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Comparative Gourmetology

Posted on by Patrick

If you’ve nev­er had pou­tine — if you don’t know what pou­tine is — it’s a French Cana­di­an food, con­sist­ing of French fries, gravy, and cheese curds.

I nev­er thought I’d eat a food that made pou­tine seem light in com­par­i­son, but that’s because I’d nev­er had a “Chick­en Bake” from Cost­co before tonight.

Yikes. I ate less than half the thing and I still feel like I may nev­er be able to eat again.

Indy

Posted on by Patrick

I went and saw the new Indy Jones pic­ture-show* tonight, and…

…well…

…it was­n’t the film I was hop­ing for, but I sup­pose it was the film I was expect­ing.

Too many know­ing nods to the audi­ence; too many hat-relat­ed gags, like they’re try­ing to work an entire tril­o­gy’s worth into one script; too much of Shia Leboeuf**—who may be a fine actor in his own right, I have no idea, but he’s not up to par with Har­ri­son “Hen­ry Jones Jr.” Ford; and an over-the-top cli­max that made me feel like they were try­ing to out-every­thing everything.

It almost felt like they made the movie, watched it, and said, “Needs more… some­thing.” So they crammed it right full of in-jokes, winks, and armies of CG mon­keys, ants, and gophers, when what it need­ed was more, let’s see, coherence.

Indi­ana Jones and the King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull: It’s like Raiders of the Lost Ark, with more cowbell.

____

* You know. The talky.
** I’m sure I spelled that wrong, but I’m not inclined to look it up.

Mats

Posted on by Patrick

Last night three of us car­ried 5,000 pounds between us, down a flight of stairs, and loaded it onto a truck.

This after­noon five of us car­ried the same 5,000 pounds back up the stairs.

Judo tour­na­ments are a lot of fun.

Late to the party

Posted on by Patrick

…again.

A friend of mine told me about Car­nivàle when it was orig­i­nal­ly on TV. I don’t get HBO, though, and I was­n’t inter­est­ed in get­ting hooked on episod­ic TV either (which worked out well, aside from a slight Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca addiction).

But the first sea­son was on sale at Wal*Mart the oth­er month, for like $20, so I said “What the hey” and bought it. Tonight I put the first disc in the player.

It’s pret­ty fan­tas­tic; the first episode was well laid out, with a self-con­tained sto­ry and the promise of more to come.

It seems to be a sto­ry of the war between good and evil, in 1934, dur­ing the Dust Bowl years. It’s well-act­ed, well-writ­ten, and the pro­duc­tion val­ues are unim­peach­able. Ronald D. Moore, who pro­duced this series (or at least the episode I watched) went on to “re-imag­ine” Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, my addic­tion to which I’ve already mentioned.

This series promis­es to be inter­est­ing. Hope­ful­ly I can find the sec­ond (and, I believe, final) sea­son some­where too.

Very early sneak peek

Posted on by Patrick

From Cin­der, still very much in ear­ly 1st draft (this is from the sec­ond scene, and it was only writ­ten about an hour ago):

Out­side, vast ener­gies swirled, send­ing translu­cent stream­ers of pale light shiv­er­ing over the crys­tal of the great win­dow. Through them, she could see stars, shiv­er­ing and sparkling through the bow-wake of the shield­ing. One red star, at the win­dow’s cen­ter, showed a broad disc, even at this dis­tance. Sol, then. She watched it, bring­ing up fil­ters in the crys­tal win­dow to exam­ine it with­out squint­ing or leak­ing more brine from her eyes.

After a dozen min­utes or so she saw a tiny shad­ow right at Sol’s center.

“Is that Earth?” she said, touch­ing the shadow.

»Yes, the ship sent on her pri­vate chan­nel. »Please, I must concentrate.

She nod­ded. The ship was far too polite to ignore her, or to out­right tell her to shut up.

The shad­ow swelled: a dot, a disc, a plan­et. A rocky black sphere, large enough to blot out the sun, and still they approached. She almost asked the ship why they approached in shad­ow, but real­ized that would tax the envi­ron­ment sys­tems less.

“She” is Lady Schrone, who is new to a human body (hence the bit about brine).

I real­ly want this sto­ry to work; I find the idea inter­est­ing, and I’m try­ing to devel­op enough points of view and sto­ry­lines to go the dis­tance. Let me know what you think.