Paul

Sam and I went to see Paul last night after work. I was excited for the film as it stared Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Kristin Wiig, Bill Hader & Jason Bateman who are all great. Simon Pegg & Nick Frost's previous movies, especially Shawn of the Dead, are some of my favorite comedies. The basic plot of the movie is that Simon & Nick are 2 huge nerds from London who go to San Diego for Comic Con then a cheesy alien vacation road rip across the South West. They meet Paul, the voice of Seth Rogen, on the road and help him evade the law in an attempt to get home. Kristin Wiig was probably the funniest character as she plays a super religious daughter of a trailer park owner. Her religious beliefs are shaken by meeting Paul and she decides to make up for lost time on the whole moral front. She swears constantly for the rest of the movie with really graphic odd curses that can't help but make you laugh. She also gets a good on screen grab of Simons man meat that was so incredibly awkward and so not sexy that it was hilarious. Good cameos and a very well acted movie, while not consistently hilarious it definitely had its moments and was worth seeing.

My favorite part of the movie was when someone you wouldn't consider a big pot smoker made an unexpected drug reference and Sam blurted out really loudly and to the audiences amusement "What!? Weed!? HAHAHA!"

11 of 30- Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Great quick read about a messed up rich kid who's gotten kicked out of his forth school and is still dealing with the death of his younger brother. Holden is 16, deeply depressed & funny. He leaves school early and has a destructive couple of nights in NYC before going home to face the music.

The way Holden thinks & speaks is hilarious. There are way too many quotes to list but a few of my favorites are;

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.

I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

There isn't any night club in the world you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you're with some girl that really knocks you out.

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

I like the inspired tatoo a lot too;

10 of 30- McSweeney's 34

I'm definitely excited to be a third of the way through my pinkie swear with only mild mental trauma. My list of books to buy after I get through 30 is getting somewhat ridiculous but that's for a later time.

McSweeney's 34 was really 2 books, the main book was typical short story goodness;



The second book was a book by Nick McDonell called The End of Major Combat Operations




I love the selections of short stories and hated the pile of flaming propaganda filled bullshit that was the second book. Combat Operations was clearly anti war, showed American solders as mostly lazy, mean, racist, desensitized aholes. He wrote in short, choppy seemingly disconnected chapters that made me more and more frustrated as it went on. I would have quit the shitty book if it wasn't for the pinkie swear. I did however like the mural of Sadam that showed him getting hugged by a "handsy" kid.




Luckily the first book was amazing filled with another great set of short stories. It started with some hilarious letters involving a Thanksgiving letter where a prodigal uncle deflowered the turkey in the middle of the night.

One of my favorites was The Wreck of the Beverly B by TC Boyle. Set in the 40's this story is about a woman whose husband comes back from the war and they buy a commercial fishing boat. The boat runs into some bad weather and sinks. One of my favorite of Boyle's short stories.

Another of my favorites was 20 Questions by Bridget Clerkin. Without giving too much away this story was about a couple playing 20 questions with a little boy. Great twist at the end.

Anthony Doerr wrote Afterworld. A powerful story about an elderly woman who was an orphan in the war and on her death bed current day. Excellent ghost story involving the girls fellow orphans from the war.

In the middle of the book were a series of self portraits by random authors and actors. My favorite was Sarah Silverman;




Your Biggest Fan by Mona Awad was amazing. It's about a crappy musician who thinks he's amazing and when things aren't going well drunkenly goes over to a fat girls house who has a huge crush on him. It shows him as the huge loser her is and I particularly thought it great as we all know some local musicians just like him.

Letters from the Academy by Tom Barbash was amazing. It was a series of letters by a tennis instructor to a parent about a student who he is clearly in love with. Hilarious and well written as the story is completely one sided but done in a way that you understand everything.

The book ended on Tafi - An oral history recorded and edited by Annie Holmes and Peter Orner and unlike the other book I liked this story a lot. It was a story about a young reformer from Zimbabwe who tried to take part in a political party trying to bring about democracy. Scary to think that what he went through is pretty commonplace in other parts of the world.

9 of 30- Episodes, My Life As I See It by Blaze Ginsberg

Blaze Ginsberg has high functioning autism and wrote this memoir while in his teens and early 20's. Originally, I read an excerpt of this book published in McSweeney's that centered around his crush on Hilary Duff that was hilarious. I find Blaze interesting, funny and a little sad. He writes about his life like a tv show where puts a title, date, summary, trivia, goofs and soundtrack. His taste in music, outside of Hillary Duff is extrodinary with a lot of great songs by Steview Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sting, Cold Play & many others. While the format tells a lot about the way Blaze thinks, it's hard to read over an entire book especially as there's no real cohesive point to the book, only stories about his ongoing life organized into themes like a year of school, a crush on someone, thanksgiving, a group of friends, etc. My sister is disabled and unlike Blaze she doesn't fit well into a group of disabled students as her language based disability is unclassified. Her experiences and the way she communicates helped me relate to the book a little better than I think I would have otherwise and made me feel for Blaze when he retold storys where kids were being mean. By the end of the book I felt for the kid a lot as all he wants is a girlfriend and hasn't been lucky in love. He's awkward in social situations and deeply sensitive. His writing is at times hilarious and facinating how he sees things. He's pretty high functioning considering how severe his disability is and I think it mostly has to do with how amazing his family. His mother and aunts especially are wonderful.

All in all I think Blaze is an amazing kid and enjoyed reading about him but I wouldn't recommend this book as you get just as much out of the short story in McSweeney's.

ESPN The Magazine, Fiction Issue

This issue along with the body issue makes me glad I'm a subscriber. I probably wouldn't be except I got a 2 year subscription for $8.99 off of Tanga last year and thought it sounded like a good idea. Normally I scan through them for about 5 minutes, maybe read 1 article and that's it. ESPN gave over control of the short stories to McSweeneys and they did an amazing job at the choice of sports related fiction.

My favorite story was probably My Life In Baseball, By The Beard by David Eggers a story written in the first person by Brian Wilson's beard. Hilarious.




Angel Wings by Susan Straight
Strong story about a mother dealing with her innocent star athlete son's death at the hands of a overzealous cop at a fast food drive through.

What If... by Jeff Pinkner
These were a series of quick what if sports related questions questions, they sucked.

Bleacher Couch Man by Jess Walter
A great story about a man in his early 40's still playing in a basketball rec league who's well past his pride, divorced & completely lost. Eloquently sums up a lot of lives of people we all know.

MOTO by Wells Tower
Quick story about neighbors who's fates switch after an accident

The Favorite by John Brandon
Probably my second favorite story. It's about a guy in the south down who has returned home broke after making a huge mistake that led to him being fired from a lucrative job that he wasn't qualified for. No one knows he's broke and he's trying to get back betting on local football games when he stumbles into some insider information.

The Kudzu League by Chris Bachelder
This story was ok. It was about a semipro baseball league started up in small towns in the late 70's, early 80's.

The Bow Tie Miracle by Michael Bible
Another great story. The story takes place at a Carolina Panthers football game where a teenage kid & his girlfriend raise a little hell in the stadium.

John Brisker's Greatest Game by Gare Joyce
John Brisker was a star of the ABA who couldn't quite make it in the NBA, tried to use his last seasons paycheck to become set for life by some questionable means and needs to disappear in Africa. The story takes place when a reporter finds him a couple years later.

The Family Business by Miguel Batista
Great story to end on. The story is about the imagined family of a real catcher who died in a plane crash in 1948 in the DR when his team was flying home from an away game. His great grandson plays stickball in the neighborhood and is taken to the stadium for a tribute night in honor of the fallen team on the 60th anniversary of the tragedy.

8 of 30- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Considering how long Anna Karenina is, it probably wasn't the smartest book to read during my pinkie swear but I'm glad I did. Last year I had listened to the beginning of the book on cd that I borrowed from the library but it was 38 hours long and some jackass put a hold on it so I could only have it for 3 weeks. I've been thinking about finishing it ever since and it was eligible as I had downloaded it for free onto my Kindle prior to the start of the pinkie swear. Long, yes, worth it? Also yes. Despite some frustrating verbal tendencies and some long winded boring stretches the book was excellent.

Anna Karenina was set in Russia in the late 1800's, love triangles galore, Russian society, politics, religion, farming & country vs. city life as the major themes. There is not possible way I could sum up all the social interconnectedness but the 2 main love triangles are;

Anna is married to Alexei Alexandrovich and who falls in love and has an affair with Alexei Vronsky. This is further complicated as Anna's sister in law Kitty was being courted by Vronsky & Konstantin Levin right before Vronsky met Anna. Levin asked Kitty to marry her but was denied as she was in love with Vronsky who obviously chose Anna over Kitty. Levin is one of my favorite characters as he's a good natured but quickly angered man from the country. He eventually reconnects with Kitty and they get happily married.

Some of my favorite scenes are ones where Levin is working on his farm in rural Russia or hunting with his friends. The book had a decent flow to it, the descriptions of Russian society was interesting although the politics tended to be a little boring. I found myself getting a little exasperated at how everyone would go from manic highs fine to manic lows to fine was ridiculous. Couples fell in and out of love repeatedly on almost every page. Tolsoy was also kind of fascinated by white teeth, me mentioned them a ton. And thanks to the magic of the kindle I discovered that blush or some variation was mentioned a whopping 62 times throughout the novel. I'm up in the air if I want to read War & Peace but I'm thinking Android Karenina is definitely on my new post pinkie swear reading list.

Sony Vaio Laptop

After completing my taxes a couple days ago I decided to finally purchase a laptop. I've wanted one for a while now but haven't wanted to add any debt. Heather's brother Tete helped me out as he works for the Geek squad and is an all around good guy. Tete said that he rarely sees Sony's come back so that was good enough for me.

My computing needs are pretty basic, I like fantasy sports, streaming things to watch like hockey fights, shows, movies, music videos, I also like sites like Amazon, Ebay, Barstool sports as well as other fun Internet activities like google image searching Kim Kardashians booty for example. Offline it's nice to be able to write things using word, my budget is done with excell but outside of that I use computers for very little else. Games can be fun but I'm not all that into them, if I can play Knights of the Old Republic II I'll be pretty happy but have given up hope as the last computer I bought I was promised it would work but was lied to. The long and the short of it is that I don't need a hell of a lot of processing power but would like to have some in case I change my mind.

In the end I bought a Sony Vaio that has;
-2.4ghz Intel i3 Processor
-15.5" Display
-4GB Memory
-320GB Hard Drive

I've only played with it for one night but so far so good. It's fast & the display is amazing. Battery life seems pretty good and it hasn't gotten too hot. I like that it has an HDMI output in case I want to hook it up to my tv. The only thing I'm not a huge fan of so far is the sound as the built in speakers suck. I need to go through my stuff and find some headphones, I know I have a couple nice pairs somewhere but I'll be damned if I can find them.

At this point I'm excited about the purchase and hope I stay that way.


****UPDATE 5/2/11****
Still love the laptop and it's working like a champ, knock on wood. Battery is still strong & the machine is still fast. Love the HDMI out as I use it to stream shows/movies on the TV.