We Read Good

I just read an article on USA Today posting the results of a study of the most literate "big" cities of the United States. Guess which one ranks 1st??

Minneapolis of course.

Well, there are actually two cities that tied, we apparently can't edge out Seattle. If you look down the list, St. Paul comes in at #4. While this statistic isn't earth-shattering, it certainly makes me proud of our great state.

Merry Christmas from John Malkovich

So Thankful

Another belly-filling Thanksgiving has come and gone and I have to say that eating three large meals in the course of 4 days takes its toll! My wife and I hosted our first Thanksgiving meal on Thursday and surprisingly, it went off without a hitch. We had over the immediate family and enjoyed 10 hours of food, fun and Fireside Nut Brown.

The food was great and all, but we also sat down and enjoyed a great comedy together. The Darjeeling Limited is a stellar movie directed by the esteemed Wes Anderson. It's always tough to pick a movie that eight people can enjoy. Three of us had already seen it and I seemed to feel that it was enjoyed by everyone. This film follows the story of three brothers trekking through India on a train, each having some additional emotional baggage they carry on. The dialog and banter between them is wonderful, and the movie also brings in some touching human elements. I give it 4.5/5 peacock feather ceremonies.

The Friday after Thanksgiving was a sit-on-my-butt-and-digest day, and I took that opportunity to let laziness set in and I watched four movies. Kind of sick, right?
Well, here's a brief run-down:
The Time Machine - This was on TV and I just went with it. Not that great, 2.5/5 morlocks.
Outbreak - Conveniently this movie came on right after The Time Machine and I was much more impressed with it. Dustin Hoffman never disappoints and the movie was an interesting peek into the scary scenario of a virus epidemic. 3.5/5 last minute antidotes.
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets - Now, I liked the first film, but this one was like watching it all over again. It wasn't original, and I didn't get as excited about all the clue-solving and code-breaking as I did with Nick Cage's first adventure. 2/5 conspiracy theories.
Rambo (the new one) - My brother and I stayed up late watching this one, and I regret that decision. This was the first Rambo film I've seen in it's entirety and I wasn't impressed. The violence was too much and the plot was boring and predictable. 2.5/5 unnecessary decapitations.

There you go. My wife and I are now sitting down to another movie this Monday evening, Kung Fu Panda. I'm hopeful that Jack Black will put some smiles on my face.

Recent Viewings

I just realized that I haven't been keeping up with my blogging, and I apologize friends.
I don't feel like writing any lengthy reviews, so here are a few brief one-line thoughts on the most recent films I've watched.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - 3.5/5 Not as great as the 1st, but better than the 2nd. Solid action, great acting by Depp, too lengthy.
Madagascar - 3.5/5 I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but it turned out to be quite hilarious.
Boy A - 4/5 A very good but depressing drama, recommended to me by a Blockbuster store employee, thank you!
Layer Cake - 4.5/5 One excellent British crime drama, Daniel Craig plays a suave criminal who just wants to get out, but unfortunately all hell breaks loose. Very enjoyable.
Sleepers - 4.5/5 Wow. Dark, twisted, but amazing.
Cool Hand Luke - 5/5 An amazing classic. I can't believe it took me this long in my lifetime to watch this wonderful film. I watched it about 1 day before Paul Newman passed away, so sad.

I also haven't shared the news about my newest bad idea purchase. Well, it didn't seem like a bad idea at the time, but now that the economy has tanked, I realize the money could have been spent a little more wisely, but that's all in the past. Here is a small photo of our new HDTV, the Vizio VO42LF.
Watching films, playing Wii and enjoying HD broadcasting with the new LCD HDTV has been quite a joy! We also bought a cheap Philips Up-Converting DVD player that beefs up the DVD picture so that it can be enjoyed on the HDTV, let me tell you, I have no immediate plans to buy a Blu-Ray player, because regular garden-variety DVDs look fabulous!

Sorry again about the lack of posts, but life has just been a whirlwind now that my wife has begun teaching again and that Summer's over. We moved into our first home at the end of July, and that has been keeping us busy with the unpacking and decorating. I hope to be back to at least a few posts per month, we'll see.
Ciao, Mike

Woo ooh, yee ooh

Recent Happenings

A few blog-worthy things have happened since the last post, just thought I'd share them.

My wife and I celebrated our one-year anniversary, this was quite a big day for us! We went out to eat at the 112 Eatery in downtown Minneapolis. The food and atmosphere was wonderful. I really enjoyed my meal, she thought her spaghetti was OK. We also drank some fabulous wine a 2006 Montes Malbec, my first time trying the Malbec varietal, very rich and smooth. Following the dinner we drove to our favorite dessert spot, Sebastian Joe's in Uptown, delicious, creamy, homemade ice cream. You can't beat the selection and the taste anywhere else in Minneapolis. All in all it was a romantic and successful anniversary.


Last Saturday my wife and I went to the Star Wars exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota with some friends of ours. It was an amazing experience, the exhibit contained many of the original models, costumes and set pieces from the movies! I was in geek heaven, the first trilogy really was a life-changing set of movies for me. I had an unhealthy obsession with it through my middle school years and have always carried a strong love for the universe that existed "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away". I've posted some photos I took at the exhibit in a Picasa web album if you want to take a look at all the neat stuff they had there.


Finally, I'll just touch on a video game I've been playing recently for the Wii, Boom Blox. This is a physics-based puzzle game where the main objective is to topple large structures through strategically placed throws of baseballs, bowling balls, bombs, etc. It also contains elements of Jenga. The concept of this game was actually Stephen Speilberg's genius. It makes some good use of the motion controls built into the Wii's remote and has some great party mode levels. So get out there and rent/buy the game if you are a Wii owner, it'll certainly entertain all ages.

Good Choice Academy!

The title is regarding the academy's choice of Best Picture for 2007, No Country for Old Men. I finally got around to watching it last night, and I have to say it was downright stunning. The intesity, the graphic violence and the subtle, dark humor all combined into one sinister, beautiful film.

The movie takes place in Texas, we follow the paths of three men, the first being Llewelyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin) who stumbles across a crap-ton of money from a drug deal gone sour. He is being pursued by one of the the most evil villians I've seen Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). To top it off, Tommy Lee Jones plays the role of the county sheriff who's trying to put a stop to all the killing that's happening under his watch. A neat detail about the film that I didn't catch while watching it (thank you Special Features!) was that the 3 main characters never really have any scenes together. Some chasing occurs, but no direct dialogue other than a small phone call between Llewelyn and Chigurh.

This is a film with plenty of gruesome violence, so please don't watch it unless you feel your stomach can handle it. Other than the squeamish factor, this movie packs a huge punch and is beautifully shot with a haunting story. I highly recommend this film to any one, it's one of the best Coen brother films I've seen. 5/5 cubes of Chigurh!

Rock the Garden

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending Rock the Garden, a four-act concert that was held on the street in between the Walker Art Center and the Sculpture Garden. There were at least 7500 folks in attendance, and it felt quite crowded. I waited a good 30 minutes for a flippin' burger, and didn't even bother with the beer or Chipotle line. Overall, the crowd was quite respectful and carried a good energy. And the music was great!

Photo credit MPR.

First up was a Bon Iver, a folksy singer from Wisconsin. Sadly, I didn't pay much attention to him, we missed the first few songs and spent the first 45 minutes getting acclimated to the area, checking out the merch booth while it was unattended.
Cloud Cult followed Bon Iver with a great set, they also had two band members/artists paint during their set and turn out some pretty sweet paintings.
Third up was The New Pornographers. I really enjoyed hearing them live, they certainly are a polished act. The energy during "Bleeding Hearts Show" was electric! Finally, I worked my way towards the front of the stage for Andrew Bird. He gave us a wall of lush noise... along with some great songs! He also performed a newer song that had some of the best violin pizzicato layering I've heard from him, I'm excited to see if that song will make it onto a live or studio album. It was my fourth time seeing him live and it wasn't the best show, I enjoyed his performance last winter at the Guthrie the best. However, Rock the Garden was the first show where I knew all the songs prior to the concert and that made it much more exciting when he suddenly broke into "Imitosis" or "Firey Crash". All in all, it was a fun show, hopefully the lineup next year will be as good. Thanks for reading.

P.S. Don't even think about seeing The Happening, bad bad bad 1.5/5 killer plants.

163 Days

That number (which is 23 weeks and 2 days) is how long it took me to listen to my entire music library both at work, at home and in the car. I took it upon myself to listen to every song that I had in alphabetical order, in essence, it was a organized shuffle.
I also didn't remain rigidly dedicated to this playlist, I very often listened to albums/songs that I was in the mood for, but whenever I didn't care what was playing, I went back the the A-Z endeavor. If you're searching for a new way to enjoy your music, if shuffle doesn't bug you, and you don't mind listening to the same song twice in a row sometimes (it occasionally ended up having studio and live recordings back-to-back) this is a fun project to take on.
Feel free to let me know if you want more specifics on how I continued the playlist when I went from work to my car, etc. Just leave a comment.

P.S. I've recently watched the following films, only Hitchcock pleased me:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 2.5/5 fedoras.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - 3.5/5 Pevensie siblings.
The Birds - 4/5 lovebirds.

Found Photo

Fellow tech-geeks, I share this photo (click to see it larger) of a 1GB storage disk that looks to have been made by IBM (*squints to read the description card*). Oh, look, someone is also holding a same capacity 1GB SD Card in comparison! I'd like to find out when that monster was made. It never ceases to amaze me how far we've come, and how far we're going to go with technology. They now have external hard drives in the Terabyte capacity.

I remember the transition from 5.25" floppy disks to 3.5" floppy disks (which held ~1.47MB) in the 90's. How many of us remember the pains of labeling all the dozens of disks we had, forgetting to flip that "lock" switch, getting the disk read errors, ugh. I find it interesting we still use the image of that 3.5" floppy as the "Save" icon in all programs. Will that icon ever go away, considering we haven't used those in years? Will it be replaced by an image of a CD/DVD?

In this era of personal computing, storage is key, and it's hard to imagine that we used to never keep digital copies of our photos, music, movies on our computers. Where do we go from here? Sound off in the comments if you have any ideas, dreams, etc.

Plan your meals carefully

I just found this image in the NYTimes highlighting how much food is wasted every month by an average 4-person American family. I was initially skeptical in the numbers, but after some thought, it seems accurate. My wife and I find it hard to always eat our produce, also, we can never seem to keep up with our leftovers and they many times end up in the garbage. Knowing of the growing problems with food prices and shortages around the world, this fact is tough to digest...

UPDATE: Well, I didn't read the article carefully enough, it's saying that the food wasted by retailers, food service and consumers amounts to the 122lbs per month, one family doesn't throw away that much. Still quite shocking.

First Laptop!

My wife and I just purchased a brand spankin' new laptop yesterday from MicroCenter. It's the first laptop either of us has owned, pretty exciting. Great specs for the price. In case you're interested, here's the product link on MicroCenter's website, it also came with a free printer, which translates into more clutter for our office!
Now begins the Windows Vista learning curve and the tedious process of moving pictures, music, files, etc. Ah, the burdenbeauty of technology!

No words

For how awesome this website is.
Go to ManBabies.com right now. It's on par with the kitty captions at icanhascheezburger.com!
What more can I say, if you don't believe me, here's an example of the pictures you'll find there.

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

I'm da boss, I'm da boss, I'm da boss...

Watched two solid films this weekend I did.

The first movie was Son of Rambow, a heart-warming comedy about two boys who decide to make an action film with the main character playing the role of Rambo's son. It's a great story, the dynamic friendship between these two boys is well played out. There are some great characters, the foreign exchange student from France is an absolute scene stealer. 4/5 flying dogs.

I happened to continue my quest to see all AFI's top 100 films (see my progress on this blog's sidebar link) and watched Raging Bull. It was quite an experience. It was a hard-hitting (pun intended) boxing drama with Bob DeNiro as the leading man. Based on the true story of Jake LaMotta, Scorsese explored the dark, jealous nature of this legendary fighter and his relationships with his wife and brother along with his self degradation. This was a disturbing
film, the boxing scenes were quite graphic (even with the film being in B&W), but it was absolutely gripping. It rightly deserves its spot in the top 10 and I give it 4.5/5 TKOs!

Freaky Beast

Here's an interesting article in the New York Times about how they have decoded the genome of the platypus, one freaky animal. This is a mammal that lays eggs, has webbed feet, a duck bill, it has no nipples and also is poisonous! I want one as a pet. Here's a photo of one in case you never paid attention during science class.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Unbelievably Silly Fun

I own a Wii, and just recently purchased the ultra-goofy, ultra-fun Mario Kart for the Wii.
I would write a review, but I'm pressed for time, plus here is one great review which I agree with. So far, my only complaint is that I don't have enough hours in the evenings to play, but life is busy and we only have one TV in the apartment!

If you're reading this and you have a Wii, buy the game! Once you've purchased it, send me your friend code and let's play against eachother, mmmk?
Looking forward to it.
-Mike

More catz

I truly laughed out loud.


see more crazy cat pics

Lovely photos

My wife has taken some great photos, I'm so proud. Anyway, here's the link to my Picasa account where she uploaded some photos she took on a "Snowy Easter Morning" here in Minneapolis.

I've posted some of my favorites below that she took and then further edited using a neat online photo editor called Picnik.

Three short reviews

As you may or may not have noticed, I haven't been churning out too many movie reviews lately.
Two reasons:

• I'm too critical of my own writing, and can't seem to write anything that satisfies my soul.
  


• I haven't been watching too many movies lately that have been post-worthy.

But I don't want to make this blog only about link and video dumping, so I'll give you a quick one-sentence review of the past 3 movies that I've watched, since they all have been good.

Y Tu Mamá También - Watched it last night, whoa, what a sexy and well-made movie, but very graphic! 4.5/5 mamacitas!

Finding Forrester - Quite the inspiring drama, I ended up reading The Catcher in the Rye after watching the movie (Connery's character has strong parallels with J.D. Salinger). 4.5/5 novels.

Atonement - Not what I expected, much more than a simple romance flick, beautiful cinematography. 4/5 hugs and kisses.

There you have it, some short film reviews. Happy now?

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

I'm not sure how many of you folks out there know of icanhascheezburger.com but it's quite the funny website where they mashup cute cat (and other aminal photos) with hilarious captions. Here's an example of one I found today, love it!



see more crazy cat pics

Huluriffic

Just wanted to write a quick post letting everyone out there know about a pretty sweet website that is now out of beta and for the public to consume! It's called Hulu and it's quite awesome. The website is sponsored by NBC and News Corp and it offers full length episodes (and many clips) of over 100 TV shows from major networks. Also, it has quite decent quality full-length movies (The Big Lebowski, Sideways and Mulholland Drive to name a few) make sure to choose the 480p Hi-Res option to get the better quality. Unfortunately you can't download any of the shows/movies to your computer, but none-the-less, it's a great guilt-free way to enjoy some quality programming. Anyway, just thought I'd share this bit of information with you all.

Ciao!

-Mike

Oops... (haha)

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Creepy but hilarious

Ahh, married life. An absolutely hilarious video from funnyordie.com