White Wedding Weekend

Two weekends ago (or the weekend of October 5th, for those of you who need it spelled out for you), one of my closest friends got married in Connecticut. This, of course, required a trip to the aforementioned state, so on that Friday I joined my heterosexual lifemate Jabba on the MetroNorth. The two of us were splitting a hotel room for the weekend, something anyone who knows us could tell you would lead to some fun times. The surprisingly sober train ride saw us have some ridiculous conversations ranging from Avengers vs X-Men to Supernatural to Doctor Who (which took up the largest chunk of the conversation, which only makes sense when you consider the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-ness of it) to my love life (the admittedly shortest part of the conversation; I seriously lost two different dates to this wedding. Who does that happen to??).

We even tried to fix my ridiculously malfunctioning, randomly deleting pictures on it's own phone, but that was beyond even the power of the great technopath I traveled with.

Once we arrived in the land time forgot, we hooked up with Renaldo, the lucky(?) groom, and went to the hotel, where, along with his best friend, we pounded two quick rounds of shots before checking in, dropping our shit off at the room, and heading off to rehearsal; Jabba was one of the groomsman and I, in my capacity as Reverend Jim, was doing a reading, so attendance was mandatory.

For the first time in print, Rev. Jim in da hizzouse!

After rehearsal, we popped back to the room for a few minutes, where I fiddled with my netbook, also known as the only piece of technology I own that is more temperamental than my phone, until I had it hooked up to the hotel wi-fi and had Spotify rocking the tunes. We then headed out to the rehearsal dinner, which was at a BBQ/soul food joint where I filled up on fried chicken, wings, rice, and macaroni and cheese... so this place was basically heaven for me, but with beer and wine instead of vodka and whiskey. So I guess it was more like purgatory. Whatever it was, it was delicious. Apparently the wine wasn't moving as fast as was expected because when the dinner ended, there were quite a few bottles left. Rather than leave poor Renaldo with all these bottles, Jabba and I liberated two of them and brought them back to our room, where they joined the bottle I had brought up with me.

Our own personal Three Wise Men...

There were plans to meet up with whoever was game in the hotel bar a half hour later, so with that time to kill, we decided to have a glass or two of wine in our room while we waited. For me, that involved pouring wine into a glass once or twice. For Jabba, it involved this:

Dionysius incarnated!

We headed down to the hotel bar, joined up with Renaldo and everyone else who felt like drinking and did a bunch of shots and had a few cocktails, including a Red Ice Martini... I can't remember what was in it, but as Ferris Bueller said, "It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up." Or two. Or five.

After a sufficient amount of drinks, the two of us and Renaldo's sister decided to mosey out to the McDonald's we had seen a block away for some literal midnight snackage... but the McDonald's was closed. At midnight. On a Friday night.

Like I said: the land that time forgot.

We ended up with some sandwiches from Subway, which we took back to the room and devoured over wine and more ridiculous conversation. We were up drinking til around 2am, with the alarms set for 7am so we'd have plenty of time before the 10am wedding. Which was fairly stupid of us, because even though we woke up at 7am, we didn't get out of bed until around 8:45am anyway. We suited up, and it was off to the wedding.

Looking that good and being dateless is just a crime, folks.

The ceremony was lovely, and I don't just say that because the reverend doing the reading from Genesis was brilliant. The officiant was spitting some wisdom, especially when he drifted away from all the religious stuff and just got down with some life lessons. My only criticism is that at one point he said something about living together through joys and celebrations, trials and difficulties... it really should have been "joys and celebrations, trials and tribulations," just for the poetry of it all, but that's just the arrogant writer in me sticking his head out.

We were joined at the ceremony by our friend Jose, and later by more friends at the reception, which was just good fun. Some drinking, some eating, some dancing, you know, all the usual. I did see Renaldo cat-daddy, which is a sight I'll never forget. Then we did our trademark typewriter dance to close the show.

As the song goes, after the party was the after-party, as Jose, Jabba, and I grabbed some more vittles at McDonald's, which was actually open. There was also a bit of a confrontation with a guy who swore he was pissing blood and needed to get to a clinic, which actually got a five dollar bill from Jabba. Back in the room again, we ate, had some more wine, and watched the Cosby Show, a show so black that one point Jabba said, "this show is even too black for me." We did see the first appearance of Rudy's friend Kenny, a.k.a. Bud, which is a plot point to remember later.

"My brother says..."

Jabba was tired, but Jose and I were still feeling froggy at this point, so the two of us made our way back down to the hotel bar, where I enjoyed another Red Ice Martini. Seriously, you should get one. Now. After spending awhile down there talking to the cute bartender, I said we should get back up to the room and finish the wine we had; the bartender asked us what kind and when I said we had half a bottle of red and half a bottle of white left, she suggested we make our own sangria.

Which is exactly what we did. And then Jabba drank it out of the room's coffee pot.

It's like a mug in his hand. He's a drinking god.

We watched a bad movie on the SyFy channel (because, despite what Jabba says, there isn't any other kind of movie on the SyFy channel), then watched some other TV and drank sangria til we all fell asleep, first Jose, then Jabba, then me. At some point during the night... or morning, for all I know... Jose left; when we woke up, Jabba asked me when Jose left and my response was that I had no idea he left in the first place left. We shrugged, and proceeded to finish the sangria while Jabba ate a burger and apple pie he had left over from the night before as we googled Kenny from the Cosby Show, looking for memorable quotes and video clips and giggling to ourselves like Asian schoolgirls. And with that, our wedding weekend came to an end. We got dressed, packed, checked out, caught the train, and made our ways home. After a tiring weekend filled with fun and drinking, I was never so happy than to be back home in Maspeth, crashing in my own bed.

That was a happiness I got over fast!

Goodreads Book Review: The First Confessor - The Legend of Magda Searus

The First Confessor by Terry Goodkind

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I haven't been this disappointed in a book in a long, long time. I've been a devoted fan of Terry Goodkind and the Sword of Truth series for eleven years now. Some of the books in that series are easily my favorite books ever... and some of them, towards the end, drop off in quality considerably. Sadly, that trend continues here. The prose in this book is boring. What's worse than the boredom of it all, though, is the unending repetition. The same explanations are given page after page, chapter after chapter, as answered to the same questions asked over and over again by the same characters. As an intelligent reader, i found that not only did that cast the intelligence of the characters in a bad light, making them all seem dense at best and completely stupid at worst, I also found it insulting to my own intelligence. That much explanation to things... I'm talking pages and pages and pages... is just unnecessary and kills some of the more fanciful aspects of the story that don't actually have to be explained. The plot was also transparent, with everything about it easily predictable. The characters were cutout copies of Goodkind's earlier characters, and the love story was completely unemotional and unbelievable. And don't get me started on the inclusion of zombies... in short, there was absolutely nothing about this book I enjoyed.



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The Recommended Reading Challenge hits thirteen books with this very, very bad reading experience. I need more books, people!

Does Arrow Hit the Bullseye?

Arrow premiered last night, and was the last of three new shows I was giving a chance this season to do so. The first, Revolution, passed with flying colors. The second, 666 Park Avenue, was a hideous failure. So where does that leave our tiebreaker?

Squarely in the middle. For me, Arrow didn't quite hit the bullseye, as it has its share of problems, but it definitely stuck one of the inner rings on the target. Let's talk about those problems first. This one might just be mine, but the show is based on the Green Arrow comic, right? He's an archer like in the comic, and he's still wearing green. They make it a point to mention the green a few times in the first episode... so why the hell isn't the show called Green Arrow?!?

Arrow?? What the fuck is that??

That little pet peeve aside, the biggest problem the show faces is that it falls into a lot of cliches in it's premiere. Some of them are unavoidable, as most superhero origins are cliches to begin with; this one has presumed dead main character returning, a dead parent with a mysterious pass, an angry cop who is tied in to not just the hero but his alter ego, a spurned love interest, a shady still-living parent and her new husband, a possibly shady best friend... the cliches go on and on. Which isn't actually a bad thing. Cliches get to be cliches for a reason: they work. But in small doses, and only if you eventually take the cliche and make it your own. So the cliches themselves might not be the biggest problem but the fact that Green Arrow's cliches so closely mirror Batman's cliches that the comparisons are impossible to avoid... and mere months after the release of The Dark Knight Rises, impossible to stack up favorably against.

Well, that, and the hackneyed and horribly delivered narration that occasionally pops up. They need to get rid of that with a quickness.

So what strengths does the show have? The action was a lot of fun. The cast, filled with people I don't know by name but have liked in plenty of other things (with the exception of Katie Cassidy; how could anyone NOT know her by name??), put in good performances and work well together. And there are enough mysteries to keep you interested. Plus, it's on the CW, and they never cancel anything... look at Smallville, that thing was on the air for a damn decade... so you know you won't be left hanging before the mysteries get solved. All in all, Arrow was good enough to keep me watching.

Although Arrow wasn't the only new show I tried watching last night. You see, I've always loved Connie Britton; from The Brothers McMullen to Spin City to starring in one of the best shows of the last decade, Friday Night Lights, I've always found her to be a wonderfully talented and captivating actress. So, for her, I tried watching Nashville.

Everyone makes mistakes, folks.

It's Halloween Marathon Time Again!

The weather is getting colder. The leaves are changing colors. It's October... and that means it's time for one of my favorite holidays: Halloween! As I covered in a few posts last year, I love Halloween.

I already have a costume (or two, depending on how many times I go out this year!) picked out. And, like every year, it's time for me to start planning my Halloween Marathon. This is where I set aside a block of time, usually around sixteen hours, and watch nothing but Halloween-themed programming, both movies and TV shows. There are some favorites I watch every year: the movie Trick'r'Treat is always involved, as is one of the three Halloween episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plus It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! and Garfield's Halloween Adventure. That gives me three hours, folks, but that leaves me needing like 13 hours more... so this is where you come in! I'm looking for suggestions for movies or TV episodes to help me complete the list. Keep in mind, though, I don't just want horror movies. They have to be Halloween-themed... and not the Halloween movies, either; they're just too obvious! For an idea of what I'm looking for, here's a link to the post last year that gives you the full list of what I watched. So if you have any ideas, share away!

666 Park Avenue: An Address You Can Skip

The television industry, much like movies and music and every other entertainment industry, is cyclical. Trends rise and fall and then rise again ten or fifteen years later. Every now and then, a show comes along that bucks the trends... before inevitably getting subsumed into them. Lost was such a show. It was definitely outside the paradigm (pronounced pa-ra-dig-um, folks). It was unique in its time; so what happened? Lost clones popped up everywhere. Shows like Threshold, Invasion, and Surface that presented mystery after mystery with only a few vague clues and even fewer answers popped up everywhere for years. Most of them failed miserably as the trend that Lost inspired faded, and a new trend arose: shows that had mysteries like Lost did but that gave us answers in a timely fashion; shows like FlashForward and Happytown both solved their main mystery by the end of the first season, even though they got canceled on cliffhangers after that. Once Upon a Time did the same thing, but it thrives. Now, shows with mysteries are providing us with answers even faster: this season alone has seen the pilot of Revolution reveal some pretty big answers right away, and even though it hasn't dropped yet, the producers of Arrow have said they give away more in the first episode than anyone would expect. That, then, brings me to Sunday night's first episode of 666 Park Avenue.

I wanted to give this a shot because, well, the name obviously employs something sinister and evil going on, and it stars Terry O'Quinn, who is usually pretty damn awesome. So, how did it go? Right in the very first scene of the first episode, we're pretty much shown that O'Quinn's character, Gavin Doran, is probably Satan.

So now that I know that almost for sure, why should I keep watching? I know. Maybe it'll be engaging and well-acted. After all, one of Lost's main points was that the answers don't matter, the journey to those answers is what counts (something I explain in detail in my blog about the show's finale... cheap plug!)

The problem with that logic is, at least in this first episode, Gavin Doran is the most bland, boring, monotone Satan I've ever seen in my life. I prefer my Satans in media to be more engaging, suave, and gleeful in their evil, like Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, or even the Lucifer in season five of Supernatural. This guy was just boring, like he was just in a zen-like state of being completely disengaged from everything around him... and the rest of the cast seemed like they were taking their cue from him, because absolutely no one was showing any real sparks of talent... or even life. Which doesn't really surprise me, because other than O'Quinn and Vanessa Williams, who has never been the shining pinnacle of talent, I've never heard of anyone in the show.

Well, except for Rachael Taylor, who was the chick with the Australian accent in Transformers. You know, because being in that movie means you're talented enough to headline a cast, right?

I feel your pain, Prime.

Long story short? This is the first of the three new shows I was curious about this season that I'm dropping, and the first show I hope gets canceled. And I won't be surprised if it does, so you probably shouldn't put this address on your trick'or'treat route...

Wow. I didn't stick that landing at all, did I?

Goodreads Book Review - Invisible Monsters

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So this might be the most twisted book I've ever read... and I've read Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis (seriously, that book features an ostrich sex club and a whole bunch of other weird stuff). It's very well-written, though; the writing style is fresh in pretty much every way. Usually I can see some of the twists in a book coming, especially a book that starts at the end and then flashes back until it gets back to the ending at the end, but this one was nothing but weird surprise after weird surprise. It's worth reading if only for that fact alone, but it's also worth reading because it throws a lot about life at you to think about. I'm not sure I buy a lot of the conclusions about life that are reached in the book, but I'm also not sure I'm supposed to. Have I confused you? Good. Read it yourself... although, fair warning to all the more close-minded conservative readers out there, this one might not be for you...



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We're twelve books into the challenge now, and if this one is any indication, I'm definitely expanding my horizons, which is what I was hoping for. Next on the the list, those horizons shrink a little bit, as someone recommended the new e-book from one of my favorite authors, Terry Goodkind. It isn't cheating, I swear; she didn't know how much I already love him when she suggested it! Once that's done I only have two books left on the list and I'm having a hard time getting my hands on them, so let's keep the other recommendations coming, folks!

Revolution... or "Final Fantasy: The TV Show"

I used to play a lot of video games when I was younger, up to a few years ago. My favorites were always role-playing games; you know, games like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star and stuff like that. The thing about rpgs as they're called is that, while a lot of the game-play mechanics and stuff differ greatly, a lot of the story were all pretty similar and pretty basic. It would go something like, "in a less technologically advanced world than our own, the hero suffers a personal loss at the hands of a villainous figure and goes on a quest to avenge that loss, usually with the help of a childhood friend or father-figure, and in the course of that quest would make new helpful friends as well as some shady ones while finding a great warrior to help them and realizing they have a personal connection to that villainous figure and eventually a personal connection to saving their entire world." I mention this because as I finally got around to watching the pilot for NBC's new show Revolution, I realized it fell into that cookie cutter plot perfectly.

Which, considering the success of rpgs over the years (seriously, there are, like 83 Final Fantasy games now), isn't a bad thing.

I'm sure you've seen enough from the promos to know that the show takes place a bit in the future, where electricity and technology have mysteriously vanished from the world. People fight with swords and crossbows and the rare firearm... just like in rpgs. Our hero, Charlie, lost her mother years ago. As the story opens, a soldier from a local militia shows up and eventually kills her father and kidnaps her brother. Charlie sets out to get her brother back, joined on this quest by her dad's friend and her dad's girlfriend. So so far we have the personal loss, the quest, and the family friends. She first has to find her uncle, a great warrior... he seriously wins a sword fight against like twenty people at once. She meets a guy on the road who helps her but who is really working for the evil militia, but who still saves her life. The shady new friend archetype I mentioned above.  We find out in flashbacks that the leader of the militia, the mysterious villain, is actually a friend of her uncle. We also find out that he was after her father and likewise her uncle because they might know what happened to electricity.

Seriously. It fits the cookie cutter rpg plot perfectly, and that was all in one episode. But it's also good. Or at least good enough to make me want to see what happens next. I love a good mystery, and there are only three new shows this year that interest me and I don't have all that much hope for the other two, so I'm willing to give this one a large margin of error before I write it off. I honestly liked just about everything about it: the acting was pretty good, the idea is interesting, and it had surprisingly good action for a TV show. My only problem with it is that I have a hard time buying the clueless dad from Twilight as this lethal killing machine. That's going to take some getting used to.

Well, that's not my only problem; the other one is hoping NBC doesn't cancel it in two months before it gets anywhere...