Monte

I'm typically an early riser, the first one up in our house. As such, one of my normal duties is, or was, rather, to feed the dogs and let them out. I would usually find Monte, our Boston Terrier, scratching at his kennel, desperate to head upstairs and have his breakfast. More than anything I've ever known, Monte loved to eat.

What he didn't like was being outside, so he would handle his business and come running up the stairs, begging to be lat back inside so that he could lick his bowl in the off chance that he missed a morsel. If he ever did, I never saw it, but that didn't stop him from looking anyway.

Villains Pecking Order

If you watch enough movies, especially those of the action genre, you will eventually begin to notice that there seems to be a natural pecking order for groups of movie villains. For whatever reason, certain classes of villains just seem to work better than others. So being of a curious nature, I decided to keep a close eye on the various movies I watch to decide if I could correctly sort out the various groups of villains and establish once and for a definitive pecking order.

1. Nazis

As seen in Raiders, Last Crusade, Schindler's List, Inglorious Basterds, Captain America (for all practical purposes). There is one indisputable fact. The world can’t agree on anything but this – we all hate Nazis. Even Nazis hate their fellow Nazis deep down. 

The undisputable king of movie villains

2. Eastern Europeans

As seen in Die Hard, Die Hard 3, Air Force One, and often played by Sean Bean. These guys fare shockingly well. They are often bland, but overall, thanks to highlight reel performances from the likes of Alan Rickman and Gary Oldman, they ultimately are very effective as villains, and Hollywood doesn't mind using them.

The ABCs of Dinkology Review

In some ways, The ABCs of Dinkology is a hard book to describe. It seems simple enough to say that it is a combination novel/graphic novel and leave it at that, but to slap an easy label on something that defies labels doesn't seem fair.

What we have is a coming of age story in the vein of a John Hughes film in the 1980s - think "Sixteen Candles". In The ABCs of Dinkology, the main character, Max, opens the story awaiting the return of his girlfriend from college, and if you see where this is going, in Max's case, things turn out even worse than what you might anticipate for him. Naturally, this leads to the typical breakup angst, only it is magnified due to both the nature of the breakup and by other events that take place during the book. I would rather let the reader navigate these twists and turns without giving away more.

As far as the graphic novel sections, these fit seamlessly into the narrative. I was afraid it would come off as distracting or gimmicky, and it didn't at all. They were a natural part of the story, and served only to enhance rather than detract.

My only complaint was that the ending was rather abrupt - my understanding is that this is the first part of the story, but there is nothing in the book that indicates as such. Nonetheless, I am looking forward to the second chapter of this story, when it arrives!

Penny Park Review

I discovered "Penny Park" thanks to a review in our local paper. Truth be told, I kind of figured the writer had overstated his praise of the album. But I was intrigued by the concept, so I decided to check it out.

When I did, I was blown away. The writer was correct. This is an outstanding album.

The concept of this record is that the songs follow the theme of one summer in the old Peony Park amusement park in Omaha (the summer of 1989 in this case), and our narrator's obsession with a girl named Penny Park. It's a catchy blend of nostalgia, love, and fun, with enough variety between the 21 songs that it always feels fresh, all the way through the end of the record.

I'm a huge fan of the Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen, and in a strange way, this feels like a mix between the two with a dose of Third Eye Blind thrown in. I'm not much of a music critic, but that's the best comparison I can make with my limited musical knowledge. I highly recommend this album, and I do not think its appeal is limited to only those from Omaha. I barely remember the park that the theme is drawn from, but I will be playing this album for years.

Preview of Novel #2

Perhaps I should explain, seeing as I don't know what you know about vampires. You may be reading this a hundred years from now, and by that point, it's very possible that every other book on the shelf is about vampires. So you might know everything there is to know about them, but I don't want to assume. 

The above is a sample from the rough draft of my next novel, or at least the one I've been working on -  I may never publish it though I've personally had a lot of fun writing it. Regardless, it's way too early to share this as I have just now finished the rough draft (and by rough, I mean, dear God avert your eyes and hide the woman and children rough), but what the hell, nobody really reads this page anyway! So here's a preview to my second novel tentatively title Adventures of Braxton Revere. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

Chapter I

New London

I warned them. Nobody can say I didn't warn them.

Course, it didn’t do any good, because nobody listened. I expected as much. After all, they never did before.

But that’s never an excuse to not do the right thing. So I said my piece and was ready to leave it at that, but was it appreciated? Course not. They laughed at me, and threw things, and all around just made life miserable. And they kept right at it on the few occasions I ventured into town for food and supplies. That didn’t stop the shop keeps from taking my money, but that should surprise exactly nobody.

Still, even after being treated poorly, I felt awfully bad when word came that the Brown family had been murdered, even though I could clearly remember the oldest daughter being one of the many laughing faces that taunted me. But it was no matter. Nobody deserves to die the way they did. Nobody.

I wouldn’t be a Revere if I felt any other way.

Sure, it proved I was right all along. I’d be lying if I said that a small part of me wasn’t happy for that, but hell man, I didn't want to be right that badly. Besides, I didn’t need to hear about a family being killed by a murderous pack of vampires to know I was right. I knew I was right, and that was good enough for me.

Still, after all these years filled with scorn, ridicule, and worst of all, pity, maybe people wouldn’t think I was crazy. Anyone with any sense would’ve made plans that day to do what needed to be done to stop the impending rise of evil. I could see it clearly - the entire town would take up arms and join me on a vampire hunt, the likes of which would once and for all eliminate Ralugard and his ilk in one swoop. It was time for war. And me, Braxton Revere, the Vampire Killer, would be the general.

*

DVD Bargain Bin Report

I love DVDs. But more than that, I love cheap DVDs. So naturally I'm drawn to Big Lots like a moth to flame, or anywhere else that stocks cheap DVDs for that matter - with the exception of Wal-Mart. The less time I spend at Wally World, the better off and happier I am.

Anyway, digging through used DVDs is always fun, because you often find movies you meant to see when they came out and missed, or movies you've heard about but never seen. Sometimes you find a treasure, and other times you find yet another copy of Wild, Wild West, but you don't know until you look, and that's the fun. So for no particular reason, I thought I would go through and summarize some of my recent thoughts on a few cheap DVDs I've recently watched to see if I found some winners.

Mean Streets: Found at Big Lots for $3. Anyone with a passing interest in mob films has probably heard of this one, but I had never seen it - the first entry of the DeNiro-Scorsese canon. Honestly, it was not what I expected. This is a very non-traditional film - there's not really an arc, and there's no character to get behind - these are scumbags and we're getting a fly on the wall type look at them. Something like should be right up my alley, but for whatever reason it just didn't click for me. I was enraptured throughout the opening but at some point it kind of lost me and it never found me. I'll have to watch it again sometime.

Raging Bull: Found at the Imaginarium for $2.50. This was a great deal - it was the two-disc special edition so there's a bunch of extras to delve into at some point. Unlike Mean Streets, I enjoyed this DeNiro-Scorsese team-up quite a bit. I absolutely love the Rocky films, but while this is the anti-Rocky, I still enjoyed it. Similar to Mean Streets in that there are no heroes, the more direct narrative makes this one easier to get into. Joe Pesci stole the show for me as the main character's brother. That said, Rocky remains my favorite fight film. But now I'm prepared to see the Rocky-Raging Bull square off in the upcoming Grudge Match.

Body Of Science

Body of Science by Jeremy Morong

Landon always took pride in getting early to work. Every job he held was filled with those sad sacks that rolled in ten minutes late only to head straight to the coffee pot. But Landon was never that way, except, for, well, when things spiraled out of control.

But now he was back in control. He had been clean since he got out, and he would stay that way. He had no choice.

Still, when he showed up early today, he was not the first one. Not even close. Twenty minutes before opening and he was fifteen back in line. Fifteen! Who knew that donating plasma was such a popular life decision.

Fifteen back meant he was behind a bunch of scumbags, drug addicts, and alcoholics. In other words, people just like him. He wished he could be anywhere else, but he needed the fifty a week. Stocking shelves at Dollar Tree twenty hours a week just didn't cut it by itself.

He glanced at his watch – five minutes left to opening. He looked back to find that he was still last in line, but his eyes made contact with a young man holding a clipboard. He had long hair that crawled out from underneath a beat-up trucker hat. A hipster. And as soon as Landon made eye contact, the hipster started coming his way, wearing a broad grin on his face.

“What's up, man?” The hipster asked. “You donating today?”

Landon could feel the shame rising in his face. “Yeah,” he mumbled. He wished this guy would leave him alone.

“Cool, man. Right on,” the hipster said. “You gotta do what you gotta do, right?”

“Yeah,” Landon replied.

“Well, check it man. I've got something better than donating plasma. You got a few seconds?”

Landon cringed. What was this clown selling? But what could he say – he was fifteen deep in a plasma line. He had a few seconds. He had many few seconds.

He was trapped.

“Yeah, you could say I've got a few seconds,” he said dryly.

The hipster laughed, way too enthusiastically. Landon was certain he was an Amway salesman.

“Yeah, bro, I can see that!” he said. Landon cringed. He hated being called bro. But the hipster took no notice and continued. “Look man, my name is Steve.”

He stuck out his hand, which Landon shook. “Landon.”

“Landon, good to meet you, bro. Listen, I know you're busy but I kind of wanted to talk to you about something. See, I'm with this company. . .”

Landon cut him off. “Amway, right? I've heard the pitch, man. It's not for me. But thanks.”

“No. No, bro! Nothing like that! No, listen to me. Times are tough right now, I get it. I know! But listen. I have a way to make you the easiest $5000 you'll ever see. One hour, boom, five grand. You interested?”

Die Hard, Die Hard, Die Hard

"Looks like we're going to need some more FBI guys."

If you told me that Die Hard was the greatest action movie ever made, depending on the day, I might not argue with you. It really is that freaking good. Recently, my wife and I sat down and re-watched the entire series, but in reverse order since part five was recently released and I hadn't seen it yet. So I started there and worked my way backwards, and in the interest of keeping our marriage strong, Abby did not watch A Good Day to Die Hard. I watched it first before I would allowed her beautiful eyes to gaze upon it, and thank goodness for that.

It really is that freaking bad.

Anyway, for no particular reason, here is how I rank the five Die Hard films, best to last.

1. Die Hard. Well, duh.

2. Die Hard with a Vengeance. Opinions are mixed on this one, but I like it quite a bit. It's actually the most believable of the sequels: instead of finding himself in the "wrong place at the wrong time," John McClane is deliberately targeted this time due to his actions in a prior film. Samuel Jackson is a lot of fun in this one as McClane's partner.

3. Die Hard 2. It's been some time since I've seen this one, and truth be told, it was much better than I remember.

If you had the misfortune of seeing The Hangover 2, you probably remember when Bradley Cooper's character says something like "We f'ed up. Again." And then they proceeded to basically rehash the first movie, only in a way that managed to remove any possible urge to laugh.

Well, Die Hard 2 has a few moments like that, with McClane wondering out loud "How can the same (bleep) happen to the same guy twice?" Except Die Hard 2 at least had the dignity to not stage the exact same movie. It's not a masterpiece, but it is entertaining.

4. Live Free or Die Hard. You know, it's not bad, and probably better than it should have been. It does start to kind of creak and groan at the end, with McClane's stunts stretching all credibility, and the movie is at least twenty minutes too long, but overall, it's pretty good. I was happy with it when I saw it in theaters and I still am. Watch the uncut version for the full "Yippie Ki Yay" catchphrase.

5. Watching other people watch Die Hard. Yes, I would rather watch another person watch Die Hard than watch Die Hard 5.

6. Watching Youtube videos of people playing Die Hard video games.  Yes, really.

7. A Good Day to Die Hard. Just horrible on every level. I could say more but I won't waste my time, as this review from DVD Talk already said it all. A major disappointment. On the other hand, Rocky V looks a hell of a lot better now. Just for an example of how bad this was, they fly McClane over from Russia and don't even bother to show him on the plane to riff off of the classic original opening of Die Hard. The only part I enjoyed was the car chase, but even that was filled with a sleepy Bruce Willis performance. If you do insist on watching this, make sure you watch the theatrical. For unexplainable reasons, Lucy McClane's two-part cameo was excised for the director's cut.

Oddly, Die Hard 5 is the only one where the story was actually created to be a Die Hard film. The first Die Hard began as a novel called Nothing Lasts Forever and was later pegged to be a sequel to Commando (wrap your mind around that for a bit). Die Hard 2 was adapted from a novel called 58 Minutes. Die Hard 3 was actually pegged as both a film called Simon Says and then Lethal Weapon 4 (Sam Jack is clearly in the Danny Glover role). Die Hard 4 was to be a stand-alone film about cyber-terrorists. Here's hoping they create the promised Die Hard 6 from an idea pegged for another film.

Coming soon: A definitive list of the other "Die Hard" movies, i.e. Speed is considered Die Hard on a bus. Someone needs to catalog those, and it might as well be me.