Thursday, May 28, 2009

Myths and Monsters

The last book in the Percy Jackson series, The Last Olympian is out and it's quite good. It manages to wrap things up while still leaving the author lots of room to play in. The only real question is, will we get more stories with Percy and crew, or will it be the "next generation". As the book is still pretty new, I won't go into great detail, but this one is certainly action packed (almost a little too much so) and manages to tell a pretty unique story. There's not as much cribbing from older mythologies this time around, so that's nice. Give it a read.

Monster volume one, by Naoki Urasawa is mostly setting the stage for the story to come, but it does a pretty good job. Part hospital drama, part crime thriller, we follow Dr. Kenzo Tenma a brilliant young neurosurgeon that seems to have it all. He's engaged to the Director's daughter and has a promising career ahead of him. Until he runs afoul of hospital politics. Deciding that all lives are equal and that he's going to operate on a young boy that's come in ahead of the city's Mayor (in direct violation of the Director's orders) Kenzo loses everything he had. He saves the young boy but the Mayor dies. The Director makes it his mission to put Kenzo in his place and his fiance leaves him realizing his fate is sealed. That might be enough to get things going, but the real twist comes in when years later, now actually running the hospital, Kenzo finds out that the boy he'd saved is now going around killing people. And so the chase begins. Looking forward to seeing where this one goes.

JCVD is a rather brilliant little movie. It follows Jean Claude Van Damme as he gets stuck in a hostage crisis. Much like My Name is Bruce, the film plays with audience expectations concerning the main star and puts the hero in a situation they've dealt with theatrically a million times. Only now it's for real. There's a lot of humor here and some heartbreak. Good on Van Damme for playing the part.

And that's about it for random review time. In other news, we had a nice little game of San Juan last night with the letter 'r'. I rather like that game. And cheeseburgers on demand season is officially open. Gotta love the grill. I think we'll try ribs this week.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Moments in the Sun

Special follows your Average Joe™ who is accepted into a drug trial, becomes convinced he has super powers (he doesn't) and uses them to fight crime (tackle people). Drug company suits are not amused and downward spiral of events follow. Will Average Joe™ prevail over the suits? Well watch the movie. Draw your own conclusions. The trailer is a little misleading on this one. It sounds like a relatively funny movie right? And in some ways it is. The problem is, they play everything a little too straight and so there are times you really start to wonder if you should be laughing at what's happening. Instead of crying or finding someone to help the poor man. The performances are all really well done and I think that's what makes it so hard to decide how you should view this movie.

We officially have the starts of several things growing in the garden. Some Spinach, some Cucumbers, a couple others. This is good. I'm really looking forward to seeing if we can actually keep things alive long enough to get some food out of them. Mmm pickles. And Spinach salad...

I suddenly have a lot of things to read/watch. Some of them may make their way here. I can recommend Melody A.M. by Röyksopp. If you're familiar with the caveman Geico commercial that takes place in the airport (he's on the moving sidewalk), you know one song on the album, Remind Me. It's a good album if you like electronica (actually it's good even if you don't). Bits of it remind me of Pink Floyd for some strange reason.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Goings on gone

square foot garden
square foot garden,
originally uploaded by dkun.
Yeah a little late and you've seen the pictures, blah, blah, blah. Blame my wife who seems not to understand the concept "flickr pool".

Managed to enjoy the week off with Dad in town. Even if we spent most of it working. Here you can see one of the boxes we built for our square foot garden. There are two. And hopefully they will provide us with lots of yummy food. We also rearranged the girls' room. Bunk beds are now single beds. And the corner of shame has been banished.

We did squeeze some fun in. Star Trek is a good show (even in spite of reboot romances... Spock?! Seriously?!). Quantum of Solace is good (pay no attention to my wife or father, they're muddled from the work and the heat). And the Aquarium is quite nice now. A really nice South American exhibit.

Managed to finish Drood by Dan Simmons. I quite liked it. I'd really like to know which parts were fiction. Well ok, a lot of it is, but there's a lot of fact in there too. Sounds like Dickens got a little strange at the end of his life, although not as strange as some of his associates. Drood tells the tale of the end of Dickens's life as seen through the eyes of his friend/collaborator/jealous adversary William "Wilkie" Collins. Pretty fascinating and a touch horrifying. And what more do you want from a summer-y novel?

How about South American adventure and jungles and spies and lost cities and madness and death? That's what The Lost City of Z, the current book I'm reading, promises. Oh and did I mention it's all true? Nice.

20th Century Boys Volume 1 is pretty good. It sounds like it's a long series, but I look forward to the chance to read it.

Well, it's hot. Even in the basement. I must go melt now. As you were.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Storm before the calm

Getting ready for an entire week off. It will be glorious. And the best part is getting to see Dad since he's flying out this weekend. Looking forward to that. Even if we are getting suckered into manual labor. Got to build some squarefoot garden boxes and get some grub planted as well as possibly redoing the girls' room.

Had a great lunch to celebrate Cinco de Mayo yesterday (yes we celebrated a day late). Some truly yummy Mexican food. (I made salsa)

Watched Cronocrimenes (Timecrimes for favorite niece) the other night. Decent time travel mystery type flick. Some of it was predictable, but there were a couple nice little twists.

Will finally get to watch Quantum of Solace soon. Looking forward to that. Making my way through the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's pretty enjoyable too, but then I like the GitS universe.

In mocking Twilight news, it gave G nightmares. Lovely wife decided to snag it from the redbox due to massive amounts of whining from McK and M. They all watched it without me (probably wise on their part). But yeah, G not so much ready for emo dudes with bad hair "vampires". Even ones that sparkle. And aren't really vampires. Oh and the director of the third movie totally mocked the first movie (wouldn't watch it at gunpoint) and then backpedaled when fans (and believe me, Twilight fans put the fanatic back in fan...) expressed emo whining outrage.

And long live blogger's autosave. This post was almost gone due to some lovely Firefox issues.

Suspect that's good enough for now.

Friday, May 01, 2009

Cue the mad laughter

Just a quick note to point to this. Not the most amazing 600th post, but it mocks Twilight so it fits the basic criteria.