Slate did a nice piece about cat pictures on the Internet which has additional links to other sites featuring more of our feline friends (or foes since there people who dislike them).
To all those PC naysayers of Apple, I say “Ha!” Seems that games will no longer be the software achilles heel much longer for Apple.
My intial reaction to the announcement of StarCraft II was really, “about time!” Seems that Blizzard had all their time consumed by World of Warcraft which seems fun yet is only cheaper than crack. When WoW appeared, you’d see someone at work playing it pretty often in his cube and I suppose it did pinnacle with the episode of South Park poking fun at it. Then StarCraft: Ghost proved to be vaporware for the PS2. I never did like the game’s premise, it seemed to be a “me-too” title of StarCraft wrapped around Splinter Cell, same as every Star Wars-licensed property. The bright side of SCII is Blizzard releasing the Mac OS and Windows versions at the same time, whenever that may be. My greatest hope for Blizzard is not inserting “heroes” in it as they did with WarCraft III. When playing the storyline, which was really a long tedious tutorial, keeping the main characters alive and building up their special powers was fine. However, Blizzard’s RTS-line of games are more enjoyable when you play against others or use maps without the heroes. For example, WC III stunk if I tried to command the Human army in a generic map because my strategy was the same one I employed in SC. It didn’t matter how many towers or long-range weapons I built, the stupid computer-player’s two hero characters just destroyed my defenses by themselves. There’s no point in developing regular units; WC III tried to be a roleplaying game or a knock-off of Warhammer. Now if SC II still lets me dig in with a quartet of tanks in siege mode reinforced with bunkers and they still blow away a Zerg or Protoss hero foolishing charging right into the line of fire. Then I’ll forgive Blizzard for making WC III lame.
Today, one of Chicago’s most famous residents is 55.
He was frequently parodied and ridiculed in the Eighties and probably in the Nineties as his stardom faded. But I think he’s a pretty interesting man whose career has had numerous twists and turns: actor, wrestler, bodyguard, and credited for at least two catch phrases in the American lexicon.
As of next Friday (May 25), we say goodbye to our Dish satellite service again. This time we hope to be done with it for good. The decision was made for financial reasons so I’m not going to go on like some pompous type who blathers on about how he’s too good for TV. Believe me, I dig TV whether it’s something as mindless as the Cartoon Network or a mindblowing special showing “live” footage from a space probe on the Science Channel. Money-wise we’re doing well but we have so many DVDs to watch, their purchases need to be justified, hockey season is over and there are days the tube is a time burglar. Now the $56/month for Dish will be used to pay of the student loans a tad faster.
With that, I had to combine my Movies on DVD and Cable sections into one unified Movies on our TV category for Picayune because there won’t be anymore reviews coming from Dish (unless I finally finish writing about Chinatown). I hope to post more about all the DVDs we own before we get around to renting any others, namely the last season and a half of Enterprise. Mock all you want, I still found it better than Firefly, or what I really think of Whedon, science fiction for Right Wing cranks.
As nuclear power tries to make a comeback, maybe this old flick should be revisited by the general public. I only remember its existence as a kid in 1979 because the whole Three Mile Island accident happened after its release. Couldn’t have asked for a better advertising gift then a real nuclear “mishap.” Now if the Chernobyl disaster happened instead, I think it would’ve tanked.
The China Syndrome is personally one of the last major “Don’t Trust Authority-Corporations Can’t be Trusted” films of the Seventies (see Network, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor). When St. Reagan came to the presidency, Hollywood changed its tune and started making all those movies for people with short attention spans we’re plagued with now.
Its story unfolds like so…Kimberly Wells (Fonda) is an aspiring reporter stuck to doing boring human-interest pieces, striving for a chance to cover the real news. Richard Adams (Douglas) is a freelance cameraman with his own production company but has an attitude against The Man. Together they go out to the local nuclear power plant to do a puff piece about energy. While they’re present in the observation gallery that overlooks the control center…something goes wrong—there wouldn’t be any movie unless it didn’t. Douglas turns on his camera to record everything happening; he had been ordered by the plant’s PR flak to turn it off (character actor James Hampton, you’ll know him when you see him). Overseeing the possible nuclear disaster are Jack Godell (Lemmon) and Ted Spindler (Brimley) who lead the staff into preventing the reactor from going critical and ending in a meltdown. Despite all the assurances from the flak, Wells and Adams aren’t convinced what they saw was “nothing serious.” The TV station’s lawyer refuses to allow Wells and Adams to make a story out of this and orders the footage shelved since the power company could sue them into oblivion. Matters aren’t looking any sunnier for Godell, Spindler and their team as they’re grilled by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and their bosses. This “mishap” could delay the company’s plans to get state approval for building another nuclear plant and there’s pressure from the shareholders to be more profitable, safety be damned.
The rest of the movie unfolds in a rather predictable manner. It’s still interesting thanks to the solid acting of Lemmon. He does a great job as a man torn between his loyalty to nuclear power (it’s his life, his career since he was in the Navy), his dislike of the media for demonizing his work, and his concern for the public’s safety (it does come first). I found Fonda less convincing as a reporter trying to juggle the people’s right to know against her ambition. However, I’m willing to fess up that my judgment of her acting is clouded by my dislike of her in general. I still stand by my statement of saying her acting has always been wooden. From Barbarella on, she’s weak. Douglas is the same. His temperamental, volcanic stuff has always been dull and by 1979, this maverick character type was a cliché anyway. Shortcomings aside, it remains a solid movie in its own right and is the best of the batch: Red Alert or Chernobyl: The Final Warning aren’t terribly scary.
We all knew this was bound to happen, the question was always…when? I was impressed since the Gibson replica for the game only has a limited number of combinations with the buttons and flipper, 360 according my math. A real guitar has six strings and more positions on the fret bar. Now if the Red Octane guys (GH’s publisher) would offer a real-sized toy guitar for adults. The three-quarter replica feels more like a ukele and awkwardly small as the aprons at Kenny’s Coffee Co.
In other Guitar Hero news, version three is slated in November for Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii. Guess there will not be any Eighties version as the rumors were saying. I’m putting off any PS3 purchase until it comes down in price and I find out what the online strategy for it is. Allegedly, GH3 will offer additional songs as downloads which would be awesome as I’ve “defeated” all of the ones offered in GH2.
This rather funny accident went down on Monday afternoon, Adam got pictures of it but I wasn’t able to post them until today because of all the other jazz going on.
I didn’t have any luck finding details of it (the who, the what, etc.) in Austin’s excuse for a newspaper. Then again, wrecks are routine even for a city of modest size. Still it was funny and I made the guys (Adam & Jeremy) laugh with my Sheriff Roscoe imitation. I have no idea why I know so much about The Dukes of Hazard, I only watched a couple episodes during its heyday; the show didn’t appeal to me since Illinois had its share of hillbillies and rednecks so it was probably mistaken for a documentary.
Congratulations to the people of Singapore according to this trivial factoid courtesy of The Economist. I have only been to be Manhattan and my memory of the people’s walking habits is fuzzy. Maybe my friends who have been to the other cities listed can fill everyone in.
I actually know a lady from Singapore at work and I’ve never seen her walk at the rate this chart claims. Could be the lax pace of Texas life slowing her down.
How I must resist the temptation to buy one of these still. So far Apple finally raised the RAM on the minimal model because 512 MB RAM was painful on it along with other models that sacrifice RAM for the video. I experienced it firsthand with an Intel-based iMac at work; when the RAM was doubled to 1 GB, the iMac rocked. The hard drive increase and the speed bump to the processor are gravy, especially with the price remaining $1100. Definitely something I’d recommend over the MacBook Pro if cost is the biggest factor now.
Next stop with portable computers? LED-backlights instead of a lamp! This will save energy, be less likely to burn out or decline as lamps do and the display could be made thinner. The other step is Flash-based-only storage as the iPod Nanos have but I think that will be farther down the line since getting at least 40 GB’s worth into one spot may be trickier and more expensive than it sounds. It’ll definitely save energy and be faster too since my wife’s iPod Nano can go 20 hours between charges, sometimes longer when it’s not using my FM tuner. Meanwhile, my iPod Mini is 10 hours if I push it and don’t flip around in the playlists due to the internal hard drive having to spin.
No word on what the Flyers are doing with the Vets or older players but they have solidified deals for Ben Eager and Scottie Upshall, two up and coming forwards. They’re quite different. Eager is a checking forward that scores from time to time and tends to take over Fedorouk’s fighting role. Upshall was a pleasant surprise, a scoring forward the Flyers got from Nashville in exchange for Peter “Floppa” Forsberg.
Now if the Holmgren can do something about the Blue Line such as dealing Pitkanen for Rafalski. I dread he’ll waste too much on the recently waived Samsonov or get pulled into the Scott Gomez auction.
This rich, chocolate-covered, triple-layered beauty was done for the joint birthday celebration of my sister-in-law Anje and my father-in-law Tom with Mother’s Day thrown in. I don’t recall if the kids ate any of it, they’re still at that age when eating gets in the way of their playing. Now with this style of cake completed, I think Somara will be getting business cards to promote her side business.
Originally, I was going to watch Spider-Man 2 before I went to this but Apple paid for my ticket and who am I to turn down a free movie. A friend said there wasn’t anything critical I would be missing if I saw 3 first so I went to it with my skeptical expectations thanks to the other reviews I read.
The latest chapter of the Spider-Man saga begins with everything going Peter Parker’s way. He’s excelling at college; Mary Jane is starring in an off-Broadway musical; Aunt May is alive and well; the city and people of NYC love Spider-Man with the exception of Daily Bugle’s editor-in-chief and Peter’s boss, J. Jonah Jameson. But it wouldn’t be much of a movie if something didn’t go sour and since it’s the flick launching the Summer Blockbuster (more like Blockbluster) Season for the third time in five years, everything for Parker has to go wrong. These types of movies don’t make money unless it’s all excessive.
Right away one can see all the problems this movie is going to have due to a rather unwarranted number of plots and subplots. Having multiple villains in a superhero flick has always been the kiss of death since Batman Returns too. Somehow director Sam Raimi pulls it off successfully. It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch: it runs a tad too long, the long conversations bring it to a grinding halt and the number of characters overwhelms non-comic-book fans. Yet the good easily outweighs the bad through Raimi’s strength with frenetic action such as Spider-Man fighting the New Goblin in mid-air or Peter’s comical dance routine in a jazz club. The comedy parts from actors other than Bruce Campbell (as a French maitre’d caricature) and Ted Raimi (an ad guy) were an awesome surprise because superhero adapations tend to be serious and I think many critics including this cartoon review miss the point, especially when blockbusters are done by the numbers.
This movie will entertain all but the most fickle Spider-Man purists and sufferers of ADD. I know I would still come to this conclusion regardless of seeing 2. My only annoyance is how much money Sony is making for several reasons. The fuzzy math on breaking box-office records for an opening weekend isn’t news, adjustments for inflation are ignored and ticket prices being jacked again this Summer definitely adds a few million bucks automatically. Eventually the bloated price tags for these types of movies will come crashing down on Hollywood, it just won’t be this one.
Hard to believe it has been a year already. According to her mom Sonia, Julia is always anxious to walk on her own power and seems to be fond of swimming class. We’ll find out later if she handles sibling rivalry poorly or well. I’d say well because her parents are smart cookies and maybe it’s something with polyglots.
For more adorable pictures of Julia as she grows up, click here. I so look forward to meeting Julia and she resembles Sonia in many ways.
Couldn’t resist reposting this cat cartoon-short even though our four cats have never done such a nice “gesture,” the selfish little furballs. Then again, we live in Central Texas so it would probably be a dead lizard or a tarantula.
What an eventful year 1997 was, that or I just documented all the sappy things in my life much better then. I just remember this road trip because it was the last car-based adventure I had with Sonia and I never drove to Houston after this for another five years. Flying doesn’t count since I only use their airport to change planes.
Sonia was done with finals at UT and was off to see her future husband Philippe in Paris for several weeks. I had the opportunity to come along because she needed a ride and I wanted a break from work and Austin for a day. My car still had some novelty left in it so I still enjoyed taking it on long trips whenever I could. Lastly, any chance to visit Sonia’s family is always enjoyable, including her parents who barely speak English which is okay, I know less Spanish. I have no idea what they’re saying yet they say it so nicely, I can only smile as if I were dog being shown a card trick (a nod to Bill Hicks for that expression).
The trip to the International airport was the memorable part. Sonia’s parents wanted to come along which was natural but due to the language barrier and my general ignorance of Houston’s geography, I arm-twisted one the nephews into coming as navigator and interpreter. Wise move on my part for once. On the way back to her sister’s house, I got a tad lost. I quickly realized it, so I was trying to correct the error without anyone noticing. Then Sonia’s mother said something in Spanish and the only word I recognized was “perdido,” lost, perdu in French. I responded, “Si! Yo soy perdido.” This elicited laughter and the nephew explained, “You just said you’re always lost.”
