The Low Crawl of Winter

IMG_3669, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Ugh. I've had a migraine for two days now. Blech. Or maybe it was because Jon and I watched the season premiere of Lost last Sunday and I'm still trying to get my brain around it. I guess I'll avoid spoilers, but it was sad to see all those dead people.

Brenden and I play a lot of the Wii Lego Indiana Jones game together. There are some tough puzzles in that one!

Even though Bioshock II came out today, I'm re-playing Fallout 3 yet again. I had to try the Point Lookout add-on, and it was kind of disappointing. Mothership Zeta remains my favorite. I do like having an axe for a melee weapon, though. Whee!

Is Fox trying to kill Fringe? They show a couple of eps here and there then take it off the air for a month or so. Way to kill any momentum.

Caprica needs more exploding robots.

More of What I'm Watching

IMG_3664, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Jon and I finally saw Avatar and we watched it in 3D. Yay! It was good, but not great. I've said before I judge James Cameron harshly because he's better than most directors working in Hollywood today (plus he directed Terminator and Aliens, and I love both of those to smithereens). Someday I'll rank JC's movies but for now I'll place this somewhere between The Abyss and True Lies. It was certainly better than Titanic!

My problems with the movie were with the script. There's nothing groundbreaking here, Humans Are Bastards and they are targeting Noble Savages for their land and a Mighty Whitey is the protagonist). I'm also not certain why Sam Worthington is such a hot item right now. He's very good looking in a generic way but I wasn't impressed with his acting skills. Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana blew him out of the water.

Which is what I did like about the movie: Sigourney Weaver plays a cranky but good-hearted scientist and I loved seeing her again. Zoe Saldana was the main Na'vi character. I never undertood why she fell in love with Worthington's character but at least she had a full range of emotions. Plus she kicked butt and I'll avoid spoilers but I'll say a common outcome with the Final Boss battle was averted here near the end of the movie. Bonus: Michelle Rodriguez, whom I always love seeing. No offense meant to Jenette Goldstein (who played a terrific Vasquez), but I always thought Cameron would have cast Rodriguez as Vasquez in Aliens if she hadn't been like 5 at the time.

Oh, and the main bad guy is a Colonel Badass and much fun to watch. The special effects are amazing and Weta, the New Zealand effects company pwns George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic. The fight scenes are worth the price of admission alone and Cameron knows better than to use Shaky Cam. So my final verdict: Avatar = Pretty!

More Creeping

IMG_3671, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Wow, I am such a frakking geek. I bought a couple of Bear McCreary's soundtracks from seasons 2 and 3 of Battlestar Galactica. His choices are so eclectic: you have plenty of celtic and arabic influences, plus for quieter moments piano and / or violin, and then there's of course the constant poundy, poundy drums. He likes them more than the Japanese do. That's saying something!

Anyway listening to it makes me miss the show something fierce. Yes, I'll watch Caprica, but there's no Mom, Dad, or the Twins. No Tigh or Caprica 6 or Baltar. Will there be anything on this new show like the time Madame Airlock told the chief mutineer she would use everything at her disposal, including her eye teeth, to end him? Anything as jaw-dropping insane as the mid-season 2 story arc of the Pegasus and crew? Or as nifty-cool as the Galactica jumping into New Caprica's atmosphere to release fighters? If Caprica doesn't break my heart at least once an episode or so it won't measure up.

24 has started again - yeah, I'm a masochist. Enough said about that. Less than a month to go for the next season of Lost! Yay!

Creeping January

IMG_3662, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Nothing new to report - Brenden told his first joke (that I understood):

Brenden: "This is yummy!" (referring to his strawberry flavored applesauce).

Me: "I'm glad you like it."

Brenden: "No, mama, you say 'you can say that again'! Ok? I say is yummy, you say 'you can say that again'!"

Me: "Um, ok."

Brenden: "This is yummy!"

Me: "You can say that again!"

Brenden: "This is yummy! Hahaha! Isn't that funny, mama? Isn't that funny?"

Of course it was.

Also: Happy 92nd birthday to Major Richard Winters, the only nonagenarian I have ever had a crush on. Watch Band of Brothers if you have no idea who I'm talking about.

Winter Fire

IMG_3666, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

What I'm Watching / Reading:

Land of the Lost: No Trope links because this is a will Ferrell movie which has become kind of a trope in itself. So I was wrong about my prejudgement about this movie. It was not worse than G.I. Joe. and that is damning it with faint praise. Some people consider this movie a rape of their childhood, but really: Land of the Lost? Sure, I watched it when I was a kid but even back then I knew it was a lame show. Most of the funny moments involve scenes with Matt Lauer.

9: Animated post-apocalyptic tale. Fascinating to look at, but it had some plotting problems.

Extract: I love Mike Judge and here he does what he always does - he shows us idiots being idiotic. The protagonist is a chemist and owns his own business so you think he'd be a little less stupid than the idiots who work for him, but he accidentally takes a horse tranquilizer and ends up getting talked into hiring a gigolo to have sex with his wife. See, this way he can cheat on her, guilt-free. This movie had its moments but on the whole I'd rather see Idiocracy again.

Under the Dome: This Stephen King book is about a thousand pages long and I read it in about 3 days. It's a page turner (kindle clicker?) about a small town that gets trapped underneath an impregnable force-field. I won't go into more to avoid spoilers except near the end of the book I was shaking so bad I didn't want to finish it. I'm glad I did though. I think it's some of his best writing ever. Your mileage may vary, of course.

American Idol is back, and it's Simon Cowell's last season. How the hell can AI go on? The whole reason to watch the show is to see Simon cut off some clueless contestant at the knees then dash a cup full of piss-tinged reality into said contestant's face. All with that dry british drawl. Also Paula Abdul is gone. No more incoherent drug-fueled rambling. How boring! I didn't last long last season, anyway. I doubt I'll make it past Hollywood week for this one either.

2009: The Year in Recap Form

Magic and Dutchman, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

January: Visit to Ed and Jen's place in Massachusetts. Snow! Yay!
February: Disney Cruise to the Caribbean! Yar!
March: Battlestar Galactica ended. Whaa!
April: I got a Kindle (II). Yay!
May: Life (the TV show) got canned. Boo! But, I also got to see a great movie in the theater (Star Trek). Yay!
June: Much remodeling work done around our house. Ouch!
July: I earned a trip to the emergency room due to a bulging disc. Ouchouchouchouchouch. Also new kitties. Meow.
August: Jon and I have our 10 year anniversary. Muah!
September: Great Tampa visit w/ dad and Ilu so Brenden can go to the beach. Whee!
October: We go camping and Brenden catches a catfish. Yum!
November: Thanksgiving in Oklahoma. Yum!
December: Long nothing-doing vacation at home during Christmas. Ahhhhhhhhhh.........!

So there you have my year in review. Heh.

Rabbids

Raving Rabbids!!!!!!, originally uploaded by meljpouliot.

I had a whole week off for Christmas, plus New Years. We didn't go anywhere and just stayed home. Jon did some work on the house but spent a chunk of time at the drop zone. He bought me Dragon Age: Origins for Christmas and I spent most of my free time playing it.

Like Bioshock is distantly related to System Shock II this game is the indirect descendant of Baldur's Gate. BG is an FRPG based on Dungeons and Dragons. DAO isn't D&D but it will be quite familiar to any experienced RPG gamers. At first I thought the story line was too limiting - I think I'm spoiled by the open worlds of Bethesda Softwork's Elder Scroll series, not to mention my favoritest Fallout 3. DAO's characters and story line sucked me in, however.

I won't go into details - there's a blight upon the land and your character is called upon to stop it. You meet people along the way who can join you for your quest and you can get kind of attached to some of them.

Anyone who remembers the somewhat stilted dialog from portions of Baldur's Gate take heart: the people who wrote Dragon Age apparently watch Joss Whedon shows and the conversation is more entertaining than usual. The first NPC who can join your party, Alastair, is a cross between Xander from Buffy and Mal from Firefly. That's according to the people who designed him and it's a fairly accurate assessment.

Brenden got loads of toys besides the way-cool brain-sucking space aliens. He received a Wii game that he's addicted to: Ubi-Soft's Rabbids go home (it is spelled "rabbid" and for good reason). He was entertained for almost an hour when he discovered a portion of the game where one of the rabbids gets stuck in your controller. You shake the controller and the rabbid makes lots of noises while on screen you see a little cartoon rabbid careening of the interior of a Wii remote. The rabbid is pretty happy about it. Anyway Brenden squees and laughs his little buttocks off when he plays.

Which is great, because it gives me more time to fight blood mages, darkspawn, and the occasional archdemon.