"X" The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

This is one of my all-time favorite movies, a Roger Corman classic. As I was prepping my talk for the ARE2010 conference, it kept coming to mind, so I sat down and watched the whole thing (on the plane on the way to the conference), and it proved to be the anchor for the whole talk! For such a goofy movie, it has surprisingly deep implications. I wonder what else its screenwriter has written?

Toy Story 2

This was the first time my daughter had seen it, in our ramp up to Toy Story 3. She really enjoyed it. Man, that Sarah McLachlan song makes me cry every time. The idea of toys as a metaphor for parents is subtle and clever. I honestly do think it is a better movie than the orginal. I hear tell that they originally had planned to do a 2D direct to DVD release of this movie, but the script ended up so strong, they changed their minds.

Replay

I love time travel stories, and this unusual one was suggested to me by Kyle Gabler. It's got a very unusual premise -- kind of a Groundhog Day that takes the entirety of your life. I had mixed feelings on the book, though -- it had some great thinking in it, and it occasionally rises to some meaningful philosophical questions, but at the same time, I felt like it had a lot of filler -- long story arcs that didn't really mean much, or go anywhere. And if there is one that that drives me COMPLETELY CRAZY, it is when people in paranormal stories don't think through their situations. There are times when the characters had 10 or 20 years to prepare for a certain event, and when it happened, they were like, "Doh! It didn't occur to me that *this* would happen!" Which was irksome to me because I only had 30 minutes to think about it, and I saw it coming, because it was pretty obvious.

In short, this was one of the rare times I was sorry it was an audiobook, because I would have been doing a lot of skimming. And yet -- I have to admit it made me think.

Weirdly, the audiobook has the same narrator as Anathem. He must really like long books about parallel universes.

Great Games for Big Activity Balls

The mighty powers of Todd Strong and Bernie DeKoven unite! And they made this really fun book for phys ed teachers about games and activities you can play with giant balls. It's a great book with practical advice about obtaining and maintaining giant balls as well as deciding which ones to get and why. It's full of great games, and each is described taking into account the psychology of kids -- what games are best to start with, when the kids are all excited just to experiment with the balls -- which games are most likely to lead to hurt feelings, and how to handle that. And they are very mindful of safety considerations, as well.  If you want to play games with giant balls (and who doesn't -- they're super fun!) this is the authoritative book on the topic.

Scrabble Slam

I learned about this super cute card game after I got a chance to visit Hasbro. Apparently it's been a big seller for them. It's cute, fun, and really fast. Average game takes maybe five minutes to play. One player lays out a word, and the other players then, in a free-for-all, overlay that word with other letters that also make words -- turning "fern" into "tern" into "term", etc. The cards are weirdly two sided, so that you have more letters, and it makes for more frantic fun. Simple, cute, and a smart way to extend the scrabble brand.

Anathem

Wow. This was a LONG book. And I did it on audiobook. It was, what, 27 CDs, I think. And, at the end of all that, I'm still uncertain how I feel about it. Without a doubt, I loved parts of it. The whole idea of mathematical monks living in a monastery, the concept of layers of monks, some of whom can only see the outside world once a year, some every ten years, some every hundred years, and some every thousand, that was all cool and fun. Really, what I enjoyed most was hearing the traditions of the monks, and why they were that way. One that really gave me pause was a tradition where every junior monk was assigned to a senior monk, and was to attend to their needs at meals. The idea being that this gave the juniors a chance to overhear and discuss (in the kitchen) what the elders were talking about. I often think about how I wish my students were able to overhear faculty conversations in this way.

So... for all the cool stuff I liked, there was maybe an equal part that made me roll my eyes. Action scenes in the arctic, in space, basically, all the action scenes I could have done without. And Neal Stephenson has this other habit that drives me crazy -- he goes into great detail about some small thing that isn't very interesting in itself, but also plays no role in the overall story whatever... and I look back thinking, "why in the world did you spend time talking about that?!" Historical battle recreation with weeds, I'm looking at you!

Anyway... this was thoughtful, imaginative, and fun, with lots of interesting surprises. It's all told first person, too, which makes for an interesting novel - more interesting, in some ways. When it was over, I was kind of sad - because I liked the world he crafted, and I realized there'd be no going back. In the end, I was really surprised to realize what a solid, compelling world he had created.

R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders

I finally found the first album! It was not easy to find. It has some fun songs on it, but Number 2 is still my favorite. Hey... I never put number 3 on here! That's strange... and it was the first album I got, some twenty years ago.

It's nice having all three of these together... they sound so nice and warm on vinyl. And I love that Blue Goose Label.