Six months of books, Part III

Here's a three-quel post to our January 2026 and July 2025 one-line book reports. This one covers our reading in the first half of 2026.

6:40 to Montreal, Eva Jurczyk - This Agatha Christie locked-room murder mystery set on a snowbound stranded train certainly seems like it should be a good book, but the execution (not to mention a ridiculous ending) is ultimately just too implausible.

The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty - This detailed account of the making of eight sci-fi/fantasy movies released in the core-memory summer of 1982 (including classics like Star Trek II and Poltergeist) is a delightful gift for Generation X sci-fi nerd movie buffs like us.

The Gone World, Tom Sweterlitsch - For the first 200 pages, this seems like the smart, complicated, epic time travel novel - with big doses of alien horror! - we all desperately need, but it never truly soars because of a tangled climax that gets too convoluted and artsy for its own good.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald - Yes, it's pretty good. And yes, to wring as much meaning and understanding out of the text as we could, we geeked out and actually bought and read the Cliff Notes version as well.

History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage - A fascinating way to examine world history using popular beverages (starting with beer and ending with Coca-Cola) to explore civilization's economic and cultural evolution.

The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar - This dull book about a man who can see a few seconds into the future which leads to all kinds of trouble with government forces - and which we most definitely did not finish - proves that there's more to a good novel than a great premise.

Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown - This erudite thriller featuring The Da Vinci Code's symbologist Robert Langdon stumbling into yet another deadly conspiracy is talky and tedious, especially the final 100 pages that feels like the world's longest epilogue, but it more or less works.

She Kills, Skip Hollandsworth - A reprinting of some of the author's best true-life crime articles (some are more engrossing than others) from Texas Monthly magazine works as a literary equivalent to those sordid Netflix documentaries Mrs. Cheese Fry loves so much.

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien - A haunting, somber collection of interconnected Vietnam War short stories - written by a veteran of that conflict - that we're grateful landed in our book pile after our 11th grader read it for English class.

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Starlight Rollercade Memories

We were amazed that Google image search dug up this image of the dearly departed Starlight Rollercade that resided on a stretch of Harry Hines Boulevard that was already pretty seedy in the early 1980s.  Judging by the pristine look of the building and the fins on the cars in the parking lot, this photo looks like it came from an advertisement postcard from the 1960s.  But we remember well those glass doors leading to the cashier alcove - that entrance remained wholly unchanged through the early 1980s.

The Cheese Fry didn't spend a lot of time at Starlight, which is probably what made a trip there so special.  A few birthday parties, some church youth group excursions, an end-of-sixth-grade celebration.  Going there was an event, people.  The smelly, unnaturally heavy rental skates.  The dark and dank vibe in the concourse around the edge of the rink, contrasted by the harsh fluorescents of the in-house pizza joint.  The feel of rolling off the sluggish worn-out carpet and onto the fast and shiny wooden rink floor. 

But the reason we even came up with this blog post subject was the music, played by an actual deejay (likely spinning actual records in dual turntables) from a far corner of the rink, sitting up high like a judge presiding over a courtroom of pre-teen, PG-rated fun.

To this day, we cannot hear these songs without being transported to the twinkling disco ball flashes of the Starlight Rollercade and those exhilarating moments of skating so fast that the wind whipped our hair, trying hard to look cool as we struggled desperately to not wipe out.

"Break My Stride" by Matthew Wilder (1983)
"Driving My Life Away" by Eddie Rabbit (1980)
"Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant (1982)
"Funkytown" by Lipps, Inc. (1979)
"Magic" by Olivia Newton-John (1980)
"Queen of Hearts" by Juice Newton (1983)

There's a roller rink still in operation in a suburb not too far from here.  It's the only one know of - and for a few years there, it was a popular destination for our kids' friends' birthday parties.  Going there was fascinating because it reminded us of Starlight in so many ways, but at the same time it was also so very different.  Like a sort of funhouse mirror version of the roller rink of our youth -- too clean, too bright, too new.  And they didn't play any early-1980s music.

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Knee-jerk review: "Obsession"

1. Whoa. 
2. If you're looking for a violent horror movie that fully commits to its dark and disturbing premise, this is the one for you.
3. Don't trust gimmicky toys purchased at New Age crystal shops.  That's the lesson we learned.
4. There's really no other way for the story to end, is there?  Like we said... whoa.
5. Bear is one weak-willed, cowardly protagonist.  We liked him less and less as the movie went along.  We understand that's the whole point (he certainly grows to understand the error of his ways), but it didn't make for a fun experience.  He gets what's coming to him.
6. Best scene: the creepy customer service call.
7. Runner up: "I like watching you sleep."
8. After one particularly shocking moment that was bloody and horrifying in ways far worse than was needed to make the point, we sort of checked out.  Gleefully grisly violence isn't as appealing to us as it used to be.
9. Inde Navarrette certainly knocks it out of the park with her performance.
10. "Kiss the person to your left."
11. Everyone can appreciate how scary it is to consider telling a close friend you want to be more than friends.  The fear of rejection is vivid and real.  But Bear had a couple of perfect openings to make his move and he totally chickened out.
12. Michael Johnston gives Billy Crudup vibes.
13. Made for $750,000 and it's grossed $300 million so far.  That's serious word of mouth.  We saw it a month into its release and the theater was packed.
14. This movie is surely resonating with moviegoers because of the way it dissects the difficulties of navigating romantic relationships, putting a horror spin on secret workplace crushes and emotional manipulation and wondering if your partner loves you as much as you love them.  These are all universal worries and fears that writer-director Curry Baker expertly taps into.
15. Mix into that a layer of sexual predation themes with Nikki not exactly a consciously willing participant in any of this.
16. We don't understand why Bear didn't try to undo the wish sooner.

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"Ted Lasso" Characters, Ranked

The Cheese Fry is extremely late to the "Ted Lasso" party.  Only recently did we finally finish the third season.  No big deal, right?  It's only been about three years since that final episode first aired on Apple TV.   But season four is coming this summer - we'll watch that one a little sooner.

"Ted Lasso" is a national treasure.  Put simply, it's one of the best television shows, full stop.  You just don't see this kind of high quality sustained for that many seasons.  We haven't watched everything that's out there, but the only other show we've watched in its entirety that was this good for that long, so perfectly cast and written and directed, was FX's "The Americans." 

Beyond just admiring the show's elite level of execution, it's the upbeat, feel good vibe of "Ted Lasso."   This is a show with heart.  These characters are good, decent people working through everyday challenges.  Just think about how so rare that is in a television landscape chock full of cynical themes (criminals run amok, housewives run amok), missed opportunities (so many shows start strong only to fizzle), repetitive premises (we love post-apocalyptic stories, but it's enough already) and tiresome formats (reality TV, for the most part, is a cultural blight that does no one any good).  

There's echoes of NBC's "This Is Us" in the way "Ted Lasso" manipulates your emotions and skillfully surfs sad and happy moments alike, but "This Is Us" was deadly serious and self-important whereas "Ted Lasso" is chipper and frothy.  The best comparison we can come up with is NBC's "Friday Night Lights," a similar show where everyone was so dang likable and interesting and fully realized that the plots were almost beside the point.  You just wanted to hang out in that world for an hour.   Even better, "Ted Lasso" is in so many ways an old-fashioned workplace comedy like "The Office." "Friday Night Lights" never made us laugh out loud.  With "Ted Lasso" there's always a gag or a joke, but it's not following a cheesy, laugh track sitcom set up/punchline structure.  The jokes and humor here flow naturally from these screwball characters.  Nothing ever feels phony.  It's a polished gem of a show.

If you haven't seen it, give it a shot.  Full disclosure: this is one extremely profane show that loves the F-bomb.

And now, we present the main characters ranked in order, starting with the most layered, complicated, and funny one at the very top.

1. Roy Kent, obviously
2. Rebecca Welton
3. Jamie Tartt
3. Coach Beard
4. Leslie Higgins
5. Ted Lasso, how crazy is it that the supposed main character barely cracks the top five; that's how stacked this show is
6. Keeley Jones
7. Nate Shelley
8. Trent Crimm of The Independent
9. Sam Obisanya
10. Dani Rojas
11. Isaac McAdoo
12. Zava
13. Sassy Collins
14. Colin Hughes
15. Dr. Sharon Fieldstone
16. Rupert Mannion

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Knee-jerk review: "Backrooms"

1. There's some old-fashioned jump scares, yes.  But mostly this thing is powered by a sense of growing dread and surreal weirdness.
2. Mark Duplass alert.
3. There are certainly familiar horror movie elements, like the fear of being stalked by some unseen bad guy -- there's also a fun but kind of stale "Stranger Things"-style twist at the end -- but for the most part this felt wholly original and inventive.  Some really crazy "what in the world am I watching?" moments.
4. Renate Reinsve is a little stiff.
5. Opening sequence is dynamite.
6. The movie's set in 1990, but the set design is 100% late 1980s and chock full of ugly decor ripped right out of our teenaged memories.
7. So who did install those creepy off-kilter breakers switches?
8. What helps makes the movie so memorable is that so much of it's ambiguous.  While we get the overall gist of what's happening, there's a whole host of strange, smaller details that just aren't fully spelled out.  You really have to read between the lines to piece everything together.  The family Cheese Fry have had many "did you notice..?" discussions sharing pet theories about What It All Means.
9. There's no way we'd be able to find our way back out of that maze.
10. We went into this with only the most basic understanding of the "backrooms" premise, which is probably the way to do it.  We, of course, conducted extensive, obligatory internet sleuthing after the fact to learn more.  Some of what we saw in the movie comes right from the internet series.
11. It's true: the buzz of harsh fluorescents can be pretty oppressive.
12. Bonus points to the Little Fry for figuring out what that little radio was broadcasting.
13. So is Clark a good person or not?  Discuss.
14. Palm sweating moment: the stairs up to the ceiling.  You'll know it when you see it.
15. "It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen a dog."

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Knee-jerk review: "The Mandalorian and Grogu"

1. No, it's not terrible, but it's definitely disappointing.
2. The movie probably spends 20 minutes of its total runtime on our heroes fighting CGI monsters.  That gets really tedious.
3. You can't tell us that this movie's development didn't start from a stack of 40-minute TV scripts.  An episodic "here, then there" is structure okay for a quest story, but this all feels very stitched together.
4. The big climax should be rousing and cathartic.  We were bored.
5. Also a weird downbeat subplot detour towards the end right as the action should be ramping up.
6. We're guessing it's an intentional retro choice to make Grogo seem like a foam rubber puppet?  His hands don't move.
7. Bonus points, however, for letting Grogu actually do something other than just look cute from the sidelines and use the Force every once in a while.
8. We really didn't need to see more Hutts.  That whole species is just a little ridiculous.
9. Also a problem: no central antagonist.  Who are we rooting against?  Who's the hero fight ing against?  Instead, it's just a series of thugs and bounty hunters.  That's not ideal when you're trying to build momentum and tension.
10. The four little mechanics - also fam rubber puppets - pretty much steal the movie.
11. So Pedro Pascal was for sure on set at least for the water fight sequence.
12. Amazing how Blade Runner's neon, rainy cityscape aesthetic so totally changed the way movies visualize the future.
13. Odd to have this whole 1950s-style noir boxing melodrama storyline.  Someone actually says "The fix is in."
14. Like we said, there's way, way too many CGI alien monsters.  Less is more.
15. Big fans of the Dave Filoni animated Star Wars shows will probably like it more than us.  Like so many big-budget brand movies like this (see also: Marvel), it sometimes like it's more for the die hard nerd fans than mass audiences.  At some point, Hollywood will learn that the safer odds lie in appealing to everyone and generating good word of mouth rather than inside baseball fan service.
16. What's the point of the iconic white stormtooper armor if laser blasters can still kill them with one shot?
17. There may may be a throwaway gag that calls back to the hologram chess game in the original Star Wars movie.  If that's the case, that's really cheesy cringe.
18. We heard others complain that the movie is overall very dim.  We agree.  All of the action happening inside or at night needs the brightness knob turns way up.
19. We still very much love the first season of "The Mandalorian" and the way it leaned so hard into Star Wars' Western origins.  Great stuff.

Updated Star Wars movie ratings
1. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
2. Rogue One (2016)
3. Star Wars (1977)
4. Return the Jedi (1983)
5. The Phantom Menace (1999)
6. Solo (2018)
7. The Force Awakens (2015)
8. Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
9. Revenge of the Sith (2005)
10. The Last Jedi (2017)
11. Attack of the Clones (2002)
12. The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

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Knee-jerk review: "Project Hail Mary"

1. It's really, really good.  A sure-fire audience pleaser with lots of humor and suspense and sci-fi spacewalk action.
2. But is it a cinematic masterpiece?  Eh.  Some fans may be overstating things just a little.
3. On the other hand, some of the moviegoers criticizing the movie come across as weirdly bitter and sullen nitpickers.
4. The music is pleasantly quirky at times, lending a goofy charm to a fairly serious situation.
5. We knew we knew Carl from somewhere.  Wasn't until later we realized he's the pastry chef on "The Bear."
6. Ryan Gosling really has it, doesn't he?
7. Honestly, it's probably hard for us to be completely objective since we read the book a couple of years ago.  It was pretty amazing.  The story has more than one pretty great plot twists.  So for us, watching the movie in a way was a lot of waiting for the next narrative moment from the book to happen.  (What must it have been like for Ms. Cheese Fry to experience all of that for the first time?  For the record, she loved the movie.)
8. Rocky is great, of course, as you may have heard.
9. It's probably a little cringey for the savior of the world to be a rumpled middle school science teacher with a wiseass personality, but that's part of what makes the movie great.  A nobody without faith in himself who rises to the occasion.
10. Any good writer just wants to put their characters in impossible situation where there is no good choice.
11. The flashback structure is cliche, but cliches are cliches because they work.
12. Incredible that they kept the ending.
13. Everyone's surely familiar with 2015's The Martian (which kind of is a masterpiece), another adaptation of a science-heavy Andy Weir novel.  Weir also wrote a sci-fi suspense thriller set on a moon base called Artemis which is really good.

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Doctors from "The Pitt" Ranked in Order of Who We'd Prefer as Our Doctor

If you haven't already heard, HBO's "The Pitt" is peak television, a fantastic 2020s update of NBC's late, great "ER" but with more gore and an appropriate workplace sprinkling of four-letter words.  This is the sort of perfectly polished show that's clicking on all cylinders - the writing, the directing, the acting, the production design.  It's like alchemy the way everything comes together.

Our question: if you ended up in the emergency room, which doctor from "The Pitt" would you most like to see whip open that curtain with a laptop in hand?

1. Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) - The perfect mix of sincere empathy and seasoned "seen it all"
2. Dr. Michael Robinavich (Noah Wyle) - Always grumpy, but the guy cannot be stumped; he's the big boss for a reason
3. Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) - Full disclosure: Cheese Fry crush bias
4. Dr. Jack Abbott (Shawn Hatosy) - Medical rock star; bro spends his free time riding along with the SWAT team; additional points for being a grizzled war veteran
5. Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) - Yes, she came in season two hot and heavy, ruffling feathers with her patient passports and AI nonsense, but admit it: she's way underrated
6. Dr. Melissa King (Taylor Dearden) - Quirky, yes, but pretty sharp; she seems detail-oriented to a fault, which seems important in an ER
7. Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) - Solid, but falls in our rankings here due to the whole recovering addict stuff
8. Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) - Close second to Dr. McKay when it comes to caring and bedside manner, but he's still pretty green; he's going to make some big misses
9. Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) - Horrible attitude, chip on her shoulder, hard pass

Honorable mention goes to bad-ass charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), who's probably the most competent, unflappable person in the whole day ER shift at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

Not ranked, for obvious reasons: med students Victoria Javadi and James Ogilvie.  They're a mess.

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12 Observations from a 14-Year-Old's Club Soccer Game

1. Portable camp chairs are everything.  Some city soccer fields provide aluminum bleachers, but it's never guaranteed.  You can go with the basic Walmart model with four legs and two arms - the cup holders will cost more - or upgrade to the high-end "look at me!" models with pneumatic piston rockers and/or built-in adjustable shade awnings.
2. There's always the one parent who's way too aggressive with the cheering, whether it's arguing with the ref ("Call it both ways!"), criticizing his kid's play ("Come on, move to the ball!"), or demanding cut-throat intensity even if your team is blowing out the opponent ("Keep the pressure up!").
3. You really cannot tell how good a team will be just by looking at them warm up.  Scrawny kids who look like pushovers can be crazy fast and agile, tall girls that look formidable can be clueless on offense.
4. Don't ask us to explain the offsides rule.
5. Soccer weather can be extreme.  We've watched just as many games on freezing cold mornings wrapped in multiple layers as we have on broiling hot summer afternoons with our chairs strategically positioned in the slender shadow of a field light pole.
6. Right or wrong, if a parent can speak Spanish we will assume they know way more about soccer than we do.
7. Thankfully, youth soccer doesn't entertain that ridiculous "extra minutes" nonsense.
8. Good luck parking on tournament days.  If it's not mud fields, it's mud fields with gravel.  The trick is to show up during the "shift change" when the earlier block of games is ending thereby allowing you to stalk the folks shuffling out to their cars carrying armfuls of camp chairs or dragging those game-day wagons.
9. Surprisingly, many of these giant soccer complexes just didn't have enough money in their budgets to create signage.  And so you're creeping along in your car squinting through binoculars like GI Joe on a secret mission trying to read the tiny, faded 8-1/2 x 11 sized metal signs that are cable-tied to the goals facing the wrong direction.  "Is that a 3 or a 4?" "If that's a 6, where the hell is 7?"
10. Parents, stick to your side of the field.  Look for your kids' bench and place your chairs opposite that bench.  And leave a nice 10-yard buffer zone at midfield.  It's not that hard.  We don't want to hear your cheering for your kids or complaining about ours.
11. It's always a weird "Twilight Zone" moment when you realize there's a player on the other team with the same name as your kid.
12. Inevitably, you will believe with absolutely certainty that the refs are making more calls against you than the other team.  Guess what?  The parents on the other side feel exactly the same.

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