Future Poltergeist

I love this movie and I'm not going to apologize for it. The idea of the movie is to show Shakespeare, the greatest of all playwrites, in the midst of creating one of his greatest plays, Romeo and Juliet. The earliest version being Ethel and the Pirate King, of course. The movie mixes Elizabethan England with Hollywood and the combination is genius. This movie might have the most clever script in this entire project. It features jokes for Shakespeare fans like Ann Hathaway's property being described as 'a small cottage'. It also has wonderful explanations for famous Shakespeare phrases like 'a plauge on both your houses'. Maybe my favorite feature is the depiction of stage life. Henslow's repeated wisdom that the play will go on somehow regardless of problems is a literal truism amongst theater people. We can only imagine the same thing was true then. The acting is good throughout. Joseph Fiennes is very good as Will Shakespeare. Gwenyth Paltrow do...

With a 24-12 win over the Browns the Vikes have a winning record for the first time this season. Their record of 6-5 puts them in the squarely in the playoff hunt. Who would have thought that after they started 1-4? I certainly didn't. The turnaround should be credited to the defense which has been playing very well. They've had timely turnovers of course, but they've also played strongly against the run and played well against the pass. The line is starting to get pressure on opposing QB's. Defense was a strong part of Viking heritage and we've been starved for it ever since Tony Dungy left. This is lots of fun to watch! The offense is starting to turn it around, too. The running game is starting to click. Receivers are starting to get open. And most importantly, the O-line is giving the QB time. This is a much, much better team than the one that was playing in September. The next four games feature three teams with a combined record of 13-21 (and one ...

 

It's been a busy week. What with the birthday stuff, Vikes on MNF and Thanksgiving the schedule has been very tight. Other highlights included seeing the newest Harry Potter movie on Wednesday. I liked it quite a bit. Maybe the best one yet. It's geared towards fans of the series. Virtually no time is spent reintroducing characters or previous story. The movie does a good job of making a long book into a watchable movie. The pace is very high in the beginning though it falls off about midway through. The FP Gal was somewhat bored and didn't like it as much as I did. Thursday's events went very well. The food was wonderful and everyone had a good time. The evening was spent playing games. We played 'Apples to Apples', a game where you match nouns with concepts. This led to Lenin's Tomb being judged 'absurd' and a great name for a band, 'Frank Lloyd Wright and the Great Chicago Fire'. True fans will call them FLWGCG. Friday was sp...

to everyone. We're getting set to host the big meal at our place. The FP Gal and her dad are getting food ready as I type. Why am I not helping? To ensure a better meal. My talents around the kitchen are limited to bachelor food. And no one wants an all toast Thanksgiving.

Today is my birthday. The FP Gal and I have a pretty tight grouping as far as that goes. It’s nice to have them close together. It makes this ‘birthday time’. We spent Saturday night at my Mom’s and Sunday with her family. Both nights were very nice. Two years ago I turned 30. That’s one of those milestone birthdates that some people fear. It was liberating for me. I was an actual real adult and able to live as such. My 20’s were basically an extended teenage decade. No longer. Sure, it was all in attitude thing, but sometimes that’s what makes the difference. A few months later I met the FP Gal and my 30 th year was pretty nice. But nothing like this last year. If you’ve been reading this blog since it last December you’ve read about some pretty big events. My desire to enforce order has led me to rank some of them. With apologies to David Letterman, here’s my top ten: 10. Jan 9 th , Vikings go into Lambeau and beat the Packers 31-17. This ...

 

is this . A modern day hero. Or something.

Had a request recently for some more personal posts (Hi Mom). And there's some stuff I've meant to link to for months now. So I'll start with some Japanese related things. My sister-in-law Rachael has started her own blog . It features pictures of the cutest nephew in the whole world. His most recent adventure has him kissing a goat. Staying in Japan, an old high school buddy of mine is living in Okinawa. His wife, Micah, is keeping a blog of the experience. She writes about the challanges of raising their dozen or so children. Good stuff. The post about Steve's recent radio work made me laugh out loud. And finishing the Japan theme, this is most recent favorite game . As enjoyable as Minesweeper or Freecell. Don't be cowed by the numbers, there's no math involved. The FP Gal was kind enough to point me towards this article rating short men. Napoleon comes in at number two. The lead singer of from AC/DC takes the top spot. Maxim did not approach ...

We've had the first in our series of near fatal winter storm (pictures below). It barely missed the forecast of 8in by a mere seven inches or so. Meterologists were calm and collected in their predictions of this traumatic event. Seriously, I'm ready for snow. The world can throw as much snow at me as it needs to as long as it doesn't get too cold. Of course now that I've typed this, we'll be having one of the coldest winters ever.

 

 

This is truly a great movie. This is another movie in the category of 'if you haven't seen it, what's wrong with you'. I'd like to break the review down into two categories, technical and story. First the technical which is unbelievably good. The movie opens with the D-Day invasion and it's shocking in brutality. Vetrans groups hailed it as the most realistic approximation they'd ever seen. It's very difficult to watch but even harder to turn away. German machine guns make hamburger of allied troops as they leave the troop ships. One scene has a medic valiantly stop one soldiers bleeding only to have the victim take a shot to the head. Death sweeps up and down the beach. The opening half hour of this movie shows the incredible amount of respect we owe to those who risk our lives for us. (Belated Vetran's Day thanks!) The movie is shot with a bleached out look that is very appealing. The destroyed French villages are amazing to look at. Spie...

 

After my post about Somali pirates, it's been brought to my attention that I haven't mentioned the honeymoon plans yet. We're taking a four day cruise to the Bahamas after New Years. Neither of us have ever been on a cruise liner before. In fact, I've never been out of sight of land before. We're very excited!

Meant to mention this story back during the World Series. A chance meeting with a cover band in Baltimore led the Sox to adopt 'Don't Stop Believin' as their season's motto. They went so far as to invite Steve Perry to travel with them during the playoffs. This is one of those goofy stories that makes sports so wonderful. Right after they won the Series, I went to Itunes and downloaded Journey's Greatest Hits. I got the idea of dedicating other songs to the rest of the season. You can find the results here .

This movie is OK at best. Which is really a shame. Queen Elizabeth I is an important figure and the story around her is very interesting. She was a woman in a man's job at a time when women were little more than property. She inherited a kingdom that was torn apart by religious strife. She faced threats from the major powers of Europe. She faced near constant threat of assassination. And she came through with flying colors. The movie compresses many of the trials in her life into a much smaller time frame. I've got no problem with that. Rewriting history for narrative sake has a long and rich history. Often it makes for a better movie. Braveheart took larger liberties than Elizabeth, but they served to better define the theme of the movie. In this movie, they serve to weaken it. Instead of seeing her playing her enemies off of one another, we see her refuse to take any of them seriously. Instead of showing her teach her subjects how to love England as she does, we see her putti...

You must be careful when you select your cruise region. Stick to well traveled areas. Or travel armed. Or make sure your life is really a Disney movie .

Anyone who thinks that a full scale investigation should be launched to find out how Bush and Republicans twisted inteligence about WMD should read this here . Maybe we should also launch investigations into how Bush twisted UN findings to find similar results. And inteligence agencies throughout Europe.

Just finished Pompeii by Robert Harris. A very enjoyable novel set in the first century, right before Mt Vesuvius did the big Jiffy Pop. The first I'd heard of it was from a James Lileks review . For those keeping score, that's two volcano books we've had in common . Don't know what the odds of that are. I'm still hoping for a good book on Mt St Helens. No doubt he'll review one in the next few months. And since I'm talking about volcanoes, this is one of my favorite volcano pictures.