Buys
Nothing to see here. Move along. Leave the wallet alone.
"Accomplishments"
Books: I was hungry for some quality short stories, and I hadn't read a Julian Barnes book in a while (used to be my favorite contemporary writer) and so I picked up The Lemon Table, a collection of 11 stories about the bitterness of growing old. I wasn't disappointed. What struck me is how good Barnes is at crafting different "voices", and he never pulls the same stylistic trick twice. If I had to name a favorite, I guess it would be Hygiene, in which a regular visit to the out-of-town hooker is met with disappointment, but if you're a fan of Barnes' more postmodern work, like Flaubert's Parrot, check out Knowing French, which is written as correspondence to the author.
Comics: Finished the OMAC Omnibus, and while I knew it would end in an unresolved fashion, it still shocked me how the series was canceled so summarily. Still, it was good while it lasted, and I often found myself giggling at the sheer extremity of it all. It's comics with a capital !. I'll be paying proper homage to it tomorrow.
DVDs: Flipped All the President's Men, the classic 1974 film about Woodward & Bernstein's journalistic investigation of Watergate. It's quite a feat when you can make a compelling film about people with typewriters, and the movie succeeds mostly on the strength of the paranoid cinematography and the extremely authentic performances from Redford and Hoffman. Redford also provides a nicely detailed commentary track (he was producer as well), and an extra disc has documentary features on the film, the history, and what it meant to journalism as a whole. Only Jason Robard's vintage interview with Dinah Shore is fluff.
RPGs: Played rather than GMed this week, trotting out my usual character, an outside-the-box thinker/clown that is no doubt the terror of all the GMs out there. The Romepunk scenario had its high points, though my PC just can't thrive in anything that includes a lot of combat. Horse thieving, however, was right down my alley.
GTA4 completion: 68.5%. Addiction Level: High on Your Own Supply. (Story complete.)
Someone Else's Post of the Week
For post of the week, I'm going to point yo Caleb's always excellent Every Day Is Like Wednesday for a discussion on the racism implicit in Mark Millar's work, specifically in Wanted (coming to a theater near you!). His observations sparked an interesting debate in the comments section as well.
Nothing to see here. Move along. Leave the wallet alone.
"Accomplishments"
Books: I was hungry for some quality short stories, and I hadn't read a Julian Barnes book in a while (used to be my favorite contemporary writer) and so I picked up The Lemon Table, a collection of 11 stories about the bitterness of growing old. I wasn't disappointed. What struck me is how good Barnes is at crafting different "voices", and he never pulls the same stylistic trick twice. If I had to name a favorite, I guess it would be Hygiene, in which a regular visit to the out-of-town hooker is met with disappointment, but if you're a fan of Barnes' more postmodern work, like Flaubert's Parrot, check out Knowing French, which is written as correspondence to the author.
Comics: Finished the OMAC Omnibus, and while I knew it would end in an unresolved fashion, it still shocked me how the series was canceled so summarily. Still, it was good while it lasted, and I often found myself giggling at the sheer extremity of it all. It's comics with a capital !. I'll be paying proper homage to it tomorrow.
DVDs: Flipped All the President's Men, the classic 1974 film about Woodward & Bernstein's journalistic investigation of Watergate. It's quite a feat when you can make a compelling film about people with typewriters, and the movie succeeds mostly on the strength of the paranoid cinematography and the extremely authentic performances from Redford and Hoffman. Redford also provides a nicely detailed commentary track (he was producer as well), and an extra disc has documentary features on the film, the history, and what it meant to journalism as a whole. Only Jason Robard's vintage interview with Dinah Shore is fluff.RPGs: Played rather than GMed this week, trotting out my usual character, an outside-the-box thinker/clown that is no doubt the terror of all the GMs out there. The Romepunk scenario had its high points, though my PC just can't thrive in anything that includes a lot of combat. Horse thieving, however, was right down my alley.
GTA4 completion: 68.5%. Addiction Level: High on Your Own Supply. (Story complete.)
Someone Else's Post of the Week
For post of the week, I'm going to point yo Caleb's always excellent Every Day Is Like Wednesday for a discussion on the racism implicit in Mark Millar's work, specifically in Wanted (coming to a theater near you!). His observations sparked an interesting debate in the comments section as well.
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