a few unrelated (to each other) topics...

I just finished reading a vampire book that is actually really surprising and good. I would recommend it to all of you, because the writing style is great and the settings are various European countries in different eras and this gives it a great global/travel setting. Rather than actually being a traditional vampire book, it's set up and tells the story through historians and their fictional research. There are layers upon layers of narrative stories, letters, research, and actual action, so that everything in the book has a feel that you're being told a story through many sources, that you are discovering the story for yourself just like the characters in the book. It is similar to Possession (by A.S. Byatt) but not quite as inaccessible, and in this case about the historicity of Vlad Dracul the Impaler rather than a few Romantic Poets. It is most in feel and tone like The Time-Traveler's Wife, to me. I'm not sure why. It has a relatively engrossing, storytelling-based, and exploratory narrative, and it was a fun read.

Check it out at Amazon.






On other topics, we watched 2 new TV shows last week, and saw a lot of familiar faces. We enjoyed Chuck, although the only person we recognized was the main girl - Ben Stiller's wife, the reporter from Zoolander. Then we saw Bionic Woman just to see Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, but it was a terrible show, despite them stealing most of the cast from BSG/Firefly. After they set up Katee Sackhoff as the evil nemesis, suddenly Chief Tyroll was sitting there at the bar, and that was odd. And then at the end in came the lawyer from season 3 of BSG (Badger on Firefly). Wild! Despite the fact that some of you - Ian and Liz - might like those actors, I would not recommend Bionic Woman even to my enemy.

the long and the short of it...

6 a.m.

















6 p.m.

Last Weekend's Entertainment

Hey guys,

So this week I’ve been hit pretty hard with a nasty flu, I missed work on Wednesday and worked from home on Thursday. But enough about that, I just wanted to mention some fun entertainment that Liz and I had over the weekend.

Last Friday we got to see The New Pornographers in concert at The Showbox. We’ve seen them a few times before but this might have been the best of them all. First off, they had all their members there which was a huge plus (usually Dan Bejar and Neko Case don’t tour with the band). And secondly, The Showbox was a really nice place to see a show. Tiny clubs always make for the best concerts and the sound was mixed quite well. The only downside is that while the first opener Fancey was pretty good the second band Lavender Diamond was terrible to the nth degree. Liz was quite a trooper to make it all the way to 1am while 7 and ½ months pregnant. We just staked out a nice spot about 20 feet from the stage and got a chair set up for her. Here are some pictures from the LA show of the same tour.

Then on Sunday we went out to see Stardust after Liz’s baby shower. Liz and I both like the book, so I must admit that we went in with some degree of trepidation. But our fears proved to be completely unfounded as the movie maintained a uniform level of comedy, romance, witty dialog and action throughout. I’m not saying that the movie was perfect, just that all the parts came together well to create a whole that was both entertaining, fairly wholesome and did not insult my intelligence. If I had to make a comparison I would call it a slightly darker The Princess Bride mixed with a shade of Pirates of the Caribbean and a dash of the UK charm of Gaiman’s original novel. I’d recommend it to any of the usual readers of this blog (all four of you).
~Ian

New Halo Ads

Hey all!

So the final phase of Halo 3's advertisements started this week and I happen to think that they are pretty cool. The ads are based off a series of huge diorama depicting various scenes from the up coming game created by a big Hollywood SFX company (think helm's deep in Lord of the Rings). Laura and Jon at least would find them pretty neat as the dioramas seem like they would appeal to model makers and painters.

Info on the diorama (check the gallery as well):
http://kotaku.com/gaming/gallery/halo-diorama-may-tour-country-299470.php

Ad number one (I like this one, pretentious as all get out...but still...):

http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_4475_en.html

Ad number two (Also nice, but doesn't make much sense if you don't have the context of the ad concept and ad number one):

Actually this was just pulled by youtube, so no link, but you can see it on Friday at the following site http://videogames.yahoo.com/

~Ian

paper dolls!

Make your own Gwen Stefani paper dolls!

Well, I thought it was cool ... and I bet Liz and mom will too.


http://h30393.www3.hp.com/printing/gwen.html

boo-yah!