Year: 2007
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Movie: Napoleon Dynamite
Maybe I’m too old, but watching Napoleon Dynamite, I could only be grateful it was short. Metacritic score of 64 is far above my personal rating.
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Book: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
I’ve read Robert Heinlein many times before, but never one of his most famous novels, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” Published in 1966, the first-person story walks us through the revolt of a colony on the moon against the earth. The colony was founded as a prison, like Australia’s origins. Right away, the dialect…
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Book: The Areas of My Expertise
The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman was a hoot. The accompanying blog shows the spirit of the humor. If you’ve seen Hodgman on The Daily Show, then the voice and wry straight-man tone are even more fun. This is short, which is fine, since it’s a bit repetitive after a while.
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Saturday links from the e-mail inbox
(Oldest item in the email inbox) Way back on June 6th, I noted JobVent Takes Dirt Dishing To a Broader Audience and earlier this week, TechCrunch returned to the genre with New Forum Site To Gossip About Work. I’m not that interested in this class of sites except for the name JobVent. My one early…
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Movie: Ratatouille
Last night, I caught up to the rest of the family and saw Ratatouille. Pixar fun, with a nice short to lead off the film per usual. Metacritic score of 96 is stratospheric. I enjoyed it, but wouldn’t put it up on that pedestal. A G movie that works for children but never talks down…
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Movie: Live Free and Die Hard
I had a lot of fun seeing Live Free or Die Hard two weeks ago. Metacritic score of 69 is a touch low. Aside from the poor riff on True Lies (the jet scene), suspending disbelief and just going with the flow is fun. Not sure why Bruce Willis defines sardonic humor, but it’s a…
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Book: Jarhead
Jarhead is a book I wouldn’t have picked up without seeing the movie. Subtitled “A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles,” Anthony Swofford’s memoir makes me wonder again that my father was in the Marine Corps reserves. Just doesn’t feel like my father’s kind of organization, but then I didn’t know my…
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Book: The Book of Fate
Such an airplane book… The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer… if it hadn’t been sitting in a pile, I wouldn’t have remembered reading it. And it took the jacket blurb to clue me in to the story again. And that’s maybe three weeks after reading the book. Enough said.
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A touch of the Tour
In past years, I’ve watched several days of the Tour de France in the early morning, or catching the repeat on OLN (now Versus) in the evenings. Some of my fonder moments a few years ago were getting up early with the boy and teaching him who Lance Armstrong was, as we ate breakfast in…
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Book: A Crack in the Edge of the World
Simon Winchester published A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 less than a year ago, in October 2006. Since April 18, 1906 was the earthquake of the title, he just made the centennial — hardly a coincidence. After my other recent earthquake book, I’m now fully…