Television

Here are two new sneak peeks for tonight’s season finale of Nashville, episode 21 “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”.

Awkward. – Recap: The Great Ball of China via Rickey.org “Guilt Trippin’” delivered the Awkward. moment we’ve all been waiting for… Matty McKibbin (Beau Mirchoff) busted a move. Come to think of it, he really broke it down by the end of episode seven thanks to a little help from the unstoppable dance machine known as Jake Rosati (Brett Davern). Matty’s refusal to cut loose and dance like nobody was watching had always been a symbol for us as viewers, a red flag cluing us in that something within Jenna Hamilton’s (Ashley Rickards) relationship with her dream boy was missing. I had always thought the show would write in a rival love interest, and maybe they still will (Collin?), but I’m enjoying the fact that they’re showing growth in Matty, who has continued to impress his girl, and the Awkward. audience, through Season 3. Let’s see how many different ways I can refer to “dancing” before I get obnoxious. MTV “Awkward.” The episode opened with a traditional ceremony Jenna had gone from loathing to loving all because she’d landed herself a boyfriend for the first time. An annual school dance was on the horizon, and Jenna was awaiting her embellished “Matty’s Girl” pin, adorably embarrassing her in the best way possible. Think Royal Wedding hats in the form of lavish chest pins known to cause boob bleeding if adorned in the incorrect fashion. Matty delivered, showing at aptitude for working with pipe clearners. Jenna, though, felt surprisingly bittersweet about the entire ordeal, recognizing that several of her female classmates would go uninvited to the dance, and a pin that made her feel amazing would dually take the wind out of some of her less fortunate peers’ sails. Tamara (Jillian Rose Reed) didn’t understand Jenna’s conundrum in the slightest. She did her best to quash Jenna’s seemingly unnecessary pity. Still, Jenna couldn’t get her mind off of former friend Christy, who was noted by Val (Desi Lydic) to be a school bottom feeder. Val hinted at the girl being in a very dark place, a place Jenna might have ended up joining her in had she not been bestowed with many of Val’s pearls of wisdom over the course of two and a half seasons. Suddenly, Jenna got obsessive. Tamara let it slip to Jake that Jenna was having second thoughts, most likely because Matty would never dance with her anyway, and Jake subsequently handed the details off to his bestie. Matty was understanding, letting Jenna know that he was okay with her not wearing the pin, so long as she kept it. Jenna wasn’t satisfied with that, though. She would refuse to go to the dance all together, deciding to take a stand for the single ladies. In the end, Jenna’s mom, Lacey (Nikki Deloach), would refuse to allow her daughter to hurt the boy she loved in favor of protecting strangers, reminding Jenna that girls who weren’t invited to the dance wouldn’t know whether she went or not. Jenna wouldn’t give in, so Lacey would take matters into her own hands, dialing Matty’s phone before tossing the cell back to Jenna to talk. Partly backed into a corner and, maybe, just a little convinced that she was indeed making a mistake, Jenna asked Matty to the dance after all. Matty was confused, turning to Tamara and Jake for advice. Tamara, who’d been scolded by Jenna for yet again breaking “girl code” (MTV crossover power!) and running her mouth to Jake refused to speak again, but a torturous tickle session by the duo of bro besties got some information out of her. Unfortunately, none of it had anything to do with sad single girls. Instead, she just brought up the fact that Matty refused to dance. After kicking Tamara out for some “bro code” bonding time, Jake decided to help his bud out. Rosati’s one-man dance class was a hilarious spectacle, as was Matty’s initial attempt at doing anything resembling dancing. Jakes main piece of advice; it’s all in the face. Unless you’re Jake, than it’s all in the everything. This is literally the scen

Check out the latest scoop on the fourth season comeback of Covert Affairs! Here’s what actor Christopher Gorham teased on a recent spoiler report: “Annie and Auggie start Season 4 in a relationship. Yes, we go there. We really explore how that works and what that is. It plays into what I think is the theme of the year, which is secrets, because everybody’s got one, or two. Joan’s got a secret, Arthur’s got a secret… Everybody! Auggie’s got a whopper of a secret, and when they all start eventually coming out, it creates some great, great drama.” Source: TV Line Covert Affairs season 4 premieres on Tuesday, July 16 on USA Network.

This is a third sneak peek for The Middle, season 4 episode 24 “The Graduation”.

Here is a sneak peek for Teen Wolf, season 3 episode 1 “Tattoo”.

Nick gets up close and personal with Baron Samedi, while Juliette wants to help on the case and Eric tries to persuade Renard on Grimm.Grimm 2.22 "Goodnight, Sweet Grimm" Recap

May 22, 2013 Some time ago, I came to grips with the realization that I am a writer, not an author. There is nothing wrong with being a writer, and during the time I’ve been doing Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride I’ve made the acquaintance of many fine and successful writers, many of whom I admire greatly. But authors? I’ve met far fewer, and generally less successful. The jump from writer to author (and in fact the jump before that, from writer to Writer- writers know what I mean) is somewhere in the neighborhood of Evel Knievel-level difficulty. Enter T.E. Stazyk. Author. You may recognize his name from the comments he is gracious enough to occasionally post here from time to time. But you may not know (you would if you read his blog) that he lives in New Zealand, where he owns a farm, and before that lived in Japan, and originally hails from The United States. But why listen to me? I have always been interested in books and literature and writing and in fact, I started off as an English major in college as I wanted to teach English literature. But it wasn’t long before I realized that getting a job after college wouldn’t be too easy and that something a little more practical would be a good idea.  My father was an accountant and computer science was becoming big, so I switched courses and became and accounting and computer science major. On graduating I started working with an accounting firm but the idea of writing was always in the back of my mind.  After almost 30 years in the auditing profession, I decided it was time to do something else and to do something about my writing ambitions so I took early retirement.  We were living in Japan at that time and as my wife is from New Zealand we decided to move to NZ. In 2001 we moved to Auckland and I enrolled at the University of Auckland. I did a Masters degree in English Literature and then continued my studies with additional courses in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Russian literature. I had a short story published in 2002 and over the years have written several stories and two other (as yet unpublished) novels.  I think that is a story right there, but what he wrote was a work of fiction, albeit one that seems all too real. Identities. It makes for a great B-grade science fiction movie.  A giant, nameless, faceless organism comes to Earth and begins to multiply.  Nothing can stop its inexorable growth and prevent it from achieving its goal of world domination.  Not only that, its job is made a lot easier because of some sort of mind control mechanism that makes people want to feed its growth and help it take over. In the hands of a writer like me, the plot would be exactly that, a B-grade sci-fi tale that would appeal to me and a couple of others. But in the hands of an author like T. E. Stazyk it is something more. Actually, it’s not science fiction.  It is a simplified description of the mechanism of global capitalism since the 1980s. Growth became the measure of success.  It became the end rather than the means.  It didn’t matter if a company sold a lousy product; or an unsafe one, or destroyed valuable resources or exploited local populations in making its products.  As long as it did more of whatever it was doing it was considered good. Whether from the expectation that they have to behave a certain way in order to succeed, or whether they have to behave as if they have succeeded, the world became populated by people who have created an identity that they want to present to the outside world. But a lot of other people got in trouble.  Usually the innocent bystanders who had pensions and 401(k)s and things like that which got wiped out when the stock market realized what was going on. Interested? Sound good? I hope so, but don’t let me sway you, let Kirkus Reviews do it for me. IDENTITIES By T.E. Stazyk (Author) A management consultant jousts with the loonier aspects of American capitalism in Stazyk’s canny debut