End of Summer Report

As August concludes, so too does the summertime, for all intents and purposes; kids are going back to school, the daily temperature has begun a slow decline, and the local breweries have already pulled their summer seasonals in favor of autumn beers. I myself will be heading back to college in just a few days for what will (hopefully) be my final year of study. As I look back on the summer, I must admit, I'm both a bit impressed and a tad embarrassed by the amount of work I've already done on my backlog. But you see, dear readers, while the Back-Blog itself began in August, the actual quest has been going strong all summer long. In addition to the 13 books, 9 DVDs, and 11 video games listed in the annals of the Back-Blog, there were dozens of successful loggings that have as of yet been unmentioned here. For the sake of revealing the full summer's worth of progress, I'll list them here and now.

A triad of DS games that I had started, but never finished, were finally put to rest: Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger, and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. The Xbox 360 saw plenty of action as well, with the first Halo, both Gears of War games, Burger King's Pocket Bike Racer and Big Bumpin', the Xbox Live Arcade version of Worms 2: Armageddon, and Trivial Pursuit all getting beaten. On the Wii, I made closure with both Wii Fit and North American Hunting Extravaganza; on the GameCube, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. That's 13 more games.

Perhaps even more impressive and pathetic was my DVD count. I finally got around to killing off two trilogies, the original Ninja Turtles and Terminator ones, while knocking off the first film from a third: Back to the Future. Additional films included Gone Baby Gone and the computer-animated TMNT. That right there is 9 DVDs. But wait until you see the list of TV seasons I knocked off: two Dexter seasons, two 30 Rock seasons, and a year's worth each of Weeds, Friday Night Lights, Entourage, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, and Family Guy. Baby... that's 10 more right there.

In terms of reading, there was Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and not much else; my booklogging quest was a late inspiration by my fellow Back-Blogger, Sweeney.

When my summer began, it was full of possibilities. Now, 14 books, 28 DVDs, and 24 video games later, the potential is gone. Some would call it a wasted summer. No doubt, my having a "life" to speak of certainly deserves to be called into question. But allow me to defend myself and my summer of logging, if only for one paragraph. Sixty-six completions is about two every three days. While this number seems high initially, let's consider what else I had time to do this summer. I had time to attend three Red Sox games. I had time to attend pick-up softball games almost every weekend. I had time for two rock concerts, half a dozen graduation parties, and scores of general social evenings with friends. I spent a long weekend in Maine with my grandparents. I spent another touring Niagara Falls and Toronto with my family. A third weekend was spent hiking and drinking at a friend's lake house. I had time to prepare for and take the GRE. And on top of it all, I worked 40 hours a week. In my eyes, this is as complete a summer as one could hope for. The logging and blogging were just occupants of my spare time, and dare I say it, constructive ones at that.

Like any good progress report, this reflection ends with a question for the future. Specifically, what's on tap? I've just bared the discard pile for all to see; perhaps it's only fitting that I show a sneak peak of my current hand as well. I'm currently reading American Lion, a biography of Andrew Jackson. It's a very interesting and intimate read, and as can be expected, it's a slow one. I want to take my time with it, so don't expect it to be the next book you see me make an entry for. Other likely targets on the horizon include the remaining two Narnia tales, a Joseph Heller book or two, and maybe, just maybe, a 700-page beast. Shitty children's books are on hold for the time being, as I can't quite bring myself to taking any of them to college with me. As far as DVDs are concerned, you can be sure to expect a number of TV shows coming up; we're in TV on DVD release season, and the purchases are bound to come in rapid fashion. I'm currently splitting time between Dexter's third season with my girlfriend and Deadwood's second without her. But plenty more abound. Video games are the hardest for me to predict, as I'm in the middle of at least a dozen at any given time. I tried playing Civilization IV: Colonization just the other day, but quickly found that I will need to wait for a better computer before that game becomes worth playing through. Worms Blast is a puzzle game for the GameCube that I played most of the way through the other night before getting hopelessly stuck on the penultimate puzzle. As of right now, my plan is to bring only my GameCube to school with me. This is where the bulk of my gaming backlog lies, largely due to my several compilations on the system. If I do indeed follow through with this plan, expect to see more Sonic games completed, in addition to the pair of Metroid Primes. I'm sure the DS will also find its way back to school with me, and I'll be sure to bring some Xbox games as well because my roommate will be sure to bring his 360 back as well.

How will the transition back to school affect my progress? My instinct is negatively. The fast pace and rigorous courseload of my senior year as an electrical engineer will certainly play a large role in this planned decrease, but so to will the different people and atmosphere on and around campus. I will apologize in advance for going weeks or even full months without logging a single thing. I can only hope that in my absence, dear old Sweeney will continue his unwavering pace of one or two loggings per week; I may have been far more active this summer, but once Labor Day hits, this will really become Sweeney's blog for quite some time. I can only promise that, slowed as I may be, I'll never lose sight of the ultimate goal: 100% completion across my bookshelves, DVD racks, and game catalogues.

34 books, 40 DVDs, and 72 video games remain backlogged. The battle is far from over. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Well spank my ass and call me Charlie; I really enjoyed this Chronicle of Narnia. There was character variety, character development, and a wonderful absence of the black-and-white, wrong-and-right storytelling methods I've come to associate with C. S. Lewis. Set at sea and on several small islands, this book really felt like an adventure, which is what a fantasy book should feel like, in my humble opinion. I would dare to compare it to the Odyssey, as well as to both boat-themed Zelda games. Aslan, rather than serving his usual role as the in-your-face moral police, is much less of a presence this time around, despite appearing several times. Characters struggle with greed, vanity, and jealousy, and for the first time I can remember in a Narnia book, mature themes like self-sacrifice and civic duty are brought up. One character, a talking mouse, was probably my least favorite in Prince Caspian. Yet he fits perfectly into this high seas adventure tale, and his story concludes very appropriately. So does Prince Caspian's. In a way, you could call the tale a coming-of-age one for his character. Also, only two of the four Pevensie children return this time around, which really makes for addition by subtraction, as they were all essentially the same character. The addition of their cousin Eustace into the cast of characters was a solid one, as he provides a good amount of comic relief and also a decent little development arc of his own. This was my favorite Narnia book since the chronological first one, The Magician's Nephew, and I read that one almost a decade ago, so it's tough to say which one I actually liked more. Still, with just two Chronicles left, I think I'm finally starting to enjoy the series the way so many others do. Of course, the last two could be terrible. We'll see.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

It wasn't long ago at all that I decided to play the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. Now, its sequel has been checked off the backlog. I must say, the playing experiences were nearly identical. There's still no password or game save system, but once again, a level select code enabled me to beat this one with no real hassle. The biggest change this time around is the debut of Tails, Sonic's trusted two-tailed fox of a partner. There's a 2-player option, but if you're lone wolfing the game like I did, Tails will be controlled by the AI, and will mostly just mimic Sonic's movements. This is an added bonus oftentimes, because during boss fights, sometimes Tails will add an extra whack to your opponent, decreasing fight times. While I thought Tails was only an extra on-screen distraction when I began to play this game, by the middle of the game I was glad to have him by my side. For the final three levels, Tails is absent, and Sonic must take on Dr. Robotnik alone. There's really not much to say about this game that I didn't cover in my recent entry on Sonic 1. The frustration levels were pretty low, and a few of the zones were really, really fun to play through. However, by the last quarter of the game or so, some of the enemies just got ridiculous, and I was glad to see it end. As of now, I'm planning to wait a little while before dealing with Sonic 3; I'm enjoying these games so far, and I wouldn't want to ruin that by pressing my luck with a third in under a week.

Our Living Multiverse

This was one heavy book. And at 250 pages and bound in paperback, I don't mean that physically. Fred Adams has spent seven chapters bringing us from the beginning of time through the development of intelligent life. Never before have I seen astrophysics, atomic physics, and biochemistry so beautifully intertwined. Adams does his best to make his material understandable for the common man, but he doesn't go as far as dumbing down the information enough to put it in layman's terms. Because of this, I often found myself having to reread passages or at least taking them very, very slowly. I've actually been reading this book for a couple of weeks, interspersing a few of the chapters with the children's books you've seen peppering my late August reading list. Without daring to even try to explain any of what Our Living Multiverse has taught me, I'll give a few highlights in a nutshell. Here it goes. There are ten or eleven possible spatial dimensions. Our particular universe includes only three of them. Outside of our universe are many others. This entire network of space-time is called the Multiverse. The average lifespan of a universe is 10^-47 seconds, an unfathomably small amount of time. In fact, outside of our own universe, and before it was created, the concept of "time" is irrelevant. Still, while "time" began along with our universe 14 billion years ago in the big bang event, the raw mess of space-time from which it emerged has been extant forever, and always will be. While our sun and galaxy are by no means "special," our universe is; it has survived for 10⁶⁰ times as long as the average one, and is expected to expand forever, thus lasting forever. This infinite expansion is thanks to the presence of dark energy, which acts as a negative pressure. While gravity alone would eventually pull every piece of matter in our universe back together in a collapse of proportions as epic as the big bang itself, dark energy will instead always continue to stretch the universe. The universe itself will thus never die, but everything in it has a definitive lifespan. Protons themselves will decay into energy eventually, some trillions of trillions of trillions of years from now. Our sun will flicker out (after a brief stint as a red giant) in just 4 or 5 billion years. Our galaxy itself will collide and combine with the nearby Andromeda galaxy in just 3 billion years. In just 1.1 billion years, our sun will grow too bright and powerful for water to exist in its liquid form on Earth. Within the next million years, a red dwarf star may or may not come close enough to our solar system to severely alter our planet's orbit, destroying the delicate balance of seasonal change that most ecosystems thrive on. The planet could be ejected from its orbit altogether, careening off into empty space where all life on the surface would freeze over and die. Does this sound grim? It shouldn't. Human civilization spans back about 10,000 years at most. While our sun and planet may be middle-aged, we as a species are still in our infancy, much like the universe itself. Part of what made this book so great was that in addition to answering a lot of questions, it creates new ones, most of them unanswerable. Is there other life out there? Can we survive the end of the earth? Most importantly, while Adams never alludes to God or religion at all - something I commend him for doing - it was impossible for me, and I would think most people, to read the book without wondering about such concepts and their role in all of this. I think that atheists and the faithful alike can enjoy this book, so long as they can get over the whole creation story and be willing to accept a new one as, well, factually true. It's the most engrossing scientific book I've ever read, as well as the most epic in scope. I recommend it for any interested party, but be warned: it's not for those who don't want to put in the effort to understand what's being said. I'm not saying you need a PhD to comprehend what's going on, but I mean, even the most elementary understanding of quantum mechanics - quarks, wavefunctions, particle-wave duality - would be helpful. I don't know if this book changed my outlook on life in any meaningful or permanent way, but it certainly was engrossing to read and will be worth remembering. If you've got what it takes to handle it, give it a try. If not, you can always try a special on the Discovery Channel.

Hocus Pocus

I've sort of lost count, but I believe that this is the seventh Vonnegut book I've read, and unfortunately Hocus Pocus joins Welcome to the Monkey House in the short list of ones I didn't like. Like many Vonnegut novels, Hocus Pocus is written as a fictional autobiography, this time about Vietnam vet Eugene Debs Hartke. The primary focus of the novel is the period of his homecoming from Vietnam through the present, where he finds himself a hostage in a prison riot in upstate New York. Vonnegut's sarcastic wit is still here, as well as his ability to develop a plot covering a wide range of topics. What's missing here is the glue to keep it all together- I kept waiting for a conclusion that would tie together all the plots; plots that on their own would be interesting enough to carry their own seperate books- Eugene's family's spiral into insanity, his sudden questioning of his atheism, his loss of faith in America after the mess that was Vietnam- all of these stories individually felt worth reading about but never were fully developed enough to make a good enough impression. I'm torn- I feel like this book could have been improved upon either by making it longer to expand on some of these themes, or shorter by cutting some of them out entirely.

The final sentence of Hocus Pocus is one I've heard quoted a few times before, I'll share it here as it's not much of a spoiler: "Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe." While an interesting idea, this line did not feel like a fitting ending to the book- in fact, the only place I can apply it is that Hartke (and Vonnegut) think that America's intrusion in Vietnam was a mistake. First, that's something that's generally agreed upon by society, so Vonnegut wasn't saying much new. Second, that only applies to the Vietnam parts of the book- if this was the conclusion, what was the point of including the rest of Hartke's story? I guess it's just a bit frustrating, as the writing is still good in Hocus Pocus, and it's clear Vonnegut had a message to take away from it, I just couldn't figure it out.

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)

At 18 years of age, this game was the oldest one in my backlog aside from a few Mega Man games. I just finished it up on a lazy Sunday morning, and I can say that I'm impressed. It came out in North America a month or so prior to Nintendo's Super Mario World, the definitive platformer of my childhood, but I feel as though its graphics engine is superior. That doesn't mean this is a better game, however; no 2D platformer is superior to Super Mario World, and there's nothing more to it. In fact, in many ways, Sonic the Hedgehog can't even measure up to it. Super Mario World had over 100 playable levels. Sonic has 18. Super Mario World had a save feature that is noticeably lacking in Sonic. When I first died in Sonic and had to start all over from the very beginning, I thought I was in for a long and frustrating experience. After all, who wants to pound through 18 levels in one sitting without dying more than twice? There aren't even passwords; you're literally given three lives and told, hey, go beat this game. Extra lives are few and far between as well. However, lo and behold, the Internet provided me with a solution. No, I'm not speaking of an emulator or a flash version of Sonic. We're talking cheat codes. A simple pressing of up, down, left, and then right while on the title screen brings up a level selection screen. Beautiful. Using this, I was able to beat the game without the nerve-wracking experience of seldom being allowed to die. Whenever I did, I could easily just start the game again from whatever level I had just been on. Now, a purist would tell me that I have not truly beaten the game, for to do so, I would need not to use a cheat code. But you know what? Fuck that guy. I've got a list of games 70-deep that need beating. Is it worth it for me to play the game for a week straight worrying about every single chasm that needs jumping? Of course not. I'd much rather have fun with a game than get pissed at it. That's why I rarely play things on the hardest difficulty setting when prizes aren't involved, unless I'm really good at said game. Look, beating 70 games is enough of a challenge; I don't need to impress anyone, least of all myself, by never taking the easier way out of a few of them. As far as the game itself goes, I must say, it was a lot of fun. It felt great to finally play through a true classic that I'd only ever really seen bits and pieces of before. If you've never tried the old-school Sonic games, I do heartily recommend them. There's nothing like them out there: a fast-paced platformer with semi-linear levels. It may have taken me 18 years, but I'm glad I finally got around to playing through this game.

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine

Way out of left field, I decided to crack into my Sonic Mega Collection compilation for the GameCube, and started things off with this 1993 puzzle game. First things first: this is a total Dr. Mario knock-off, and Dr. Mario was somewhat of a Tetris knock-off itself. Yes, the Mean Bean Machine is a second-tier knock-off. The game consists of 13 stages (opponents, really) and, unless one was included in the original instruction manual, zero story whatsoever. The object of each stage is to make your enemy's board fill up before yours does. To clear pieces from your board, you must connect four or more of the same color. The foursome will vanish, allowing gravity to pull down other blocks (beans?) into the vacant spaces left behind. Now, the only way to beat the game is to get combos. To do this, you have to set up your beans such that when one foursome is made, another one is made in the aftermath. Getting a combo will send a black unclearable bean into each slot on your opponent's board. If you're able to string together a two-fold combo, three such beans will hit each spot. And should you be able to get a combo of a higher order than that, well, you pretty much instantly win the game. I beat Dr. Robotnik himself with one such four-combo. In one fell swoop, he was gone. It was really sort of anticlimactic. The thing is, while making big combos results in a quick win, not making big combos results in a loss. Your success at this game is completely contingent upon your ability to set up such dastardly chain reactions. Before realizing this, I could get no farther than the 2nd level on the normal difficulty setting or the 3rd level on the easiest one. I would spend five minutes neatly cleaning up my board, laughing at my opponent and his two-thirds-full mess, when suddenly, an avalanche of black beans would tumble all over my orderly grid. It was infuriating. So, yeah. This is a one-trick game. But then, what would you expect from a knock-off's knock-off? Don't play this game until and unless you have already played yourself bored with Tetris and Dr. Mario, in that order.

Madworld

A puchase in June, Madworld is one of the most recent and anticipated additions to my backlog. When I first heard about the concept for this game, people were hailing it as the most violent game to come out for the Wii. Having played some of the recent over-the-top violent Wii games such as Resident Evil 4 and No More Heroes already, I felt I had been jaded and wanted to see if the game would really quench my thirst for blood and gore. I'm happy to say, Madworld delivers and is really, really fun. The plot is that you're a guy named Jack who has stumbled onto an island full of crazies all taking part in a game show where everyone kills eachother to win. People hold some secrets and I think there was a government conspiracy in there, but none of that really matters, it just serves as an excuse to murder everyone in sight. The standard way of killing a guy is to chop him in half. This is something I've seen before in No More Heroes, but NMH never moved far beyond that- Madworld pushes creativity in your killings. Instead of just taking a chainsaw to a guy, why not first trap him in a barrel? Then with him unable to fight back, ram a pole through his skull, and then finish him off by throwing him into another enemy and have them both land on a bed of spikes. Stuff like this keeps the gameplay fresh all the way to the end. In addition to the fun gameplay, the overall atmosphere of the game is great. The entire world is black and white, except for red blood splatters. Combining this lack of color with onomatopoeia words displayed everytime a sound effect is made ("CLANK!" "SNAP!") and the whole thing feels like playing in a comic book. It's important to note that these gimmicks never really got in the way of the game or distracted me; this is a game first and foremost. Also adding to the experience are the two announcers- Greg Proops and John Dimaggio do some spectacular voicework and have a hilarious dynamic together. They made the credits worth watching, which I can't say about any other game I've played. Overall, the game may have been a little short, but I can't fault it for that, because that kept it from ever getting frustrating- the game never wore out it's welcome. While it won't got down as one of the top games I've played, I'll certainly remember Madworld as a fun but extremely violent experience.

Letters From Iwo Jima

After watching The Last Samurai two nights ago, last night I decided that it was time for another Japanese war movie. This one's often described as a "companion piece" to Clint Eastwood's other 2006 flick, Flags of Our Fathers. Having seen both, I can attest like the majority of people who have seen both that Letters is the better film. It was very moving and powerful in addition to offering plenty of insight as far as what it was like on the Japanese side of the conflict. However, it wasn't a perfect film. Sadly, it seems Eastwood couldn't bring himself to depict his country and their forces as the brute savages that the Japanese considered them to be. While there is one very strong scene depicting an American soldier acting without morals or kindness at all, you're never really left thinking that the Americans are evil, even as you see Japanese soldiers getting gunned down by them. Perhaps that's because you naturally empathize much more with the Americans, but in my mind, a fantastic movie can make you start to question what you thought you knew about human nature. A few of the Japanese generals are sympathetic to their American POWs and even their own men, but we learn via flashbacks that these officers spent time, prior to the war, in America. So what you take home is that all of the Japanese higher-ups are brutal death-lovers except for those who have been to the more modern country of their enemies. As I said, the movie is flawed in this regard; Eastwood has managed to lead me to believe that the Japanese are the good guys, but he really hasn't gotten me to view the Americans with the same fear and hatred that the Japanese did. Thus, I'm not completely sharing their point of view. A small part of the problem is that when we hear Americans shouting or talking to each other, we fully comprehend what they're saying. Here's a thought. What if Eastwood had made it such that, instead of comprehensible English, the Americans spoke in some sort of garbled pseudo-language? You know, like the one in The Sims. There was a scene in Lost once where we finally come to see things through the Korean foreigner Jin's eyes, and when the other characters speak, the audio is played backwards, achieving the garbled gibberish effect I'm talking about. That could have done wonders here. Still, despite all of my suggestions, I'm only saying that a film that's already an 8 could have been a 9. It's definitely better than Flags if you're only looking to watch one of the two, and I'd recommend it to anyone, especially fans of grenade-based suicide.

Super Mario Land

Released in 1989 for the original Game Boy, Super Mario Land is now 20 years old- just three years younger than me. Being by far the oldest game currently in my backlog, the question I wondered as I popped the cartridge into my GBC was "will it hold up?" I've recently replayed some old Mario games and some are just as good as ever (Mario Bros 3) while some feel unplayable by today's standards (Super Mario Bros). Unfortunately, it seems Super Mario Land falls into the latter category. Okay, "unplayable" is a little harsh, especially considering I not only played it but finished it, but it certainly hasn't stood the test of time. The game is divided into 12 levels, none of which are notably long, but many of which are notably short. Seriously, I think some of them were completed in under a minute, and the whole game took about half an hour to play through. Add to this the little replay value, and it seems like the whole game is very lacking. In addition, the boss fights were either mindlessly easy or frustratingly difficult. The first three are bosses who you can literally run right through if you have a mushroom; the last two take a lot of damage to finish off and require precise controlling- something you won't find in a several-generation old system. Luckily, I managed to finish the game off with a few lives left, only to see Mario and Princess Daisy take off in a rocket ship. How the hell does that fit in with the Mario canon? Oh well, at least I can put away my Game Boy Color now, comforted by the fact that I am done with all of the games I had for it.

The Last Samurai

A December 2007 purchase, this one's been backlogged for nearly two years. It's famous enough and critically acclaimed, so chances are decent enough that anyone reading this has already seen it. I think the hardest thing for me, with this movie, was buying Tom Cruise as a Civil War hero turned martial arts master. I think he's at his best as the fast-talking sarcastic guy, and really enjoyed his performances in movies such as Rain Man, Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men, and even Tropic Thunder. I can even deal with him as a man on the run or an action movie star, like he was in Minority Report, War of the Worlds, and the Mission: Impossible movies. But a soldier? A war hero? Give me Mel Gibson instead. Plenty of other aspects of the film seemed just a little too far-fetched or unlikely as well. I'll give away no spoilers, but let's just say that some extremely unlikely partnerships and alliances are made, on both the bedspread and the battlefield. Was this movie based on a true story? Not really; it was only even very loosely based on certain historical events. Now, I'm usually a stickler for historical accuracy whenever possible, but the creative liberties taken by the screenwriters of this film allowed for plot simplicity as well as a decent story. Ken Watanabe was great, however. He was really the driving force of the movie, for me, and without him, it'd have been a lot harder to empathize with or relate to the samurai of old Japan. For me, the movie was more or less everything I wanted it to be. But then, I didn't set my expectations as high as I could have. Worth a viewing, certainly. But is it in the same league as other contemporary war classics like Braveheart, Gladiator, or Saving Private Ryan? Probably not. Stick to the role of the frantic and cynical smartass, Tom; leave the war films for those more than five and a half feet tall.

Donkey Konga 2

I bought this one at the beginning of the summer, just before my project began. As such, it's been one of the frontmost games on my back burner. At least, it was. Having drummed along to every song in the game on the normal difficulty level, I feel I can call this game beaten. Gameplay-wise, it was exactly the same as its predecessor. I always felt that the Donkey Konga series never got any respect because the ten month span over which both games came out occurred back when everyone was already sick of the DDR craze, but before Guitar Hero came out and revived the "music" genre. Donkey Konga found itself wedged between eras where people could have cared about it, I reasoned. Having just played the second installment for a few nights, I can say I have changed my mind. Donkey Konga 2 was not unsuccessful because of its release date. It was unsuccessful because of its lackluster tracklist. Now, this game is only four years old, having been released in North America in May of 2005, but it feels as dated as any music game ever could. Take a look at a sample of the tracklist, and you'll see what I mean. There's Shaggy's "Boombastic" (1995). Smash Mouth's "All Star" (1999). Incubus's "Drive" (2000) and "Wish You Were Here" (2001). Pink's "Trouble" (2003) and Blu Cantrell's "Hit 'em Up Style" (2001) also appear. Butt rock enthusiasts will be happy to know that Trapt's "Headstrong" (2003) and Staind's "It's Been A While" (2001) were included. Into R&B? Enjoy TLC's "Unpretty" (1999) and Aaliyah's "Rock the Boat" (2001). And what collection of mediocrity would be complete without Good Charlotte's "The Anthem" (2002)? I hope you'll notice the underlying trend here; this game reeks of early 2000s stink. The reason no one bought it is because, well, who still liked any of these songs in 2005? The obvious counter-argument to make here is, "So what? Guitar Hero and Rock Band use songs from the past fifty years, and everybody loves those games!" The thing is, those games intend to be broad-spanning collections of all kinds of music. Donkey Konga 2 gives off the vibe that it aims to be a mixture of popular contemporary songs that'll be a big hit with the kids. I was somewhere in middle school when the majority of these songs came out, and was concluding my junior year of high school once this game did. Of course, that didn't matter; it wasn't even until after my junior year of college that I played this game anyway. In a way, I think that made the tracklist more bearable. Playing through loads of crappy songs that are 7 to 10 years old was a lot more entertaining than playing through crappy songs from 3 to 6 years ago would have been. It'd been ages since I'd heard any of the songs I was drumming along to, and that made for a slightly more enjoyable experience. It made it feel not so much like I was playing a 4-year-old game, but at times like a 10-year old one. Ironically enough, a miserable yesteryear tracklist turned out to age like a fine wine, ending up with more of a vintage air to it. So let's wrap things up. Do I think you should make it a priority to play this game? No. But if you've already got the first one and the bongos, it's not like it'll put that big a dent in your wallet, either. Besides, once you get into it, it's really pretty fun. Just get the show on and get paid, you rock star.

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

When I mentioned, about an hour ago, that you would find out about the sequel to Ratchet & Clank another time, I bet you didn't think that time would be this very time, right here, right now. Shocked? Yeah, that's right; I beat not just one PS2 game last night, but two PS2 games. Shawty what'chu think 'bout that? Alright. The gameplay and dynamics of Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando are identical to those of its prequel, which I have just discussed. The chief difference between the two is that this time around there are more weapons, more levels, and more upgrades. And that's what makes it a better game. There's also a little more creativity shown in the level designs and puzzles, as well as the in-game mini-games you must complete. A great feature that this game includes is the ability to import weapons from the first Ratchet & Clank into your arsenal in this one, albeit for a price. That was huge, as I bought back my old R.Y.N.O. from my original Ratchet save file early in the game this time around. Plus, there's a RYNO II. I now had two beastly ultimate weapons, which meant that ammunition was only half as scarce and levels were only half as long. I mentioned earlier that all I had to do to "beat" Ratchet & Clank last night was conquer the final boss. The exact same situation applied to this game. In fact, I find that in my own experience, this is hardly a rarity. Too often, before making it my mission to beat every unbeaten game on my shelf, I would play either the majority or entirety of a game and then immediately lose interest one day. Typically, this is due to reaching an annoying or frustrating point. A perfect example would be Metroid Prime, where I currently need to collect a bunch of artifacts from previous worlds in order to open the path toward the final boss. Put yourself in my situation as I played the game many years ago, and you'll see where I'm coming from. I'm done with all the fun stuff and exploration of new worlds. Now, it's time to retrace my steps for a few hours until I find some stuff I'm looking for. How fun is that? Can you even blame me for abandoning the game? "Hurdles" like this are not uncommon in gaming, and all too often a particular level, race, or boss fight will lead one to say, "Fuck it, I got plenty of other games." There's a fine line between challenging and frustrating, and while it varies from person to person and game to game, once it's been crossed, a game stops being fun. And why play a game if you're not having fun? You don't. Unless you have foolishly made it your mission to beat every single game you own. If there's on thing this summer of backlog cleaning has taught me, it's how to never give up, no matter how much fun I'm not having. After all, I had the discipline to toil all the way through Luxor 2. Beating the final bosses from two old games I really enjoyed was a cakewalk by comparison. I have heard that the third Ratchet & Clank game is the greatest one, and will certainly consider playing it if I ever stumble upon it for a low enough price. But due to my project, that'll be years away, if ever. We only have so much time on this green earth, and thus, can only play so many video games.

Ratchet & Clank

Last night I felt like cleaning a plate from yesteryear, and went straight for Ratchet & Clank. This is a game I played through in 2003, quitting after dying two or three times on the final boss. So anyway, all I had to do last night in order to beat this game was get reacquainted with the controls and gameplay before taking on that final boss and finishing him once and for all. All said and done, it took less than an hour. There was definitely an air of nostalgia I felt when playing the game - not quite childhood nostalgia, as this game came after the 16-bit era and even the 1990s in general, but certainly some sort of nostalgia for a more recent, yet still gone, era. I mean, this game was mostly played at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school. I look back on it with a smile, although admittedly, I cannot tell it apart from its sequel by means of recollection alone. As far as the game itself is concerned, I think both it and the series it spawned are underrated. The PS2 always lent itself well to RPGs, sports games, shooters, and racing games, but never to platformers. That said, Ratchet & Clank was easily the premier platforming series on the PS2. And the games were hardly clones of other series. It's easy to scream Banjo-Kazooie when you see another video game featuring a duo where a fighting character carries a flying character on his back, but honestly, this series is largely its own. It's a mixture of platformer, shooter, and puzzle-solver, which I suppose is a generic enough blend, but the ace up its sleeve is its weapon system. You come across over a dozen different guns over the course of the game, each with its own unique ammo that must be collected or purchased, and must use them in order to max out their stats. After firing a certain number of rounds with any given weapon, it upgrades into a more powerful version of itself. This prevents the game from getting stale or repetitive; although hordes of enemies often come after you, there are many, many different ways - most of them entertaining - to eliminate them. Sick of guns? Use Ratchet's wrench, an absolute beast of a melee weapon that just might be the coolest club-like weapon I've ever used in a video game. But the thing is, you won't get sick of guns. Not when you have the abilities to morph enemies into chickens, shoot lightning bolts, drop landmines, and launch spheres that emit tiny robots who hone in on your enemies and explode on them, kamikaze style. My favorite weapon in the game was the R.Y.N.O. (the "Rip You a New One"), which was capable of firing several homing missiles all at once. In fact, I don't see how the final boss could have beaten without the R.Y.N.O. - he was pretty tough, even as far as final bosses go. I think Ratchet & Clank was a fantastic platformer and I'd recommend it to any PS2 owner who can find it relatively cheap. However, I'll admit that its sequel was a better game. But you'll find out all about that one another time.

A Gathering of Days

This is Wikipedia's entire article on this book, verbatim, at this moment: "A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal is a historical novel by Joan Blos that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1980. It tells of a girl's days as a Quaker during the Revolutionary War." Two sentences, the second of which, I can vouch, is entirely inaccurate, as the girl is not a Quaker, and the timeframe is 1830-1832, as can be seen at the bottom of the image above. This should give you a rough idea of this book's importance and significance; its Wikipedia article is two sentences long and 50% inaccurate. I'll proceed with a quick recap. This book was terrible. Uninteresting and totally non-immersive, it just didn't impress me at all. It's set in Meredith, NH, a town I have been to several times, and I never once felt even a remote sense of connection or immersion with this pseudo-diary. The whole time, I couldn't help but wonder what the point was. Right off the bat, the narrator tells us that the diary covers the year when her father remarried and her best friend died. These are the only two moments throughout the book where I even felt like anything at all was happening, but they had been spoiled by the author from the get-go. The book I most readily compare this one to is Thomas Bailey Aldrich's A Story of a Bad Boy, which astute readers of Back-Blogged will recall was something I read a few weeks ago. That book was set around 1850 in Portsmouth, NH, and was also about a young person growing up and dealing with death, loss, and other generic things that happen to youngsters. Both were even intended for children. Yet, for whatever reason, Aldrich's tale was so much more interesting and engaging than Blos's. I suppose what bothered me most was that while reading Blos's book, I expected... something. It's a Newbery winner, after all. Having found nothing to rave about whatsoever in either this book or the previous Newbery winner I read, The Midwife's Apprentice, I'm starting to get really bummed that I decided to take on all of these books I found under my bed. Oh well. They're short, if not sweet, and each one brings me one book closer to completing my mission. But yeah, never read this book. It didn't do a single thing for me, a grown man reading children's books and blasting them on his unread blog.

Prince Caspian

Despite claiming I would wait awhile to read another Narnia book just two weeks ago, and despite being in the middle of three other books at the time, and despite being pretty disappointed with the series in general so far, I found myself pulling Prince Caspian off the shelf last night for no particular reason at all. I finished it in two sittings. I can honestly and thankfully say that it was much better than the previous Narnia book I had read, The Horse and His Boy. However, this doesn't mean it was a good book. As the second book published, this was the direct sequel to the most famous Narnia tale: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But there's so much less to this book than there is to its predecessor. Character development is completely absent, as is the mysterious atmosphere provided by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The battle at hand this time around is even far less epic and meaningful, which is readily admitted by many characters in the story, who say, more or less verbatim, "The White Witch [last novel's antagonist] was ten times as evil and powerful as King Miraz [this novel's antagonist]." So, in a way, you're kind of left wondering what the point is. Why make a half-assed sequel? Furthermore, why would C. S. Lewis readily admit, via his own characters' conversations, that he did not even try to outdo himself? After being both bored and moderately insulted by The Horse and His Boy a fortnight ago, I can happily say that Prince Caspian offers a tad more excitement and far less bigotry than that book. Yet, still, it's not all that interesting, and it too has its moments where it seems like shameless Christian propaganda. The main conflict is over a civil war, of sorts, between Prince Caspian and his uncle, King Miraz. We are simply told that Miraz is a cruel and uncaring king, and we are shown nothing at all as evidence of this. So, from the get go, the antagonist and protagonist are declared, and we have "good guys" and "bad guys" who we are more or less assigned to root for. That's textbook poor storytelling. It's somewhat clear that Miraz and his people represent a secular and faithless society (not unlike the Western world today) but never once does Lewis show us an example where this lack of "faith" in Aslan the Lion (the series' recurring horrible attempt at an embodiment of Christ) leads to this society being corrupt or immoral, aside from the fact that Miraz killed Caspian's father to usurp the throne. But even in this case, we're hardly affected, as Capsian's dad was kind of an asshole anyway, based on the brief history of the Capsian lineage that we are given. So, in short, the "good" guys are the ones forcing religion down everyone's throats, while the "bad" guys merely don't believe in a lion-god. Sounds like an unfair portrayal to me. Of course, the book ends with Caspian reclaiming the throne after a bloody coup. Where's the Christianity there? Oh, and the book also includes a scene in which some of the talking animals justify that it is okay to kill and hunt other animals because they are "deaf and dumb" and cannot talk. All I gathered from this is that C. S. Lewis was a proponent of euthanizing the retarded and disabled, for in his eyes, or at least the eyes of his characters, intelligent beings are more worthy of life than retarded ones. Again, where's the Christian message here? Though I hate to give any credit at all to The Horse and His Boy, at least that book's main conflict was between a "free" nation and one of stringent caste systems, racially divided as they were. At least in that book I never found myself wondering why I as the reader was "rooting for" the Narnians to prevail over the other side. This series continues to frustrate me at every turn. Oh well. With four books down and three to go, I'm more than halfway through it. Thank the Lord - I mean, the Lion.

Mad Men: Season 2

Oftentimes, a one-hour drama series that enjoys critical acclaim during and after its first season will endure what is most commonly referred to as a sophomore slump. Expectations are set too high for a second season and the show runners try way too hard to keep things fresh that the show itself becomes too modified and different from what it once was. The second year is a pivotal one for a drama series, as it is often largely responsible for determining whether a show was a one-year wonder or will be around for years to come. In the case of Mad Men, I am happy to say that it looks like we've got a long-term winner on our hands. The first and second seasons fit together so seamlessly that the only difference one notices is the year, and it's a slight one at that - 1962 as opposed to 1960. At the time of this writing, the third season is barely underway, and its second episode aired last night. I could easily catch this episode and the prior one at some point this week and be completely caught up, ready to jump in next Sunday for the rest of the way. And yet, I'm not sure if I'll do that. As good as Mad Men is, I feel like it's best enjoyed on DVD where one can watch episode after episode with no breaks. Then again, it'll be 11 months, at least, before I get a chance to own or watch such a DVD set. At any rate, this is a blog devoted to the completion of my backlog, not a place for me to debate with myself, in written form, the merits of watching a TV season now or later. It seems that, once again, I've completely lost track of anything worth actually mentioning about the DVDs I have just completed. Suffice it to say that Mad Men: Season 2 was great, just like the previous season. For more of an actual review of the show, feel free to check out my "Mad Men: Season 1" entry. I promise that like the show itself, my opinion of it has not really changed since then.

1941

I have absolutely no idea why I ever came to buy this movie. I know it happened some time in the past year, and for some amount under $5, but I really do not know what was going through my head when I decided to buy it. It's a 1979 Spielberg comedy set in Los Angeles at the outset of World War II. Three factors prevent this movie from being good: its age, its generic blandness, and its length. We'll start with the first one. Now, I'm not of the opinion that an old movie can't be a good movie, but when it comes to comedies, I often balk at some of the "classics." Animal House? Didn't do it for me. Porky's? Same. Caddyshack? Even that one, I fear, holds no special place in my heart. But why should any of these movies? They're products of my parents' generation, and not my own. there are still plenty of comedies from the late '70s and early '80s that I do enjoy, however; Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Airplane, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Blazing Saddles are just a few movies from the same era which I do enjoy. So what's all of this got to do with liking or not liking a movie? Let's bring in the issue of generic blandness. 1941 contained a slew of jokes based on, essentially, three types of humor: slapstick, miscommunication, and sex jokes. The slapstick aspect, especially, left me shaking my head. It's just not that funny to see guys getting clonked in the head and falling over in scene after scene. And this movie pulled out every single cliche. At one point, a man was fired upon by several machine guns, and he danced and jumped wildly to dodge the bullets, escaping unscathed. Another four-minutes were occupied by the characters engaging in dace floor hijinks while a band played swing music. And of course, at plenty of separate points, a heavy object was clumsily handled and a bunch of architecture was destroyed as a result. There was very little creativity put into the movie's jokes. With the exception of Fast Times, of which I have no explanation for my being a fan, all of this era's comedies that I previously mentioned enjoying had something in common: originality. Blazing Saddles was a satire that lampooned both racism and westerns. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was flat-out absurd and rife with famous and quotable dialogue. And Airplane, though teeming with groaners, never missed a chance to make any sort of pun or satirical reference; it was the original "spoof" movie. But nothing in 1941 seemed original in the least bit. It more or less seemed like Animal House set during wartime instead of college. Lastly, we come to the movie's length of two and a half hours. Why is it necessary for any comedy to be two and a half hours long? My biggest peeve of the last few years with comedies has been their increasing in length. Judd Apatow is someone who I respect, but cannot stand lately because it seems like every movie he makes is longer than the last one by twenty minutes. Going over some of my favorite comedies of the past 15 years, I can think of only one that even approaches two hours in length: Superbad. The others fall gracefully between 90 and 105 minutes in length. 1941 took 146 such minutes to finish, wearing out its welcome by the better part of an hour. I guess bitching about running times will get me nowhere, so I apologize for being a crotchety old man about them. There just aren't a ton of positive things to say about 1941, a critically panned movie from long before my time that I never should have purchased at all.

Halo 2

I beat this one in a matter of six nights, co-op style, with my girlfriend (her request). I needed to do so, not only because I need to beat every game I own, but also because I really want to play the Halo 3 campaign this coming autumn. While I was excited to play the first Halo last winter, and am excited for the third installment, I never really looked forward to playing this one at all. I can't really say why, either. A hunch? A lack of interest? Well, having just completed Halo 2, I can safely say that my unenthusiastic approach was totally warranted. Nothing about this game seemed special, unique, or memorable, in any way whatsoever. In the first Halo, half of the excitement comes from the mystery surrounding the world of Halo itself, as well as its origins. While I didn't even find the first game to be the epic classic it is widely considered to be, I can at least say that it was immersive, new, and interesting. The second time around, not so much. Rather than coming up with a new story or world, Bungie has instead come up with a plot involving a second ring world ("Halo") and a second mission to destroy it. Still, Halo 2 offers a few improvements over its predecessor. For one thing, the shield system has been redone, and health has become a moot factor. New weapons were added as well, and most importantly, half of the game is played from the perspective of an "Elite," a member of one of the antagonistic alien races. Plot-wise, I would even say that Halo 2 has a lot more to offer than Halo. The problem is, so little of it is actually new. My final beef is the ending. The first Halo ends with the most memorable and enjoyable level in the game and, you know, has a definitive and concrete conclusion. In Halo 2, your final fight is against a hammer-wielding apelike creature (the Brute Chieftain) and is very forgettable. Even the ending cinematic and story closure fell short of the first game's; Halo ends with Master Chief escaping Halo's detonation, while Halo 2 ends with more of a blip than a blast, as the second ring world is not destroyed at all, but merely deactivated. Worst of all, immediately afterward, it's discovered that there are about a half dozen additional ring worlds. Our story ends, and we're left waiting until Halo 3 for any kind of conclusion. Now, Halo 2 wasn't a bad game. Please don't think I'm calling it a waste of time or money. The thing is, the Halo series is the flagship series of the Microsoft Xbox platforms. It's their Mario. It was an instant classic long before it even came out. For such a highly anticipated and famous game, it just doesn't seem all that special. It's good, but it should have been great. Oh well. Here's looking forward to Halo 3; if that one doesn't provide an epic conclusion to the series, I'll be sorely disappointed. One more thing to note about finishing up Halo 2: I now possess zero original Xbox games in my backlog. Hey, it may be a small milestone, but it's still a milestone.

The Adventures of Pinocchio

What a liar I am. Just two hours after complaining about children's books and promising to mix things up with a nonfiction book or two, I have instead completed this 1883 classic from Italian author Carlo Collodi. But I'm really glad I chose to do so. This book was great. Rarely do I ever find myself truly unwilling to put a book down, but this one completely held my interest from beginning to end. If you're like me, and have only seen the Disney version of Pinocchio, you'll be just as shocked as I was to learn that the "Talking Cricket" - the second most important character in Disney's film - gets killed in the original Italian version in only the fourth of thirty-something chapters. His assassin? None other than Pinocchio himself! In fact, the book was hardly child-friendly by today's standards at all, as Pinocchio dealt with thieves, hangings, stabbings, and the deaths of close friends. It included fairy tale elements to an extent, like talking animals and fairies, but it also did not neglect to show the harsh realities of the need to make a living, such as dealing with hunger, homelessness, and imprisonment. The book manages to convey some surprisingly biting irony and dark humor at times, and I was very much reminded, at certain points, of my favorite book of all time, Catch-22, as the same kind of twisted and bizarre logic abounds in both. For instance, Pinocchio is jailed for being the victim of a con, and is only let out when he claims to have been a thief rather than a victim. At another point, a self-proclaimed medical expert pronounces Pinocchio dead, but when Pinocchio begins to cry upon hearing news of his own death, the doctor, refusing to admit that he has made an incorrect diagnosis, states that when a corpse begins to weep, it is a sign that it may be coming back to life. I of course have done no favors for Collodi or his book here, clumsily spoiling some excellent lines and moments. But fear not, for plenty others abound. I guess I'll stop blabbering now, leaving my not currently extant readers with an obvious recommendation: this book. I doubt there are many people out there who will find it less than likable.

George's Marvelous Medicine

Another night, another short Roald Dahl book. This one was twice the length of Esio Trot and was actually broken into several chapters, but it still made for a quick read. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was the shortest remaining book on my shelf after Esio Trot. This book did absolutely nothing for me. Here's the plot synopsis. George has a miserable cranky old grandmother. One day he decides to mix up every chemical in his house, garage, and barn, and feed his grandma the concoction. It makes her grow extremely tall, but thin as a rail. He then feeds it to the animals on his farm, and they grow fiftyfold. George's dad notes the obvious potential for profit in making farm animals grow fiftyfold, and tells George to make more "medicine." George tries four or five times to replicate his potion, but each batch just does a wacky thing to the animals he tests it on. His final batch has the reverse effect: it shrinks animals. His grandmother mistakes a cup of it for a cup of tea, drinking all of it. She shrinks down to a miniscule level and more or less disappears enitirely. I had a number of problems with this book. It had no closure whatsoever, but was not at all left "open" in a way that invited any sort of sequel. Effectively, George sets out to poison his grandmother. In the end, she is more or less "killed" as she disappears forever to the microscopic realm. So, really, the entire book consists of a boy succeeding at killing his grandmother, with a momentary side plot revolving around the marketing potential of an animal growth potion. This book was terrible. I need to stop reading children's books for a little while. They may be on my shelf, but man, this is not what I had in mind when I made it my goal to read all of my unread books. I've got some real classics and interesting reads waiting for me, but I've still got 15 or so kids' books to deal with as well. Next up, expect a science or history book. I've really got to mix up my pace here.

The Talisman

Jesus, look at the number of updates Stan has lately compared with my few- I've been slacking. Perhaps it helps that he's been reading children's lit, but I have the next best thing- a fantasy novel. Fantasy was a genre that for a long time I refused to give any credit. Friends would praise The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and I would call them books for nerds obsessed with wizards and dragons. I guess that makes me quite the hypocrite, because this book is just as nerdy, but I've been binging on Stephen King books lately and I found The Talisman to be really good. In it, a boy journeys across America (and a smaller world similar to America, but in another universe called The Territories ) to find the Talisman which can save his cancer-stricken mother's life. On the way he befriends a werewolf, avoids his best friend's villainous father, and eventually becomes god. You see, I told you it would sound really nerdy. There's not much to take away from the book aside from a well-crafted story- a concluding moral about the idea of ownership seems a little bit tacked on at the end, but isn't really forced on the reader. The Talisman was written during a time when King was on all sorts of drugs (I hear he had no recollection of writing Cujo) and the creativity shows. His prose is usually good enough to keep my interest, but King really is on top of his game writing about gunfights, which I couldn't get enough of. The Talisman was meant to be a stand-alone novel, but a sequel was made back in 2001 that ret-conned the whole story into the Dark Tower series, which is what got me into Stephen King in the first place, so I had to give them both a read. Now, I think it's time to get back into the original series- Dark Tower V, Wolves of the Calla is up next.

A Tale of Two Cities

Buckle up folks, because I've got a lot to say about this one. Wow. Where to begin? Prior to this, I had only read one Dickens novel: Great Expectations. Reading that book was not the best experience for me. You could say that, ironically, it left me with poor expectations for future Dickens works. A large part of my dislike for Great Expectations was that it was mandatory summer reading, which of course no high school student enjoys. Beyond that aspect, however, was the issue of Dickens being too wordy. I can't blame the man. He was a product of his time, and in that time, writers were paid for quantity and not for quality. Thus, it was to his advantage to use as many words as possible to say as little as possible. And did he ever take said advantage. The book dragged on and on and on, and plot points and character development seemed sparse. It was only after we analyzed the book in class once school began that I even began to understand the full scope of the story and all of the clever character intertwining Dickens had done. Beneath all of his superfluous language was a very solid story. But the book was forever tarnished in my mind because reading it had been so laborious. Flash forward to the past couple of weeks. When I took on A Tale of Two Cities, I was committed to not allowing Dickens' style get in the way of my enjoyment of his story again. I only partially succeeded. I certainly was more patient with Dickens this time around, but once again, I couldn't help but feel upset with him at times for absolutely unloading pointless sentences on me. Examples included multi-page setting descriptions, characters asking each other to repeat what they had just said, and, in my opinion, far too much focus on events that did nothing to advance the plot, set a mood, or develop a character or conflict. I made it about halfway into the book before once again falling victim to skimming for details that I thought were relevant. I confess that I even had to look up chapter summaries online at a few points, fearing I had missed something important. Now, all of this having been said, there was plenty about A Tale of Two Cities that I enjoyed. The title is sort of a misnomer, as the story is really unquestionably about Paris and the first French Revolution. The other city, London, really only came into play because some of the characters affected by the revolution lived there. Not surprisingly, it was the French "half" of the story, where all of the action was, that I found most entertaining. It was here, too, where I thought Dickens was at his best, depicting not only the cruelty of the French nobility toward the lower class but also the mob mentality and unwavering madness that broke out once the French revolted. He managed to examine both sides of the coin while championing neither cause, thus in a way somewhat saying that the nature of man is a dark one indeed. Behind all of the wordy fluff and extemporaneous characters - and both abound in this book, in true Dickens fashion - there lies a beautiful tale of redemption. Unfortunately, it's really only focused upon in the final chapters of the book; in general, I found the rest of the story to fall short of being worthy of all the praise it has received. It was really only the last three chapters or so that gripped me on an emotional level, drew me in, and and made me empathise with the characters and all of the Terror's victims for which they stood. The final pages of the last chapter made for one of the greatest and most bittersweet and beautiful finales I have ever seen, read, or heard of. So in the end, I'm kind of torn, not just with how to view this book, but also with how to regard Dickens after having read two of his most famous works and being largely unimpressed by the majority of them both. On the one hand, Dickens is one of the greatest writers I've ever read, when he wanted to be. On the other hand, what Dickens wanted most of all appears to have been his paycheck. How else could such a good writer allow himself to drawl on and on about such mundane details in all of his works? It's tough to blame Dickens for wanting to make a living, and I won't go as far as to call him a "sell-out" or anything similarly pejorative; that would imply that his greatest works came before, and not during, his long-winded phase. It just seems that when it came to editing for brevity, he was the literary equivalent of Peter Jackson or Judd Apatow. How do you rate a movie that had one of your favorite five-minute scenes of all time, but also two hours of forgettable nothingness? This book was both more enjoyable to read and also an all-around better story, in my opinion, than Great Expectations was. Still, I don't think I'll ever be able to think of Dickens as one of the all-time greatest English authors unless he shakes his garrulous ways in some other works of his that I may someday read. Until then, he'll always have that fatal flaw, in my eyes. But I should end on a note that gives credit where credit is due: regardless of its tedious language, I absolutely recommend A Tale of Two Cities, even to fellow Dickens skeptics. It's a classic, it's an adventure, it contains numerous memorable characters, and it boasts one of the most powerful endings in story-telling history.

Rambo

I bought this DVD in May, making it one of the more recently backlogged movies on my shelf. Looking for a quick movie to get out of the way last night, I put it on. I had pretty low expectations. My expectations were low because I have seen the previous three Rambo films. While I found the first one (First Blood) to be somewhat of an interesting commentary on the psychological damages suffered by some Vietnam War veterans, I can honestly say that the ensuing sequels were two of the most plotless and awful movies I have ever seen. Having been made in the '80s, they were also dated in terms of special effects, so it was touch to enjoy them even on a strictly action-based level. Enter Rambo number 4 (simply called "Rambo"). This film was quite possibly even less plot-based than the previous installments. But I loved it. While the action was not quite as over-the-top as Rambo III's - no helicopters were blown up with a bow and arrow this time around - it was far more enjoyable because it no longer felt dated. Instead, as the Burmese body count grew, I was treated with some of the goriest and most brutal action I've ever seen. Soupy chunks of human bodies flew everywhere as grenades and landmines exploded. Deep red liquid gushed out of 95% of the people that appeared in the movie, extras included, at some point. There were at least five beheadings, some blade-based, and others due to cranial gunshots. Plot-wise, the movie felt eerily similar to a WWE film in the vein of Steve Austin's stink bomb, The Condemned, or John Cena's even worse attempt, The Marine. I mean, this was just ridiculous. And yet, all this having been said, the film still seems to take itself just seriously enough so as not to betray the audience. It toes the line with enough restraint to avoid jumping up into the "completely ridiculous" category, a la Kill Bill or Death Race. Every killing was just realistic enough to stay at least somewhat plausible in my mind. Oh, and don't put off seeing the movie just because you haven't seen the first three. There's absolutely no prior knowledge of the Rambo series needed. When a movie and its predecessors all lack plots, it's tough to feel as though you're missing something by skipping an installment or going out of turn. So where does Rambo rank? Well, the plot's a fat F, and the acting is no better than a C-minus. But did Stallone set out to make an Oscar nominee of a film? Of course not. You have to grade Rambo on its own terms. Action? Long pauses between it did detract from the overall rush of excitement, but the movie boasts a higher body count than length in minutes. B-plus. Thrill? I've seen my share of R-rated violence, but this took things to a whole new level. At one point, a baby is torn away from his mother, thrown into a burning house, and then torched with a flamethrower. Amazing! A-plus. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Rambo is everything it set out to be, and nothing more. And that's fine by me.

Esio Trot

This is easily the shortest "novel" I found among the unpacked box of children's books. At 50 pages or so, it was so short that I considered not even blogging about its completion, which took a whopping 15 minutes. But then I reminded myself that some video games are 80-hour RPGs while others are 2-hour arcade games; some DVDs take 90 minutes to watch while others are 24-hour seasons of television. Since I don't discriminate based on the size of my video games and DVDs, why should I do so with my books? Esio Trot is about a man who loves a woman who loves her tortoise. Did you catch that "Esio Trot" is tortoise spelled backwards? I did not until I was about halfway through the book. It was short, sweet, and, like all Roald Dahl books, full of questionable behavior on the behalf of the protagonist. I have no idea what I was expecting when I started into this one, but it probably involved some sort of twist ending. After all, what short story does not throw you a giant curveball late in the game? Apparently, a children's short story. Kids don't like curveballs. In fact, they don't like pitches of any kind; they're just whacking balls off of tees. As is the case with "batting" in tee-ball, there's nothing unexpected at all thrown at you in this entire mini-book. I feel like I'm already getting close to matching the its length with the length of my entry about it, so I'll wrap this up. The book is nothing special, but it demands only ten or twenty minutes of your time to complete, so it's not like it's something to avoid either.

The Midwife's Apprentice

And so begins my sidequest, if you will, to read all kinds of young adult books I've owned for ages but never bothered to open. First up was The Midwife's Apprentice, a Newbery-winning 117-page quickie from Karen Cushman. Set in England around 1300, it tells the story of a young girl who starts out as a homeless orphan and becomes the heroine of a village through her virtuous, kind, and noble actions. The plot was formulaic, but I was fine with this, as I'd rather see a "tried and true" method in place than a bizarre fiasco with convoluted or messy dynamics. My biggest issue with this book was that parts of it seemed unfinished. At only 117 pages, there was certainly room for more. I'm not saying the book felt too short; it just felt incomplete. The heroine's dark past is alluded to, once, in the middle of the book, with one sentence: "the girl dreamt about her mother that night, but forgot about it before she awoke." Why even touch on her past if that's the furthest into it that you're going to delve? Another plot point involves the girl caring for a young boy, also homeless, who she finds. He reminds her of herself and even reminds the other villagers of her. Most assume the two are brother and sister. A big deal is made over one woman claiming the two must be twins. At this point, I thought we would learn that the two were in fact siblings, both cast away by their mother and left to fend for themselves. This was the highest my interest ever managed to get during the entire story - who could their mother be, and why is she casting away her children? Once again, the familial issue is never touched upon any further. So in the end we've got a nice, neat, mostly generic coming-of-age tale, but questions about the girl's backgound remain completely unanswered. Again, this would have been fine had Cushman never noted the sibling-like shared appearances or dreams of parents that she has, in fact, noted. At any rate, I suppose I'm starting to sound a little too critical, twenty-something and criticizing a children's book written 13 years ago. I'll wrap this messy recap up now, like such: I read it, I liked it enough, and I'm forging ahead without looking back to it.