Samhain Thoughts from the White Board - Oct 31

I was going to call it just plain old "Halloween" Thoughts from the White Board, but decided to go with something different.  I Googled "names for Halloween" and Samhain was among the list.  Don't ask me what the significance of it is.  I dunno.

Our front porch jack-o-lanterns.  From left to right there is mine, which reads "Wong Lives!", my daughter's in the middle - which has a bunny, a heart, and a flower, plus some ink drawing on it to (in daylight you can see them), and the happy and bright-faced traditional jack-o-lantern on the right is my wife's.  We're all very talented around here.

Dual Review: Total Recall / We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

Time to get this dual review on the road.


Total Recall (2012)



2012's Total Recall is supposedly closer to the Philip K. Dick story than Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt in 1990.  I'm here now to definitively prove whether that happened here or not.  If you have money on "not," you'll probably win your bet.  Read on and find out.

Book Review: King Solomon's Mines, by Henry Rider Haggard

Went to the local "Trunk or Treat" at the church house with my daughter and wife and my daughter's little friend last evening.  Kids can be so cute sometimes.  One boy I teased because he was dressed as the protagonist "Link" from the video game The Legend of Zelda.  But he was missing the elf ears.  Another little girl was dressed like a gothic vampire, and I told her she couldn't have any candy unless she said "I vant to suck your blood."  Actually got her to say it, too.  Good times.  I've always liked Halloween season.

And on a totally unrelated topic, here is another book review.


Source: Amazon.com


King Solomon's Mines, by Henry Rider Haggard

From the book’s cover:

Allan Quatermain and a group of fellow-adventurers set out to find a missing member of their party. This is the beginning of their adventures in an unfamiliar and unexplored region of inner Africa. The first adventure novel to take place in Africa, King Solomon s Mines achieved wide-spread popularity as soon as it was published in 1885.

Book Review: I Am Ozzy, by Ozzy Osbourne, with Chris Ayres

Right on the heels of my Russia: A Journey... review.  Maybe if I keep at it, I'll eventually get around to writing that Dual Review about Total Recall too.  Then again, with my Spanish class midterm over the next four or five days (it's a multi-part operation), I wouldn't hold my breath, if I were you.  I Am Ozzy's was mostly written all ready, or else it would still be waiting too.

Source: Amazon

I Am Ozzy, by Ozzy Osbourne and Chris Ayres

From the book’s cover:

"They've said some crazy things about me over the years. I mean, okay: 'He bit the head off a bat.' Yes. 'He bit the head off a dove.' Yes. But then you hear things like, 'Ozzy went to the show last night, but he wouldn't perform until he'd killed fifteen puppies . . .' Now me, kill fifteen puppies? I love puppies. I've got eighteen of the f**king things at home. I've killed a few cows in my time, mind you. And the chickens. I shot the chickens in my house that night.

It haunts me, all this crazy stuff. Every day of my life has been an event. I took lethal combinations of booze and drugs for thirty f**king years. I survived a direct hit by a plane, suicidal overdoses, STDs. I've been accused of attempted murder. Then I almost died while riding over a bump on a quad bike at f**king two miles per hour.

People ask me how come I'm still alive, and I don't know what to say. When I was growing up, if you'd have put me up against a wall with the other kids from my street and asked me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of sixty, which one of us would end up with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and Beverly Hills, I wouldn't have put money on me, no f**king way. But here I am: ready to tell my story, in my own words, for the first time.

A lot of it ain't gonna be pretty. I've done some bad things in my time. I've always been drawn to the dark side, me. But I ain't the devil. I'm just John Osbourne: a working-class kid from Aston, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a good time."

Book Review: Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People

Today I finally post a review that has been languishing for a couple weeks.  Been busy, as my blog posts have indicated.  That and the book's content needed extra attention before I felt satisfied with what I'd written.  believe it or not folks, I actually do spend some time and effort trying to write a decent analysis of the things I read.  Not a particularly scholarly one, I'd say, but decent?  Yeah, I try.

Source: Amazon.com

Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People, by Jonathan Dimbleby

From the book’s cover:

Russia is a country in transition. It is a land of exotic treasures with a culture rich in world-famous artists, writers and musicians. It is a swiftly modernizing economy yet still a place of corruption, suppression and secrecy, trying to shake off its recent, bloody past of Communist dictatorship. Russia may no longer be seen as a rival to America, but with control over a huge portion of the world’s non-renewable energy resources, it is a rapidly rising energy super-power. Yet, shrouded in myth and ice, it is little understood by the rest of the world.

Travelling thousands of miles, Jonathan journeys from Kaliningrad in the west to Provideniya in the east to discover modern Russia. Passing through some of the most extreme landscapes on Earth, several climates and seven time zones, he visits places “spectacular, infamous, secret” that witnessed defining moments in Russia’s extraordinary history. Caught between Asia and Europe, the people of this vast landmass are as diverse as the landscape they inhabit, their ethnic mix a product of Russian expansionism.

In his book and the television series it accompanies, Jonathan looks at how the past has shaped the present and attempts to explain what modern Russia means to her people now.

Saturday-ish Thoughts from the White Board - Oct 22

My wife commented that today feels like a Saturday.  I'd agree on the later half of the day.  The beginning, not so much.  Unless it was a lousy sort of Saturday.

Things are not going too well in my Spanish class.  I feel like I go in there and we do group activities, and everybody else is speaking in complex sentences, and I'm like, "Que?"  "Hola." "Donde esta el banyo?"  "El queso es viejo y mohoso."  That last one was a joke from the movie Encino Man, by the way.


Couldn't find a clip of the Spanish class scene, so this will have to do.

Book Review: The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, by Anne Rice

I'm still working on my midterm project for my Public History class, but decided to take a moment out to do a quick review of a book I managed to get through the other night.  I figure I need to get this out on the 'net soon.  As a public service, of sorts.  Read on.

Source: Amazon.com

The Mummy - or Ramses the Damned, by Anne Rice

From the book’s cover:

"The reader is held captive, and, ultimately, seduced."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Ramses the Great has awakened in Edwardian London. Having drunk the elixir of life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied. Although he pursues voluptuous aristocrat Julie Stratford, the woman for whom he desperately longs is Cleopatra. And his intense longing for her, undiminished over the centuries, will force him to commit an act that will place everyone around him in the gravest danger....

Subterranean Thoughts from the White Board - Oct 16

I had the wonderful opportunity yesterday morning to go underneath the Marion Hotel, one of Ogden's older and more storied buildings.  My wife works for one of the business owners who occupy shops that front the structure.  I told her (my wife's boss) about my midterm assignment for my Public History course (the one where I do research on buildings on 25th Street) and she told me that she was having some plumbing work done (this conversation was a week or so back) and would have access to the basement of the Marion, which in years past had housed in its depths illegal boot-legging dens and probably prostitution activities as well.  She offered me the chance to go, and I jumped at it.

The Marion Hotel was built in 1910.  This photo is from a few years back, based on the shops I can see.  It looks a bit nicer now, since Ogden City has been trying to spruce up 25th Street for the tourist trade and the business market. / Source: UtahHomeFinder.com

Movie Review: Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows (2012)



Keeping to my new rule about two paragraphs of synopsis only, here goes: 2012's Dark Shadows stars actor Johnny Depp in the role of Barnabas Collins, a New England vampire who was imprisoned by a jealous ex-lover who was actually a witch. This witch, named Angelique Bouchard, contrives to tempt Collin's one true love to jump off a rather precariously jutting cliff, and when our man Barnabas follows her over, he discovers he is dead, and yet... undead. Keep this moment in mind, it's going to play into the film's final moments (let's put this up front, we will be repeating the whole "jumping off a cliff to save a loved one thing at Dark Shadows's conclusion).

Histrionic Thoughts from the White Board - Oct 14

As in overly dramatic, or excessively overacted.  My wife is watching the season premier of The Vampire Diaries on tape.  Yeah.  You figure the rest out.

A country without a memory is a country of madmen. - George Santayana

Honest history is the weapon of freedom. - A.M. Schlesinger, Jr.

I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism. - Charles Schwab

My neighbor asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could, so long as he didn't take it out of my garden. - Eric Morecambe

Book Review: The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down

Been out of commission for a few days, due to this big midterm assignment I've been doing for my Public History course.  A lot of research on a half block of buildings on Ogden's lower 25th street has been done, and hopefully the results will show.  If I have time, maybe I'll even put some of my findings in my blog.  But no promises.  Time is a valuable commodity these days, more than ever, that is.  So we'll see if any spare time comes up, and if I feel up to posting my research when it does.  Or if I should just get done some of the odd dozen other things I need to be doing.  Either way.

Source: Amazon.com

The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, by Colin Woodward

From the book’s cover:

Welcome to the Pirate Republic—the early-eighteenth-century home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates—former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves—this "Flying Gang" established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote.

For a brief, glorious period the Pirate Republic was enormously successful. It cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires. Imperial authorities and wealthy shipowners denounced its residents as the enemies of mankind, but common people saw them as heroes. Colin Woodard tells the dramatic untold story of the Pirate Republic that shook the very foundations of the British and Spanish Empires and fanned the democratic sentiments that would one day drive the American Revolution.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

I went last night to see The Dark Knight Rises at the cheap seats.  I've been torn as to whether or not to pay full price and see it in the regular theater, or to wait and catch it at the local second-run theater (insert free advertising for Ogden's Cinepointe 6, which is a good little outfit from my personal experience).  Since it just came to the cheap seats, I decided to go.  Was it worth the money spent, or should I have seen it sooner or waited for Redbox?  Read on to learn more.


The Dark Knight Rises (2012)



I am left feeling kind of uncertain here. I just sat down, after having seen The Dark Knight Rises at the local cheap seats, and am searching for a way to proceed in writing this review. You know, I think it's a case of sequel-itis. As probably lots of other reviews have mentioned when discussing this particular movie, The Dark Knight Rises had much to live up to. After all, Christopher Nolan's previous Batman effort, 2008's The Dark Knight, was both extremely dark and at the same time - in this reviewer's opinion and plenty of others too - phenomenally good (please note: that doesn't mean I'd recommend Dark Knight to everyone, but for what it was, it was very satisfactory in my mind).

Op/Ed: Can't We All Just Get Along?

A little Opinion/Editorial piece for this evening.  A bit of my own mis-informed political commentary ahead, and then I'll get to my latest review or two in the next few days.  Look for The Republic of Pirates book review soon and then later a couple of Dual Reviews, one for Total Recall and the other for The Princess Bride.  One of these two I read to my daughter for her bedtime story (betcha can't intuit which one), and that was real fun. 

Ok, on to the Op/Ed...

A week or more ago, I read an article about the newly elected Egyptian president,
Mohamed Morsi. He's the guy who replaced Mubarak, who is apparently very ill and probably won't serve a great deal of his life imprisonment sentence. A pretty lucky fate for an old dictator, all things considered. Just ask Libya's Muammar Gaddafi or worse, Nicolae Ceauescu.

President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt. / Source: NewYorkTimes.com

Preventative Thoughts from the White Board - Oct 3

I considered calling it "Flu-like" instead, but since I only got the Flu shot and not the Flu (here's hoping anyway), "preventative" seemed more appropriate.  What's that one about an ounce of prevention?

And the best news of all, I'm actually still caught up on my book reviews, as of this writing!  Good thing too, as I have a ton more homework to do.  Isn't life great!?  No really, I mean it.  Not even sarcastic or anything this time.  I'm caught up on my reviews and I'm getting homework done.  That beats being behind on my reviews and not getting my homework done, any day of the week!

Book Review: I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot From School

A short pause between school assignments, and a short book review to go with it.  I promise this one will take significantly less time than Catcher in the Rye did.  That book was heavy. 

I also promise to avoid any sexist parting comments, if I can.  As I remarked in my response to the first comment along those lines, I probably am over-compensating due to the virtual hedgerow of female perspectives I'm being exposed to in my Women's Studies class.  Only the most off-the-reservation stuff is getting over it, just now.

You should see the rant she gave me over my last response paper assignment.  I can't wait to see what she has to say about my response to her film clips that bagged on Hollywood movies for being too biased against women.  I said I agreed, but that there were a few films on her list that I thought she was being too one-sided on herself.  We'll see what comes of that.

Ok, enough on my Women's Lib - er, I mean Studies class.  On to the review.

Source: Amazon.com

I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot From School, by Caroline Taggart

From the book’s cover:

If you've forgotten the capital city of Chile; the basics of osmosis; how to solve a quadratic equation; the names of the Bennet sisters in "Pride and Prejudice"; who wrote the famous poem about daffodils; the use of a conjunction or the number of continents in the world, "I Used to Know That" will provide all the answers. A light-hearted and informative reminder of all the things that we learnt in school but have since become relegated to the backs of our minds, "I Used to Know That" features hundreds of important snippets of wisdom, facts, theories, equations, phrases, rules and sayings.It is a practical guide to turn to when an answer is eluding you, when helping a child with homework or preparing them for the new school year, or maybe just to brush up on trivia for the pub quiz. "I Used to Know That" covers English Language and Literature, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History, Geography and General Studies, so never again will you find yourself stumped!