Anime

I recently completed the third year of One Piece.  After the Alabasta arc ended, the last dozen episodes were filler between the manga stories.  The first ones were pretty good, but the last ones were an odd story about entering a time warp and finding children who'd entered fifty years ago.

I've almost finished the third of seven years of Dragon Ball Z.  I'd have to say I prefer the first Dragon Ball overall.  The second show is focused mostly on the fighting and the story's less fast-moving.  At the climax of the Frieza arc, the planet Namek was going to blow up in five minutes but so help me, it takes over half a dozen episodes to get to the complete explosion!  I've been watching the Garlic Jr. filler arc, and that's pretty weak (besides being a sequel to a DBZ movie I haven't seen). The bad guys take over Lord Kami's sky realm and release a chemical that turns most of the world into evil brainwashed zombies...

Now I've started the last season of Sailor Moon.  This one introduces the Sailor Stars, three fetish-costumed girls with a remarkable resemblance to three guys in a boy band who go to the same high school(?) as Serena and friends. Serena's now transforming into Eternal Sailor Moon, who has white boots and a pair of wings!  Fortunately, Sailors Uranus and Neptune are back.

Last Friday I showed the Sondheim musical Pacific Overtures for the Friday night History Meetup watch party.  It improves with repeat viewings. (It opened in 1976, and it's like Sondheim's contribution to the Bicentennial: America as other people see it.)

We just saw Fear City on Netflix, a documentary about the New York Mafia in the 1970s and '80s and the efforts to destroy it through the RICO act. (They interviewed Rudolph Giuliani, whom I call Adolf Bullyani!)