Thank God you're around to make movies as incredible as Up.
Went to see it tonight downtown with Isaac and his new roommate Alexis in digital 3D, and rarely have I come closer to pissing myself laughing so many times during a film. The Diet Coke the size of my head that I drank in the beginning didn't help with this, but still.
Somehow in ten minutes of almost no dialogue at the beginning you not only had built a loving couple's entire lifetime together, but you had us all almost in tears. I looked around the theater and the credits were barely gone but there was already sobbing coming from the back of the room. It definitely wasn't from me. Probably.
If only there were more movies like yours.
-Charlie
PS: Enough with the sequels, though. I'm sure Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 will be great, but we need more original stories like Up.
Huge thanks to Tall Dan and Meg for throwing the Fourth Annual Sausage Fest in their back yard yesterday.
Despite all eight pounds of my giant sausage not ending up being particularly fit for going down anyone's throat, it was a decent first attempt and I will conquer the recipe at subsequent sausage festivals.
All eight pounds of Charlie's sausage. Yes. This is digusting. But showing great potential.
TD and the uncooked weight of Charlie's sausage, wrapped in a bacon lattice and smothered in barbeque sauce.
The finished product. I'm curious to hear what the hell Dan and Meg ended up doing with it. I'm guessing there were some fucking psyched raccoons last night.
Isaac and his girl Liz's hair
Kramer and the Raiche-Cassidys
TD, Carole and Kelly
Dan fixing the very appropriate testicle-tossing game.Turned out that after a rather steep learning curve (unlike Sarah), I wasn't terrible at this game. I may have to go buy it if I ever figure out what it's called.
Shana in the foreground, Australians in the background
A bunch of Madores
Daniella and papa
Day turned into night, there was a Winston appearance, more games played, cigars smoked. Good times.
Yes, guys, I still don't like Led Zeppelin. They insist upon themselves.
Okay, despite my past opinions on Goldfish snack crackers (I still find Parmesan Goldfish measurably lacking in cheesiness), this Goldfish truck is pretty damn awesome, particularly from a marketing POV. I can't say I could physically restrain myself from immediately pulling over and buying Goldfish in bulk if this thing blew by me on the road.
On Thursday 106 Hudson St. roommate Erin Byrne invited me and Demuth out to a show she was having at Sally O'Brien's. Never been to the place but pretty decent little pub off of Union Square.
I'd never heard Byrne sing, but damn, the girl has a seriously strong voice. Her friends were saying that the acoustics at the place weren't even that good and that when they are her tunes punch even harder. She did an acoustic set with her b/f Andrew Gravel, about 10-12 bluesey songs, some really good stuff in there but I could see her rocking upbeat songs even harder.
Byrne & Andrew
The Funkadites
After the set Andrew and his band The Funkadites did a set of their own which was fantastic. Andrew was killer on the guitar and owned most of the stage presence, but a couple covers his bassist did were kinda stellar.
Only downside was that a couple friends of the band had apparently brought their entire dance group along, who insisted on performing in front of the stage -- made it a little hard to just watch the music. Think the hippo ballet scene from Fantasia meets Bring It On.
After a great night Saturday night, messed around at home with the sites on Sunday before heading back down to Block Island to catch the 5pm ferry. Ended up running into Marcus Picherri on the boat. Really good to see the dude, sounds like his whole family's doing well. Got out to the island and found it buried in the usual late-May fog.
Dinner that night was fantastic, parents were having the Hills and other friends over and Dad was making lamb, salad and lentils. Usually not a fan of any lamb that's not either a gyro or resurrected by Chuck Norris, but this was spiced just ridiculously well. Not to mention a fairly decent job with the presentation.
Headed out around 9:30 to meet up with Marta downtown, her and a friend of hers were up from New York and it ended up being a long night hitting the Albion and Yellow Kittens. Her, Nathaniel and I need to get on managing this year's party. Also had a huge shock finding out that my grandmotherly neighbor of 20+ years ago had in fact not passed away but was living in a nursing home in Westerly. Will definitely have to try to see her at some point.
Much later in the night we decided a fire at Mansion would be required for the evening, so we throw a bunch of pallets in the truck and head down the Neck. We're at the beach for ten seconds before the local volunteer environmental cop comes up and tells us to get lost. "No fires are happening down here tonight or any other night!". We shrug, get back in the truck, drive to the water to do a u-turn, come back up the beach and immediately the truck sinks into the soft sand and starts spinning its tires. God damn I hate Mansion Beach.
We try to dig it out for awhile but it's going nowhere. Marta drives me over to West Beach to see if there's anyone there to help but everyone's going home and none of my buddies are out. She takes me home so I can get the CJ, I head back, work for awhile, go back home and get a shovel and jack, work for awhile, get it out, it sinks in again immediately, I work some more. Finally at around 9am the truck's out and I'm driving home past early morning joggers and people heading to work.
What's up, Dawn.
After already being unstuck once.
I take the Tacoma to the marina and completely wash it down, take it home and vaccuum it, Dad gives me a ride back to the beach for the CJ and I come home and pass out for about three hours. Get up for lunch, do some serious brush cutting out in the yard, and then I'm on the 5pm ferry and manage to be asleep back in Boston by 10pm.
Just got a Facebook Wall post from Marta this morning saying "PARTY AT MANSION!". Funny girl.
After pretty fantastic Friday night at The Joshua Tree here in Somerville listening to Carole DJ 80's tunes, I headed into Davis Square this morning with Isaac and his new girl Liz to meet up with Sarah and Dave Holmes, AKA The Australians. Sounds like a husband-wife torture ensemble. "Give us the codes or we shall have to call in... The Australians!" Looking forward to hanging with those guys up on Rattlesnake in a couple weeks.
Anyway, we met up with them at McKinnon's to pick up some meats (I do love that place, thanks Ken), then all headed over to Kelly and Rich Raiche's driveway to pound Sam Adams Summer Ale, put down marinated chicken and get stared at by the Raiche's massive cat Izzy all afternoon with them, Carole, Sam, Britney, Kramer, Sparky, Jason and the rest. Great times, guys.
Around 6pm we all then make our way downtown to the new House of Blues (formerly The Avalon) near Fenway, which turned out to just be fantastic and not disappointing at all. It keeps the standing-up, open-bar vibe of the Avalon while just feeling much bigger. Plus we had the VIP seats with the closest balcony to the stage, looking out over all the crowd, and a just fantastic waitress who really needs to work everywhere I go.
So anyway, this guy Colin Stetson opens the show, doing insane and almost dirty things with a saxophone and bass sax that I've never seen nor heard done before. Like Isaac said, he was like a human beatbox, somehow reminding me of the way the polar bear god in The Terror plays Lady Silence's vocal cords by blowing down into her lungs. Check this out.
Matt Berninger from The National then walks out next and kicks off the show with a terrific new song. No clue what it was but it played well to the audience... smoother but still with the usual National buildup. They go on play most of their usuals interspersed with a few more new ones, which definitely sound different -- less angsty Matt, more of the full band. Felt like the producer had decided this next album is going to be their big public one.
Our view the whole show. Yeah.
The show ended with "Green Gloves", "Mr. November" and "About Today", though sadly no "City Middle", "Karen", or "All The Wine". Steve, Erin and I walk over to TC's Bar, say what's up to Tony, threw down a couple Miller High Life's while rocking the Journey on the jukebox, then it's a cab ride home in the cool summer night to play a few cards out back and head in.
Today heading over to Georges and Ava's to see their now-almost-a-year-old daughter Farrah, then it's out to Block Island tonight to see all my summer folk. Not a bad kickoff to the summer.
I made a mistake in my life today
everything I love gets lost in drawers
I want to start over, I want to be winning
way out of sync from the beginning
You know I dreamed about you
for twenty-nine years before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I missed you for
for twenty-nine years
David Benioff: City of Thieves: A Novel Only partway through this but looking forward to finishing it as soon as I remember to buy an extra lightbulb for my reading lamp. The tale is being related to an American writer by his Russian grandfather, about being trapped starving in his hometown in Russian in the year the Germans were invading. The grandfather found himself imprisoned as a young man by the Russian militia for stealing a flask off a dead German pilot, and being then set on a mission to find eggs for the Commandant's daughter's wedding cake. Was just speaking recently with a friend who only reads nonfiction. Seems like all the nonfiction in the world about the Second World War could not begin to capture the sense of how it felt to be there at the time, with the world collapsing around you and yet desperately in love with your future executioner's engaged daughter. (****)
Dennis Lehane: The Given Day: A Novel Usually Lehane's books are just very entertaining detective stories, though a few -- Shutter Island in particular -- stand out as more. This one so far seems like it's clearly going to fall in the "more" category, with a tale that looks like it's going big places. Chubby, happy, stupid Babe Ruth just joined and then failed to prevent the ruin of a negro baseball game while killing time waiting for the train, and that was just the prologue. Note: it's been almost six months and I have yet to finish this. (***)
Junot Díaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Took a surprisingly short amount of time to get into this one and cranked through it once into it. Which is surprising given that I don't relate wholly to a massively pudgy, socially outcast, fatally romantic Dominican kid named Oscar Wao.
But damn if the book's narrator didn't suck you into the world of Oscar, his family and the weight of the Dominican curse (fuku) that he carried on his back. Not to mention that the narrator was easily as much of a geek as Oscar, and loaded the pages with references to Final Fantasy, Starblazers, Warcraft, and all that other great gags that only true nerds would catch onto. I'm sure I missed dozens.
What kicked this one up to five stars, though, was simply the writing of the last third of the novel. By the time he was most of the way through his story -- particularly the crushing tale of Oscar's grandfather's family -- Junot Díaz's typing was on fire, and the last chapter's flash-forward rush was just devastating. (*****)
Chuck Palahniuk: Choke: A Novel The story of a man addicted to sex whose dying mother thinks he's everyone but himself and who earns his keep by faking choking in a restaurant for purposes of getting saved by people who then spend their lives looking out for his well-being.
Brilliantly funny yet subtly sad, looking forward now to checking out more Palaniuk. (***)
Scott Smith: A Simple Plan Much like his newer book The Ruins -- though containing actual chapters -- Smith's "A Simple Plan" just never stops getting worse, yet stays highly entertaining.
Ostensibly it's the story of the narrator, his slower brother, and his brother's buddy who together happen across a downed plane containing a dead pilot and $4.4 million in cash out in the forest, and decide on the simple plan: take the money and hide it for six months, and if no one comes looking for it, keep it and disappear.
The plan turns out not be so simple, and circumstances go from there. One of the best thrillers I've read. (****)
Yann Martel: Life of Pi Finally got around to finishing something, thank god. Reading five books at the same time when you have very little time to read essentially means you finish nothing for ages, then finish a bunch all at once, but after getting halfway through this I couldn't stop until it was over.
"Life of Pi" is at the outset the story of a confused Indian lad named Piscine (after a local pool), though nicknamed Pi for short. Pi's the son of a local zookeeper and a highly confused individual when it comes to religion. With the greatest of intentions he takes up Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all at once, much to the consternation of his parents and local Christian, Islamic, and Hindu priests.
Approximately 30% through the tale Pi's father decides to sell of much of the zoo's livestock to take the remaining animals along with his family to Canada via a freighter -- a freighter which then proceeds to rapidly sink halfway across the Pacific, stranding Pi in a lifeboat alone with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and... a fully grown Bengal tiger named Richard Jenkins. The rest of the story concerns Pi's survival asea with this group, and goes some pretty damn surprising places -- places that I've never seen described before, some wonderfully funny, some darker than "The Terror" (the other book I'm taking for-freaking-ever to finish).
I'm sucker for killer endings, and damn if the last thirty pages are so aren't the definition of a fast read. The last page -- and especially Pi's final words -- are simply heartbreaking, though undoubtedly truer than anything I've read in ages.
Here's to the world in which there lives a Richard Jenkins. (*****)
Dan Simmons: The Terror: A Novel Just started it, so far there are two ships in the 1800's locked into ice while trying to cross the northwest passage through the artic. And something's out there. Not bad so far. (****)
Dennis Lehane: Darkness, Take My Hand Having started with A Prayer For Rain, actually the fifth in the series, I'd gone back to the first Kenzie/Gennaro novel set in modern Boston, then moved on to this one.
Like the others, the book focuses on a wisecracking Boston private eye raised in Dorchester who, along with his hot but equally intelligent partner Angie and unstoppable juggernaut of a buddy Bubba, jumps into cases that are way over their head.
Unlike the cliche this setup sounds like, however, this Lehane series inevitably ends up being far darker than its setup would have you believe, with an ending involving dual serial killers that's pretty much unbelievable in its violence. Like the movie Gone, Baby, Gone (which I needn't read, as I believe the movie did a good enough job), and Lehane's own Mystic River, people are frequently more than they seem, but usually for the worse.
While I can't say any of the series will leave you walking away with a smile on your face, damn if they aren't pageturners. Looking forward to the third one, which is allegedly on the more comedic side. (***)
Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (audio) Not sure if you can really call this a novel, more a novella, On Chesil Beach is the second Ian McEwan book I've read, after the terrific Saturday.
The story is straightforward and pretty damn simple: two kids in England in the 60's from different backgrounds find themselves in a room in a hotel on the English shore on the first night of their honeymoon, wondering how the hell to get it on. He's really into the idea, she... not so much.
From there the book covers only the next two hours or so (or more, maybe), as well as the events in their lives leading up to that night, but it's McEwan's wording and painting of what's going on inside both of their heads that makes the book so killer. You get to know both of these two people -- we all know people in many ways like these two -- and it's how the drama of the night plays out in the big and evn more little ways that sucks you in.
This isn't the most action-packed thing you'll ever read -- hell, it'd probably even make a shitty dramatic movie -- but somehow the thing gets into you with its mood, laying you out with an ending you somehow knew was coming from the first line. (*****)
David Anthony Durham: Acacia: Book One: The War With the Mein (Acacia) Been awhile since I found the time or geek factor to read a good fantasy novel, probably not since reading the LOTR trilogy in '97 and not really even enjoying it that much. Loved books like the Dragonlance serieses back in high school, though, so when EW recommended this as a terrific start to a trilogy, figured I'd give it a shot.
Acadia is the island capital of a massive empire on a world much like ours, an empire which has ruled the Known World for a thousand years. Like many empires, however, (I'm guessing here), its foundation is rotten, built on a tithe of slaves send to a faraway unknown people in return for an addictive heroin/weed-like powder known as "Mist".
Without getting too much into the politics of it all, the king of the world is assassinated early on, his four children are scattered to the four corners of the world, his kingdom conquered by cursed Norseish conquerors, and the book focuses mainly on who the heirs grow up to become and how the family is reunited.
Actually pretty damn riveting stuff, Durham describes clearly how each of the children is molded by the new lives they're thrown into in a nature/nurture argument that -- much like most of the characters and their choices in the book -- never becomes a picture painted in clear black or white.
Not a perfect book -- I never got a sense of the countryside or the people of the lands outside of the royal main characters, and a few more small, comic details would have been welcome -- it was still a great read, with a damn strong ending that makes April '09 still too far away. (***)
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