BOOKS. eureka: brain box blues

a few years ago, when the tv show eureka first premiered, i thought id give it a try. i really loved it! the show is about a sheriff who works in the town of eureka, a scientific sort of utopia where the government has holed away thousands of scientists in this small town, and they have come up with amazing technological advances. the characters are a ton of fun, especially sheriff carter, the main character. he's really the only sane one in this town full of crazy scientists! having watched the show for the past four seasons, i decided to give the books a try.
'brain box blues' is about a strange invention that can supposedly see the last memories of someone who died. the story starts with a top secret case and they need to see what the last memories were of an important government official who was recently killed. its up to the scientists at global dynamics to get the information out of the box and make some sort of sense of it. of course, the purpose for getting these memories is kept under wraps until it becomes more and more obvious that there are some hidden motives behind the information being harvested.
the story itself is pretty good, it plays like a big episode of the show. it was fun to read all the different characters, who the author does a great job of recreating. the different actions and events are true to the show and its attitudes. a quick and fun read!

COMEDY. colin quinn: long story short

the latest stand up special from colin quinn takes a very different approach to the old 'stand there and tell jokes' formula that most comedians use. instead of just stories and jokes following no particular pattern, quinn tackles one subject matter for the whole duration of his show. granted, the topic is pretty big: the history of the world! this structure is really well done as quinn, with the assistance of photos and animation on the screen behind him, goes through all of recorded history and takes a critical look at whats gone wrong and whats gone right, all the while adding his own hilarious two cents! he starts with cave men, jumps to the greek and roman empires, then in to christendom, finally traveling around the world visiting each continent and giving his perspective on their respective histories. quinn does a fantastic job of playing the history teacher- in fact, if it wernt for all the bad language, this thing could almost be shown in schools! my only real experience with quinn was his role as saturday night live's weekend update anchor, and i was very pleasantly surprised at how funny and clever he really is! and he's pretty good at accents from around the world too! all in all this is a pretty impressive stand-up show, i enjoyed it so much that i plan to watch it again soon!

TV. camelot

i'm not particularly drawn to the legend of king arthur, but my wife loves that kind of stuff, so we decided to watch the new camelot show on starz. i have almost no knowledge of the legend itself other than the most basic of information: arthur was a king, he had a round table with knights, a cool sword, a strange magician merlin, and some creepy chick who lives in a lake. other than that, i dont really know anything about it, so watching this show will be learning a completely new mythology. in the first episode we see the king killed by his daughter morgan who then tries to take the throne, but merlin reveals that the king has a son who has been in hiding for the past twenty years. merlin then makes work of getting the hidden son, arthur, to accept his true fate of becoming the king of england. the story wasnt all that interesting to me, but as the episode reached its climax and arthur begins to take the role of king and fight against those who oppose him it started getting good. i can honestly say that i dont know where the story will go from here, but it should be fun to find out!

BOOKS. stargate sg-1: the cost of honor (book 5)

this stargate novel is a continuation of 'a matter of honor'. the story left off with our gang getting the technology they needed to try and save an sg team that they had left behind years ago. the team had been left behind in a world that was collapsing into a black hole. the black hole had effected the planet so much that time itself had slowed. it had been four years since sg-1 left that planet, but to the team that was there it had only felt like an hour. now that sg-1 has the technology (though some uncharacteristically shady means) to go back and rescue them, they try to get the go-ahead from hammond. he is facing a tough time from some officials due to their plan with the planet sg-1 had gotten the technology from, so he is not officially allowed to let them go on the mission to save the lost sg team. but they go anyway and save most of the lost team. but the machine they had gotten broke and they too were effected by the time stream of the black hole and when they get back many months have passed at they must face the repercussions of their disobeying commands. hammond is gone because he let them go save the lost team, and how the sg-1 team is in big trouble because of how they got the technology that broke. it was a great story with tons of action and good characterizations. we really get to see how much it effected jack and hammond that they broke protocol and did things they werent supposed to do. a very good finale to the first book. well done.

GAMES. dice wars

dear dice wars, please give me my life back. one of my buddies showed this to me a few months ago. he sent me a link to a flash game that he had been enjoying. i gave it a try and became instantly hooked! the game is basically the board game 'risk', which is a personal favorite of mine! growing up i always loved playing risk with my big brother, he would always beat me, but i loved playing anyway! dice wars is just like risk except you wont find little plastic figures in the vacuum for the next three weeks! i'm going to share the link, but i'm warning you: only click on it if you have a few hundred hours to kill! it will suck away all your free time, like it has with me. click at your own risk (get it? risk? ha!) here.

BOOKS. stargate sg-1: a matter of honor (book 3)

the third book in the long series of novels based on the stargate sg-1 tv show, 'a matter of honor' is the first book in a two part story. the story is actually based on the events of one of the episodes of the tv show. in that show, the sg-10 team gets stuck on a world that is being sucked into a black hole. the interesting thing about that is the black hole has slowed down the time on that planet so even though this story takes place five years after the team was lost, only an hour or so has passed for the sg-10 team. jack's dedication to the military philosophy of 'no man left behind' is what drives this story. the sg-1 team finds itself on a planet where our government is trying to barter a trade with the local inhabitants in order to get some of their more advanced technology for ourselves. the sg-1 team and general hammond dont feel that we need this technology and are trying to end the trade. while on the planet, they realize that it houses one of baal's fortresses that has another technology that they might be able to use to save the lost sg-10 team. our four intrepid heroes do everything they can to get this baal technology, including going against direct orders from general hammond.
this story is really well written by sally malcolm. the characters are perfectly captured and think and act in a way that fits what we have known about them for so many years on the show. one of the big plot points is how jack o'neill deals with being in baal's fortress again. last time he was there he was tortured and killed, resurrected, and killed again, ad nausium. the author has a fantastic grasp on what is going on in o'neills head during their trip to retrieve the technology from this place with so many bad memories for him. it was a great read, and i am eager to read the next one to finish the story! these stargate sg-1 novels just keep getting better and better!

TV. spatacus: blood and sand

we currently have the starz channels on tv, and they have recently been replaying the entire season of 'spartacus: blood and sand'. i thought i would give it a shot, so we recorded the whole 13 episode season. knowing that the super graphic violence probably wouldnt be diana's thing, i began watching them by myself. after about two episodes, diana became curious about it and wanted to give it a try. we watched the third episode together and she got hooked! sure, the violence is really graphic and outrageously over the top, but she said it was cartoony enough that she was ok with it. oh, one other disclaimer: there is an absurd amount of nudity in it as well... anyway, the story follows a man who goes in to battle and makes an alliance with the roman army to help defeat his nation's enemies. when rome decides to go after another army instead, he and his people back out of the alliance. well, the roman general doesnt like that too much and the man is caught and turned into a slave, as is his wife. they are separated, and the man is thrown into the arena to die by the gladiators hands. he doesnt die, and instead defeats the four gladiators, becoming a new hero to the audience in the arena. he is sold to a gladiator trainer and must prove himself worthy of the gladiator brotherhood. as the story unfolds during the 13 episode season, we see spartacus earn his new name, make friends and enemies in the training grounds, and his master's attempt to enter the political arena. all the stories are incredibly well written and the acting is quite good all around. though this show obviously started as a '300' clone, its depth and scale quickly outgrows those shackles and it becomes an amazing spectacle all its own!

TV. party down

i had heard good things about this little show on starz but had never seen it before. well, over new years they had a marathon of all the episodes, season 1 and season 2, so i thought id give it a shot. turns out that its really funny! diana and i zipped through all 20 episodes in one sitting! the show follows a group of caterers who serve food at different events, and shows their lives unfolding and interacting. the set up is a lot of fun, each episode is about the caterers at a different event, it may be a birthday party, or a picnic, or even backstage at a rock concert. the fun is how these six characters interact and hassle each other and those that are at the parties. the show is done is the same way as something like 'curb your enthusiasm' where there is a lot of improve going on- and its always hilarious! all the characters are wannabe actors who are just working as caterers until they land their big break (like thats going to happen...), except the main character, henry. he had his big break in a beer ad, even had his own catchphrase, but his career stalled out from there and he retreated back to the catering job giving up acting for good. while there he falls for a coworker and has to deal with the boss who takes his job way too seriously. the interplay of the different actors is hilarious. my favorite of the bunch was the wannabe writer who is always working on his hard sci-fi masterpiece and gets pissed at anyone who doesnt understand his ways. unfortunately the show was cancelled after its second season, so there wont be any more episodes coming, but what they did for those two seasons was fantastic to watch!