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| Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 | | 8:41 pm |
| | Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | | 2:36 pm |
| | Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | | 9:39 pm |
Anthrocon 2009 from the Inside
Ok, con report con report con report. Gotta write it before I forget everything. Right, ready, set, go... Wednesday Worked late throughout the week so that I could leave early. Uneventful drive. Wandered around being nosy for a bit, then went out for dinner way late - everything was closed. Originally considered taking the T to a euro bistro, but the city was scary and empty, so we detoured to Pizza Parma instead. Eech, no thank you, not again. Fries on salad, bleah! (It's a Pittsburgh thing). Saw the charity non-wine & cheese thing on the news. ThursdayGot up early and put on nice-wear for the morning meetings with the Westin & DLCC. Had hoped to stay dressed through till dinner, but got sidetracked setting up the message boards and putting out flyers. Changed before I got too sweaty. Spent most of the afternoon leisurely assembling 45 way-too-big raffle boxes (note to self: next year, cans) in the Dealers' Room and chased the media around a little with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) xydexx. Dinner with the GoHs was lovely as usual. Not only didn't the restaurant have red velvet cake for dessert, but they were sold out of the peanut butter "toadstool", dammit. Staff meeting followed, then [something], then bed. Friday My staff meeting in the Dealers' Room at 9am. Note to self: charity drop-off table outside Dealers Room bad idea. No one used it, but rather waited near it till the room opened. Skipped lunch collecting raffle/auction items. Note to self: insist on earlier drop-offs. Lupus in Tabula at 7pm. Two games, went ok. I was depressed about things for some reason and moped over a salad at the Fish Market. They were sold out of the peanut butter "toadstool" - again. Sat outside the dance for a while, then bed. Saturday More charity table. mrianti got us Arby's, yay. Auction went well at 4pm, good sales. Had to talk the Dorsai into letting us stay to draw raffle winners after the Dealers' Room closed - they wanted to kick us out. Note to self: plan accordingly for arduous ticket counting on Saturday. Recruited charity volunteers and Dealers' Room staff to help. Tried to hike to Big Mama's House Of Soul for dinner, but furries had eaten all the food! Proprietor: "They destroyed us". Friggin' locusts. Hiked back to Golden Palace for mediocre chinese buffet. Dance at midnight. Was terrified of set quality, and faced with unfamiliar equipment. Surprise: set was very well-received. I'd originally been planning to quit the ballroom after this year, but we'll see how it goes. Planning for a downtempo room next year, anyway. Stopped by the cheetah lawn party. Tried to avoid staring at Jaspian. Talked with djdragonboy and sat quietly like I do at any party. 4am, time for bed. Sunday Nothing left but prize-pickup. Six or seven items weren't claimed - good stuff, too! Oh well, more money for the charity when they're re-raffled next year. Note to self: Sunday very boring! Closing ceremonies, whoopee. Staff dinner, yummy. Wandered aimlessly till bed. Monday Breakfast with board. Meetings meetings meetings. Then home. Current Mood:  tired | | Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 8:00 pm |
| | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 10:26 pm |
Cajun + Bowling
Went to a new restaurant in Leesburg tonight: The Cajun Experience. They have a small menu, but the prices were reasonable and the food was yummy and special. Why special? Because when we went bowling afterwards, I got 220 + 176 + 225 = 621 series! Best series ever!!! And tomorrow, Anthrocon! Current Mood:  bouncy | | Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 7:46 pm |
Lupus In Tabula @ Anthrocon: Cambria Room, Friday @ 7pm
Since I'm not running the Masquerade at Anthrocon this year, I have time for other things - like hosting a Lupus In Tabula game! Westin: Cambria Room Friday, 7pm-? If we have enough people, we'll do a speed game and kill two villagers/night. Mwahahaha. Current Mood:  mischievous | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 9:47 pm |
Video Reviews (6/25/09)
Movie: The Good Girl (2002) Review: This is what soap operas would be if they were written really well and featured name actors. The relatively simple premise can be summed up in one word: infidelity. What happens when a woman has an affair with a younger man? There's some mild tension as the viewer doesn't know when or if anyone will find out or how it will resolve. It's even a little awkward in that the male love interest, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, lives with his parents and is borderline psychotic. There are a number of recognizeable faces in the cast, and if the performances seem familiar, it's because Gyllenhaal is pretty much playing Donnie Darko without the magic, and Tim Blake Nelson is rehashing a more modern version of his role in O' Brother Where Art Thou. Billed as having a twist ending, it's not entirely unexpected, and the rest of the movie is survivable due to the background, low-level dark humor throughout. It's an interesting drama, but not stellar. Rating: *** out of ***** Movie: The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) Review: Gotta give Judd Apatow credit, he is the king of "awkward" comedy, which seems to pretty much be the only brand of humor that brings up full-on belly laughs these days. It doesn't hurt to have your star be Steve Carrell, near the peak of his fame as one of the funniest commedians of the moment. While T40YOV panders to the adolescent crowd with profanity, nudity, and gross-out gags, the central story remains appealing to adults with plenty of really funny genuine comedy that doesn't require farts, burps, barf, or boobs. Apatow and this crew could also teach Christopher Guest and his cast a thing or two about improv, seeing as much of the film featured it and turned out significantly more amusing. In the end, it loses the momentum somewhat and becomes a sappy romance, but that was kind of the point - until the rather disconnected final scene that seems to have come from some other movie (oh, right, it did). Very funny and glad to see some sparks of real comedy in the movies again. Rating: **** out of ***** Movie: Immortal (2004) Review: If I could split the rating on this film, I'd give the non-character FX a 5/5 and the story a 2/5. Almost entirely CG, with the exception of a handful of actors, the visual design of the city is phenomenal, with inventive structure and especially the clever implementation of traffic. Dystopia never looked so real. The CG characters vary wildly, from the so-real-you-can't-tell-the-difference to looking like the character just stepped out of a 1990's videogame. Plot-wise, it's based on a comic book and, unlike some better graphic novel adaptations, it shows in both the script and the terrible dialogue. Very difficult to follow, it generally revolves around an egyptian god who has seven days to have sex with a particular woman. Why? We're not sure. Where did the woman come from? It's never explained. Who's the guy all wrapped up in black like a mummy? We're never told. This is a very fun film to watch and deserves to be seen, but the experience may be ultimately disappointing. Rating: *** out of ***** Next: Lost (Season 3), Warlock, Warlock 2: The Armageddon, Warlock 3: The End of Innocence (it's a horror-schlock marathon!) | | 9:03 pm |
| | Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | | 7:57 pm |
| | 7:55 pm |
| | Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | | 9:49 pm |
Father's Day
I went home to Rochester, NY for Father's Day weekend. My sister was also in town, so the whole family was together. I performed cleanup on a laptop my Dad had brought home from the volunteer ambulance. We went out for chinese, saw a planetarium show, and I went to the zoo and pet a kincajou. Did you? Gnu. Current Mood:  content | | Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | | 7:30 pm |
DC-area friends: Fringe Festival is coming!
If they hadn't sent me an email, we might've missed it again. The Capital Fringe Festival is coming July 9th-22nd! Last year, we only discovered it at the last second and managed to get tix to the final few shows. But we loved it! This year, we want to hit it as much as the two weekends will allow (nigh-impossible to get into DC for a show and back on work nights). Schedule opens for ticket sales on June 22nd. I'll post what we buy tix for when we decide in case anyone wants to join us for any of the shows. All tix are $15 - cheap (and usually crazy) theater! Current Mood:  excited | | Sunday, June 14th, 2009 | | 2:46 pm |
Video Reviews (6/14/09)
TV: Powerpuff Girls [Season 3] (2000-2001) Rating: ***1/2 out of ***** Movie: Up (2009) Review: Sadly, all good things must end. While I hope this is not the case for Pixar's independent creativity yet, a strong case can be made for it with "Up". This film is the first of a new generation after "Wall-E" exhausted the last of the napkin-sketched classics Pixar's creators conjured up over a 1994 lunch. As usual, the production values are phenomenal. There are a number of creative moments, although not quite as many gags, similar to "Ratatouille"'s record. The first ten minutes of the film lead up to such a sorrowful and depressing scene, that it hangs over the rest of this shortest of all Pixar films. That tends to handicap it as a comedy, wherein laughs are soon hushed by frequent references to the tragic opener. It also makes some of the more contrived elements seem that much more out of place. Most disappointing was the Disney-creep, where stereotype Mouse Factory elements saturate the storyline. The director apparently was inspired by Disney animators, to the point of adding in some tired cliches: the kid character comes from a broken home, one of the dogs is modeled on Pluto, the villain is named after the Universal exec who stole Disney's early characters, the climax concludes the same way that nine other Disney features do, and other small but noticeable swipes. Additionally, it was never designed to be presented in 3D, but was done as a financial and marketing afterthought to sell digital projection systems. Perhaps Pixar should direct their energy towards their new "Shorts" department, which will create more genius productions like "Partly Cloudy" which precedes the film. I'd like to say that it's another great Pixar masterpiece, but it's the first one I don't desire to own. Rating: *** out of ***** Movie: Drag Me To Hell (2009) Review: For a film that garners an 83% on Metacritic and a 95% on RottenTomatoes, you'd think it would live up to the hype. Written after "Army of Darkness", but only recently produced, DMTH features many of the same camera tricks, action shots, sound effects, scare tactics, and even performances that the good 'ol Evil Dead series did. Seventeen years later, it's fun to experience the cartoony, retro-Raimi film school, even if it is somewhat repetitious. But that school was built around one particular student: Bruce Campbell, who played a very tongue-in-cheek character in a very tongue-in-cheek story. The latter is present in DMTH, but Alison Lohman plays her part dead seriously, as if she just stepped out of "The Ring" or "Final Destination", and that just doesn't work. The film garners a PG-13 rating for one particularly over-the-top blood gag, but the rest of the grossness is entirely goopy ickiness, particularly a nearly OCD drumbeat of getting-gunk-in-your-mouth phobias. If executed properly, it would have a fantastic twist ending, but it's telegraphed blatantly far in advance with a switcheroo seen in many other films. If you're a Raimi fan, this is old school fun, but for the rest it's another C-grade high-school horror. Rating: *** out of ***** | | Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | | 12:59 am |
Just like last year
NoVaFur Yahoo group: 289 members MarylandFur Yahoo group: 397 members Novafur LJ group: 73 members Furginia LJ group: 99 members Marylandfurs LJ group: 127 members Chez Turtle LJ group: 85 members Total: 1070 non-unique memberships Number of RSVPs for tubing at Harpers Ferry next weekend: Zero Current Mood:  disappointed | | Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | | 7:39 pm |
Weird storm day
Woke up around 5:30am to a single long rumble of thunder, thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. Turns out that it developed into a massive storm with frequent lightning to our east with the particular characteristic of having extremely loud thunder. I wish it had been that strong by us, it sounded interesting. This afternoon, we had a pretty hardcore line of storms come through again, but once more got disrupted by the Blue Ridge Mtns and went all wobbly as it passed by. Nevertheless, saw lots of very wild lightning going across clouds, the whole sky, and taking very circuitous routes to ground. Strangest of all was the sight of the storm approaching: the cloud cover was parallel overhead, but a few miles off, it slanted at a 45-degree angle. It was like looking at the sky horizontally instead of vertically. A very weird phenomena. Current Mood:  refreshed | | Saturday, June 6th, 2009 | | 5:21 pm |
Burnout Paradise Multiplayer
X and I are starting to get into Burnout: Paradise on the PC and loving it. Does anyone else have the game and might want to do multiplayer sometime? Current Mood:  chipper | | Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | | 10:33 pm |
Video Reviews (6/3/09)
TV: Arrested Development [Season 3] (2005-2006) Rating: ***1/2 out of ***** Movie: The Final Cut (2004) Review: Robin Williams didn't transition well from family-friendly comedies to more serious films. One Hour Photo must've given him a shot in the arm, but it ended up being a one-hit wonder. The Final Cut, a dystopic sci-fi drama about a funerary editor of life-long first-person videos, is no exception. Aside from being dull and dreary, Williams' character is excessively undeveloped, with the depth of a wading pool. I guess if you take the comedy out of a comedian, there isn't a lot left. The film itself is no great epic, either. It's mildly interesting, altogether unthreatening, and wraps up thinking it's far more clever than it actually is. Chronologically, it doesn't make much sense either, describing a highly scientific camera implant as "completely organic" but present the video as a single microchip in an art deco plastic box. Toss in that the science in the 40-years earlier flashbacks is exactly the same as the present, and incredulity starts to permeate. Not really worth the time unless you're a Robin Williams completist. Rating: ** out of ***** Movie: Stir of Echoes (1999) Review: I'd been wanting to see this film for some time, but never quite enough to actually rent it. I'm glad I finally did because this is a very balanced mix of thriller/borderline horror and just the right amount of black comedy. Kevin Bacon plays an urban Chicago family man squeaking out a living until he's hypnotized at a party, opening his mind to a mystery that's part whodunnit, part ghost story. Told using some very obvious elements borrowed from asian horror cinema, it starts off being a squick-fest, followed by some decent scares, before getting down to the business of the core plot resolution. Regrettably, it doesn't quite become all it can be, introducing some plot devices and then abandoning them unexplored, but the tale is a local fable rather than a saga. The performances are great, and even the kid manages to act rather than just reading offscreen placards. Fun, creepy, just a little bit gross, and recommended. Rating: **** out of ***** Next: Powerpuff Girls [Season 3], The Good Girl, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Immortal, Up | | Thursday, May 28th, 2009 | | 7:49 pm |
Warn Notice
Yep, it's official. Tomorrow, I get my 60-day Warn Notice, saying that my last day is August 1st, the day before my birthday. Five people resigned today. After work tomorrow, everyone's getting together at a bar. I put my resume on Craigslist. Monster and CareerBuilder yesterday. I don't think I want to do JobCircle this time because it's primarily for government and government contracting. I very much preferred the private sector and commercial interests, tho those are few and far between in NoVa these days. I wonder if I should ping ClearSpring. I don't want to work 60-hour weeks, nights, and weekends, but they were my other option when I went for NG. At least I have a 60-day head start. Current Mood:  gloomy | | 7:41 pm |
Video Reviews (5/28/09)
TV: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge [Season 3] (2005-2006) Rating: ***1/2 out of ***** Movie: Stay (2005) Review: The story this film tells would be little more than a b-grade direct-to-dvd indie flick if it wasn't for the really cool cinematography and entertainingly wild FX'd transitions between scenes. Elements seamlessly meld into one another in an unnerving shift whenever we want to see another place, a different perspective, or even to just look at another character. It's hard to describe without actually seeing it. Otherwise, we have a mildly creepy psychothriller where we try to determine who this depressed teenager is, why he can predict the future, why he wants to die on Saturday, and why his insanity seems to be leaking into everyone else. There's some great WTF? moments and it all wraps up with a twist that telegraphs itself a little too early to be shocking. It's a neat little thriller-filler for in between other blockbuster rentals. Rating: ***1/2 out of ***** Movie: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Review: One of those classics that I had never actually seen, Cuckoo's Nest can be described as an epic drama in an insane asylum, albeit a little slow to get going. Mostly, it's a professionally-told tale of a sane criminal who teaches some asylum residents a bit of independence. Most scenes don't seem in much of a hurry to get anywhere, lingering on faces, phrases, or just dragging out events a little too long. If it wasn't for all the expletives, it would almost be a family-friendly film, although the ending, while not so much of a twist, is somewhat unexpected and bittersweet. This is also the debut performances of both Brad Dourif and Christopher Lloyd, as well as very early jobs by Jack Nicholson, Danny Devito, and Vincent Schiavelli, one of my favorite (late) character actors. Quite neat to see what they all could do before they became typecast. Apparently, it's not quite the book it was originally based on, but that didn't stop this film from sweeping all the top awards at the Oscars in 1975. Worth checking out if you never had the chance. Rating: **** out of ***** Next: Arrested Development [Season 3], Stir of Echoes, The Final Cut | | Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | | 8:45 pm |
Tubing and Flooding
On Saturday, we went tubing at Harper's Ferry with X's older brother and his girlfriend. The river was higher than I'd ever seen it, causing it to run quickly and completely cover most of the rocks. All of the landmarks we usually recognize on the river were missing or altered. Rapids went up to Class 3 this time. The chute at the end had become just a raging morass, and there was a new roiling flume downriver that hadn't been there before. Due to all this, the trip took less than 90 minutes, so we hopped back on the next bus and did it again. Today at work, I arrived to find that the water fountains across from where I sit had burst over the weekend, flooding the entire area, but most specifically my cube. I spent the day on moist carpet, with all my computer equipment on my desk, surrounded by torn up moulding, three dehumidifiers, and eleven industrial flood fans, blasting all day long. And I have to endure it for another two days. As if things there weren't bad enough there already... |
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