Oh SNAP

Three Musketeers trailer

I suspect I should be mildly to moderately embarrassed to admit that I’m going to go see this in the theater, but I have a sneaking suspicion it will be my favorite Alexandre Dumas adaptation OF ALL TIME.

And let’s be real: it can’t be any worse than any of the other Three Musketeers adaptations I’ve seen.

Little, Big

2011 books update

I finished Little, Big this morning. (Goodreads review here) I enjoyed it and I know the review is a bit vague but I rather think that’s what the book needs. Summarizing plot points isn’t helpful and it’s hard to characterize a novel like this. It’s fantastical but not strictly fantasy and, as in most ‘genre’ books tackles questions that are bigger than the book (see also: title).

While listening to a Books on the Nightstand podcast last week, I got annoyed because they were discussing authors making the ‘leap’ from literary to genre fiction and how the “characters in horror can sometimes be two dimensional” and that literary writers can bring “more to them”. This is the sort of commentary I expect from people who don’t read books. I’ve not read a single GOOD novel that had two dimensional characters REGARDLESS of genre. Slapping that generalization on any one genre should be embarrassing to the person providing commentary.

They were discussing The Passage and while I liked that book, I didn’t love it. Read Feed or Boneshaker or God’s War and tell me that a ‘literary’ writer would do better. I don’t believe it. As evidence, I’ll offer that all these books are ones I WANT to read the sequel to (unlike The Passage).

If you like Piña Coladas…

I’ve got a half-assed recipe that turns out well and is even less terrible for you than the average piña colada.

WilderColada:

Fill blender 1/2 full with ice

small can (8 oz) of chunk pinapple (drain just enough juice that you can see the tops of the pineapple

1/2 cup light rum

3/4 cup lite coconut milk

1 Tablespoon agave syrup

Chuck it all in and blend to your desired consistency. Tastes like summer!

Mountain Views (large pics ahead)

During my talk-through with the Verizon rep, we somehow managed to recover the pictures from yesterday’s train ride.

There was a fundraiser for the local battered women’s shelter and it involved an afternoon/evening train ride through the mountains. I haven’t been on the train before as I see the views pretty regularly on my commute, though that didn’t stop people from being shocked that I hadn’t ridden the train. I have to say, the views from higher up the mountain are pretty impressive. Click on the photos for larger views.

Leaving town

It's possible you can see the highway in this picture...

Last one

In conclusion, I live in a beautiful place.

Verizon is awesome part 67

1. My calls don’t get dropped.

2. When I call customer service, they HELP.

3. When I called customer service about this phone situation, they didn’t make me do the shit I’d ALREADY done (factory reset, sd card format) but talked me through some other options. And then told me they were sending me  NEW PHONE. No hassles, no hoops, no bullshit.

I know there are haters out there but there’s a good reason I’ve been a Verizon customer for 8 years.

More on the Droid X

Well. After two factory resets and erasing my SD card, I’ve narrowed the problem to the camera. Everything works fine and yesterday I even took some pictures. I came home, plugged the phone in to charge and looked at the shots I’d taken. This morning when I tried to find them, the phone told me there was no gallery. Searching via File Manager, I found the older photos I’d transferred but the ones from yesterday are gone. W.T.F.

Despite the fact that everything else about the phone is working, I’m finally contacting customer support. I suspect they will be less than helpful.*

Update: As predicted. Motorola wants me to send my phone in for repair. Turnaround is 5 to 7 days from the date they receive it. Right. Thanks for the utter lack of help, Motorola.  I guess Verizon’s the next stop.

Android love takes a hit

But first – WTF. No one on the internets told me The Big C made its comeback last night! I’m very disappointed in you all.

Back to the phone: Yesterday my phone went insane. It’s running the new Gingerbread update and is not rooted. After using it all morning (Stitcher podcasts and then my music from the SD card) all of a sudden it shuts off. And then when I boot it, as soon as it goes to sleep I can’t wake it. I boot it, rinse repeat for like 4 hours. W.T.F. This is weird mostly because I haven’t had any real problems with it. I attempted to erase the SD card and factory reset, neither of which actually completed but THEN when I booted it, it worked JUST FINE. W. T. F. F.

Intermittently the camera has been giving me shit (like tonight) and the phone only froze once today (corrected with soft reset). I went to the Verizon store yesterday because WHAT THE HELL ASS BALLS but there’s not a good answer at this point. If the phone is working fine, I can keep it as is but I may run a factory reset this weekend just to see if that helps. Otherwise, Verizon will be replacing my phone.

Yeah. My HTC phone was pretty much all love all the time. This will probably be my last Motorola phone.

Related, I love that smartphones allow geekage with people who wouldn’t normally consider themselves ‘geeks’. One of my drivers and I were doing app comparisons today (AND he’s got a Kindle now) and talking voice text, ringtone makers and remote security apps. This is an older guy who doesn’t consider himself a nerd AT ALL, but we spent 20 minutes fansqueeing about Android. I love the future. Where’s my hoverboard?

True Blood, Season 4

w00t!

So glad the show is back on, so glad Lafayette and Tara are chock full of awesome. Sookie was… Sookie-like. Most importantly, Pam kicks ass. The long ‘previously last season’ was warranted as GD it felt like it was a long time ago and it made for a great segue into Sookie’s fairyland adventure. As an HBOGo person, I also watched episode 2 last night and will probably watch it again next week. I saw a tweet that said Season 4 didn’t start with a bang. True. All the banging is in episode 2, fo sho.

I stopped reading the Southern Vampire series quite a while ago, mostly as the books began to be repetitive and mediocre. What I love about the HBO series is that they’ve deviated enough from the books to keep me hooked on where they’re going to go and made the characters interesting enough that I care.

Unrelated, except that it’s TV we got our Xbox hooked back up to Netflix and I watched the first episode of Sports Night again. I miss really good network TV. The basic cable networks are all doing things I love but I found Network disappointing pretty much all last season. Totally related: the interface for Netflix on the Xbox is so much better than on my Panasonic Blu-Ray player that I’m largely embarrassed for Panasonic.

Bears shit in the woods, and so do I

Last weekend, Spouse and I made a trip to Colorado Springs. The drive includes Wilkerson Pass, where there are incredible views from a visitor station. Given the dearth of nearly anything from Buena Vista to just outside the Springs, odds are if you’re making that drive you’re ALSO making that stop.

The visitor station has bathrooms of the enclosed fancy port-a-john type. I loathe these things. I actually detest port-a-johns as a whole but I hate these things especially because the tanks are so large and frankly just about any damn thing could be swimming around down there and ohmygod I don’t talk about this because it gives me the screaming heebie jeebies.

This is all apropos of 1. Having stopped at the Wilkerson Pass visitor center, having to use the john and being skeeved out about it. 2. Thinking I would maybe post about the inherent ick factor of those facilities. 3. Reading THIS STORY in the local paper TWO DAYS after this adventure.

I’m not sure that I can convey exactly HOW MUCH that story freaks me out except to tell you that there are now two emergency TP rolls in my car.

Random nerdery

Friday I updated my DroidX with Gingerbread. It was a rocky transition, I won’t lie, but the end result is good. So good in fact, that this morning I updated Spouse’s phone. If you want to know how much of a geek I am, I was thoroughly stoked to add PasswordCard, Shazam and Netflix (among other things) to his device. It’s the first time since activation that I’ve really gotten my hands on his phone. Also, demonstrated voice texting. w00t!

What I learned this week: Smartphones are wasted on at least 50% of the population. This because one of my work contacts (also owns a DroidX) was asking me what kind of things to do with the phone. He’s had his longer than I’ve had mine. I introduced him to Swype and Google Voice Search. He was impressed.

I love living in the future.

This is it

I’ve been engrossed in Little, Big virtually all day. All day, people. We’ve had a lovely Saturday up here in the mountains: grilled Bleu Cheese and Bacon burgers, made sweet tea and spent the entire afternoon reading on the deck. Spouse saw my paperback and asked, “Why’d you buy an OLD FASHIONED book?”

Truthfully, I purchased this book in our pre-Kindle days and had forgotten about it. When cleaning a couple weeks ago, I re-discovered it (as well as two others) forgotten in a drawer. Little, Big is one of those books I’ve heard many people rave about, including authors I respect. It’s been a while since I read anything this lyrically dense – sentences packed to overflowing – and it took a bit to adjust but then I just fell in. It’s been a lovely read and I’m already sad that the end is near.

As the sun began to drop and the air chilled, I came inside and dropped onto the couch in the basement. We’d had some musical accompaniment upstairs and I clicked on the TV for background noise. It just happened that Michael Jackson popped on the screen. Other than previews, I never saw anything of This Is It so imagine how surprised I was that it pulled me directly out of my novel and captured my attention just as intently.

Part of it is Michael’s final performance but the rest of it is just FASCINATING. Logically you know the guy had to be a perfectionist, but the extent to which he’s involved in every aspect – and seeing HOW MUCH of his project vision they were able to execute – is stunning. MJ holds a special place in my heart and the musical memory of my childhood. Probably I should be more embarrassed that my best friend Ruby and I designed and performed a tumbling routine for school set to Beat It, but I can’t muster it.

So yeah. Completely unexpected, I’m sitting here watching the making of a concert video and can’t tear myself away.

You and the Little Mermaid can both go f**k yourselves!

It should come as no surprise that listening to This American Life’s Father’s Day episode at work was probably not a great idea. Actually, it wasn’t that bad until they got to a story about a girl whose father was worried about her going to school in New York after the 9/11 attacks. He decided to build her an anti-terrorist attack kit. This grabbed me immediately because it is TOTALLY the kind of thing my dad would have done. She tells the story of him building the kit over a period of time and then having it at school for a couple of years (not opening it) and then – knowing there was $200 inside – she opened it for the cash because she was going overseas. I was crying before she even recited the letter her dad had left inside. Hell, I was choked up before SHE was choked up.

That story was the only story that really punched me in the gut and I felt like I needed to rebound with something funny, so I looked up an episode I’ve heard referenced a couple of times on TAL. The Greatest Phone Message in the World. Go to Buddy Picture and press play. Here’s a hint, it involves my blog post title. Ultimately what’s just as funny as the phone message is the story of the guy and his friend who actually TOLD him about the message and all their interplay during the story. Definitely worth the listen.

I also loved Simon Pegg on The Nerdist podcast this week. He completely bungles a funny Pippa Middleton joke but it’s so charming it stays funny. For laugh out louds, however, you CANNOT BEAT the latest Doug Loves Movies with Jon Hamm, Bill Simmons (sports writer) and Adam Scott (Community). I was laughing so hard at work that some of my colleagues thought I’d sustained brain damage. Note to self: you’re wearing EARBUDS. THEY can’t hear the voices in your head!

Right now I’m relaxing on my deck, enjoying a Pimm’s Cup and this gorgeous weather (photos in Twitter feed to the right). Summer here is absolutely the best summer I’ve ever experienced. Pimm’s Cups make it better. For those drinking along at home:

In a Collins glass about half filled with ice (pint glasses work too),

1 shot Pimm’s liquor (No.1 is what I’m using)

3 shots lemonade

float of 7Up on top

Delicious and super refreshing.

I got up at 3:30 this morning to go to work and let me just tell you that there is only one acceptable reason to be up at 3:30 a.m.- if you’re still up drinking from the night before. My new alarm app (Gentle Alarm, for those who care) is brilliant and doing the best job ever of waking me up (heavy sleeper) without waking the Spouse (very light sleeper). Also nice, Guster’s Bad World as my wake-up call.

While I didn’t love getting up early, it paid off in the amount of additional work I got done and not having to race to meet my deadline. Not only that, it makes Friday a coast day. w00t!

In reading news, I’m on to Little, Big. Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life was good but not great. A few parts made me snort or laugh out loud but I’m mildly disappointed given how hilarious Shane said Are You There Vodka was. I suppose that will have to be my next effort of hers.

Shades of Milk and Honey was something I had on my wishlist and received as an anniversary gift. Great stuff. If you like Austen, I predict a thorough enjoyment of this novel. It’s set in a similar time with similar society but a couple of fantastical elements to set it apart, as well as some interesting characters. Thoroughly enjoyable read, especially for summertime. On a Buy, Rent or Steal rating, I’m going to go with Buy. It’s a book I see myself reading again (much like I do Austen’s work) and a nice comfort read.

Dogshit Tuesday

No really, that’s how I started the morning. We’re sitting for our friend’s dog who apparently had some intestinal distress. This morning, in the dark, I went to the basement and was going into the laundry room when I felt the unmistakable (even at 4:30am) squish of a relatively fresh pile under the ball of my right foot. It threw a bit of a wrench into my morning.

On the bright side, I laughed out loud with the Doug Loves Movies and Nerdist podcasts this morning to help me regain my cheer. I also left work an hour early in order to compensate for hour fuckery which will almost inevitably occur on Friday. When I arrived home, I found a smaller pile of dogshit on the rug in front of my kitchen sink. Awesome.

At any rate, I’m not in love with any single app for corralling my podcasts. Currently I’m using DoggCatcher, Isyncr and today I added Stitcher. My issue is that I haven’t found a single app capable of pulling up all the podcasts I want with the most recent eps. DoggCatcher refuses to pull The Bugle. Stitcher doesn’t pick up the most recent Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe or Hardcore History. Isyncr is currently pulling what I want but I have to sync it with iTunes. Thus far it’s not cumbersome but it doesn’t have the benefit of updating the 404 while I’m at work for my drive home.

I suppose I’ll test run them all this week and see which are worth keeping or whether or not I can get a single one to jump through all my hoops.

In unrelated news, Tuesday is one of my favorite summer TV nights thanks to White Collar and Covert Affairs.

What I say about WeinerGate

I promised Shane I’d post this.

1. He didn’t fuck a little kid. (Special nod to you, Catholic Church!)

2. He didn’t fuck a guy. (Or get blown by one in an airport)

3. He didn’t even fuck a woman.

This already makes him better than the entire Republican Party.

And for the Democrats who are all aghast about some bad texts?

4. He didn’t get blown by an intern in the White House. Take your smelling salts. Calm down.

How are we even still talking about this?

Bottom line: if his constituents want him to stay, he should stay. *I* certainly hope he does because at the very least, he’s one of the few elected officials who uses logical arguments in session.

Dear Dems-

When someone asks you about this guy’s underwear shots, how about you mention the refusal of Republicans to negotiate in good faith on goddamn near ANYTHING – including the debt ceiling  and paying millionaires to be millionaires – and talk about what we’re paying you to do?

No love,

Sarah

And while I’m at it- Hey Weiner, good looking out with your manscaping! Way to be considerate of the spouse!

X-men: First Class, No Strings Attached

I was a fan of the X-men comics when I was younger, reading them regularly through the first part of college. Therefore I attend every film iteration with a certain amount of apprehension. First rule of Comic Book Movies: this shit ain’t the comic books.

If you go in expecting a literal translation, you’re going to be disappointed. Sometimes it’s for the better (Watchmen) and sometimes it’s horrible (X-men Origins: Wolverine, Elektra, Daredevil, almost everything not Batman) and sometimes it hits the middleground.

Here’s what makes First Class great: McAvoy and Fassbender CLEARLY enjoying the shit out of their roles and playing the subtext (and the 60s) for all it’s worth and writing good enough that you feel free to ignore the shit that isn’t great. *cough*JanuaryJones*cough* Seriously, Fassbender was great. It was excellent to see Magneto precisely as bad ass as you always knew he was. And McAvoy’s Xavier is awesomely smarmy and elitest until he has to re-evaluate things.

I loved what they did with Mystique, I loved that they blurred the good/evil lines between Xavier’s school and the Brotherhood of Mutants. Kevin Bacon was kind of fantastic and yeah, January Jones played Emma Frost stony vs. icy (though to be fair, I think she played the only role she’s ever played) which was my least favorite part. In all, though, it was a FUN watch. I haven’t had that much fun in a reboot since Star Trek.

I can’t wait for Disco mutants, that’s all I’m saying.

We rented No Strings Attached from RedBox and I’m not going to lie, I wanted to hate it. I saw all the gross previews AND it’s got Ashton Kutcher but holy shit, I laughed out loud. It wasn’t just that, either. If you’re tired of the comedies where the dudes are emotionally crippled and the wives/girlfriends/love interests are naggy bitches you want to see this film. Portman does an admirable job as a commitment-phobic med student, making her character sympathetic and funny. Kutcher’s character is more dimensional than the previews would lead you to believe and we enjoyed it, despite all predictions.

Also in the rental queue was The American, a beautifully shot and incredibly boring film. Spouse made the mistake of getting up to get pizza in the last 10 minutes – where neither of us expected that all of the action would take place. To illustrate how boring it was, he was perfectly happy to have me recap it rather than skipping back to re-play it.

I boxed up a bunch of donation items today and with any luck will drop them off tomorrow. Then I get to start looking for more stuff to give away.