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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Health food

I just lost a head's up match against my wife in poker. Not too thrilled. But, I've come to terms with it. The first time I ever taught her Texas Hold 'Em, she got pocket Kings on her first hand, and on the second hand, pocket Aces!
She's something all right. Another funny story has to do with a random trip to the casino on a long car trip. We decided to stop at the Ho-Chunk Casino in Wisconsin and see where $20 would take us. We ended up walking out with $300 thanks to her fabulous luck at a slot machine and her watchful eye when I played video poker! Great memory.
Anyway, the reason for the title is that we made a "salad" tonight I've never heard about or tasted before in my life. Snickers Bar Salad, if you follow the link it takes you to the very difficult and strenuous recipe. We skipped the marshmallows, but just three ingredients makes some good eats...

• Snickers Bars
• Apples (we used Braeburn)
• Whipped Cream

I just love the fact that it's called a salad! Well, we're going to let it chill in the fridge overnight and try it tomorrow, can't wait to try it... We ended up not going with Cool Whip (we whipped cream, baby!), but if you'd like to check out this video I found a few weeks ago, it is an interesting find.

OK, I'm done, this wasn't about a movie, sorry to all of you who read this blog every day looking for high quality reviews. You just didn't get one today. :-(