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.