I just got back from a swim, a whirlpool and a steam room. So far the trip to Toronto is A-OK. I’m here for a conference on Friday and heading back Friday night to hit up Darcy McGee’s with Cousin Rick. Feel free to drop by!
Categories
Month: January 2010
While on the bus ride home yesterday, I noticed that they have installed those nifty electronic announcement systems inside the bus that will let people know what the next stop is. Well, at least on the Transitway where my bus was running.
However, I noticed one peculiar thing. It was only in English.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there a big issue with OC Transpo drivers not announcing the bus stops in both languages? So now the electronic computer voice doesn’t either?
Methinks this smells fishy.
Categories
The Good Old Days of Gaming
When video games were impossible to beat! I personally can attest to Ninja Gaident, Mega Man and TMNT.
Categories
Review: The Walking Dead
Last night I accomplished absolutely nothing. Well, almost nothing. After my trip to the dentist, I had visions of arriving home after Vero had been there for awhile preparing dinner. Sweetness! But this didn’t happen. I roll into the house around 6PM and it’s dark. I have to dodge a bunch of recycling bins which were thrown into the middle of the driveway. Vero has been working overtime because of the Haiti crisis. It’s pretty amazing that they are in contact with the Canadian Forces down there and interviewing a bunch of people. I highly recommend checking in with Army News if you’re interested in hearing interviews from there. http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/land-terre/life-vie/haiti-eng.asp
After preparing some spaghetti ala Palmer (that’s with a lot of meat!), I was falling asleep on the couch while Vero chatted with her grandmother. I realized it was futile to ignore my sleepiness. At 8:30 I headed for bed. As I crawled in, I picked up the first volume of The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman. I have heard a lot of good things about this series over the years so I figured it was due time to jump in. Heck, even AMC is making a pilot for a TV series.
The Walking Dead follows Officer Rick after he was shot in the line of duty. He wakes up from a month long coma and is the only one inside the hospital (Think: the beginning of 28 Days Later). He looks around the hospital and encounters a zombie! What the heck?! After escaping, he finds his town empty and heads for home where he can’t find his family. Some humans have holed up in the house next door and explain that somehow people have become zombies and the government has asked people to head to major city centers to find aid. He figures that his family could be in Atlanta so he heads out there and finds that the city has been taken over by zombies! He then finds a group of survivors who are camping outside of the city limits and takes refuge there where they discuss what they should be doing next, how they are going to get supplies, etc.
All in all, I really enjoyed the first trade paperback of the series. The story is not an original one, at least not at this point…everyone knows what a zombie story is like. However, I like how the comic focuses more on the characters and how they interact with this crisis…that’s what makes a good zombie story a great one. The character development. You can see the difference in Officer Rick’s life as she changes from this mild-mannered cop from a small town where he only shot his gun a few times in his life, to a commanding force who has to take out dozens of zombies when they attack.
I also enjoyed the artwork by Tony Moore. The artwork is not in full colour but in gray tones which adds to the creepiness of their environment. Ha, wouldn’t that be awesome if the final issue would be in full colour all of a sudden? Kind of like how the Matrix ended with a full colour spectrum in the world instead of the greenish hue.
Recommended! I’m excited to see where the series will go!
Categories
Review: Drag Me To Hell
My anticipation was high for this film. A new horror film by Sam Raimi, famed director extraordinaire of such modern day tales such as the Evil Dead trilogy and the Spider-Man films? Excellent!
Then Benoit comes into work and says “Meh.” and a fear comes over me. Is it actually all hype?
I popped the film in last night and I have emerged with the following breaking news bulletin.
It’s a great campy horror film.
Who doesn’t like a little camp in their films? Camp definition: something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement, as by virtue of its being artlessly mannered or stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly ingenuous and sentimental.
The film follows a Christine Brown who pisses off an old gypsy lady who puts a curse on her. The curse involves three days of haunting by a demon and on the end of the third day, chances are, you are being dragged to Hell by this demon. That’s a heavy-duty curse!
There are some great bits if you are a fan of Sam Raimi films…like the appearance of his 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88…I remember my parents having that car! In fact, I remember that being the first car I got into an accident with! Woops? Anyhow, that car shows up in every one of his films.
There are some great characters in this film…the psychic, the crazy old lady who keeps haunting Christine, the dude from the Mac commercials…brilliant!
All in all, I will admit that when I heard that this is the a really great horror film, I thought it would scare my pants to the ground (much like the first Evil Dead still does to this day), but in the end, there were some good shock moments, a good storyline (do you really need much story for a horror film? I think not!) and all in all, some good fun moments where you just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Classic Sam Raimi flick.
Categories
Kapuskasing Kijiji
Well, you know Kap has hit it bigtime when they have their own Kijji website!
Dad, scour this each day! You may find good deals!
http://kapuskasing.kijiji.ca/
Rob picked me up around 5PM on Friday night and I was in full pirate gear. A great hat and eyepatch from Vero’s disguise box (as she likes to call it. I prefer the term ‘tickle trunk’). I was also going as Captain Unibrow Pete so I applied some makeup to form a nice looking unibrow!
In I jumped into a van of rowdy ten-year olds and I chuckled to myself as they wanted to show off their costumes. One kid was quite proud of the chest hair he had painted onto his chest. Was I this rowdy as a kid? Probably.
The murder-mystery party/pirate mutiny turned out to be a decent time in my opinion. Rob and I discussed it afterwards and we found that even as adults, I don’t think we could have figured out the solution to who of the crew threw Captain Unibrow Pete overboard, so we can only imagine how hard it was for the group of kids. But they were having a great time. Everyone came in costume, everyone had swords…what more can you ask for at a birthday party? Swordfights were going on at a constant pace as First Mate Robbie Burns and I passed out clues, read pages of dialogue to push the story forward.
If you are not familiar with a murder mystery event, let me explain a few things. You start off with a mystery…who threw Captain Unibrow overboard? Then everyone gets clues…some clues are meant to be hidden from others…basically a ‘For your eyes only’ clue. Others are meant to be said aloud to the rest of the party to give them hints as to who was involved or not. Then, as everyone had read their clues aloud, another round comes into play and another set of clues to further the story arrives. There were five rounds in total, the sixth round being the round where everyone’s story comes out and the solution is revealed. I thought this round was great as everyone had made their picks for who they thought was responsible and then as soon as they realized they got something wrong, they just went about their night instead of listening to the rest of the solution!
After some pizza, cake, swamp juice (a concoction of whatever soft drink you can mix find!) and some gift giving to Ryley, the night was over and we headed back to Rob’s where we hung out for awhile. All in all, it was probably the most fun I’ve had at a birthday party in years!
Saturday morning I woke to the phone ringing at 9AM. I rolled over and ignored it. But then the phone rang a SECOND time which brings out fear in me…is this an emergency? Has someone fallen down a well? Is The Beer Store on fire? Of course I jump out of bed and find a message from Holly asking if we want to go out for breakfast for Joelle’s birthday. She told me later that she phoned the first time and thought “Ooh, I wonder if this is too early” and didn’t bother leaving a message. But then she phoned back the second time thinking “Well, the least I can do is leave a message.” which triggered my panic. Smooth move Holly!
All kidding aside, we headed to Broadways which is home to my favourite Philly Steak sandwich…mainly because they put hot banana peppers on it. Yum! Joelle, Holly, Vero and I chatted about everything under the sun and I had so much fun that I think I shall have breakfast more often in the future. However, if you all know me, you know that I don’t really like breakfast so I’ll order from the lunch menu if possible.
We headed home where I played a few more levels of Plants vs Zombies and then we finally cleaned up the house. We stripped all the Christmas party decorations down, cleared out all of our Christmas gifts that we had dumped into the house before heading to Brazil, and gave the house a good scrubbing. It’s looking a little better now, although the garage is chaos and my office is the last resting place of all sorts of junk. Sigh…
Mike and Trish came over later that night to hang out. Trish ended up getting me the Star Wars cookbook for Christmas which have some hilarious recipes (like the Han-Burger!) and she also made me a fridge magnet with a Boomerang Bros from Super Mario Bros! Awesome!
We hung out for awhile, had some beer and then watched a documentary on Mike and my favourite film, Dazed and Confused. Mike had ordered the Criterion Collection version which had a bunch of special features. I then proceeded to pass out while Mike and I started watching Pink Floyd’s The Wall and headed to bed. Classic Palmer move.
The next day Vero went to a theater practice..she’s in a new play scheduled to debut in…May? June? I basically laid down for the entire day and watched Being Erica, which is a decent premise for a show – girl with problems has a therapist that can send her back in time so she can fix her regrets.
All in all, I would say it was the best weekend…one that is productive, but one that is relaxing at the same time!
Categories
Arrr mateys
Item! I’m reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol right now, much like everyone else in the world who received a copy over Christmas. It’s a good read, although I can easily put it away when my bus gets me home each night. I do not feel the need to keep reading.
Item! Amazon is freaking amazing for the amount of time it takes to get a package to my house. Order something on Tuesday, it’s on my step on Wednesday. Beauty! In the package was Cheers! An Intemperate History of Beer in Canada which I discovered on this amazing website called Great Canadian Pubs and Beer. Also included in the package was the new four disc live anthology by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I had been on the hunt for the deluxe edition which would have cost $150 but then I realized I am not the biggest Tom Petty fan in the world and four discs of live music for $18 should suffice!
Item! Had the house to myself last night in which I enjoyed some sheppards pie that Marie-Annik passed along to me that afternoon. I also spent the rest of the night watching episodes of Being Erica (not that bad of a show actually…I like how the character is my age so when she goes back into the past I laugh at how it intersects with my own past…music, posters on the wall, clothing, etc.), trying to rebuild my Plants vs. Zombies game and getting Dad connected to Skype so I can transfer him some episodes of Lost. Turns out that he is missing Episodes 22-24 from Season 2 and he proceeded to Season 3 without knowing and realized he missed something! Woops? By the way, Skype SUCKS for transferring files. I ended up killing the transfer in the morning.
Item! Tonight I shall be hosting a pirate mutiny party for some ten year olds. It’s like a Murder Mystery Party but instead, I am Captain Unibrow Pete and my crew has thrown me off the boat one night and we have to figure out who was involved. It was for Ryley’s tenth birthday. I am hoping that the game will not be too advanced but I’m sure I shall have some fun dressing up as a pirate for a bunch of kids and practicing my pirate-speak. I predict “land-lubber”, “get me my bottle of rum matey”, and “Arr, you scurvy dog” will be my choice phrases of the night. I am also trying to acquire a real monkey if anyone has it. I think that would add a little something special to the party. A crazy monkey running around pooping everywhere. Beautiful.
Item! The house is in need of a massive cleanup this weekend. There are still Christmas party decorations up, boxes of gifts that were thrown into the house for the six hours we were back in town before heading to Brazil, and all our Brazil gear hanging out in the house. There has been no motivation whatsoever to clean the place up. That’s what three weeks of vacation does to you! Heck, I can’t even remember half the stuff that happened in 2009! My brain is toast. Anyhow, it’s time to clean up the house. Actually, starting this weekend, I am going to start going through sections of the house and throw out anything I don’t need anymore. This is in preparation for moving to a new house sometime in 2010. I figure why wait until I *need* to pack up my things to decided what to keep and what to throw away? Less stress this way, I believe.
Categories
Review: Drinking with George
For Christmas, I received this excellent book by George Wendt, otherwise known as the actor who played Norm Peterson in the sitcom Cheers. What a great idea for a book!
The book is quite entertaining as it is part-biography of all of George’s beer related stories (which we have all told around a pub table during our lives to see who would get the bigger laugh), stories that revolve around his time in Cheers (albeit, not too many stories so don’t buy it if you’re solely interested in that), and fun factoids about beer in general.
I enjoyed the structure of the book which had his life with beer as the main anchor, but then when the opportunity arose, the book would explain what he is talking about in more detail (like what is the difference between a pilsner and a lager).
All in all, a great read for the beer lover! Plus, it’s George Wendt…how can you not love the guy? Feel free to borrow my copy after Mike is done with it. It’s a short read.