Quantum of Solace
While still better than the majority of post-Connery Bond films, this one lacks the intrigue and story of Casino Royale. It relies too heavily on choppily edited chase sequences that are really just standard Bond faire.
Author: Robert Gomez
Nonagon on One Kind Radio’s Local & Indie Podcast
We had a track from No Sun played on this week’s Local & Indie Podcast on One Kind Radio. They had some nice things to say about the CD and threw in a plug for tonight’s show at the Beat Kitchen.
The Gunslinger
Starts out pretty good, but decends into the idiotic by the end.
Blue at the Mizzen
Not the strongest book in the series. It doesn’t help that many of the regular characters are gone in this book.
Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts
Beautiful wood engravings are the reason to “read” this.
King Jesus: A Novel
I loved I, Claudius but was utterly bored by this. Maybe I would have appreciated more if I had more than a passing knowledge of the Bible. It doesn’t help clear up matters when it seems like half the characters are named either Mary or John.
Max Payne
A lot of people hated this movie, but I thought it was pretty darn good. Okay, the demons were a bit much and there’s not much character development, but the slow beginning pays off with an exciting, stylish finale.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Well, someone finally found a film genre that hadn’t been parodied—the rock bio pic. They pull it off relatively well. The film suffers from the foible of most modern comedies, which is to find a funny joke and then point it out to the audience again and again like a stale SNL routine. Yeah, yeah, he cut his brother in half. That stopped being funny about 5 minutes into the film.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards on MS-DOS
Leisure Suit Larry is one of my favorite adventure games of all time. Certainly the best of the Sierra 3-D games in my opinion. It may not the most challenging game or have the deepest storyline, but what it lacks in depth, it makes up for in humor. Leisure Suit Larry is essentially an 80s PG-13 sex comedy in pixelated form.
The graphics, crude as they may be, are completely appropriate for the mood of the game. By keeping the imagery minimal, Larry’s dirtiness attains a level of cuteness that never comes across as anything but good-natured fun. My favorite moment is the disco dance scene which borrows heavily from the movie, Airplane!
This is one of the few Sierra games that I actually completed as a youngster, back before the days of the Internet. When I inevitably got stuck, I needed to use a hint book. I remember the hint book also included the setup to the dirty jokes’ punchlines that the barfly at Lefty’s keeps muttering (always followed by a “Har, har, har…”). Now that I do have access to walkthroughs and such, I may try to tackle the sequels. I got about halfway through Larry 2 before giving up.
Oh, and one last thing. The Lesuire Suit Larry theme song—what a great, catchy tune. You’ll be whistling it for days. I believe it was written by Al Lowe himself. I was very disappointed when, as a teenager, I saw Al Lowe on Name That Tune and there was no mention of his dirty-old-man video game designer career, just his musical background. Yawza, yawza, indeed.
Zeus and Hera Wedding Invitation - Wood Engraving
This is a wood engraving that I created for my brother’s wedding invitation in 2002. He got married in Athens, Greece so I wanted to do a Greek god themed image.Here we have Hera and Zeus, with Zeus cutting the cake with his lightning bolt. The actual invitation had a translucent sheet in front of the print with some metallic lettering and an olive leaf motif.