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!

MAGAZINES. wizard

since i was about 10 years old i have loved comic books. in junior high and high school i was an avid collector. during the comic book boom of the 90's there were a bunch of magazines devoted to comic books that i read. the best of the best, though, was wizard magazine. you could pick up an issue and read it for hours learning all about the comic book industry, read interviews with creators and artists, find out about little known independent comics, as well as check out the price guide in the back. i spent so much time reading this magazine through out the years, loving every minute of it! as i went off to college i lost touch with the comic book world but would still periodically pick up the latest issue of wizard and find out what had been going on in the industry. this past summer my buddies and i, as is our annual tradition, went to the comic book convention in chicago. well, on the website for the convention was an offer to buy a ticket for the con in advance and receive a free 1 year subscription to wizard magazine. i took advantage, remembering how much i enjoyed the magazine all those years ago. well, after receiving the magazine for the past few months i have been heartbroken by just how far it has sank since the heyday of my youth. the magazine really shouldnt even be called 'wizard' anymore, it doesnt resemble its old self at all! no longer is it a magazine for comic books, now its about movies, tv and toys. oh, and sometimes theres a little article about comic books. it obviously has been hit hard by the decline of the magazine market. what once was a hulking 300-350 page issue has now been degraded into a 75 page pamphlet. where once there were long interviews and in depth looks at comic books, there are how pages and pages of huge images with barely a couple paragraphs per page. what once took me weeks to read, i now flip through in about 4 minutes. thats not due to lack of interest, that simply had to do with lack of content! all this once mighty publishing great has become is a pale imitation of entertainment weekly. but with less articles... they must really be struggling too because the amount of advertisements has exploded! in this last issue its gotten so bad that they have even put a paid advertisement on the cover! seriously?!? and the tron article featured on the front is only three pages long. back in the day it would not have been unusual for a cover article to be 10-15 pages. lame. even though i got this subscription for free, but i still feel like i want my money back.

BOOKS. stargate sg1: sacrifice moon (book 2)

ah, now this is what i was hoping these stargate books would be like! after starting the book series at number one, i was a bit disappointed with the first entry, 'trial by fire'. this one is much much better! the fun thing about these different books is that they can be set in whatever season the author wants. this particular book takes place near the beginning of the first season, when the sg-1 team was still trying to get to know each other and try to get the hang of the whole 'visiting other worlds' thing. the team finds themselves on a planet that seems to be similar to ancient rome. the arrive and find themselves it a bit of trouble. they are sent off through the gate to another world where the goddess of the moon rules. while there they discover that all those who are sent to this world are brought to play a deadly game where some are the hunters and others are the prey. the story line itself was pretty good, i kept thinking i knew where it was going to go, but then surprised by some of the twists and turns it took. the best part of the book though wasnt the storytelling, rather it was the interesting and insightful characterizations of the four members of sg-1. julie fortune, the author of the book, did a wonderful job of digging in to the characters and really showing what was going on in their heads, something that the show itself is never able to do. we get a great look at how and why these four work so well together, and get a sense of what keeps them together for all the years they travel through the stargate together. a great read. it makes me really excited to read more in the series!

BOOKS. stargate sg1: trial by fire (book 1)

i've recently begun reading stargate sg-1 novels, so i thought i'd start at the beginning with the first of the series. its been a very long time since i read a book based on a tv show (back in high school i read a couple x-files books that were pretty bad) so i wasnt too sure if they would be any good. they have published more than 15 stargate sg-1 novels so far and they dont seem to be slowing down at all, so they must be pretty good, right? well, it turns out that the first one in the series is pretty bad.
the book follows the sg-1 team as they investigate a new planet with two warring factions. the story is rather poorly written in that there were quite a few long passages where i didnt exactly know what was going on. the action and events are muddled and poorly written, with the stargate team itself doing things that are not in character for how they would really react. the show has 10 years worth of episodes, so there is a really really strong foundation of character traits and personalities that are set out. also, there are some pretty basic rules that the team has followed on all 200 plus episodes that this book quickly throws out the window in the first pages. one major problem with the book is that the team takes a normal person from our world, a professor, and brings her through the gate with them. this would have never happened no matter how knowledgeable they think someone might be about a particular culture. never! yet here they are bringing a civilian with them. and to top it off, the character is really really annoying! every scene of the book that the professor was in was hard to get through. there are times where she is in danger and i was actively rooting for o'neil to just let her die! the final resolution for the book was pretty vapid and didnt play much part in the set-up that had been created over the former 200 pages.
over all, a terrible start to the novel series, but i'm willing to try again on the next novel. fortunately there are different writers that take over the series, so as long as sabine c. bauer stays away from novelized stargate, then i'm sure i will enjoy them!

GAMES. metroid pinball

i have recently been going through a renaissance with my nintendo ds. i had it put away for about a year or two, never playing it at all. but recently i found it gain and have been enjoying it a lot! ive been going through some of the old games i have for it and playing them all again. some of them are still really fun, but others i just cant get into. one of my favorites at the moment is metroid prime pinball. i really love pinball games, so i got this one a few years ago. i have no real interest in metroid, having never played any of the other games. as someone who is new to the metroid universe, i wasnt exactly sure what was going on most of the time. there were a bunch of characters and levels that i did not recognize, so if they were homages to different things from different games, it was all lost on me... anyway, the more i play it the more i like it! as far as pinball games go, this one is pretty good! i've been having a lot of fun traveling from world to world with the ball and even finding the level boss. after many many nights of playing i was able to actually defeat him and have an absolutely huge amount of points! metroid prime pinball it a blast, but nothing quite compares to my absolute love of the old pokemon pinball game for the original game boy!

TV. riverworld

i am almost always up for a sci-fi mini series. almost. this one was not really advertised much at all when it was on the syfy channel, and after seeing it, i can understand why. its based on a series of books written by phillip jose farmer. i am unfamiliar with that series, but here is what it was made into:
we meet the main character as he is about to propose to his girlfriend, then a huge explosion seems to kill them all. but instead of dying, they are taken to an alternate universe where they wash ashore of a river. the girlfriend is gone, but the main character matt ellman, played by battlestar galactica alum Tahmoh Penikett, is now on a quest to figure out what happened and how he can get his girl back. as things unfold we come across some different characters from different times. one of the guys ellman must fight against is the conquistador pizzaro. and somewhere along the way they meet up with samuel clemens as well (thats mark twain, in case you forgot what his real name is). all the while there is some strange goings on with some robed blue people. i'm not really sure what they are all about, but one of them, played by alan cumming, seems to be helping them. all of this sounds interesting at first, but none of it is done in a way that makes much sense or has any sort of dramatic weight.
its apparent that the syfy channel did not like it either since it was obviously meant to be a four episode miniseries that they quickly played out in two nights, about as under the radar as they could get... its too bad, there is some spark of a good story here, but none of it is done well.

BOOKS. abraham lincoln, vampire hunter

i havent read this one or anything, just merely saw that it exists, and i must say that i am really interested in it! first, i love me some abe lincoln! second, the premise is that the southern army was filled with vampires and lincoln is on a quest to kill them all, thats the cause of the civil war. wow, that sounds amazing! i just hope its as good as the version in my head!

TV. macgyver season 6

ive always loved macguyver. i remember watching the show when it used to be on, but i was a bit young to remember it very well. i just so happen to be at the used movie place and saw season six of macguyver on the shelf for only ten bucks. well, i figured it was worth ten bucks to relive my childhood a little bit, so i got it. one night, with nothing else to do, i convinced diana to watch an episode with me. i feared that it would be pretty bad and not hold up very well, but i was pleasantly surprised with how fun it was to rewatch all these years later! i know its a bit unconventional to start a show at season six, but thats the only one the movie place had, so thats where we began! one of the things that everyone remembers most about macguyver is how he could get out of anything, or fix anything, with the most random of things! well, by the time they got to season six, they must have used up most of their good ideas, because there isnt much of that in these episodes. theres about once or twice per episode that he needs to get himself out of a jam, but the contraptions are not very intricate or believable. it seems by this point in the series it was more focused on sharing a positive message. the season starts with an episode deriding gang violence, and continues through out the season with episodes dedicated to teen drinking, environmental abuse, and even an episode about glaucoma. the episodes are still a bunch of fun to watch, partly for the 80's flashbacks, and partly because they still tell good stories. well, diana and i enjoyed them so much that we have since picked up season one so we can start from the beginning!

BOOKS. a wrinkle in time

i remember this book always catching my eye when i was in school, but i never actually read it. well, recently i came across a free copy of it (which even had the cover i remembered from junior high!), so i dug in to see if it was any good. the story follows a young girl as she begins to notice strange things going on around her. her father went missing years ago and her little brother is a bit of a strange little genius. the two kids, and one other who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, get swooped away to another dimension. they are given advice and told that they need to go and try to save their dad who has been locked away by the evil bad guys for years. as they take their journey they stumble upon many different worlds and dimensions that boggle the mind. eventually they arrive at the planet that their dad is at. everything is a bit askew here. everyone must follow certain rules of behavior that are exceedingly strict. the little brother gets taken and brainwashed by the bad guys. now the two kids have to save dad and the little brother! its an interesting story, and i can see why kids would love it, but i was pretty disappointed by the ending. it was a good set-up, with interesting twists and turns and good characterizations, but the final resolution was pretty lame. its one of those where 'love is the answer' and can solve all problems. boring! that resolution often feels like a cop out, and with this book it certainly was. the situation they were in was dire and destined to be a great showdown, but then it all falls apart when they begin to go in to platitudes about how 'love makes humans special and unique'. maybe i'm a bit too old and too jaded to be reading this book, but i found it to be pretty bad at the end.