The Town

This movie is one I always had interest in because it is set in Boston, and you know how I love Boston. Plus, it has Ben Affleck and he's not half bad either. This story is centered around four guys from Charlestown. And BOY does it make Charlestown seem awful. Here's what I learned... Basically if you are from there you are a criminal. That's really all there is if you are from Charlestown. This gang of boys, they like to rob banks. Don Draper and the man in black? They like to solve crimes and put bank robbers in jail. Drama! Fast forward fast forward the movie ends with a pretty cool robbery of Fenway Park which I would hope wouldn't actually be able to be pulled off in real life.

Enough about the movie / plot though. What the hell is up with the exaggerated Boston accents? I don't get it. BEN, you're from Boston. Why do you make yourself sound like a faking idiot in movies? I don't get it.

Regardless of the awful accents, I liked the movie. Nothing special, but it was enjoyable. And with that, I am COMPLETELY caught up with my backlog of backlogs. CAN YOU HANDLE THAT?!

Community Season 1

Thursday television for me was mainly The Office. Some shows (ex. Lost, SYTCYD) were / are on this night from one time to another, but that's about it for me. It is always a busy night for Steve though. From Parks an Rec through the likes of It’s Always Sunny, he basically watches TV all night. I catch a few of the shows here and there, and the two he most highly recommends and I watched the most were Parks and Rec and Community. I recently watched Parks and Rec Season 1 and really enjoyed it, so right after I watched Community. For some reason, I went into it thinking I would not like it as much as Parks and Rec (despite loving the few episodes I saw of Season 2). Turns out, I was wrong.

I really really liked Community. When I didn’t follow this show, every time I watched it, I was like “oh that’s the Soup guy, he’s annoying”. Now he’s Jeff, and I’m completely on board with his character. I always called Annie, Trudy. Now she’s only Annie. I always liked Abed. He’s fabulous. This show isn't “obviously” funny. The jokes are subtle and sarcastic, but I think this only makes the show better. The pop culture references are spot on, and the supporting characters like the Dean and Senor Chang only add to the show. I still am not completely on board with Chevy Chase, but oh well. There’s season 2 for that. Pierce is a B.

I, Alex Cross

16 of 17! Almost finished! What are the odds that he releases a new Cross book as I finish the 17^th book? High. What are the chances this will be a movie? Not great. Morgan Freeman played Alex Cross in the first two books of the series (Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls). Kiss the Girls was one of my favorite Cross books. Maybe they stopped making the movies after Patterson told them he had fifteen more books in mind. Apparently they are making “Cross” into a movie slated for release next year. Tyler Perry is playing Alex Cross. I don’t see it.

As for this book, it was good. The case was personal because Alex’s estranged niece was murdered. Turns out she was a high class hooker. And she died. Ya know how? The first man. The first gentleman. Whatever you want to call him, he’s a murderer, yo! Needless to say, the Mrs. President was angry. That is all.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Whew. It's been over a month since I've beaten a video game, and even though this one is the most recent addition to my backlog, making it a zero-sum month for me on the video game front, I'm just glad to have shaken some dust off. Will this be the spark that ignites a flurry of September game beatings? Let's hope so! As far as the game itself is concerned, Professor Layton is a "puzzle-solving" series for the DS which is really just a simple point-and-click adventure interspersed with mazes, riddles, brain teasers, and other logic puzzles. I played the first game in the series back in the summer of 2008 after borrowing it from Sween. (Sometimes I miss those pre-backlog-focused times when borrowing a game from a friend made just as much sense as playing stuff in your own collection. Sigh.) I enjoyed it a great deal, beating every single puzzle the game threw at me and even several downloadable puzzles. There was a certain charm to the English gentleman in a top hat and his apprentice - an orphan, perhaps? - in a flat cap and sweater, walking around solving riddles as if it was the most important or interesting thing in the world to do. The story was iffy, but I chalked that up as part of the game's overall tone. Maybe three years later I'm a hardened cynic, or maybe Back-Blogged has changed the way I like to experience and beat games, but I just didn't enjoy Diabolical Box as much as I did Curious Village. The story was laughably bad, but probably not even as bad as the first game's. Several puzzles were ridiculously easy or straightforward, but that's not a cause for alarm when you've still got sixty games waiting to be beaten. No, I think the reason I was nonplussed by this game is that the only part of the game worth playing - the puzzle-solving - was almost entirely optional. I could have easily progressed through the story solving very few puzzles along the way, but that would have been a tedious bore covered from wall-to-wall in "move here" commands and excessive dialogue. But every time I tapped on a villager to see if they had any good riddles for me, I knew I was wasting my time as far as beating the game was concerned. I realize that Back-Blogged has totally changed the way I play games. Optional side quests take a backseat to the overall game count, and I play games now merely to beat them instead of to enjoy them. I "suffer" from an over-saturation of games and even the most widely renowned of those I've yet to play are like nuisances in their own way. I'd rather beat a game quickly than take time to stop and smell the side quest roses. This is probably an issue I could seek to alleviate by slowing down my trek through my backlog. But at the same time, how could I be going any slower? It's an interesting dilemma and it's one that'll only grow more disconcerting as the backlog weighs heavier on my shoulders with time. If only Layton and Luke could come up with a solution for this puzzle!

Call of Duty: World at War

The hard part about finishing a lot of similar things rapidly (in this case, Call of Duty games) is that you start running out of things to talk about. What separates World at War from the other games? Well, I mean the graphics get better every time and the game always plays a bit smoother. How about the campaign? It's a little more focused than the last time Treyarch made a Call of Duty game- you switch off between just two characters rather than 5 or so. Here you play a Russian in Germany, and an American fighting in the Pacific. There was plenty here that I've already done several times before but three missions of two different types stand out- an excellent mission that finds you running back and forth between different sections of a plane, shooting whatever exists in the small area you can see and eventually landing in the water to rescue some survivors of a plane crash; and two missions that feature a flamethrower. I think the mark of a good war game is if you can get a good sense of the brutality of war, and any time I wielded a flamethrower in World at War, I felt it. Burning people alive, listening to the screams- damn! That's hardcore. I realize the flamethrower is a long-standing go-to weapon in video game history, but to me it's never felt quite like this. So that's what I take away from World at War- a decent but unmemorable game that did offer up a few moments of intrigue.

God Save the Fan

I don't read many sports blogs. Maybe some on fantasy sports, but I dunno, I've just never got too interested in basic blogs about sports. 'Read Deadspin!" people tell me. "Barstool is hilarious!" others chime in. I think it's the fact that I'm pretty sure neither of these sites are work-safe is what keeps me from checking them out. Just the other day Barstool took some serious heat for posting dickpics of Tom Brady's kid. Whether I think the blogger had the right to do that or not is irrelevant; all I know is it's probably bad for pictures like that to show up on my work computer. Anyway, here's my introduction to sports blogs, specifically Deadspin- it's God Save the Fan, a book of anecdotal essays that never appeared on Deadspin at all, written by site founder Will Leitch, who doesn't even blog anymore! Truth be told, the book was actually really good. Leitch has a fresh take on why people like sports so much and just who is ruining them (basically everybody). He saves most of his vitriol for ESPN, and while I'd normally be very receptive to this (I really can't stand ESPN but it has such a monopoly on sports TV that I can't help but watch), the book starts to drag when it reaches a point where it feels like every other sentence is "if you thought that sportscaster was bad, this guy's even more boring and terrible!" The exception here being Leitch's recap of the "You're With Me, Leather" saga that I'm seriously pissed that I missed the first time around. Aside from the ESPN-oriented sections, Leitch does a great job of criticizing athletes, fans, and owners in a no-nonsense way that's changed my views on a lot of sports-related issues. Ryan's got a few more Will Leitch-authored books, although apparently the other two are fiction, so we'll see how those go when I get to them.

Wild Animus

Travel back in time with me, dear readers, to the end of the spring semester of my senior year of undergrad. It's early May, because the soot-encrusted ugly snowbanks are mostly, but not quite, gone. As I leave the campus center, two girls ask me if I'd like a free copy of a book. They've got bags full of these books. The book is Wild Animus by Rich Shapero, an author I've never heard of. I figure he must be local, or otherwise affiliated with the University. I take my copy, thank the girls, and head back to my apartment. I promptly do a Google search on the author and his book, and learn the following: "Rich Shapero (born 1948) is an American venture capitalist, self-published writer, and musician. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended UC Berkeley where he graduated in 1970 with a degree in English literature." (Thanks, Wikipedia.) So, no. Not a local, not a student. And, of this book? "Shapero's book Wild Animus was released in 2004 using print-on-demand technology by his publishing company, Too Far. Initially 50,000 copies were printed, and copies of the book have been given away in for promotional purposes. Shapero has also published three CDs, "The Ram," "The Wolves," and "Animus," which were used in free promotional distribution, both separately and in a boxed set with the book." In other words, Shapero had been giving his book away for years all over the country, presumably because no one was buying it for money. Oof. This musical accompaniment to the novel intrigued me, and I decided to check out Shapero's book's website for more details. Apparently, neither the book nor the music tells the whole story of Wild Animus, and the two must be experienced in tandem for the full experience. I played along - the music streams on his site for free - expecting the tracks to be some sort of looping background music. Because how can you read to anything else? Instead, my ears were assaulted with very hard and heavy rock music, complete with over-the-top riffs, fast drumming, and wailing lyrics. The task at hand, as described, was purely impossible. I shelved the book hastily, and only recently today, during "Hurricane" Irene's assault on New England, did I pull it out for a reading. The book was actually a very quick read, but that may be because I skimmed more or less everything after the first few pages. Shapero, bless him for his efforts, simply isn't a good writer. This had been a suspicion of mine for a while, given that good authors usually don't insist their writing be experienced in tandem with death metal, and typically don't just give away their books on college campuses. Allow me to summarize what little plot I can. (And most of my own understanding has been gleaned from Shapero's website.) A young man falls in love for the first time, and enjoys that initial feeling of "surrender" so much that he decides to always live life on the edge. He moves to the Alaskan wilderness, where nature and wilderness overwhelm him and he may continue to feel both helpless and excited. He becomes fascinated with the Dall sheep, a wild Alaskan mountain goat, and begins to envision himself as a ram. In fact, the book is narrated in the third person, but passages are emboldened and italicized and written in the first person. In these parts, the main character envisions himself as a majestic, well, sheep. (Is he tripping on acid? Perhaps. I really have no idea.) The natural predator of the Dall sheep is the wolf. There are plenty of passages in which the main character, as a sheep, is being chased by wolves. Is this a metaphor for the thrill of being in love? Is it to be taken literally? Again, I'm not sure. The book feels half stream-of-consciousness at this point and half Animorphs. I'd give the author the benefit of the doubt in most cases, but in most cases I'm not reading a free book with an accompanying soundtrack. Eventually the main character creates a diety named "Animus" - or is Animus extant outside of his mind? - and becomes obsessed with Animus and being a ram and running from the wolves in the freezing Alaskan mountains. His girlfriend feels like she's been replaced, but then joins him in ram role-play/worship anyway, and by the book's end the dude is dying in the middle of nowhere being torn limb from limb by a pack of wolves. So, that's the story for you. It's unclear to me, again, how much of it is real and how much of it simply takes place in the ram-man's mind. I'm also unclear what the point of the novel was at all. I'm glad it doesn't matter. Here's another excerpt from Shapero's site: "Experienced as a whole, the music expresses the emotional core of the story and the novel serves as its narrative shell." Don't good writers convey emotion within their writing? I guess Shapero isn't even pretending to be a good writer. But then, that's okay. He's probably just an average Joe who really wanted to tell the world a story, for some reason, and I like that he followed through on his dream by publishing his own book and giving it away to college kids around the country. Amazon.com currently has 139 customer reviews for the book, and 90 of them are for one star out of five. But don't think that it even has that many "defenders;" "The most helpful favorable review" can be found right here, and is well worth a read. Actually, I was more entertained by that review than I was by Wild Animus, and that's without even handicapping the former for being 1/300 as long. Let this be a lesson to all of you out there, as if you needed to be told - you get what you pay for, and new books being given away for free are being given away for free for a reason.

Lost: Season 6

I've vented and ranted enough times in the past year or more about what an utter letdown the sixth and final season of Lost was. For three seasons, it was my favorite show on television and I was completely convinced that the various dots the writers had mysteriously placed everywhere would somehow connect in an ornate and well-articulated manner. Instead, the showrunners realized with about five episodes left that they had way too many unconnected dots left to reasonably connect, and instead just began to explain the dots away in bunches. "Oh, we're going to leave that one unanswered. It's supposed to be a mystery. Oh, we're not going to have time to elaborate on that backstory. Blame the writers' strike!" The sixth and final season was just so sloppy, poorly paced, and shoddily put together. It wasn't just a bad season of Lost, or a case of a TV show extending itself for one season too long; it was a grand reveal that never was. Because it was so frustrating and unsatisfying, it retroactively made many moments from many previous seasons frustrating and unsatisfying, ultimately compromising the entire show's integrity, and even tainting the initially fantastic early seasons. I'd like to think that if I went back and watched the first season or three, I'd still love the way it all sorted out. Perhaps Lost would have been better off had it been canceled after the third season. With a few tweaks, that season's finale would have made a fantastic series finale. Instead, we got a series finale in which the main theme was, "nothing we do in life matters because the people we do it with will all be there with us in death." Wait, what? And some casual fans actually liked that ending? And defended it by saying, "you can only hate the way Lost ended if you cared more about the sci-fi mysteries than the characters" in a non-ironic way? Ugh. Blech. Sigh. Perhaps nothing can illustrate Lost's decline more than my DVD viewing procedures. I watched the first season on DVD at least twice, many episodes three or four times (and the pilot probably seven or so, I swear). I bought the second season for full price and watched it twice through with new college friends. I bought the third season immediately and for full price as well, and watched every episode once again, a few of them twice. Then it was announced that the show would run for three more seasons an end. My friends and I already looked forward to being able to buy Season 6 on DVD some time in 2010 and watching the entire series all the way through again. Then Season 4 was so-so, and I bought the season and watched it right away only out of practice and principle. The same was true of Season 5. (That write-up begins with the sentence, "Lost is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I'm really unsure about where it's headed after this messy season," and ends with "I know Lost has enough left in the tank. It's up to the writers to make the right decisions, execute, and deliver." Whoops!) And after Season 6 was as disappointing as it was, I didn't even buy it for four months, and din't watch it for another eight months. And my desire to go back now and watch all six seasons in order is nonexistent. Oh well. A lot of good shows wind up with weak final seasons. But that's the thing - Lost went from being a great show to merely a good one because of how uninspired and lame the ending was. And I don't just mean the final episode, but by extension, the final season, and perhaps even the final two or three. Eh, whatever.

The Secret Garden

Recently I've tried to implement somewhat of a FIFO system on my backlog. That is to say, "first in, first out," which essentially just means that the oldest items in the backlog should be the next ones I attempt to log. I like that I'm semi-seriously pushing myself to do this because it's forcing me to read and watch and play the stuff I've been putting off for years instead of just jumping right into my most recent acquisitions. Unfortunately, the book backlog is front-loaded with all sorts of books I had as a kid (or at least as a young teenager) and we all know just how little I've enjoyed those for the most part. That said, The Secret Garden wasn't half bad. I was especially dreading this one, actually. Not just kid-lit, but little-girl-lit, and little-girl-lit from a hundred years ago to boot. The daunting prospect was enough to make me shudder. But there's actually some decent characterization and story-telling going on here, and that was more or less the best case I could envision going in. My girlfriend claims this is an old favorite of hers, but when she asked me the other night what part I was on, she seemed to have very little memory of the characters or plot. Oh well. Sometimes we remember liking things as kids, but have no recollection of anything else about them, I guess. Like, how many Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episodes did I see? Easily dozens and possibly a hundred. But if you asked me to summarize the plot of any one of them, the best I could do would be struggling to recall more information about this one episode where Shredder and his baddies rigged a "free pizza" contest so that the turtles would win a booby-trapped pizza prize. Also there were some episodes with aliens (I think) who called themselves the "Dudettes" or something like that. As in, female dudes. Look, clearly, it's hazy. (Did Yogi Berra ever say something like that? He should have.) Wow, that got away from me fast. Anyway, I rarely "grade" things on Back-Blogged, and when I do I try to do so on a curve. ("Considering the genre and the time period..." and so forth.) But in terms of overall enjoyment and entertainment and enrichment, this 23-year-old man in the year 2011 would have to give The Secret Garden something along the lines of a D+. But when the expectation is an F, that's something to be proud of. So, rest easy in that grave, Frances Hodgson Burnett. You've done all right by me. That said, I will never read A Little Princess. Ninja Turtle-loving six-year-old me hated that movie!

The Omnivore's Dilemma

It had been far too long since I'd read a nonfiction book; my last such logging took place back in April when I read Angela's Ashes. My last science-y book was Malcolm Gladwell's Blink last November. And my last truly science-based book was Fearful Symmetry, way back in June of 2010. Clearly, I was overdue to enrich my mind a bit with some concentrated knowledge. Now, this isn't the first book about food that I've read, or even the first one I've posted about. But it certainly taught me a lot more about food and the 21st century American diet in general than Fast Food Nation did. Let me start off by explaining the title. Herbivores eat plants and carnivores eat meat. Neither needs to fret about what's on the menu on any given night because their diets are so specific, for the most part, and not very diverse. But omnivores have options. And human beings living in the modern day supermarket era have literally thousands of choices when it comes to what to eat for any given meal. The book's author, Michael Pollan, posits that especially here in America, where food is plentiful and diverse (unlike in third world countries) and where we have no real national cuisine (unlike, say, the French or the Italians), we have what appears to be a nation-wide eating disorder; nutritionists are constantly changing their minds over the right things to eat, and when and how to eat them, while new diet crazes spring up and fade away year after year. So what exactly is it that we should and shouldn't be eating? Pollan never really answers the question directly, but goes on to spend the majority of the book explaining in fascinating detail just where our food comes from. It should be no secret, of course, that most of our beef, chicken, and pork comes not from pastoral farms but from industrial meat factories of sorts which pump animals full of hormones to make them grow meatier in a shorter amount of time. But what actually surprised me is just how unnatural the very food these animals eat is. It's corn. Cows aren't supposed to eat corn, having evolved to get their nutrients from grass instead. They have a specialized organ called a rumen that allows grass to sit for a while and ferment into sugar for sustenance. Corn, already loaded with sugar, ferments into alcohol inside the rumen, and by the time most cows (70%) in the industrial food chain go to slaughter, their livers are failing. So 70% of our country's beef has come from terminally ill cows. I'm not particularly shocked or disgusted by this fact, but it's eye-opening all the same. They're fed corn because it gets them fatter faster than grass would, which increases meat output and turnaround time, and by extension, of course, profits on the bottom line. Plus, there's too much corn not to feed them corn; we're making way too much corn as a nation, and someone or something has to consume all of that corn! The book goes into great detail about corn itself, and its journey from very humble origins (a few tiny terrible-tasting kernels, unhusked, on an inches-high blade of grass) to backbone of the agriculture and economy of the world's only superpower, all via domestication and cross-breeding rather than natural selection. Corn is an ingredient (via high fructose corn syrup or xanthan gum or several hundred other derivatives) in nearly every processed food item in our diets. A typical meal at McDonald's is more "corn" than "not," with the soda's caloric source being 100% corn, the hamburger's being 50%, and the chicken nuggets' being 60%. Corn and soybeans (the former for carbohydrates, the latter for proteins) are two of the only crops being grown by most industrialized farms in America today. Again, kind of eye-opening. Or at least I thought so. So, what do you do to avoid eating tons of corn? And chemical fertilizer-grown pollution-causing corn, at that? You eat "organic." But Pollan spends just as much time pulling back the curtain on the organic "food chain" as he does showing us the unnatural mechanization of the corn-based industrial one. "Organic" is just a term owned and defined by the FDA, and you can still put certain amounts of artificial flavoring and synthetic additives into food and still call it organic. "Organic" just means, more or less, "not chemically fertilized or hormonally injected." That organic meat - grass-fed beef and free range chicken eggs - is better for human consumption than corn-fattened sick animal meat is hard to argue against. But is "organic" better for the environment? Maybe not. Because of factors like seasonal availability and ingredient rarity, you often need to truck animal feed halfway across the country just to make sure it comes from organic sources. And this, of course, pollutes the air with diesel exhaust. By the time I was finished reading the section on this "industrial-organic" food chain, it was clear to me that Whole Foods wasn't nearly as different from McDonald's as I had previously believed. For the third section of four, Pollan travels to a pastoral (ie, grass-based) farm in Virginia, where a hard-wrking family maintains a delicate but very natural balance of plants and animals, earning the admiration and recognition of locals and regional restaurants. But that's part of the problem with truly organic, old-fashioned farming. It's seasonal and regional. If it weren't for supermarkets and industrial farming, or at least lengthy transport routes, we couldn't eat red meat in the summer time or citrus fruits in New England. So while pastoral organic farming is great on a small scale level for certain parts of the country, it's clearly not an adequate solution for our current "national eating disorder." Finally, Pollan goes way old school and tries to create a meal like a hunter-gatherer would, killing a boar and gathering some edible mushrooms from the woods. He admits that it's just far too much work, not to mention entirely impractical; there's not enough fungi and wild game in the country to feed even a fraction of its populace. Pollan does spend a whole lot of space talking about how good and wholesome it felt to eat an entirely self-made meal, though. Ultimately, he has no answer for the titular dilemma. The industrial food chain is bad for people, animals, and the environment; the organic one is impractical for a nation as large as ours is; and the hunter-gatherer method is far too antiquated and ill-suited for 21st century America. But the lack of a definitive answer to the problem doesn't come off as pessimistic. Instead, I enjoyed the various things I'd just learned about the food I eat every day, where it comes from, and how I could (if I wanted to) take steps to improve my eating habits for my own health as well as that of my environment. Yeah, it's a bit cliche to take so simple a message away from a 400-page book about food economics, but at least it was an enjoyable read. Unlike the McDonald's-hating author of Fast Food Nation, Pollan never seems to be pushing an agenda or judging people for their dietary decisions. He admits to being a vegetarian, but still takes part in killing animals in the book both on the farm and in the wild; clearly, he's to trying to come off as "holier than thou"or food-snobby at all. Inspired by readers complaining that he'd never actually come up with any solutions on what middle Americans can do to improve their diets, Pollan wrote a follow-up book (do nonfictional works have "sequels?") called In Defense of Food that I'd like to try out sometime. But I've still got 32 unread books on my backlog, so... not yet. Not yet.

On the Road

I feel like On The Road is a book that people idealize. They read it and think "man, I was born in the wrong generation. If I was around in the fifties I would totally be at the forefront of the beat movement." Well I can say right now without a hint of cynicism that I would most certainly not make a good member of the beat generation. Frankly, I think these guys were assholes. On The Road is the mostly autobiographical story of a few cross-country roadtrips Jack Kerouac took with some friends in the late forties. It's written well enough and kept me interested, sure, but I can't get over how clearly these guys are examples how to NOT live your life. I mean, they're constantly drunk and on drugs, leading them to be assholes to strangers; they mostly get across the country bumming rides and using other people as their own personal resources; what little money they do have they gamble away fairly quickly; and most stunningly, Dean Moriarty, the character who protagonist Sal Paradise looks up to, has like four illegitimate kids by the end of the book, and no one ever calls him out on being a deadbeat dad. Maybe that's why they call it the "beat" movement? Okay, okay, this wasn't nearly as infuriating as Naked Lunch, another major work of beat literature, but I guess I'm just miffed that this became such a cultural icon. It's fun to think of a life spent on constant road trips, but the lesson of the book really felt like "don't care about anyone else but yourself," and that just aint something I can get behind.

Step Up 3

I am drawn to crappy action movies like it's my job. Bad Boys II? Awesome. Transformers? My favorite. GI Joe? So great. There is something about the Step Up movies that warms the cockles of my heart. (Disclaimer: I do not know what the cockle of my heart is.) I loved Step Up 1. I loved Step Up 2 even more. And here comes Step Up 3. Claiming to be the best of them all. Well lemme tell you, it was great.

I was trying to decide why I loved these movies, and I think it's because they are so simply predictable. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl love to dance. Boy and girl bond over dance. Boy and girl encounter a hitch in their ultimate dancing plan. Cue sad montage of pouty faces and lonely stares. Enter resolution. Joyful reuniting. Epic dance finish. Scatter the entire movie with some hilarious one liners and awesome dance steps, you have the recipe for an awesome freaking movie. And Step Up 3D didn't disappoint. If any of the above plot line interests you, I would highly recommend it. Because you know what? It's awesome.

Alex Cross's Trial

Have no fear! My #1 homeboy Alex Cross did not get arrest, and no, he is not on trial. Phew. That would be a crazy plot line. Oh wait, they already did that. See Pop Goes the Weasel. Anywho, the last book was about violence in Africa. This is about lynchings in the South. Our boy Cross, writes a memoir. Not his memoir though. One about his great Uncle Abe. No, it's not Lincoln. It's Abraham Cross. A black man growing up in Eudora, MS where lynchings are common. This book was so out of pattern (see the additional author) that I didn't want to read it. Would it still count as reading the whole series? I thought so. Steve made me doubt my commitment though, and so I read it.

Turns out, it wasn't bad. It was about a white man from DC who under the orders from Teddy Roosevelt he goes to his home town of Eudora to investigate the lynchings. Not only does he investigate, but he stirs up enough trouble, that he himself is lynched. He survives though and lives to fight the white men on trial who "didn't shoot and kill a black man". Sure. He is unsuccessful in his defense but he makes a lot of friends and gets support for a larger cause. Heartwarming.

Despite not wanting to read it going in, it went quicker than I thought. It was a good book and a much needed break from our hero, Alex Cross. Two more to go!

Tron

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L.A. Noire

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 3 is one of my favorite games of all-time. It pioneered the entire genre of open-world gaming and left an indelible mark on tons of video games that came after it- for better or for worse (think the awful open world of No More Heroes). The ability to do whatever you want, and actually have more fun just tooling around and not bothering to play the main campaign was something I really hadn't seen before. Rather than speed from mission to mission, I spent countless hours plowing through pedestrians, attempting daredevil car jumps, and killing myself in creative ways. But since then, aside from the inspired DS game GTA: Chinatown Wars I haven't spent much time on any other games from that series. Frankly I think the problem is that Rockstar got too big for its britches. They started making games gigantic, with no sense of pacing, and filled them with repetitive crap rather than interesting mini-games. Tons of people kept eating it up, but I remained unimpressed by GTA: San Andreas and GTA IV. Then Rockstar came out with Red Dead Redemption, which I still haven't played, but I've seen glowing reviews online yet mixed reviews from friends of mine who have played it. I'll eventually get to Red Dead, but for now I was content to play the newest Rockstar-developed game: L.A. Noire. And while I wasn't as big a fan as my roommate Ryan, I still found L.A. Noire a solid gaming experience throughout. The first thing to talk about is the graphics. They're good. Like, reeeeally good. Scary good graphics. There was some sort of hullabaloo over the face capturing technology that got used, and it doesn't disappoint. When so much of the game comes down to reading people's faces, it's important that they look natural and fit in with the feel of the rest of the game. And they do. We have a few famous faces here as well- or at least familar ones. Everyone knows that Mad Men's Ken Cosgrove (no idea what the actor's name is) is the main character, Cole Phelps. But in addition I counted at least 4 other Mad Men actors present. It's not quite pulling Martin Sheen in Mass Effect 2, but L.A. Noire has an excellent cast of acting talent. Second, the gameplay. As I said before, I lamented the fact that Rockstar had gone for such a "bigger is better" mentality with their recent games, and was worried about the fact that a sizable chunk of Los Angeles was supposed to be recreated here. Well, my fears were unfounded. The gameplay here doesn't stress "ooh"-ing and "aah"-ing over the landscape they worked so hard on, but on the mysteries themselves. After the first few cases I found myself fast-travelling everywhere, and it really helped keep my interest during some of the longer cases. Solving mysteries can unfortunately be a little simplistic- as long as you can get from one point to the next, there's no real way to lose. Finger the wrong bad guy? There's no noticable penalty. Miss an essential clue? It's ok, it didn't matter much in the first place. The only "game over" screens come from specific action sequences where you might lose a fleeing suspect, or be spotted by someone you're trying to secretly tail. Even these can be skipped if you mess up a few times in a row. So there's not too much at stake during your average case. A few of the cases themselves are duds, but for the most part they make up some interesting multi-case storylines- you might find yourself trying to end a drug war on the vice squad, on the hunt for a serial killer, or during the climactic finale unravelling a huge (and satisfying) government conspiracy based on a few housefires. A few times my interest waned, mostly during a series of murder investigations that all ended up pretty similar, but the ending to each set of cases makes up for it all. Overall the game has its ups and downs- the downs are never too bad, and the ups are especially high. While I don't think this will be a game of the year for 2011, it certainly seems to be one of the better ones, and anyone looking for some high-quality sleuthing should give it a shot.

Cross Country

You got it! Another Patterson Cross masterpiece. Instead of telling you about the plot, I'm going to tell you about how this book paints Africa. Cross goes to Africa. He immediately needs to give someone money as a bribe to explain anything to him. Then he gets kidnapped. By people that seem like the police. Then he is shoved in a jail where he is deprived water, tortured, and completely mistreated. He is released through a bribe. Not after they stole all his money. He then travels to other parts of Africa where he must bribe people at every road stop. Then he is brutally attacked by a teenage who works for a big time mob boss / diamond smuggler / African drug lord. The teenagers beat him up and almost kill him, thankfully he escapes the teenagers. He meets a journalist. The journalist's entire family is murdered because of her story. Then she and Cross are brutally beaten and taken back to the hell jail. Africa and the American embassy kick him out of the continent for causing too much trouble.

This paints a bad picture to me.

The Social Network

This movie was critically acclaimed. From an outsiders perspective, it didn't seem to fit with the Oscar type of movie, but that's what you get when you expand the category to ten movies. Pity vote! But seriously, this movie was actually really good. I was entertained the entire time. Not only was I not bored at any point in the movie, I was left wanting more of the story when it finished. I'm not sure if it's because Facebook has become a part of every day life, but it was just interesting. Jesse Eisenberg was just what you pictured: a Harvard drop out future billionaire.... a nerdy but somewhat cocky geek. He programs for fun. He just wants to be the next big thing (he still is). Other comments: I had no clue who Eduardo was despite him co-founding Facebook. Yea, the movie explains this. Also, JT plays Napster founding cool guy, Sean Parker. Heard some real life stories about him, and his acting sure fit the bill. He's better at dancing though. 'Nuff ramblin'. Watch the movie, yo.

Dog Day Afternoon

I know it shouldn't be surprising, but damn. This was a really good movie! Based on a true story and set in the post-Vietnam anti-establishment mid-'70s, Dog Day Afternoon is about a bank robbery that goes wrong right away and results in an all-day hostage situation. Al Pacino and John Cazale wind up bartering with authorities and releasing hostages one by one for favors from the police and FBI, who have them surrounded. The result is an almost-always tense but also fairly humorous standoff. By the middle of the movie, the bank teller hostages have all befriended their captors and want them to get away with everything. So do a number of civilians outside watching everything unfold, because again, this is the anti-establishment post-Vietnam era in which plenty of people wanted to see nothing more than the little guy pulling one over on the authorities. The acting is outstanding, and this is probably the purest and rawest and most charismatic I've ever seen Pacino be. And that, obviously, is saying quite a lot. The two-hour film kind of slows down and switches gears about halfway through, when Pacino's character's true motives for robbing the bank are revealed, and all of a sudden this isn't just a tense thriller but also somewhat of an exploration of a Vietnam veteran's psyche. All in all, it ranks as one of the best 1970s movies I've ever seen, not that that's a very long or illustrious list. (Actually, the list is essentially John Cazale's filmography: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Shit, that guy went out on top. Like Cobain, except instead of Courtney Love, he was getting it on with twenty-something Meryl Streep.)

Johnny Tremain

Some time ago I boasted that I had finally finished every Newbery Medal winner in my backlog. That claim was premature, because for some reason, I never realized that this book was, in fact, a Newbery winner. Sigh. In all honesty, regardless of its Newbery status, I wasn't really looking forward to reading this book. Not because I thought I'd hate it, but just because I didn't have a whole lot of interest in reading a coming of age tale set in the 1770s and written in the 1940s. I'd already seen the movie back in middle school and didn't remember the tale being anything out of the ordinary. And that more or less sums up this novel. Ordinary. Nothing I'm angry I "wasted time" reading, but certainly nothing I'd ever tell another person to look into. Actually, as far as young adult novels set in Boston during the American Revolution go, I much prefer April Morning, for what it's worth. (But then, I read that book back in middle school. Who knows whether or not I'd enjoy it today?) At the very least, I'm now definitely done with my Newbery winners and only have four or five more young adult books to go.

Double Cross

Jeez I have read far too many of these books. I liked this book. The killer was crazy and made each murder a show for the audience. He is in conversation with Kyle Craig, the Alex Cross bff turned serial killer. So ya know, in typical Cross fashion, Cross gets the girl, gets the bad guy, and leaves mostly unharmed. I would write more about this book. But I don't want to. Sorry Steve.

Julie & Julia

Before we begin, every time I upload a picture Chrome makes the pop up window hide. I don't want it to hide! I want it to pop right up. How upsetting.

This movie, as you can see, is based on two true stories. Story 1: Julia Childs learns to cook in France and wants to publish a book a la the Joy of Cooking for American women who want to learn French cooking. So she must first learn French cooking! How neat! (We all know how this story ends)

Story 2: Meet Julie. It's Amy Adams looking less attractive and more worn looking with short hair. Her boyfriend makes her move to a crappy apartment and instead of being a writer she is stuck in a telemarketing esque job.

Enter Julia! Julie is all like, "I never complete my goals, wahhh." So she says, I'm going to cook through Julia Childs' cookbook in 365 days. And dangnabbit, she does! She blogs about it and gains many followers. The New York times even does a piece on her and she gets oh so many book offers!

It's really a happy story all round. I must say Meryl Streep was fabulous. I really don't know if Julia Childs was that eccentric, but Meryl played it to the tee if so. She was so enthusiastic and eager to learn. She also had a great accent. Amy Adams plays a great frustrated twenty something. She really comes into her own. I thought this was a very fun well done movie. Nuff said.

The Wire: Season 5

And there it goes. I've just completed what is arguably the greatest TV drama of all time. And hell, I think I might even be someone who falls in the camp making that argument. This is especially incredible given that I found the first season underwhelming and the second one even less impressive. Most TV shows peak somewhere in the second or third season. But it took The Wire five full seasons to tell its story in full. And boy, does this story seem complete. Or completely open-ended. Maybe both; the game is the game and the systems and institutions portrayed by The Wire are broken. Players from all sides will continue to take advantage of this corruption and misguidance long after individual people are forced out of their roles through death, incarceration, or retirement. It's all connected, and cyclical, and life goes on. Creator David Simon alwyas claimed that Baltimore itself was the main character of The Wire, and that it only served as a specific (and especially bad) example of the American city in general, and by extension, America. Having soaked up all sixty episodes over the past year or so, what impresses me most is the patience with which Simon told these stories and connected everything together. It's as realistic a fictional TV series as I've ever seen and yet it's incredibly heart-breaking and depressing and even, at times, darkly, darkly hilarious. And it earns every single emotion it elicits out of you; this isn't just a show where a B-character can die while sad piano music is playing and it tries to cram tragedy down your throat. No - those who die in this show, or get axed, or arrested, or injured, or whatever, they do so in cold silence and are never seen again in flashbacks or dream sequences. Just a fantastic show overall and I absolutely can't wait for friends and my own girlfriend to give it a try. It's overwhelming at first, and more "work" to get through than any show you've probably ever seen. (Although I've heard Game of Thrones throws about fifty characters and ten plot lines at you from the get-go, too.) But damn, is it worth it. Just follow my own trajectory of Wire season reviews here on Back-Blogged and see for yourself. But yeah. Great series, great season, great ending. Shows like this one just don't come around often enough.

Cross

Hola Senoritas, I come to you bearing Cross. Alex Cross. Very original title the twelfth book in the Alex Cross series. Let me give you a hint, Patterson got lazy, and the next 5 books also have the name Cross in the title. It's like he got tired of writing the same story over and over.

I kid I kid. I really do enjoy the books, otherwise why would I still be reading them. This is one of the better Cross books in recent memory. One piece of Cross' history that is vital to how he functions daily is that his wife was murdered shortly after they had their second child, and he was never able to solve the case. In this book, you find out.

The story starts with why Cross wife is killed. It is a flashback from the murderers point of view. His name is the butcher, and he is a mob hitman. He regularly rapes girls and then threatens them with pictures of people he killed. They either die or never speak of it again. One poor victim confides in Cross' wife, a social worker. Cross, meanwhile, on another case, is investigating some mob hits and actually sees the butcher in the middle of a hit. The butcher goes after Cross and kills his wife. Flash forward, Cross and Sampson are investigating a series of rapes in the Washington area.

I won't bore you with the entire middle of the book, but Cross gets his man and avenges his wife's death. The shocker, his best buddy Samspon knew the killer the entire time but could never get to him. Oh, and Cross gets shot. He is still risking his life all the time.

Good book. Fun murder case and some Cross history. Seven posts left!

Parks and Recreation Season 1

What to say about Parks and Rec? I had seen episodes of this show during season one and two, and my only defining thought was "man Amy Poehler is annoying". I had a preconceived notion / hatred of her from SNL so this is probably why I thought that. Steve promised me during season 3, that Amy Poehler was really tuned down and by virtue of moving in with a person who watches this ever week, I eventually saw more episodes. And ya know what? I liked it! The characters are funny and adorable, including DJ Roomba. So I gave it a shot and started with season 1.

Because I had seen some of this before, I was really waiting for the characters that I knew and loved from the episodes of season three I saw. Like sweet Ann, her and Leslie aren't even friends at the beginning of season 1. But they're like besties now! Anywho, this show is very good. Ron Swanson is great. April is funny in her own way. Tom (Aziz) is great. And Leslie really grew on me. I don't like Mark because I love Ben, but hey, shit happens. Also, Louie CK makes a guest appearance, and he's adorable! Yes, adorable!

Overall, I would recommend this show to anyone. It's an easy watch. And you get to hear a song about a pit.

The Remains of the Day

I read The Remains of the Day about a week ago, on a flight from Ohio back to Massachusetts, but never got around to writing up a post about it. I guess it just didn't have much of an effect on me. I had heard of the basic plot before- Stevens, a butler in England on a cross-country drive reflects on his service for his former employer, Lord Darlington, and comes to realize that the man was a Nazi sympathizer in the years leading up to World War II. Really though, the backbone of this book is the professional and romantic relationship between the butler and the head housekeeper, Miss Kenton. The two spend years upon years together in Darlington's service, and while the stuffy butler Stevens insists that they stay professional at all times, there are clearly some deep-rooted feelings for eachother that went unrealized until Miss Kenton leaves the house and marries another man. It's hard to sympathize with Stevens for his loss, especially since he likely would have never made a move. I guess the whole point of the book was to show how horrible it is to lead a butler's life dedicated to professionalism and unquestioning loyalty- Stevens loses the girl, and eventually realizes what a terrible person Darlington was the whole time. Throughout the novel he adds in details of what it means to be a truly great butler, and while they start of noble and dignified, they end up sickening and sad. I guess we should all take Kazuo Ishiguro's advice and not become butlers. Ok, got it. Moving on...

Eastbound & Down: Season 2

I really enjoyed the first season of Eastbound & Down, and was looking forward to last fall's sophomore effort. But I dropped out after four of seven episodes. I just wasn't enjoying the show as much as I had the first time around. It was probably a combination of a lot of factors - raised expectations, slightly diminished quality, a crowded primetime TV schedule on Sunday nights, etc. Whatever the cause, I cut bait and said "I'll wait for the DVD." And now, here's the DVD. And it was well worth the wait. Freed from the chaotic Sunday night autumn TV grid and long after expectations have faded, Eastbound & Down's second season ended up being a real pleasure to watch. Still not as good as the first season, but decent enough for me to be glad I spent my time watching it. And isn't that all we can ask from any TV show? Also, in Fall '10 me's defense, the final three episodes were better than the first four. This show isn't for everyone and the humor is pretty sophomoric and crude, but in a very self-aware way; we're not laughing with Kenny Powers, but at him instead. So if "semi-ironic redneck comedy" isn't something you can believe in, you might as well avoid this show. Otherwise, I do think it's worth looking into. Thirteen half-hour episodes are all there've been so far, and Wikipedia says (so take it with a grain of salt) that the upcoming third season will be the last. That means it's a low commitment! At any rate, it's nice to finally have some closure on the season of television I started ten months ago, but I can't even pretend I've been dying to see how things turned out. I need to remind myself I have the "wait for the DVD" option more often.

Mary Mary

What's that? You thought I stopped reading the James Patterson Alex Cross series which I have written far too many posts on? NEVER (at least until the series is over). This book was fine. Good. Kept me reading to find out the ending, which was unexpected if I may add. Ok, let me rephrase, it wasn't completely unexpected. In books like this, generally you have always met the murder, otherwise then they can't really surprise you. Because if you haven't met the person, you can't dismiss them as a character. But I did not see this person coming.

So a murder is killing famous people in LA, mutilating their faces, and leaving children's stickers. Naturally all fingers point to.... Mary Smith a lonely housewife. So the police arrest her ass and she raves about her children. The weird part... she doesn't have any children?! This lady is cra - zay. Alex Cross, being the master investigator he is, traces her identity to a mental institution in Vermont where she was institutionalized after killing her children. Bad news bears.

I won't even bore you with the details of Alex Cross coming out victorious. All I can say is, he may have been hurt, but he sure came out on top. That a guy.

The Proposal

Today, Steve tried to kick me out of the back-blog. I understand his concerns, but I object! His biggest concern: I have a back-log of items that I have backlogged. AKA I have 11 completed items that I have not posted. I know I suck. But I am on board with the back blogs goals! To complete items! Hoorah! Because I don't have a huge physical backlog, mine extends to movies I have seen and Kindle books. But that doesn't matter, yo. I'm on board. And I'll do my best to get through my backlog of backlogs. COMMENCE

Enter Sandra Bullock. Bitchy over achieving Canadian publisher. She's successful. She's beautiful. She's mean. And she has no personal life to speak of. But, wait, what's that? Ruh roh! She's being DEPORTED! That's right! Get your Canadian butt out of the states Miss. Bullock.

Enter Ryan Reynolds. Sandra's devoted assistant hoping to breaking into the publishing industry. What brings these two together? Love and marriage. Anywho, it's not really love and marriage. Sandra B. is all like, marry me assistant so I can stay in the country. And he's all like, nuh uh girl, what's in it for me? And she's like, fine. promotion!

So now they only have to convince the US that they actually love each other and this isn't a fake deportation marriage. So they take a little trip to Alaska where Ryan Reynolds family is super rich and super nice. They are convince why he is dating his awful boss. Even more confused when they find out they are engaged. Regardless, they are on board because they are super nice and love their son.

Can you guess how this movie ends? Not without their problems in the middle, but these two Razzy nominated cuties fall in love fo realz. The end.

Bluebeard

Purely by coincidence, the first six Vonnegut novels I read were also the first six (of fourteen) that he'd written. So I was long overdue for some latter day Vonnegut, and got my fix with 1987's Bluebeard, his antepenultimate novel. Although I'll never know for sure, I think I would have been able to tell that this book was written by an older Kurt Vonnegut than the other six I'd read even if I'd been oblivious to publication orders. The man has seldom been sloppy, but Bluebeard felt refined and immaculately constructed like none of his previous works had. Still present is the quick wit in short paragraph form, but the prose here read so much more rhythmically and methodically than it did in the earlier Vonnegut works. It seems almost like he'd completely mastered his own writing style at this point in his life. (And why not? He was 65 years old by now and had written eleven other novels.) Now, that's not to say that Bluebeard was my favorite of his books so far. It's definitely up there, but "up there" is a vague term when you're talking about the bibliography of one of my all time favorite authors. Know what? I'll worry about ranking his books against one another some other time. For now, I'll draw a comparison between this book and one of Joseph Heller's: Picture This. It's not because the books were published within a year of each other and it's not because each has a painter for a protagonist. It's because both novels feature a narrative that switches back and forth between the past and the present, making social observations and offering commentary on the human condition all along the way. I said that Bluebeard wasn't my favorite Vonnegut book, and after finishing it last night I was actually a bit put off by its ending. In lieu of a tragically ironic twist that symbolizes mankind's follies - a classic Vonnegut move - there's actually a pretty happy and heartwarming conclusion. But after sleeping on it for just one night, I've already "forgiven" the change up and come to embrace it as a key component of the story. After all, what's wrong with happy endings? Well, Entourage is, but still. Anyway, Vonnegut still has seven novels I've never read, but only one of them - Jailbird - is in my current backlog. I've got no specific plans to read it anytime soon, but at the rate I'm scarfing down this particular author, I'd take even odds that it'd be finished by Halloween.

Salt

Who is Salt? Honestly, after seeing this movie, I'm still not sure. This entire post will probably be a SPOILER ALERT so read ahead with caution. We start the movie believing that Angelina Jolie aka Salt is an American CIA agent performing as a spy in Russia. Then a Russian agent is captured by the CIA and says Russian spies were trained since birth to infiltrate the American CIA and kill the Russian president during the US VPs funeral. Here's where things got a little foggy for me. Why would Russians want to kill their own president? Regardless, this Russian guy accuses Salt of being a Russian spy who will do the killing. She then freaks out, escapes CIA headquarters, and evades them during a high speed chase. Dramatic. At this point, I still kind of thought Salt was innocent and not a Russian spy. Wrong! She sneaks into the VPs funeral and kills the Russian president. She's captured by the police, but don't worry, she's sneaky and a spy, so she escapes. She then rendezvous with her Russian "father" who trained her in the ways of deception and badassery. However, this here Father person is pissed that she married someone so he kills her husband. She is sad, and what do sad spies do? They kill everyone around them. She begins killing people with a vodka bottle. How very Russian. She then goes to the White House because apparently she is involved in an elaborate plot to fire nuclear missiles everywhere. Weirdness continue. The president is rushed to the bunker with a CIA agent but guess what? The CIA agent, Salt's former boss, is also a Russian spy. Seriously, I cannot get anyone's identity straight in this movie. What other plot twists can we have? Well, on the news, the two Russian spies see that the Russian president was actually only paralyzed with poison. So apparently Salt was a spy with a heart of gold and didn't actually kill the president. So I don't get it. She stops the nuclear attack and escapes.

But I don't get it. Was she a Russian spy? Yes. Was she a CIA agent? Kind of. Did she kill dozens of Russians? Yes. Did she love her husband? Yes.

I have no clue what her motives were. I think she's supposed to be a good guy. But I can only say that with 60% confidence.

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time 3D

I had played this game as a child and had never beaten it. For the most part this game was very familiar to me until about the last two dungeons where I got a bit confused and the game actually got difficult for me. After Replaying this game as an adult I can see why it often gets acclaimed as one of the greatest games of all time. It is just hard enough to be challenging while simple enough to be enjoyed by almost anyone. The various items make the puzzles fun and varied. It also has one of the best told stories of any game I have ever played.

The story continues with Link trying to save his precious Princess Zelda while concurrently saving the land of Hyrule from a dark enemy, namely Gannondorf. While some games in this series have implemented twists that involve link to travel from the light world and dark world to take on the same temples this games twist involves traveling 7 years into the future where a dark and bleak world has become of the land of Hyrule. The evil King Gannondorf has taken over the castle and destroyed most of the world.

The 3d effect and remastering of the games graphics was cool but unnecessary. I found that the 3d got in the way of fighting enemies and became dizzying at times. I found that after a short while I kept the 3d toggle in the off position until a cut scene of something cool happened and I would turn it back on for a short period of time. Now that I have beaten this game the Master Quest version has become available to me and soon I will have to re tackle this game with harder puzzles.

Brink

It's been 56 posts since I posted Pokémon White. I need to step my game up. At least 28 between this and my next post.

What can I be said about Brink that hasn't been said before in this ultra saturated FPS gaming community. We got some guys, they got guns and they have an enemy that is begging to be filled with bullets. So what did Brink bring to the table that you haven't seen before?It brought teamwork.

Brink is your everyday shooter, but doesn't let you play it that way. Mainly, you carry around your gun for self-defence. Every level isn't about kills or survival, but instead is about your objectives. Hack this computer, carry this briefcase, guard this check point, blow up this bridge, etc until you realize that each objective is the same. Defend your team and yourself. Sometimes you have to defend a door from having a charge attached to it, and if it is, remove it before it blows. Sometimes you have to crack a safe, so you and your team rush the safe, and while an Engineer tries to open it, defend him. You will die, and lose, if you are not with at least another solider. Lone wolfs die alone.

Speaking about wolves, you can look like Wolverine. Or Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad. Or a lot of different ways. You create your own character to use in the game, and he plays on both sides. The costumes and weapons work a lot like Rock Band. Gain experience, and unlock new shirts, armor, pants, hair and accessories. Weapons can have attached to them silencers, shields, bayonets, scopes and grenade launchers. Body size means a lot too. Big guys have the most health and can carry the most damaging guns, but their sluggish and can't parkour. Small guys can't carry anything heavier than a pistol, but their speedy and can climb over any jump and move over any physical obstacle. Medium guys are, well medium.

The story is mildly interesting. A self sustaining city floating in the middle of the ocean has gotten too many inhabitants to survive. Plus they lost contact with the rest of the world 23 years ago. So the 'Security' and the 'Resistance' are up in arms. The extra people, living in container houses on floating garbage, are nicknamed the 'Guests' and their leader, Brother Chen, thinks its time that they take control over the arc and its Founders. The Security team is lead by Caption Mokoena and he is responsible to keep the uninvited and and unwanted guests from being destructive with their protests.

This game got mixed reviews, and I see why. This isn't the shooter you really want. This is a shooter that's trying to be experimental with its gameplay. You don't play the game online for kills-streaks or survival, you play the campaign levels with other people. There is no online mode where you all spawn and run and shoot. Its the same objectives from the campaign, in the same levels. Of course you mix it up by playing both sides, but that soon can become stale. Thank goodness Bethesda feels bad about this, and promises DLCs to improve it. I received their first one free, which added new abilities to each class, and additional levels and costumes.

This game is going to be taking my attention for a long time, but I already know its not going to be one of those FPS that I will play for ever. Coming up soon will be my new computer and games like Sims 3, Minecraft, Spiral Knights and Team Fortress 2. My videogame backlog will be unprogressive for a while.

Look at the Birdie

I guess this is my second book in a row by the same author. But it had been so long since I last read some Vonnegut, I'm okay with double-dipping. Look at the Birdie is a recently released compilation of Kurt Vonnegut short stories- one of several posthumous releases- that's entertaining while it lasts and touches on some interesting ideas, but in the end feel decidedly un-Vonnegut. That's not to say it's bad or not worth reading, but the staples of Kurt's writing are mostly gone- most notably his sense of humor. Most of the stories, even when they are a little funny, eschew his laid-back style of story telling for a more serious approach. The first story, Confido, about a gadget that talks to people and agrees with everything in their subconscious is the only one that's obviously written by Kurt himself, while others are uncharacteristically optimistic (FUBAR, The Honor of a Newsboy), pessimistic (The Good Explainer, Look at the Birdie), or just plain directionless (A Song for Selma, The Nice Little People). There's plenty of good stuff to read here though. The high point to me is clearly Ed Luby's Key Club- clocking in at around 50 pages, it's a bit lengthy for a 'short story', but was a gripping, tense piece that reminded me of An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, minus the twist but with an even better ending. Still though, it's odd to see Kurt create such great tension- it wasn't long ago when he put asterisks next to character names in Galapagos to indicate which characters wouldn't live to see the end of the book. Despite the changes though, there were enough interesting ideas and well-told stories here that I'll be glad to check out the other posthumous works- Armageddon in Retrospect and While Mortals Sleep.

The Man in the Iron Mask

It would actually be correct to refer to this book as The Three Musketeers III, Part 3. That's a lot of threes. (Three.) After Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers, he followed it up with two sequels, uncreativlely titled Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. That third book, The Vicomte of Bragleonne, is so long that it is typically split into three parts published and sold separately in the modern day. And so the 600-page third part of The Three Musketeers III is none other than this book, The Man in the Iron Mask. Now, I'd never read The Three Musketeers, let alone its sequel or the first two parts of Vicomte, so from the start this book was a challenge for me. Not because the prose was heavy or antiquated or the subject matter difficult to understand, but because all of the main characters had already been introduced in the previous 2,000 pages or so of the Musketeers saga. So when long time friends and fellow musketeers D'Artagan and Aramis found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict, it meant nothing to me. That said, I'm not regretting skipping out on those first 2,000 pages or so. Maybe someday I'll return to the original Three Musketeers story (an old classic), but at the moment my backlog is Dumas-free and I'll try to keep it that way for a while. Anyway, let's get down to brass tacks. This book was slightly disappointing, but that's primarily because it didn't match my expectations. Again, I didn't even know this was a continuation of The Three Musketeers until I began reading it. But I did expect the titular man (in the iron mask) to be an important character in the book. I wasn't expecting a deep psychological thriller or anything, but I figured there'd be something symbolic in there about a man slowly losing his sense of identity after he's sentenced to spend the rest of his life wearing an iron mask. Instead, after said sentence is decreed, we never hear from him again. The very cover image seen above depicts a scene we never see in the book; we only know the man in the iron mask before he is doomed to wear the iron mask. Oh well. Misleading title and cover aside, this was a decent story. People who've read the blog before know that I've dabbled with plenty of 19th century literature here and that I've had very mixed results. This was certainly one of the easier-to-stomach pieces from that era. Maybe it's because the original was written in French and translations hold up much better than 19th century English. Either way, a decent but ultimately forgettable story. Do it right and start with The Three Musketeers and only keep going if you feel particularly attached to the characters and the writing style.

Back-Blogged Turns Two

At the outset of August in 2009, Sween and I decided to create a blog. We each owned plenty of video games we'd never beaten and books we'd never read. In addition, I had quite a few unwatched movies and TV seasons. So we figured we'd each make it a goal to finish them all and to post about each item as we ventured forth through our respective backlogs. We figured some of our friends would find the blog entertaining enough to give us at least a minuscule audience. And off we went.

Eventually, that minuscule audience became five additional bloggers. More and more frequently, posts weren't about items we owned, but instead were about items we'd downloaded, borrowed, rented, or streamed on the Internet. The original focus of the blog gave way to more of a "book club" type of feel. But at the blog's heart and serving as its backbone, that goal of finishing off every last backlogged item remains alive and well. But just how well is it going? Two years in, I feel the need to evaluate things.

My own backlog has been broken down by media type (book/movie/television/video game) and posted for the world to see just under the title banner. So I won't repeat myself by posting it here as well. But I will look at some raw numbers and statistics.

When the blog began there were 29 books in my backlog.

One year ago there were 42 books in my backlog.

Today there are 32 books in my backlog.

Of the 42 books in my backlog one year ago, 22 remain, with 10 new additions. This means I was able to finish off 48% of last year's backlog and that I shrank my overall backlog by 24%.

When the blog began there were 31 movies in my backlog.

One year ago there were 11 movies in my backlog.

Today there are 7 movies in my backlog.

Of the 11 movies in my backlog one year ago, 2 remain, with 5 new additions. This means I was able to finish off 82% of last year's backlog and that I shrank my overall backlog by 36%.

When the blog began there were 11 TV seasons in my backlog.

One year ago there were 5 TV seasons in my backlog.

Today there are 23 TV seasons in my backlog.

Of the 5 TV seasons in my backlog one year ago, 1 remains, with 18 new additions. This means I was able to finish off 80% of last year's backlog and that I expanded my overall backlog by 360%.

When the blog began there were 77 video games in my backlog.

One year ago there were 66 video games in my backlog.

Today there are 61 video games in my backlog.

Of the 66 video games in my backlog one year ago, 49 remain, with 12 new additions. This means I was able to finish off 26% of last year's backlog and that I shrank my overall backlog by 8%.

The overall final number is a bit depressing. It's one. The sum total of items on my backlog one year ago was one more than the sum total of items on my backlog today. Oh well. Through seven months of 2011, I'm at a net reduction of 49. So, I was at a net increase of 48 in those final five months of 2010. December alone set me back 46 when I went balls to the wall on a bunch of bargains on Amazon and elsewhere with Christmas gift cards. Never again! Quality, not quantity!

In closing, I'll share one final statistic. Collectively, we logged 402 items in the blog's first year. In this past year, we've logged just 322. But that's still an average of nearly a post a day. I think the blog is going strong after two years. Here's hoping for however many more it takes for me to finish off my backlog!

Happy anniversary, everybody.

The Walking Dead

A few years ago while I was back on the east coast over the winter, J drove me into Boston to hang out with Greg and all those kids. I remember being in Evan Dean’s house when I found this stack of books sitting over his mantle for The Walking Dead. With my affinity for zombies and all, I had to take a peek at something with this kind of a title. It looked amazing, and soon Evan wandered over explained how awesome the series was, that I needed to read it… alas, I never did--

--and for good reason, too. I’m an American. I don’t read. I watch. And what I’ve seen with series so far is absolutely great television. I mean, what is it with AMC? (Breaking Bad, from what little I’ve seen while in Guatemala it, is gripping as hell. It just doesn’t stop with the recommendations for Mad Men – it’s on Netflix now; I’ll give it a shot soon.) It’s like these guys have the Midas touch. Regardless, these guys clearly have another classic on their hands.

What’s really interesting, though, is despite it being a compelling watch and all, it’s really not that original. I mean, zombie shows have been done to death (ha!), so it’s difficult to really sprout any originality from it – unless it’s Shaun of the Dead. However, this show actually seems to flourish by exploring every possible zombie-scenario that’s been put out there. Our main character wakes up from a coma in a hospital post-apocalypse – this was done in 28 Days Later. Or finding the military base stationed underground – done in the original Day of the Dead. It would seem the next place they’ll hit will be a mall or something.

Easily, the best aspect to this is the acting. All actors, from what I can tell, are (were) basically no-names that exhibit outstanding performances. On top of that, it’s their interpersonal drama that keeps you hooked… well, that and it’s just fun as hell to see a mob of the dead swarming through desolate cities. Plus all the make-up effects are done by KNB studios. These guys originally got their start on Evil Dead II, so you know I love 'em.

I might be the last person here to have seen this, but if I’m not, I highly recommend this show. It’s only six hour-long episodes, so just do it already.