Agent Palmer

We can all use a little help. Sometimes from our friends, sometimes from ourselves. Whether or not we admit to needing help, to others or to ourselves, will make it all the more apparent that we need it.

For nerds, self-help books are everywhere, because learning comes from everywhere – from video games, from that tabletop dungeon crawl from eight years ago, or from the many experiences in between. A good self-help book for nerds is a bit like the Highlander: “There can be only one.” That one is The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) by the Nerdist himself, Chris Hardwick.

The third and final installment of The Hobbit, is more a bridge to the initial Lord of the Rings trilogy then farewell fanfare to The Hobbit trilogy, at least that’s how I see it.

There are two ways to look at this movie, as an end to the trilogy of The Hobbit or as the third act in a six part play. It’s much better overall to look at it as the latter, because of all of the extra stuff added into this trilogy to make it a bridge from one trilogy to the next.

I just can’t see it any other way.

There are those among us who still maintain that The Rat Pack – sometimes called “the Summit” or “the Clan” of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop – are the epitome of cool. Consider me among them.

My mother, of all people, picked up The Rat Pack: Neon Nights with the Kings of Cool by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell, for me at a used book store. This look into the Kings of Cool was written and published in 1998, just before the death of Frank Sinatra on May 14, 1998.

I literally couldn’t put it down.