frankly.
Although I don't remember the plot of the movie in detail, the feel of the movie (or at least the first 30 minute of it) was pretty much as I remembered it. It's got great scenery, a good looking cast, great acting, and you really want to like this movie, but... the plot just moves too slowly to be interesting.
The movie is also notable for starring Sean Connery before he became famous for being James Bond.
This is a reread. I originally read it back in college, as I mentioned in previous blog posts: here, here, here and here. However, since this is my first time reviewing this book on this blog, according to my new rules, it gets a video only review.
Quotation from that essay: “Published in 1933, [Man’s Fate] did for fiction what Harold Isaacs’s “Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution” did for scholarship. It pointed up the increasing weight of Asia in world affairs; it described epic moments of suffering and upheaval, in Shanghai especially (it was nearly filmed by Sergei Eisenstein); and it demonstrated huge respect for Communism and Communists while simultaneously evoking the tragedy of a revolution betrayed by Moscow. Somewhat lushly Orientalist in its manner, the novel was ridiculed for its affection by Vladimir Nabokov and hailed as prescient by Arthur Koestler."
