Fortune And Glory, Kid

Comin’ right at you.

It’s been a while since I did one of these “bullet-point” type of deals, and I don’t have any real pressing topics top of mind at the moment, so I’ll clean out the ol’ mental closet by sharing my thoughts on some stuff I’ve read/watched/played/heard/eaten recently.

Go.

• I loved The Wrestler. I wish it had won some Oscars but at the end of the day all that matters is that I enjoyed it. Did anyone else notice that the version of Round And Round by Ratt they use isn’t the regular studio version we’re all used to hearing? I wonder why?
• I’m not the biggest Bill Maher fan in the world, I think he takes the snark a little too far, but Religulous was pretty great. It uses the time-honored documentary tradition of “Take crazy person. Put camera in front of them. Get out of way.” and runs with it.
• Finished Sly 2: Band Of Thieves last night. A little late to the party? Yeah, considering the game came out in 2004. Still, they don’t make platformers like this any more (which is a discussion for another day), so it’s worth going back and playing the games I missed. Overall, a terrific game, but I thought the last “task” you’re given was lame, and it sort of brought the endgame to a screeching halt. Not Meat Circus levels of frustration, but it could have been better.
• I made an amazing lasagna. I love lasagna. Three meats: ground chuck, hot italian sausage, and cheese & garlic sausage. Five cheeses: mozzarella, ricotta, romano, parmesan, and asiago. I could eat it for a week and not complain. In fact I may just do that.
• Joe Torre needs to send a fruit basket to the reporter that leaked the “controversial” passages from his book, The Yankee Years. After reading the whole thing, there really isn’t that much there. Maybe he pulls the clubhouse curtain back a little further than you’re supposed to, but not by much. Plus, if you read the book it’s pretty obvious he had almost nothing to do with actually writing it. Tom Verducci wrote a book about the Yankees and Joe Torre acts as the “brand”.
• Don’t Mess With The Zohan: nothing you haven’t seen in every other Adam Sandler movie, but I chuckled more than I thought I would.
• I was really excited to read Rogue Leaders: The Story Of Lucasarts right up until the point where I actually read it. I can only assume the book was produced as a vanity project to sit in the lobby at the Lucasarts building. There’s very little in the way of new information, and crappy games like Podracer get as much play as Day Of The Tentacle. Definitely not worth $60.
• I like the Cohen Brothers as much as anyone else, but Burn After Reading simply wasn’t that good. The first 45 minutes are a snooze fest, and then it just gets all screwy without really being funny. Brad Pitt is pretty good, but all of his best parts are in the trailer.
• I’m two gardens into Flower. It’s cool, it’s sorta zen relax-y, man…but it certainly ain’t the game of this or any other year. It’s nice as a chaser after playing something intense, though.
• Thanks to Papapishu for turning me on to Boxer, an MS-DOS frontend for OS X. I’ve been revisiting chestnuts like Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of The Serrated Scalpel without having to get my backslash on. I love it when a program just plain works.
• If you aren’t already listening to The Exploding Barrel Podcast, please do. The Minotti brothers are a fun bunch, and they’re good people.

I’ve also been watching a lot of TV. This post is getting long enough as it is, so I’ll probably save that for another day.

Also, so Rocgaude stops bugging me: There isn’t going to be 2008 music retrospective. I tried, honest, I did. It just boils down to this:

• Early in the year Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers released Turbo Ocho. It was good.
• In the middle (ish) of the year Metallica released Death Magnetic. It was great.
• At the end of the year, Butch Walker released Sycamore Meadows. It was also good.

That’s pretty much it. I’m fairly certain that I bought other music throughout 2008, but none of it really resonated enough with me that I felt compelled to write about it, so that should tell you something.

As always, thanks for your time.