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West Coast Kaiju Big Battel throwdown in full effect!

What is Kaiju Big Battel, you ask?

Kaiju Big Battel is a modern conflict of epic proportions. Scattered throughout the galaxy is a monstrous mob of Kaiju - maniacal villains, ominous alien beasts, and gigantic, city-crushing monsters who are fighting for control of the globe, their volatile tempers periodically detonating into bouts of intergalactic sparring and senseless acts of violence.

Basically, its GWAR, if they were Japanese, atomic, and didnt play instruments.
(for more info check out this or for the vanilla wiki version, look here)

Heading down to Los Angeles Thursday November 20th through Saturday the 22nd with some SpiceAliens to check out the carnage at the Mayan Theater.

tags: big battel, kaiju, Los Angeles

(minor spoilers may be present - I’ll try to be vague in reference to specific events)

Finished up Neal Stephenson’s latest tome, Anathem, and at 980 pages and nearly 3 pounds, it was a hefty read. My thoughts and appreciation of the book changed rather dramatically over the course of reading it, so perhaps a chronological review is in order.

Pre-Purchase - I was hopeful this was going to be a good book. After loving a number of his novels, he lost me with the Baroque Cycle. While the content was interesting, I felt that the books could have been much shorter. I know others will disagree with me. They are wrong. I knew ahead of time that this was going to be a long book, so I hoped for the magic of Cryptonomicon to return.

First 40 pages - Egads… Is this is in english, latin, or hopelandic? Is it spec-fic, fantasy, or a manual on how to wind a clock in a monastery. Hopes for a good experience plummeting.

Pushing through to 150 pages or so - Ok. I’m getting into it. After the rush of the initial nelogisms, he’s calmed down and is actually telling a story.

Evocation - Aha! We have a plot - and a mystery! At this point, I was rather enjoying the book.

Road To Orithena - Hmm Valers? I get it. I liked them, but this is the first indication of a fairly unique variation on a concent. Nevertheless, travel adventures are usually fun. Considering the terrain was as foreign to the characters as it was for me, much was explained.

Orithena and the Laterran - Again, really interested still. Pacing was good.

Convox - Hmmm… again with the noncohesive mathic community. While I understand it and accept it, it seemed a little forced, perhaps so that the messalans could take place. So much time spent on the plurality issue. Perhaps that was just me though. As someone who already understands configuration space and the Wheeler Everett Graham model, it was overkill. On the other hand, for a layperson, trying to decipher it, while having to deal with “Procian” and “Halikaarnian” flavors of it, it may have been too cryptic. Regardless, still completely invested at this point.

Orbital Ballet - Zzz… wha?! oh, are they still out there? Ok, wake me when they land.

Contact - Can we get a couple dozen of the pages spent on explaining orbital calculations back to actually see more of this interaction. Perhaps all of the built up explanations of plurality can get a payoff here instead of a couple pages of lip service.

Resolution - Wait… the book is over? Whatchoo talkin’ bout, Erasmus?

Seriously, this book felt like it could have been twice as long or a third shorter. It felt like so much time was spent in world building and context, while major plot points were glossed over. Maybe I’ll throw Cryptonomicon back in the queue so I can regain some Stephenson love.

tags: Anathem, book review, Neal Stephenson

but do you have the right guy?

I just received in the mail an advance reading copy of a book - Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland. I wasn’t aware it was coming, so its like a birthday gift from someone I don’t know.

Unaware of who the author is, I looked her up on the wiki. Hmmm… winner of two Romance Writers of America awards? writes single-title paranormal suspense romance novels? romance is not normally my cup of tea. And those of you who know, know that I don’t even like tea.

The back cover does mention urban fantasy, psychics and demons, so maybe this is a departure.

I’m still deep into Anathem, but I’ll give this a read afterwards and let you know how it was.

Over at The Art of Manliness, there is a list of 100 books that should be part of every man’s library - “books that have shaped the lives of individual men while also helping define broader cultural ideas of what it means to be a man”.

Now, that doesn’t mean the book is irrelevant for female readers, but it just may have special import for the males. I’m not necessarily in agreement with each choice, but its a fairly diverse list which makes for a good source of new reading material.

Go check out the article for specific commentary on each book. I’m going to use this blog entry to track which ones I have read and give me a place to refer back to what should be next on my reading list. Bold indicates it needs to enter the queue.

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Read - but along time ago.
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli - Unread - bits and pieces here and there but not cover to cover.
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - Read
• 1984 by George Orwell - Read
• The Republic by Plato - Unread - bits and pieces here and there but not cover to cover.
• Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

(the other 90 after the jump)

Read more…

This movie came across my path in a list of recent DVD releases. Saw Patton Oswalt, Winona Ryder, Julie Bowen, and Leslie Bibb and was intrigued. All people that I like and I hadn’t heard of this movie? Got it in the queue, and tonight was the night it was destined to be watched.

I can not recommend this movie more.

It is definitely quirky. It is mid-90’s Miramax if that means anything to you. But the writing and the story were excellent.

This is the kind of movie that too much information ahead of time spoils the plot, but here goes: Imagine you receive an email with a list of all the people you’ve slept with.  Creepy? sure. Maybe one of your friends is messing with you. But what if that list continues on for another 30 or 40 names? How does the supposed knowledge of your future conquests change the way you live your life?

Any more and I might ruin the vibe of the movie, but trust me - add this to your netflix/bit torrent queue. You’ll enjoy it.

I present the Image Fulgurator. (The site is in German, so the link is wrapped in a Google translation). Basically, this guy created a projection system that senses a camera flash and briefly shines a projected image on a surface. If the camera that took the picture was pointed at that surface, the project image is part of the picture taken. The cool thing is that the image is only momentarily projected, so most people would not notice it until later when looking at the captured image.

For example, here is a picture of the Reichstag in Berlin, with a momentary projection of a fire on it, recalling the Reichstag fire of 1933.

And here is a short video of the device in action, and people’s reaction to it.

First off, lets get this out of the way. It is not a date movie. I should know. The last date movie I watched was “No Country For Old Men” and she gave me the heave ho less than 36 hours later. She may claim that in this case correlation does not imply causation, but I have my suspicions. It was a bad movie. This coming from someone who owns a Fargo snowglobe, no less.

So, this movie was totally under my radar. Apparently, there were nominations involved with it. I was only clued into its existence by looking at recent DVD releases and cross referencing them to my local private bittorrent server. And I am really glad it bubbled up.

Funny thing about “depressing” movies, or movies that tackle depressing topics (like the dementia and death of your parents). I think they they work best when you are in a funk as well. Now, the funk cant be caused by the same topic of the movie. Thats just piling on. But if you’re blue for other reasons, a well-scripted black comedy movie can do wonders for you.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman (or was it John C. Reilly… I get them confused) and Laura Linney were spot on in this. The pacing and the dialogue were perfect. Although not a true sequel to Slums of Beverly Hills, it was a great “continuation” of that story. I think the quote of the movie has to be “If you ever want to engage in compromising self destructive behavior, you know who to call.”

(and a bonus treat - a shady cell phone pic of my fargo snowglobe!)

click to enlarge:

from the cartoon chronicles of my life: achewood

Do you use Google Reader? If so, enter the Konami code ( up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A ) while on the site for a little visual easter egg.

(Edit: I had a typo in the code. I know it with a controller in my hand, but not typing it out - heres a screencap tho…  30 lives yeah!)

Elmo, with Robert DeNiro, reads for the part eventually won by Joe Pesci in this early casting call for Casino.