The Masked Binging ER Singer

The Masked Singer Logo

Some weekends ago (mid February) I binge watched a show about 2 weeks before their season finale. Then for the final two weeks since the show aired on a night I wasn't able to watch I on demanded those episodes, but had to wait a few days (like 5 days) for Crumcrust to list the episode. The show was on Fox. One of those music competition shows, that I normally don't watch or like, but this one I did. I was pleasantly surprised. The show was The Masked Singer hosted by Nick Cannon. It is a singing competition with a twist. The "contestants" are celebrities of every kind except their identities are hidden behind fancy costumes with full head masks. On The Voice the contestants identities are hidden because the judges have their chairs facing away from them while they are singing and they turn their chair around if they are interested in who is behind the voice. This one the judges are face forward but the contestants are hiding behind full head masks. When they speak in their "normal" voice their voice is electronically altered so it is only when they are singing that the judges hear their real voices.

A Celeb contestant being escorted by security.

Interesting I noticed that this show seems to be based on a Korean show called "King of Mask Singer" looks to be from 2017. UGH. Oh of course if I had bothered to do more research before getting hooked on the show I would have known it was based on a popular South Korean TV show.

Celeb Contestants: Rabbit, Alien, Lion, Bee, Peacock and Monster

The competition started with 12 Cosplaying Celebrities who were only identified by their costumes: Peacock, Bee, Monster, Poodle, Alien, Deer, Hippo, Raven, Pineapple (yeah a sort of SpongeBob SquarePants vibe), Lion, Unicorn and Rabbit. Some of them took on the persona of their costume. The panel of Judges: Robin Thicke, Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger (with guest judges for 1 or 2 episodes each: Joel McHale, J.B. Smoove and Keenan Thompson) had to try to guess who was behind the mask.

The Regular Judges: Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy, Ken Jeong and Nicole Scherzinger

 Each week the celeb who got the least amount of votes from the panel of judges and from the audience were unmasked. When the characters were introduced before each performance some clues were given about the identity of the celeb. For most of the celebs the panel was way off but there were a few one or two of the judges got right. I only got one completely right (I had an alternate idea, but I was right and the judges were also on that one), and a couple were among the celebs that I had thought were that character but either didn't know or was going for someone else. For the most part I think I had at least heard of each celeb (a couple just barely), many I already was aware of. I was disappointed with who actually won. The way celebs are now days I almost thought there would be a few times when I had no idea who the hell they were, a couple were close. It would be pretty funny yet also sad if a celeb was unmasked and then they had to explain to everyone who they really were. I thought there were one or two that almost needed that.

Celeb Contestants: Poodle, Deer and Pineapple

I won't match up which character was which celeb you can find that out for yourself if you are interested. I will list the competing celebs below somewhere. Before I decided to watch the show I had heard about who one of the characters was and wanted to hear what they sounded like singing since they were not known for their singing. Then after I had watched a few episodes I went to IMDb to check off that I had seen the show for my watch list and I accidentally saw the identities of two of the characters that I hadn't seen unmasked yet. One of them was unmasked the next episode I watched. The cast list there also lists the security guards, who escorted the masked celebs around during the filming process, and the non-celeb supporting performers: the backup singers and dancers during each performance.

Celeb Contestant Raven

As with any singing competition, there were the two extremes of voices, the pleasant sounding angelic type voices and the blackboard screeching "stop that damn noise" type. I was surprised by a few of the non-singer/musician celebs who had nice voices.

Celeb Contestant Hippo

Here in no particular order are the competing  celebs: Ricki Lake, Margaret Cho, Rumer Willis, Gladys Knight, Terry Bradshaw, T-Pain, Tori Spelling, Donny Osmond, Joey Fatone, Antonio Brown, La Toya Jackson and Tommy Chong.

Celeb Contestant Unicorn

All in all I'd give The Masked Singer 3 or 4 stars out of 5. It was enjoyable but I am not a huge fan of voice contest shows. Oh I just recalled a show from a few years back (early 2000s maybe? Possibly Pre-American Idol) that I had liked where contestants dressed up like their music idol and performed their song. I forget what it was called. Some of the contestants nailed the look, but sounded nothing like who they were performing as, and of course there were a few the other way around sounded like them but even with heavy makeup looked nothing like the idol. I think I found it Your Big Break (1999-2001) Hmm it was syndicated.

My favorite performers based solely on their performances were Peacock, Bee and Alien. Rabbit was an overall good performer and was one of the characters that really got into his masked persona. He had a crazy head twitch thing going on.

Book Update: One Book Two Books Red Book Blue Book

BOOK UPDATE: One Book Two Books One Buck Two Bucks

On Tuesday 25 April while on a quest to my neighborhood Dollar Tree for some much needed paper products, Kleenex facial tissues for backup and TP (toilet paper) of which I was down to the last part of the next to the last roll, I picked up a couple of books. Yes you guessed it for a $ingle Dollar a piece. One of them is a mystery type story that sounded so cool. I discovered it is the second book in a series of at least two books.

OH according to my Goodreads there are four more books in the series. The other book I got is a memoir/autobiography/biography relating to baseball.

So the book that is part of a series is called The Madness Underneath from the Shades of London series by Maureen Johnson.

I went back a few days later (Saturday 29 April) because I thought I had recalled seeing one of the other books in the series on that first trip. I didn't see any of the other books the second trip. I checked another neighborhood dollar store a Family Dollar store but they didn't have any books other than a handful of kids books and coloring books. Through Ebay I have ordered book number three The Shadow Cabinet for $6 Free Shipping. and received it.

Not sure why I'm attempting the full series before I've even read one of the books. Wait I do know. I had found book number two and thought the synopsis of it sounded fun, and then realized it was a second book in a series after bringing it home for a closer look. Often individual books in a series will have the same sort of feel even though the plots are completely different. They are related because they follow the same characters on another adventure or the continuation of the same adventure.

The other book I got was a memoir slash biography slash autobiography of sorts. It is Ted Williams, My Father: A Memoir by Claudia Williams.

Claudia is the last surviving child of baseball great Ted Williams. He played 21 years for the Boston Red Sox and then 9 years later returned to baseball to manage the Washington Senators for their last 3 years and the first year when they moved to became the Texas Rangers.

On my second trip I bought two more books. These two are written by comedians slash actors. The first one is the novelization of a comedy film the second one is another sort of memoir slash autobiography.

The film novel is A Million Ways to Die in the West by Seth MacFarlane the creator of the television show Family Guy.

The second and final book of this update is Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film by Patton Oswalt.

The book cover images in this post I got from Google image searching. I was too lazy to scan my own copies. I have enough things to do and to scan than to worry about scanning my books. It also helps me to publish these posts quicker. I have already delayed putting the finishing touches on this post and wanting to include the book covers added at least another week or two.

OH and just today (Thursday 11 May 2017) I ordered a book from Ebay for $13.60 Free Shipping by an author who is now one of my faves. Greg Cox and his latest novel in the based on the television show The Librarians. This is his second book from the series The Librarians: And The Mother Goose Chase.

Book Update: January 2012 Books

JANUARY 2012 BOOKS

I got a large number of books this month so I will not post individual covers for all of them. I got 3 of them from the Quality Paperback Book Club, 1 from Goodreads in the first giveaway that I won (I have entered many giveaways there but this was the first time I won one, it helped that the author was giving away 25 copies) and the rest from Ebay.

HARDY BOYS MYSTERIES: 

Many know that the author of these books Franklin W. Dixon was actually a group of authors for the publishing company, but that is a story that has been told before by others and can easily be found by a web search.These first four books I got from one seller on Ebay for and average of $3.00 a piece (some auctions and some fixed price I think) they were ordered in December and I think originally shipped in late December/early January but the post office failed to leave one of those little "orange" pick up slips. Fortunately you can still pick up packages showing you valid photo ID to prove you are who you say you are and you are authorized to pick up mail for your address. I got it 10 days after they had originally tried to deliver it.

USPS "Orange" pick-up slip

Hardy Boys #1 The Tower Treasure

So since I'm trying to rebuild my collection from my childhood, or at least some of the highlights I got the hardback copies of these books. They are the 1960s or early to mid 1970s versions at the newest. I don't plan on getting any newer printings unless the original publication was later for those later numbers. Anyway the Series library numbers I got are 1, 4, 15, 16. These editions are numbered only on the spine, later editions put the number on the front cover. Later still they added a "flashlight" banner to the top of the front cover. I found an excellent identification website The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page that can help you determine which edition you may have. It might not be perfect but it helped me tons.  Anyway the titles of what I got:

Hardy Boys #16 A Figure in Hiding

01 - The Tower Treasure

04 - The Missing Chums

15 - The Sinister Sign Post

16 - A Figure In Hiding

With the exception of "number one" I had previously owned the others, I even had two different editions of number 16.

Next I had gotten three books from QPB:

Evidence of the Afterlife by Jeffrey Long, MD with Paul Perry
The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer 

The Vikings: A History by Robert Ferguson - When I first saw this book in the catalog I thought I already had it because I have a hardback edition of another book titled Vikings by Magnus Magnusson that has a similar cover.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E

Next I am building a library of television-tie-in books from a TV series I barely saw as a kid. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. which starred Robert Vaughn, David McCallum (who plays "Duckie" on NCIS), and Leo G. Carroll. The trick to this series is I also plan on getting the UK versions of some of the books which have a different numbering system and sadly didn't publish as many of them there. I am concentrating on getting the US editions first then perhaps as I can find them get the UK ones. There is an excellent website (from a guy in the UK that has a bunch of series listed on his home page) to see the covers of all these books The Man From UNCLE Books Gallery

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.  (later printings listed it as #1 and titled "The Thousand Coffins Affair" this edition only has that title on the inside) by Michael Avallone

02 - The Doomsday Affair by Harry Whittington
03 - The Copenhagen Affair by John Oram
04 - The Dagger Affair by David McDaniel
05 - The Mad Scientist Affair by John T. Phillifent
06 - The Vampire Affair by David McDaniel
07 - The Radioactive Camel Affair by Peter Leslie
08 - The Monster Wheel Affair by David McDaniel
09 - The Diving Dames Affair by Peter Leslie

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Affair of the Goldrunners' Gold by Brandon Keith

The book I got as a freebie from the Goodreads giveaway by the author is a Sci-fi story Death Drop by Sean Allen. That is about all I know about it right now. I moved it to the top of my "to-be-read" list. When I am finished with it I will post a review there as soon as I can. Oh and it was signed "All my best" by the author..

 The last minute addition is just a small one, well a big one a big little one actually. Journey To The Center Of The Earth - The Fiery Foe by Paul S. Newman a "Big Little Book". When I was a kid my brother had a copy of this book. I'm not sure if he snagged it years ago upon move out of the family home or if my mom had put it into a giveaway box years later. I think it was the former. Anyway this copy I got from Ebay for $8 (the shipping was free) it is in very good condition but has that really musty old book smell. I might try that putting it in a plastic container with an unscented clothes dryer sheet to see if that trick works I don't want to try the kitty litter trick as I have no cats and would feel strange buying kitty litter. LOL.

A Recent Read Number 17

"Again Langdon forced himself to consider the implausible. If the Illuminati were still alive, and if they stole the anti-matter, what would be their intention? What would be their target?"

NOTE: This review may contain SPOILERS.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. I'm getting to this review very late. I read this book around December '09 to January '10. After reading it I re-watched the movie adaption of The Da Vinci Code and watched the movie of this book (I will probably point out the differences as I go along). Chronologically this book was written before The Da Vinci Code but the movies were released in reverse order and the Da Vinci Code movie claims that adventure as the main character Robert Langdon's first mystery case. That forced the producers of the movie to act as if this adventure came later.

The mystery begins with the murder of a physicist working with anti-matter experiments at the CERN (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire AKA: European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Left by the body is an ambigram (an artistic depiction of a word to make it read the same way from another angle usually upside down) depicting the word Illuminati. The main character Robert Langdon is brought in because he is an expert in symbology. An odd and grisly fact about the murder is one of the scientists eyes was removed. The reason is soon discovered a container holding a piece of anti-matter was stolen from a lab that had a sophisticated retina reading security system. The big problem is the anti-matter has to be contained in a certain way, without this containment it becomes a bomb with a set time to explode, unless it is returned to it's containment system. Only two people had access from the secure lab the murdered scientist and his partner/daughter. Of course Langdon falls in love with Vittoria Vetra.The movie version changes the murder victim to being an assistant of Vittoria The movie also changed some of the other character's personalities around, making one of the characters I didn't like in the book likable in the movie.

The main goal of this adventure is to get back the anti-matter before is explodes In the meantime the Pope has recently passed away and the Vatican is in the process of electing a new Pope. One big problem the main candidates for the Papacy turn up missing. It is made known that the Illuminati are indeed alive and are responsible for the disappearance of the main candidates. Soon they start showing up dead. Langdon now has to not only race against the clock to keep the bomb from exploding but he has to help find the missing cardinals before all of them end up dead.

Like The Da Vinci Code this book digs deep into Catholic traditions and culture. It also gives some very vivid descriptions of areas of Rome and the Vatican. As part of his investigation Langdon has to gain access to the Vatican's Library vaults to research the Illuminati and follow all the clues to finding the cardinals in time. As with the other book it has a nice fast pace to it and was difficult to put down. 

As I said I read this book before seeing the film version I am glad I did because it helped to understand somethings about the movie, but as I said they did make changes to some things. It is always interesting to see a film adaptation of a book you have read. There were a few scenes in the movie that were completely different from what I had envisioned while reading the book. I think a few of them could have been done the way I imagined, but one or two of them couldn't. The ones that I thought could have been done I was a little disappointed with how the movie handled them. Oh Well.

My review of The Da Vinci Code.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown 2000 (2006) Pocket Books 710 pages. - ****