The One Thing That Stays Mine

Good things come to those who wait

2010-12-21T14:39:00.002-06:00

Wow, how the fuck is it December 21st already?

Now that there's been over two months of inactivity on this blog, it's probably time for an explanation. It's right there in the blog's tag at the top of the page (if you aren't reading this through a feed reader): "Random nonsense from a thoroughly bored geek / nerd / skeptic." In an unexpected twist, that thoroughly bored person no longer exists; thus no more random nonsense.

Avid followers of this blog may recall a blog post from early this year where I had an online dating mental breakdown and took myself off the market. At that time I wasn't really ready to start dating other people and was only trying to because I thought I had to, to prove that I could. I ultimately made the correct decision at the time to get the fuck out. To help resolve my issues, I spent many hours this summer and fall reading Reddit's relationship_advice and relationships subreddits. Many threads were entertaining, educational, and therapeutic. One recurring theme for those seeking love through online dating was to avoid all other dating sites in favour of the completely free OkCupid. So, in late August, while drunk and lonely, I decided it was time for a second attempt at meeting that special someone, but this time on OkCupid and only OkCupid. My timing could not have been more fortuitous.

My OkCupid profile was pretty bad. Rather than use my standard, over-written profile, I wrote this one from the heart... on the spot... while drunk. It shouldn't have worked. But within a couple of days, I had received my first email.

There wasn't much to that email, and the grammar and spelling were atrocious, but I responded eagerly. Her profile, at least, was interesting, and we seemed to have a lot in common. After a couple of emails, we made arrangements to chat on MSN. I was excited to be back out there, and having much more success this time. But I never chatted with that girl. I was pretty busy at this time, dealing with Christina moving in, and it just never ended up happening.

On September 6th, only a couple of days after getting the first email, I received a second email. Two emails out of the blue within a week of joining an online dating site was pretty unheard of in my experience, so I was a little floored by my luck this time. This second girl was moving to Regina from Halifax in a couple of weeks and had rather obviously sent out a form message to more than just me. Her profile was well written, but I thought she might be a little too pretentiously artsy to enjoy spending time with me. For those and other reasons, I waited a week before responding to her with an uncharacteristically short email. I have to admit that I was surprised when she responded quickly with a second email, but I again, for various reasons that I can't even recall, waited a few days before emailing her back.

I'm pretty lucky that my initially lackadaisical approach with this girl did not sabotage things, because shortly afterwards we were emailing back and forth daily and I warmed up to her in a big way. After a week or so of steady emails, we met in person for dinner and a movie. And then a couple of days later we took in an art opening. And a week later, another movie. And then we played Rock Band and sang karaoke and there was no turning back for me.

Her name is Erin. I am in love with her. I am happier now than I have been in a long time.

Also: way, way busier. Blogging is not high on my list of priorities.

I mentioned earlier that the timing of my OkCupid profile could not have been more fortuitous. That is definitely true. However, there are other matters where the timing of all of this has not been quite so great. And by other matters I primarily mean one other matter. And by that I mean Christina.

Christina moving in with me was supposed to be this great thing to get me out of my rut. And it pretty much worked. For a month and a half, we had a good thing going. But then Erin came into my life and Christina was suddenly unnecessary. (Sorry, Christina, that probably sounds harsh, but I'm sure you know what I mean.) And after a while, when things between Erin and I became serious, Christina's presence became an obstacle in ways I had never anticipated. Obviously, if I had known I would meet someone special in September, I would never have invited Christina to move in with me when she did.

Christina is now investigating her options for moving out well in advance of our original plans. But don't feel too bad for her. If all of this hadn't gone down the way it has gone down, she would have been sitting on her hands in my house for the next nine months. Because of the circumstances, I have escalated the process of paying her out of the terms of our separation agreement. Now she can take her half of my house's equity early and invest in her business and career. She'll be better off for it.

So, what now? I'm not saying that this blog is done. The Week/Month in Review stuff is over, for sure. But I definitely have some more Brewblog posts in me. And I might stop in every once in a while for an update on my life. There will be a lot happening in the coming year.

Brewblog, Entry Nine

2010-10-14T09:04:00.001-06:00

Good News, Everyone!

212, which will probably be bottled this weekend, is NOT SOUR. Hallelujah. I don't have to quit brewing (yet).

October 2, 2010 - Brewed Brewniversity #8 (126)

The plan for this brewday wasn't really to do a Brewniversity beer. Simon had awesomely taken it upon himself to build us a bigger mash cooler (66L vs 45L) to match our big 15 gallon pot, so I let Simon create a 38L recipe for the day based around the malts and hops we had in stock. After seeing that his recipe relied on staggered additions of only Amarillo hops for bittering, flavour, and aroma, I decided to slap on the Brewniversity brand.

Malt-wise, it was more complex than the average Brewniversity, having Victory, Crystal, and Munich malts. But 124 (and 224) had been similar, minus the Victory malt, and had also featured staggered hop additions, so 126 made sense for a label for this brew. To me.

The new cooler wasn't nearly pushed to its limits by this batch. That is excellent because it appears that we should be able to do a big batch of big beer in the future. (Right now I'd argue that we have too much big beer in stock.)

After brewday, we attended the Brewer's Dinner at Beer Bros, featuring Half Pints from Winnipeg. It was fucking awesome! I am relieved that my memory blackout for the day only covered a short period between finishing brewing and arriving at Beer Bros. I now believe in teleportation.

October 9, 2010 - Brewed Vanilla Porter 2 (VP2)

The first plan for this brewday was to attempt a Milk Stout. I failed at Friday afternoon shopping (where the fuck do you buy lactose?) and proposed a second attempt at making a delicious Vanilla Porter as plan B. We decided again to do a big 38L batch, which will give us the fun experimental opportunity to split the batch and do different things with the Robust Porter base. This recipe had only a slightly larger grain bill than the 126, so the new mash tun was again nowhere near capacity.

The original Vanilla Porter had been pretty good. The pure vanilla extract added to secondary had lent a very subtle vanilla-ness. For this batch, I purchased both vanilla extract and vanilla beans. I am not yet sure what quantities of vanilla I am going to add to my half of the batch, but I want it to be much more noticeable this time, without being extreme.

The recipe was slightly modified from the original Vanilla Porter. I adjusted the Black, Chocolate, and Crystal 80 malt quantities, and added Munich Malt, based on what I have learned from the various Scott's Stouts and Imperial Stouts and Honey Nut Brown in the meantime. For hops, I went with only Fuggles this time instead of the Fuggles and Goldings blend from the original.

We did make one interesting process change with this batch. Although my house has a water softener installed, it is not operational, so there theoretically shouldn't be a difference between the drinking water tap and the hot water tap. I am assuming that the water heater doesn't fuck up the water somehow. So, rather than heating cool drinking water on our propane burner, we started each step with 145F hot water from my house, letting the high efficiency natural gas water heater handle the brunt of the work. The savings on time is definitely significant. The savings on propane probably is as well. But it remains to be seen if there is an affect on taste.

Next time on Brewblog?

The tenth Brewblog will likely include the next edition of Tasting Notes, discussing the merits of 224, Honey Nut Brown, Matrimonial Ale 6, and the Wee Heavy at a minimum.

Not sure what we are brewing on Saturday. Or if. I'm a lot distracted right now by life. Not complaining. It's fantastic!

A Month in Review, Sep 7 to Oct 10

2010-10-13T14:53:00.001-06:00

Oh, I just remembered I have a blog! Oops...

The month of October has been insanely good for me so far, and I haven't been sitting around doing nothing like I did for most of the past year. After the last Month in Review post, I had intended to get back into Week in Review posts, but that fell by the wayside pretty quickly. (Fuck blogging right now. Better things to do.)

The Month in Books

This month, I kept soldiering through the massive tomes that are Steven Erikson's awesome Malazan Book of the Fallen. I completed book five, Midnight Tides, and immediately jumped into book six, The Bonehunters. Midnight Tides was fantastic, dramatic but often hilarious, epic while focused (comparatively), and I read its last five hundred pages in a couple of marathon sessions. The Bonehunters has an early set-piece that is breathtaking in its scope and intensity, but since reading those incredible pages, I have been preoccupied with other things. (Fuck reading right now. Better things to do.)

The Month in Music

Two of my favourite bands released new albums in the past month. Anberlin's Dark is the Way, Light is a Place is okay, with the band taking a different somewhat disappointing approach with their sound, while Jimmy Eat World's Invented is fantastic, more than worthy of their impressive discography. The other new release for the month was Weezer's Hurley, a huge improvement over the immature Raditude, but otherwise not really worthy of my blogging effort. (Fuck blogging about Weezer right now. Better things to do.)

Anberlin has now released two less than spectacular albums since their peak with 2007's Cities, so it may be that they don't have another Cities in them. New Surrender was at least Cities-like in its structure and sound, but it felt rushed and was very inconsistent. Dark is the Way... is much more consistent, but in a poppy, boring-ish way. To go from re-recording the rocking "Feel Good Drag" for New Surrender's first single to this is particularly jarring. First single "Impossible" is a pretty good indication of what you are in for with Dark is the Way.... It's a good, light, catchy tune, but it's not great. "To the Wolves" is arguably the best track, but album closer "Depraved" continues Anberlin's trend of interesting album endings.

Jimmy Eat World slumped a little with 2007's Chase This Light, but with Invented they have found a way to successfully fuse the diverse sounds of Clarity, Futures, and Bleed American into a cohesive and interesting whole. Songs like "Heart is Hard to Find," "Coffee and Cigarettes," and the divisive "Higher Devotion" find the band experimenting with new sounds and new energy, while songs like "Movielike" and title-track "Invented" knock me over with their classic Jimmy Eat World brilliance every time. And the increased orchestral presence throughout is very welcome. I am relieved that my faith in Jimmy Eat World (as illustrated by a comment in The Albums That Always Bring Me Back For More that they are my favourite band that is still together and at the top of their game) was not at all misplaced.

The Month in Movies

I'm not going to review the first movie I saw this month, romantic comedy Going the Distance with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, because you'll never believe me when I tell you that it is actually quite respectable for its genre. This is not a movie that I would ever see by myself, but I wasn't by myself... and it served its purpose wonderfully.

I would have seen The Social Network by myself--because David Fincher! Aaron Sorkin! Facebook!--but I didn't have to. It's a terrific movie, well acted, funny, moving, frustrating, compelling, fascinating, and brilliantly structured. The bookends are perfect.

The Month in Television

Loved: Dexter (5x1/3), Fringe (3x1-3), Glee (2x3), Mad Men (4x7/9-12), Merlin (3x1/2), Modern Family (2x1-3)
Liked: 30 Rock (5x1-3), The Amazing Race (17x1-3), The Big Bang Theory (4x1-3), Bored to Death (2x3), Chuck (4x1-3), Dexter (5x2), Eureka (4x9), Glee (2x1/2), How I Met Your Mother (6x1-3), Hung (2x10), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (6x1-4), Mad Men (4x8), Merlin (3x3/4), The Office (7x1-3), So You Think You Can Dance Canada (3x12-20), South Park (14x8), Stargate Universe (2x1/2), True Blood (3x12), Warehouse 13 (2x10-12)
Meh: Bored to Death (2x1/2), Entourage (7x10), House (7x1-3)

That's a lot of fucking TV shows. Goddamn. I'm obviously only going to address the highlights and/or lowlights.

The following statement is definitely something that I never thought I would say: the best thing on TV in the past month was the two-part season three premiere of (fucking) Merlin. "The Tears of Uther Pendragon" was dramatic, game-changing (or was it?), epic, and unquestionably the best thing Merlin has ever done. Bravo! Sadly, the next couple of episodes were firmly back in the series' predictable ball-park. And I forgot to download Saturday's episode. (Fuck Merlin right now. Better things to do.)

In other good news, Fringe has been having a fantastic third season so far, awesomely alternating between universes to keep things interesting, Dexter's fifth season is off to an interesting and compelling start, Modern Family seems funnier than ever, Glee is still awesomely stupid, How I Met Your Mother is redeeming itself from a terrible fifth season, and Mad Men finally found its dramatic thrust halfway through its season and won me back in a big way.

In less good (and now old) news, True Blood's third season finale was only okay, which puts it firmly in the disappointing category. Entourage and Hung ended how they started, lame and pretty good respectively. Bored to Death's premiere episode was dumb, dumb, dumb, but episode three was borderline fantastic, so they've earned my time for the rest of the season.

30 Rock, The Office, The Big Bang Theory, and Always Sunny have been fine but otherwise unremarkable. Not the strongest seasons for these shows, but it is not unusual for comedies of this nature to run out of steam after so many seasons. I still enjoy them even if they aren't what they used to be.

Eureka went on hiatus with a strong mid-season finale, but Warehouse 13 very nearly went off the rails with its finale. Yet it was still enjoyable in that ridiculous cheeseball way. Sadly, my favourite cheeseball dramedy, Chuck, has had a disappointing fourth season so far. If it doesn't get better soon, I may have to pretend that the series was actually canceled after its fantastic third season.

I haven't watched Caprica's first couple of episodes yet. (Fuck Caprica... okay, I'm sure you get the point!)

Why do I even fucking watch House?

Brewblog, Entry Eight

2010-10-01T13:44:00.002-06:00

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Son of a bitch!

The sour infection that refuses to die came back to taunt me with our Saison. When I racked it, I was sure it was completely fine, but after a few days in the carboy, there was some unusual fermentation activity (a haze) and I took a sample. Yep, sour! Fuck. Suspecting the source of infection to be the plastic Better Bottle carboy, I isolated the batch and crossed my fingers that this was the end, for reals this time. I had already stopped using the pail that gave us the horrible 112 and slightly less disgusting Sour Strawberry Wheat.

Belgian IPA 2 was most likely fermented in the same pail as the Saison. (I should have been keeping better track of these things.) After primary fermentation, it seemed fine, again, but after racking the ten gallon batch into two carboys, unusual secondary fermentation was again witnessed after a few days. In my Better Bottle, there was strange surface bubbling. In Simon's glass carboy, the surface actually hardened into a crust. Cue panic.

Because BIPA2 had initially seemed fine, Extra Special Bitter 2 was also fermented in the same damn pail. Once again, when I racked it, it seemed completely fine, but after a few days there was suspicious secondary fermentation activity in its two carboys. And a weird smell.

Ridiculously, after racking the ESB2, I then threw a friend's kit beer into that same fucking pail.

It was shortly after this that I decided to buy a new fermentation bucket and start using glass carboys and containers more consistently. I was going to put an end to this infection once and for all.

Oh, wait!

Last weekend, I did another tasting of all of the supposedly infected beers. And they are not sour! Well, no, the Saison is still sour, but everything else seems kinda fine. Good, even. ESB2 has a Belgiany aroma that it shouldn't have, but that's way better than sour, and it may actually be due to stressed yeast rather than infection. Belgian IPA 2 tastes and smells like it probably should. Even that stupid kit beer tasted and smelled like a kit beer, even though I would have sworn it was sour when I racked it. Holy confirmation bias! What the fuck?

I guess this is good news, but it's super confusing. Stay tuned for more details as they are available.

September 11, 2010 - Brewed Bushwakker Imperial Stout Clone (WAK2)

This was an interesting experiment (with results still pending). We had all greatly enjoyed the ALES club Big Brew Day Russian Imperial Stout (WAK) where our only contribution to our bottles was the Wyeast Denny's Favorite 50 yeast and the priming sugar. With the recipe for that big batch freely available, it made sense that we would eventually attempt to replicate that beer with our ingredients and our mash equipment.

I had to scale the recipe down and make some substitutions. We did not have Crystal 120, so I used Crystal 80. We did not have Carafa Malt, so I did a lot of research and determined that our Chocolate Malt would work. We did not have Munich 120, so I devised a combo-substitution of Munich 90 and Black Malt. For hops we had what we needed, namely Columbus and Willamette, but I had to guess at quantities without knowing alpha acid details.

I had originally planned to use an old ranched London Ale yeast for this batch. I created a starter and everything. But our second sour scare was now underway and the starter smelled funny, so I backed away from reusing the yeast and threw in two packets of dry ale yeast instead.

When we racked this beer one week later, the sample definitely showed a lot of promise. The beer hasn't been touched since then. Nothing wrong with bulk aging this batch since we still have a fair bit of WAK left to drink.

September 18, 2010 - Brewed Harvest Ale (HA)

One of the first awesome beers I had as an ALES member was a Pale Ale made with locally grown fresh Cascade hops. Inspired by that, Simon and I both planted rhizomes from that hop plant in our yards. Both of our plants did quite well this year after not doing much last year.

Actually, my plant is fucking ridiculous. SO MUCH HOPS. So it was time to try using them. I had no idea how effective the hops would be, but the standard recommendation is five times as much wet hops as you would usually use of dry pellet hops. With no other evidence, I took that as gospel.

For a recipe, we went with an all Pale Malt grain bill to keep things simple. I picked a pound of hop flowers on Saturday morning, devised a staggered hop addition schedule, and hoped we'd end up with something that tastes like an American Pale Ale in the end.

Um. No. It does not. Based on the sample from racking, it needs way more hops. Dammit. I still intend to dry hop it with more of the fresh hops before bottling. Hopefully a nice pleasant citrus aroma will distract from the bready taste.

September 25, 2010 - Brewed Brewniversity #7 (212)

Oh, sour 112, you are the absolute worst. How can we learn anything about Goldings hops from your ketchup chips-ness? Trevor had a fantastic idea about using the 112 to marinate meat for a BBQ party. We certainly don't want to drink that shit.

Lucky number seven? 212 was pretty much the exact same recipe as 112, with minor adjustments to Goldings hop quantities. I haven't touched it yet. It had better not be fucking sour. If it is, I quit.

Next time on Brewblog?

Dunno. Hopefully some good news about WAK2's awesomeness. And confirmation that 212 is not sour.

Brewblog, Entry Seven

2010-09-09T18:31:00.003-06:00

August 7, 2010 - Brewed Matrimonial Ale 6 (MA6)

With most bottles of Matrimonial Ale 5 gone, it was time to start the cycle all over again. The consensus (two out of three, anyway) for MA6 was that we should try the same Imperial IPA concept of MA5, but with the citrus hops of MA4. And that's pretty much exactly what I devised in BeerSmith on the morning of brew day. I say "pretty much" because I had a new 15 gallon pot to work with.

After using a friend's 8 gallon pot for over a year, we finally saved up enough money to purchase a big pot of our own in July. With twice as much volume to work with in the new boil pot, we are now able to create 10 gallon batches (38L) of some beers instead of the standard 5 gallon (19L). I say "some beers" because we haven't yet upgraded our cooler mash tun, so there are limits on how much grain we can use in a batch. We can easily make 38L of a 4% beer, but as the alcohol content goes up, we can make less and less volume, until we bottom/max (depending on your perspective) out at 19L around 9%.

(We will not brew 38L every brew day, just because we now can. Between only three guys, that's simply too much beer. We just like now having the option to go big if we want to.)

Having previously maxed out our cooler with Blackout Stout, I had a vague idea of how much grain and water I could fit in the mash for MA6. I planned the recipe for a 22L batch of 8% beer, requiring nearly 8 kg of grains. The cooler was definitely maxed out once again.

I had been very happy with the Wyeast Scottish Ale yeast's performance with the Wee Heavy so I wanted to give it another chance to impress on a strong beer. My first attempt to reuse a ranched yeast (the Denny's Favorite 50 in MA5) had been a dismal failure, but I was confident that a yeast starter was key to success. And I was right. MA6 had a very healthy primary fermentation with more than a foot of krausen and better than expected attenuation. Like the Wee Heavy before it, MA6 easily crossed the 9% threshold.

MA6 was bottled on September 4, so I will reserve comments on the finished product for a few more weeks. The samples have been promising. The dry hopped aroma is excellent.

The Matrimonial Ale series, for me at least, has always been about experimenting with American IPA and Imperial IPA recipes to find what kind of crazy things we can make, but one member of the club wants us to settle on an MA recipe and start making that over and over. I expect that MA4 will be the model for future Matrimonial Ales, putting the series firmly back in American IPA territory (it started American, went Imperial by accident, then American, American, Imperial, Imperial).

However, as a big fan of MA5 and hopefully MA6, I am not giving up on the Imperial IPA series. So I need a new name. Aside from Blackout Stout, I haven't really done anything creative with our beer names. Matrimonial Ale was not my idea. Everything else is just named after its style. It's a little boring. But I'm a little boring. So, "Imperial IPA" it is?

August 21, 2010 - Brewed Belgian IPA 2 (BIPA2)

The first Belgian IPA was soured and a big disappointment, but everyone liked the concept enough to try it as our first 38L batch. The plan was to bottle 19L in the standard way but keg the other 19L in Simon's newish kegerator setup. In a month or so, we will do a bottle vs. keg taste challenge.

Not coincidentally, the size of the grain bill for the Belgian IPA 2 was identical to the previous week's Matrimonial Ale 6, maxing out the mash cooler. The extra volume for BIPA2 was added during the sparge process. Ignoring the size difference, the recipe was only slightly revised from the original BIPA, with the same hops, malts, and yeast.

For this double batch, we used the Wyeast Belgian Abbey II liquid yeast that had been ranched from Trevor's Blonde. That yeast has been in my fridge for a few months, and had been ranched and cleaned sloppily and possibly incorrectly, but I made a starter for it two days before brew day, and it seemed healthy enough. And it was. It did quite well.

Simon, unsurprisingly and understandably, wants nothing to do with the sour epidemic of this summer, so his half of the Belgian IPA is currently sitting in a glass carboy, just in case. So far I have detected no obvious sourness in the Belgian IPA, but I am checking on a weekly basis out of paranoia.

August 28, 2010 - Brewed Extra Special Bitter 2 (ESB2)

On this brew day, we wanted to do another big batch (35L or so) to split between bottles and a keg, but of a simple light beer. English Pale Ale was a good fit, especially considering the unused Wyeast London Ale III yeast sitting in my fridge. The first Extra Special Bitter (aka English Pale Ale) was brewed well over a year ago, and I can barely remember how it tasted. In the meantime, we have brewed two Standard Bitters that were solid if unspectacular.

I completely ignored the recipe from our original ESB, instead taking inspiration from various online recipes and our previous Standard Bitters. For malts, it was mostly Pale, with some Crystal 80 and a little Biscuit. For hops, I went with Northern Brewer for bitterness, Goldings for flavour, and Fuggles for aroma.

As I write this, I am racking ESB2 into its two carboys. I detected no sourness in the sample. And it seems like it will be a crisp, refreshing, mildly bitter brew. Nice.

September 4, 2010 - Brewed Simon's Sapporo Lager (SSL)

We don't make many lagers. They require tight temperature control and at temperatures much lower than you'll find anywhere in my house. The first, a Pilsner, fermented and lagered in Simon's basement, had turned out okay (once the sulfur smell went away) despite being fermented and especially lagered at higher than recommended temperatures. But with Simon's kegerator setup, making lagers properly is now a much more realistic prospect.

For our first kegerator lager, Simon wanted to try to make a Japanese rice lager like a Sapporo, so that's what we did. All we could get on short notice was two pounds of rice flakes, so eighty percent of the grain bill was still Pale Malt. I did some research on hops and determined that Saaz and Hallertau were the best fit for bitterness and flavour/aroma respectively.

Other than the rice flakes in the mash, it was a pretty standard brew day. We did only 19L for this batch so it can all be kegged.

Next time on Brewblog

As I conclude this post, I am preparing the London Ale yeast starter for Saturday's Imperial Stout.

A Month in Review, Aug 8 to Sep 6

2010-09-07T10:00:00.003-06:00

For a month in review post, this one is actually quite short. I haven't really done that much of note in the last month. Christina moved in, so there was that. And we watched a lot of episodes of So You Think You Can Dance and Queer as Folk. And I've read a lot of reddit threads. And I've been busy at work for a nice change. And I listened to a ton of music as research for the favourite albums posts. It was overall a pretty good month, just not very blogworthy.

The Month in Movies

I can't believe I forgot to review Inception last time. As a big fan of Christopher Nolan's films (Memento and The Prestige, mostly), I was quite excited to see his latest mindbender. What took me by surprise was the fact that it is actually a pretty straightforward storyline. The ending is left open to interpretation, but Inception is otherwise completely logical in structure and easy to follow, once you accept the premise's rules. Repeat viewings are not required to understand Inception, but there are enough details and subtleties to keep the movie interesting in repeat viewings. That is good movie-making. And Inception also features top-notch acting and action. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's zero-gravity scenes were the highlight for me.

As good as Inception was, I enjoyed Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World even more. I haven't read the source material (soon?), but this live-action video game of a movie was entertaining from start to finish, features one of the coolest soundtracks I've ever heard, and even made me like Michael Cera again. From Spaced to Shaun of the Dead to Hot Fuzz to this, Edgar Wright has yet to disappoint.

The Month in Music

Disturbed's "Asylum," released August 31, is a solid hard-rock album. All of the songs are pretty good, but there is an undeniable sameness to a lot of Disturbed's songs since 2002's "Believe," and I certainly don't think they broke out of that rut with "Asylum." Disturbed is clearly unconcerned with diversity. "Asylum" is a more consistent album than 2008's "Indestructible," but "Indestructible" had better stand-out moments, so I'll call them even. Best Disturbed album is... hmmm... I'll go with "Ten Thousand Fists," I guess.

The Month in Television

My first TV task of August was catching up with Eureka's in-progress fourth season, which has surprisingly been the best season of the series to date. The writers took a big risk in the season premiere that could easily have backfired in a huge way, but have so far managed to make it work rather well.

More recently, I also finished all six series/seasons of hilarious British comedy Peep Show. This series might just be my new favourite comedy series of all time. If I compare only its first two seasons with the two seasons of The Office, The Office wins, but Peep Show kept getting better throughout its third season and hit its comedy genius stride in season four. It's embarrassing how often I identify with pathetic sad sack Mark Corrigan. A seventh season is coming later this fall, so: yay!

It is now September, so that means the return of endless television viewing. I'm looking forward to (in alphabetical order) 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Chuck, Dexter, Fringe, fucking Glee, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Modern Family, The Office, South Park, and Stargate Universe. I'm reluctantly also going to watch The Amazing Race, House, How I Met Your Mother, and Merlin. I'm undecided about Survivor. And I'm annoyed that Caprica and Parks and Recreation are being held for midseason.

As for new shows, I'm not watching any of them, at least not at first. Not even the promising No Ordinary Family. I can always catch up later if the buzz is strong.

Loved: Futurama (7x9-12), Penn & Teller: Bullshit (8x10), Sherlock (1x3)
Liked: Eureka (4x6-8), Hung (2x6-9), Mad Men (4x3-7), So You Think You Can Dance (7x22/23), So You Think You Can Dance Canada (3x1-11), True Blood (3x8-11), Warehouse 13 (2x6-9)
Meh: Entourage (7x6-9)

In the best news of the month, Futurama continues to kick all kinds of ass. I can definitely count on twenty minutes of hilarity every week.

Sherlock's third episode/movie, "The Great Game," was the second best of the three, ending with quite the unexpected jolt. I'm looking forward to more of this series, in a year or two or whenever...

Bullshit's season finale, "Vaccinations," was definitely one of the strongest episodes in the eighth season. In particular, the duo's episode-opening demonstration of the effectiveness of vaccinations was eye-opening. Anti-vaxxers need to fuck off and die.

Eureka and Warehouse 13 had fun crossovers this month that I enjoyed. Eureka has definitely been the better of these two similar silly shows this season, but I nearly always guiltily enjoy both.

Sadly, I'm getting a little bored with the rest of the shows. Like with its second season, True Blood's third season lost a lot of momentum in the second half and is now getting kinda boring sometimes. Mad Men seems to have no dramatic thrust this season, so is just there. Hung is still mostly just okay. Entourage is up and down and all over the place. The three HBO shows end their seasons this coming Sunday. I am still pretty excited for True Blood's finale, as episode eleven did have quite the awesome cliffhanger ending. Perpetually overrated Emmy-winner Mad Men still has half a season to impress.

The Albums That Always Bring Me Back For More, Part 3

2010-09-03T16:20:00.003-06:00

Wow, I've been busy these past couple of weeks...

Better late than never, at long last, I present my top five favourite albums. To make up for the delay, I put a little more effort into each entry this time, including my favourite lyrics from my favourite songs.

If you are late to the party, please check out part one and part two.

5. Catherine Wheel - Happy Days (1995)

The video from Waydown was my introduction to Catherine Wheel. I didn't know what to make of it at first, but it was in heavy rotation on MuchMusic in 1995 and grew on me to the point where buying the album became a necessity. It's fun to remember those days when music wasn't so easily sampled for free, buying albums based on one song you liked was common, and you often quickly came to regret the fifteen bucks you had just wasted. Some music stores let you sample the album in-store, but I rarely took advantage of that; I was a risk taker. This particular risk was well worth it. Happy Days is the best album I ever purchased on the strength of only one song without any prior exposure to the band.

It was only when I checked out Catherine Wheel's previous albums that I realized how much of a departure Happy Days was for the band. Fans of Ferment and Chrome, their two quite similar previous albums, were not necessarily fans of Happy Days. The lyrics and vocals have an awesome angry edge, and it is a much harder rocking album musically. Catherine Wheel continued to change their sound significantly with their final two albums, Adam and Eve and Wishville, because they insisted on never stagnating. I love all of Catherine Wheel's albums, but Happy Days is the one that I fell in love with first, and you never forget your first.

Essential Tracks:
"Waydown" - "I breed deep in me a beautiful thing / And I need energy for my beautiful thing / But pain for days has stayed with me / Expect to see some change in me"
"Heal" - "I can climb a tree and push up through the leaves 'cause / Only when I try am I happier to see / My head's in some kind of space where boyhood used to be / It's how high you are and the time it takes to heal"
"Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck" - "Eat my dust you insensitive fuck"
"Shocking" - "But won't you listen to me, why can't you believe / That you're breaking my heart / And these moments were part of our lives / And it destroys me to see you destroy them / Every time"

Filler Track: "Fizzy Love"

Runner-Up: Chrome (1993) - "The Nude"

4. Silverchair - Diorama (2002)

Diorama is one of those albums that comes out of nowhere to completely blow you away. Previously, I had only moderate interest in Silverchair, just enough to pick up their "Best Of" album at a used CD shop in the winter of 2001/2002. The best song on that greatest hits collection was "Emotion Sickness," an awesome orchestrated rock ballad that showed promise of much greater things to come. Now much more curious about Silverchair, I also tracked down a used copy of 1999's Neon Ballroom, which is definitely a solid rock album, but with no other songs in the same league as "Emotion Sickness." The next album, Diorama, was the much greater things.

As soon as "Across the Night" starts, you know you are in for something special. I've always been a huge fan of orchestrated rock music; the orchestration just gives it that extra kick, a little epicness. Diorama is the best orchestrated rock album in my collection. The influence of the orchestration ranges from subtle touches in some of the harder rocking songs to songs that are effectively built around the orchestration. Another big reason Diorama stays in my playlist is the diversity of songs. In this one album, there are brilliantly quirky songs "Across the Night" and "Tuna in the Brine," awesome hard rocking songs like "Without You" and "One Way Mule," and beautiful ballads like "World Upon Your Shoulders" and "After All These Years." This is an album that repeatedly rewards the listener from beginning to end.

Essential Tracks:
"Across the Night" - "Never seen the sunshine / From higher points than sunrise / I don't wanna be lonely / I just wanna be alone"
"Without You" - "Old incisions refusing to stay / Like the sun through the trees on a cloudy day"
"Too Much of Not Enough" - "A close look at something so close / It's too much of not enough / When all we need is just a taste"
"After All These Years" - "All those years / I was hurting to feel / Something more than life"

Filler Track: "The Lever"

3. King's X - Please Come Home...Mr. Bulbous (2000)

King's X's Please Come Home...Mr. Bulbous (herein referred to as PCHMB) has a lot of elements working against it. It was written and recorded spontaneously in studio as an experiment, entirely self-produced, features the most ridiculous title and cover art in my entire collection, has foreign language tongue twisters between tracks, jumps from lyrical absurdity to profundity between songs and sometimes within songs, and even includes a beat poetry breakdown. All of these elements actually lend the album a quirky charm. PCHMB is a diverse, crazy mish-mash of an album that works because the songs all work.

Although the members of King's X always share writing credits on all of their songs, on most of their albums it is not difficult to pick out which songs were originally written by Ty or Doug or Jerry, as they all bring different sensibilities to the music. And that is a big reason why PCHMB is special, because the songs don't feel like Ty or Doug or Jerry songs, but Ty and Doug and Jerry songs. And this group effort led to some of the band's best, most melodic songs, really living up to their reputation as the hard rock Beatles, and some of my favourite songs of all time. "She's Gone Away" and "Bitter Sweet" are my favourite songs about marital separation; "Move Me" (annoyingly split over tracks nine and ten) is my favourite song about losing faith in god; "Smudge" and "Charlie Sheen" are my favourite songs about complete nonsense; "Julia" is my favourite song about Julia. (Yes, that last sentence was largely a joke.) PCHMB is a quick listen, far, far too short, leaving you wanting much more, but that's ultimately the best thing you can ask for from an album.

Having said all that, there is no way that I could claim with a straight face that PCHMB is King's X's best album. That honour belongs to 1994's Dogman, which, like Catherine Wheel's Happy Days, found the band at their angriest and hardest rocking. Old school fans might go with 1989's Gretchen Goes to Nebraska, but Dogman was my first King's X.

Essential Tracks:
"She's Gone Away" - "I've got a lot I call my own / My house is full of things / But it's just an empty home / And all day long I walk around / Seeing reminders and reliving all I've found / She's gone away"
"Smudge" - "Any day... yesterday... there's tomorrow to say / Let's forget it anyway"
"Bitter Sweet" - "Ever reading... something's bleeding in my soul / And I can't seem to fill up the hole / And I love you... thinking of you... bitter sweet / So I bury the feeling and empty my head / Just to sleep... too deep"
"Move Me" - "Wish I could whisper how much I need you / After tomorrow I might forget to / If it's only from a story"

Filler Track: "When You're Scared"

Runner-Up: Dogman (1994) - "Cigarettes"

2. Jimmy Eat World - Clarity (1999)

I have already told the story of how I discovered Jimmy Eat World in my second Soundtrack post, so I won't repeat that here. Once again, thanks former co-worker!

Clarity is another diverse album. (If you are starting to notice a pattern, that's because diversity is very important.) It is also unique. Opening track "Table for Glasses" is a slow, quiet, amazing song, not at all representative of Jimmy Eat World or the rest of the album. Album-ending track "Goodbye Sky Harbor," which is awesomely rockified when played live, is seemingly over after three minutes but somehow keeps going for another thirteen. (I used to despise that repetitive instrumental ending, but it grew on me as I started noticing the subtleties of the changing arrangement.) In between, there are catchy pop songs "Lucky Denver Mint" and "Believe in What You Want," rockers "Your New Aesthetic" and "Crush" and "Blister" and "Clarity," epic "Just Watch the Fireworks," and beautiful songs "Ten," "A Sunday," and "For Me This is Heaven." And then there is "12.23.95," the one song that I wish had been left off the album; it's pretty, albeit a little boring, but its worst offense is that it is a fucking Christmas song. It is not bad enough to tarnish the album, but I have been known to pretend that "Ten" comes after "Crush."

Clarity was a major departure, and significant step up, from Jimmy Eat World's emocore major label debut, Static Prevails, and while some of their newer albums have approached its quality level, most notably 2004's Futures, it is still their best overall album. Seeing as Jimmy Eat World is my favourite band that is still together and still at the top of their game, it should make sense that they come in pretty high on this list.

Essential Tracks:
"Table for Glasses" - "Not asking of me anything / Saying nothing about what it means / Without anybody telling me what I should feel / Lead my skeptic sight"
"Just Watch the Fireworks" - "What giving up gives you / And where giving up takes you / I've had and I've been / Here in center frame / Here, there's only air / And just enough space to fit"
"For Me This is Heaven" - "And the time's such clumsy time / In deciding if it's time / I'm careful but not sure how it goes / You can lose yourself in your courage"
"Clarity" - "Wait for something better / Will I know when it can be us? / Wait for something better / Maybe that doesn't mean us / Wait for something better? / I shouldn't, it's not enough / Pull one excuse from another"

Filler Track: "12.23.95"

Runner-Up: Futures (2004) - "23"

And, Now, The Moment You Have All Been Waiting For

1. Live - Throwing Copper (1994)

Like Catherine Wheel, I was introduced to Live by the heavy rotation of their first single "Selling the Drama" on MuchMusic. It was awesome, but I was hesitant to buy the album Throwing Copper based on only the one song. (The difference between this situation and the Catherine Wheel situation is that Throwing Copper was released in 1994, when I was a poor high school student with no job, and Happy Days was released in 1995, when I was heading off to university with lots of money from a summer job and scholarships.) The next single, "I Alone," tempted me further, but I was still broke and very frugal. By the time "Lightning Crashes" was in heavy rotation both on MuchMusic and local radio, I could no longer resist Throwing Copper's pull. Three amazing singles in a row was enough justification to spend fifteen bucks of my birthday money.

It should come as no surprise at this point to read that Throwing Copper is a diverse album. Between the distorted wailing vocals of slow-building album opener "The Dam at Otter Creek" and country-infused hidden track "Horse," numerous alternative rock styles are represented. A number of the songs rely on predictable quiet verses, louder choruses song-writing, but that shit is classic and overused because it works. And Live mixes it up wonderfully with a "Top" here and a "Stage" there. And then they throw in the indescribably fantastic "Waitress" and the epic "Pillar of Davidson." Every song on Throwing Copper is terrific in its own way.

Throwing Copper is easily Live's best album. I was never a big fan of their debut album Mental Jewelry, which makes Throwing Copper a hell of a sophomore improvement. 1997's Secret Samadhi and 1999's The Distance to Here have some excellent songs, but are much less consistently strong throughout. There was a brief time that I considered The Distance to Here to be Live's best album, but those days are long gone. The band almost went completely off the rails with 2001's V, but 2003's Birds of Pray was a surprisingly strong recovery and the last worthy Live album. 2006's Songs from Black Mountain commits the unforgivable sin of being thoroughly boring. And then Ed Kowalczyk went full dick and screwed over his bandmates and Live is no more. What a sad ending to my favourite band from 1995 to 2000.

Essential Tracks:
"Selling the Drama" - "And to Christ: a cross / And to me: a chair / I will sit and earn the ransom / From up here"
"Lightning Crashes" - "Lightning crashes, a new mother cries / Her placenta falls to the floor / The angel opens her eyes / The confusion sets in / Before the doctor can even close the door"
"Waitress" - "After all, everybody's good enough / For some change / Some fucking change!"
"Pillar of Davidson" - "Warm bodies, I sense / are not machines that can only make money / Past, perfect, tense / Words for a feeling and all I've discovered"

Filler Track: "Iris"

The End... finally!

Now back to regularly schedule blog content. Brewblog and Month in Review posts should show up early next week... I hope. And, next Friday is my one year blogiversary!

The Albums That Always Bring Me Back For More, Part 2

2010-08-23T22:46:00.002-06:00

In part one, I listed ten of my favourite albums that I can't get enough of. If you haven't read part one yet, you should obviously start there.

Before I get into the top ten, what about those albums that didn't quite crack the top twenty but were damn close and are at least worthy of a brief mention?

Honourable Mentions

The following albums are presented in alphabetical order by band name.

Collective Soul - Collective Soul (1995)
Essential Tracks: "Untitled," "The World I Know," "Where the River Flows," "Gel"
Filler Track: "Bleed"

Copeland - You Are My Sunshine (2008)
Essential Tracks: "Should You Return," "The Grey Man," "On the Safest Ledge," "What Do I Know?"
Filler Track: "Strange and Unprepared"

Extreme - III Sides to Every Story (1992)
Essential Tracks: "Warheads," "Stop the World," "Rise 'N Shine," "Who Cares?"
Filler Track: "Seven Sundays"

Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape (1997)
Essential Tracks: "Monkey Wrench," "Hey, Johnny Park!" "My Hero," "Everlong"
Filler Track: "See You"

Galactic Cowboys - Space In Your Face (1993)
Essential Tracks: "You Make Me Smile, " I Do What I Do," "Blind," "About Mrs. Leslie"
Filler Track: "Space in Your Face"

Incubus - A Crow Left of the Murder... (2004)
Essential Tracks: "Agoraphobia," "Talk Shows on Mute," "Southern Girl," "Here in My Room"
Filler Track: "Priceless"

Mae - The Everglow (2005)
Essential Tracks: "We're So Far Away," "Someone Else's Arms," "The Ocean," "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making"
Filler Track: "Anything"

Pixies - Doolittle (1989)
Essential Tracks: "Wave of Mutilation," "Here Comes Your Man," "Monkey Gone to Heaven," "La La Love You"
Filler Track: "Crackity Jones"

Radiohead - The Bends (1995)
Essential Tracks: "Fake Plastic Trees," "Just," "My Iron Lung," "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"
Filler Track: "Bullet Proof...I Wish I Was"

The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream (1993)
Essential Tracks: "Cherub Rock," "Today," "Disarm," "Mayonaise"
Filler Track: "Sweet Sweet"

Without Further Ado: The Top Ten

10. Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory (1999)

Dream Theater is composed of some of the best musicians on the planet, so impressive musicianship is expected. But their song writing is hit and miss, so this can lead to excessive noodling and showing off, and songs that are three times longer than they need to be. James LaBrie's vocals are sometimes thin and he is easily the band's weakest element. All of these issues arguably apply to Scenes from a Memory, but it is still 77 minutes of pure heavy metal magic and Dream Theater's best album by a wide margin.

Scenes from a Memory is an elaborate concept album about past lives, illicit love, and murder, opening with a session of hypno-regression and ending with an unexpected jolt. There is no album that I've listened to from start to finish in my car more times than this one. It's an awesome album for a long drive.

Essential Tracks: "Overture 1928," "Strange Deja Vu," "Home," "Finally Free"
Filler Track: "Through Her Eyes"

9. Porcupine Tree - In Absentia (2002)

I remember the first time I heard Porcupine Tree's "Blackest Eyes," album opener to In Absentia. It was a bizarre blend of heavy metal with REM/U2-style pop rock, and I wasn't sure if I liked it. This was another Amazon.com recommendation, and I had purchased it entirely unheard on the strength of the rave reviews. Fortunately, second song "Trains" was an instant classic, soon becoming one of my favourite songs of all time. And I now love "Blackest Eyes," too.

In Absentia is a diverse progressive rock album, with no two songs sounding alike. It is arguably a concept album about social deviants, but that's not a major factor in my enjoyment of it. It is musically adventurous, unendingly interesting, and, like all Porcupine Tree albums, even better in DVD Audio surround sound. I'm also a big fan of Steven Wilson's atmospheric, layered vocals.

Essential Tracks: "Trains," "The Sound of Muzak," "Gravity Eyelids," "Heartattack in a Lay By"
Filler Track: "Wedding Nails"
Runner-Up: The Incident (2009) - "The Incident"

8. Dashboard Confessional - The Swiss Army Romance (2000)

What is amazing about The Swiss Army Romance is that it is only Chris Carrabba and his acoustic guitar (plus awesome use of female backing vocals), but it never feels like anything is missing. His guitar playing is brilliantly rhythmic and almost percussive, providing a surprisingly complete soundscape for his passionate vocals to soar over top of. I was doing similar things with my acoustic guitar before I knew Dashboard Confessional even existed, but I was never even close to this successful at it.

Most importantly, every song on The Swiss Army Romance is something special. There are few albums that are this emotional, this powerful, while being so deceptively simple.

Essential Tracks: "The Sharp Hint of New Tears," "Turpentine Chaser," "A Plain Morning," "Age Six Racer"
Filler Track: "Living in Your Letters"
Runner-Up: So Impossible (2001) - "Hands Down"

7. Alice in Chains - Dirt (1992)

Alice in Chains was the best thing to come out of the Seattle grunge scene of the early 90s (even though it is tough to compare their distinctive sound to other great Seattle bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana), and Dirt is their undisputed masterpiece. Lyrically dark and honest, musically eerie and unique. Years before I was doing the Dashboard Confessional thing with my music, I was trying to do something more like this, but with none of the life experience and absolutely no understanding of real pain. (And no guitar skills anywhere near Jerry Cantrell, who was my guitar hero until Ty Tabor came along.)

Essential Tracks: "Them Bones," "Rooster," "Angry Chair," "Would?"
Filler Track: "Hate To Feel"
Runner-Up: Jar of Flies (1994) - "Nutshell"

6. Green Day - American Idiot (2004)

I was a pretty big fan of Green Day during the Dookie era, but they dropped off my radar in a big way in the mid-90s. When American Idiot was released, it received mostly rave reviews, but I was skeptical and held off checking it out until the release of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as a single. When I finally listened to it, I was definitely impressed. Green Day had come a long way from Dookie. "Jesus of Suburbia" was an amazing achievement for the band. But I still didn't really care. I didn't give the album the time it deserved.

Fast forward to 2009 and the release of 21st Century Breakdown. Impressed again by Green Day's growth, I gave American Idiot another listen. And, holy shit, this whole album is fantastic! Where previously I had fixated on "Jesus of Suburbia" and the singles, and hadn't really paid attention to the through story, I was now recognizing the album's depth. Every song adds to the whole. It is not only one of the best concept albums in my collection, it has become one of my favourite albums period. I don't even really consider myself to be a Green Day fan, but... probably I should.

Essential Tracks: "Jesus of Suburbia," "Give Me Novocaine," "Wake Me Up When September Ends," "Homecoming"
Filler Track: "She's a Rebel"

To be continued... again... sigh.

Sorry, due to time constraints, I am saving the top five for part three, hopefully going live later this week.

Three of the top five have already been sussed out by my brother in the comments to part one, if you are curious. My brother isn't really familiar with 5 and 3, so it's not a big surprise that he didn't figure those out.

Edited to add: part three is here.

Money and Happiness

2010-08-20T20:45:00.004-06:00

This is a rare spur of the moment blog post. On this fine Friday night, I have absolutely nothing to do. I'm all caught up on my TV, except for the shows I'm saving to watch with Christina. I took care of some brewing tasks, but those details will be saved for the next Brewblog (spoiler: another sour beer?!) which I guess I could have written right now instead of this--but no!

I'm sitting outside on my patio swing, patiently waiting for my ThermaCell to scare away the mosquitoes, blogging while drinking an amazingly delicious Honey Nut Brown--we made this, you guys!--and enjoying every minute of it. Daisy and Duke are frustrated; I think they just want to go downstairs and relax on the couch, but fuck them.

I've recently realized something profound that I need to blog about. The realization was triggered by a raise at work that bumped me into six figures (one milli--er, no, that's just one hundred thousand...). And it was the following: holy shit, I'm rich! And then: where the hell does all my money go?

Actually, I know very well where all my money is going. I don't know anyone that budgets and records expenses as thoroughly as I do. So this allows me to say with 100% confidence that I have been led astray by the motherfucking American dream for far too long.

Of the five thousands of dollars that are deposited into my bank account every month, a large portion (approximately 35%) goes to my non-voluntary living expenses (mortgage, property taxes, utilities, etc.). That's life. Approximately 10% goes to Christina (down from nearly 20% last year), but that's actually far less than the amount that went to her when she was my wife, so I'm not too annoyed by that. That leaves... hm, let me see... 55%? What? Seriously?

That's a lot of money. But I'm not writing this post to brag about how much money I have. Because I don't have lots of money. More than half of that discretionary spending money is put towards my stupidly large debt every month. Dammit, Past Scott, what were you thinking?

Past Scott was a sucker. He believed capitalism's lies that having stuff will make you happy. "I will take all of my money and buy stuff," Past Scott said, "and then I will be happy." Sadly, happiness still eluded Past Scott. But capitalism had a solution. "I can't quite afford this super awesome stuff right now, but I will pay for it with credit and then I will be happy."

Now Scott wishes he could punch Past Scott in the face. Now Scott knows that buying stuff can not ever make you happy. So, what does make Now Scott happy? Experiences!

I am greatly reducing my spending on stuff. And when I say stuff, I mean consumer goods. I don't need to buy that new Blu-ray movie; I can just pira--er, I mean, rent it through legal means, of course. I don't need a new TV. I don't need a new car. I don't need new anything. I have everything I could ever possibly need when it comes to stuff.

I want to spend my money on experiences. I want to travel. I want to spend time in places that I love. And I want to see places that I've never seen. I want to drink expensive beers that I love. And I want to drink crazy beers that I've never drank. I want to eat expensive foods that I love. And I want to eat crazy foods that I've never eaten. I want to live. Having stuff is not living. Doing stuff is living.

Now Scott is going to live, dammit! And maybe happiness will follow...?

The Albums That Always Bring Me Back For More, Part 1

2010-08-20T12:03:00.004-06:00

As I mentioned in my previous Month in Review post, I don't blog nearly enough about music considering how hugely important it is to my life. The concept of this post, a discussion of my favourite albums of all time ("desert island discs," if you will), has been banging around inside my head for a few months, but it was only recently that I started putting it down on "paper."

The following list would be somewhat different if I took a Soundtrack to My Movie approach to it, but what I wanted to do was actually talk about my favourite albums now, not albums that were awesome in their day. If I can still listen to the album as a whole today and love nearly every minute of it, it belongs on this list. I had one simple rule, only one album by any given band, which gave me a hell of a challenge at times.

The list is more or less presented in opposite order of preference--so the best is saved for last, of course!--although that is a little absurd when they are all albums I love. I will attempt to justify each album's placement in the list with a short discussion of its merits. After each entry, I have also listed: the four best songs on the album, in order of their appearance; the one song that I could take or leave (ignoring short instrumentals and hidden tracks); and, if I had a tough choice picking only one album from a given band, I cheated and listed that band's second best album along with its highlight track, just to confuse the matter. You should not be surprised to see a lot of overlap with the Soundtrack to My Movie (and I do strongly recommend starting with that post before reading this one).

20. Avenged Sevenfold - City of Evil (2005)

I only started listening to Avenged Sevenfold in 2009. Every other band and album in this list has been a part of my life for years. This made it tough for me to decide whether they deserved a spot in the top twenty. Will I still be listening to Avenged Sevenfold in the years to come...? The recent release of Nightmare is good evidence for "Yes, definitely."

It was Avenged Sevenfold's 2007 self-titled fourth album that first got my attention, and for the longest time, I preferred its straightforwardness to City of Evil's progressive thrash metal sound. (Their previous two thrash metal albums do little for me, so they are irrelevant.) But over the course of 2010, I have found myself going back to City of Evil much more than the self-titled album. It is something truly special. The last half of the album, in particular, is insanely good.

Essential Tracks: "Bat Country," "Seize the Day," "Sidewinder," "Strength of the World"
Filler Track: "Blinded in Chains"

19. Third Eye Blind - Out of the Vein (2003)

There was a time that I hated Third Eye Blind. Stephan Jenkins has a unique vocal style that took me a while to appreciate. "Semi-Charmed Life" was such an overplayed song that it was years after its 1997 heyday that I actually appreciated its brilliance. But, in 1999, 3eb released awesome single "Never Let You Go" from their second album and I decided that maybe I should check them out. And I was shocked to learn that their self-titled debut album was actually fantastic from beginning to end. Songs that I had never wanted to hear ever again on the radio sounded perfectly acceptable in the context of the complete album. Their second album, Blue, was also quite good, although much less consistent.

Third Eye Blind's popularity had waned by the time Out of the Vein was released, but sales never reflect quality. Out of the Vein is unquestionably 3eb's best album, diverse, never boring, and frequently catchy and singalong worthy. I didn't even really appreciate it until a few years after its release, when I listened to it again on a whim and was blown away. Although it starts off strong with "Faster" and "Blinded," the album really hits its stride with "Crystal Baller" and especially "My Hit and Run," which is arguably the best 3eb song.

Essential Tracks: "Crystal Baller," "My Hit and Run," "Misfits," "Palm Reader"
Filler Track: "Can't Get Away"

18. Our Lady Peace - Gravity (2002)

Before Gravity was released, I was sure that Our Lady Peace's best days were behind them. I was a big fan of OLP from the very beginning when "The Birdman" and "Starseed" took MuchMusic by storm. Naveed and Clumsy were both awesome in completely different ways. But the two following albums had been mostly disappointing.

Gravity was like a rebirth for a band. Original guitarist Mike Turner had been replaced with Steve Mazur, and a new guitarist meant a new guitar sound. And what a great new sound it was. "All For You" and "Not Enough" are the best examples of Mazur's influence.

Essential Tracks: "All For You," "Innocent," "Not Enough," "A Story About a Girl"
Filler Track: "Made of Steel"
Runner-Up: Naveed (1994) - "Naveed"

17. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica (2000)

There are times that Amazon.com's recommendations are shockingly good, such as the time that the site recommended that I check out Modest Mouse's The Moon & Antarctica. I sampled a couple of tracks, was intrigued, and bought the album mostly unheard. This was my first exposure to Modest Mouse's unique guitar sound and song structure. And, for me, it is still the best album they've ever released.

Essential Tracks: "3rd Planet," "Gravity Rides Everything," "The Stars are Projectors," "Lives"
Filler Track: "I Came as a Rat"

16. Queensryche - Rage for Order (1986)

Rage for Order is the oldest album on this list, and Queensryche is one of only four bands in the top twenty that even existed before the 90s. If there are older folks out there reading this, you may now be grumbling about all of the awesome albums from the 60s, 70s, and 80s that I am missing out on (there's nothing good before the 60s), but it should be no surprise that the music that sticks with me is the music that I have grown up with. The only older albums that were in contention were something from The Beatles and some classic Rush (see next entry!), but there ultimately isn't a single The Beatles album that I enjoy from start to finish. And it should also be no surprise that most of the music I listened to in the 80s is not worthy of this list, because it was mostly garbage. (Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet and Def Leppard's Hysteria came closest, almost making the Honourable Mentions section in part two--yeah, I copped out again and made this top twenty an unofficial top thirty.)

And now I have to somewhat embarrassingly reveal that the first time I heard Rage for Order was in 1996, ten years after it was released. (So, none of the music that I listened to in the 80s made the list.) Actually, this is a testament to its quality. It is an unapologetically 80s metal album, but unlike nearly all of its peers, it hasn't aged miserably. It definitely helps that the subject matter is never partying and rarely girls. It is political. It is dramatic. It is awesome.

Essential Tracks: "Walk in the Shadows," "The Killing Words," "Neue Regel," "Screaming in Digital"
Filler Track: "Gonna Get Close to You"
Runner-Up: Operation: Mindcrime (1988) - "The Mission"

15. Rush - Counterparts (1993)

It's a bit blasphemous for a Rush fan to give the top nod to Counterparts, Rush's surprisingly successful reinvention of their sound for the 90s (technically, this reinvention started in 1989 with Presto, but that's a minor detail), over their numerous classic albums from the 70s and 80s. But that's simply the way this Rush fan feels. I can't pretend that this doesn't have a lot to do with the fact that it was Counterparts that made me a Rush fan.

It's even more blasphemous to then give the runner-up nod to their newest album instead of Moving Pictures or Hemispheres or Signals. But, shit, Snakes & Arrows is awesome, the best thing Rush has released in more than ten years, and it very nearly bumped Counterparts off the top.

Essential Tracks: "Cut to the Chase," "Nobody's Hero," "Double Agent," "Everyday Glory"
Filler Track: "The Speed of Love"
Runner-Up: Snakes & Arrows (2007) - "The Way the Wind Blows"

14. Anberlin - Cities (2007)

Cities is the newest album in this top twenty. If you haven't heard it, this may seem like a bold choice on my part, but it's really not. There are a few minor missteps in the first half of the album, but everything from "Alexithymia" on is breathtaking, and you may recall that its amazing album-ending "(*Fin)" made my Soundtrack. Anberlin's Stephen Christian has one of the best voices in alternative rock, and I mean that both in terms of his strong (albeit Christianity-infused) lyrics and his unique vocal tone.

Essential Tracks: "The Unwinding Cable Car," "Inevitable," "Dismantle. Repair," "(*Fin)"
Filler Track: "Adelaide"
Runner-Up: Never Take Friendship Personal (2005) - "Paperthin Hymn"

13. Brand New - Deja Entendu (2003)

Deja Entendu is the second album on this list that I discovered because of Amazon.com's recommendations. Like with Modest Mouse, I bought the album mostly unheard. (Lest you think based on two examples that this practice always turned out well, there are just as many times that a recommended album was a disappointment. This is also a practice that I've long abandoned in these days of easy access to free downloadable music.)

Unlike Modest Mouse, Brand New isn't really a unique sounding band. They have a pretty standard alternative rock sound, with a couple memorable song exceptions. Deja Entendu is awesome mostly because of the quality of the song-writing. The song titles are ridiculously long and pretentious but still somehow work, and the songs are all fantastic in their own ways.

Essential Tracks: "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades," "The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot," "Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis," "Good to Know That if I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do is Die"
Filler Track: "Tautou"

12. Weezer - Weezer (1994)

Weezer's "Blue Album" is a classic. Everyone owns it; everyone loves it. And we all shit our pants the first time we saw Weezer interacting with the cast of "Happy Days" in the brilliant "Buddy Holly" video. While Pinkerton is arguably the better Weezer album, I'd rather listen to their debut on most days.

Essential Tracks: "My Name is Jonas," "Undone - The Sweater Song," "Say It Ain't So," "In the Garage"
Filler Track: "Surf Wax America"
Runner-Up: Pinkerton (1996) - "Butterfly"

11. Pearl Jam - Vs. (1993)

I don't know if there's a band that has squandered more of their potential in my life time than Pearl Jam, but once upon a time when I was in high school they were the shit. Vs. was my favourite album for a long time. It has slipped a little over the years, but it's still a great goddamn rock record. "Go" is the perfect album opener, clearly establishing what type of album it is going to be, and that energy rarely lets up.

Essential Tracks: "Daughter," "Glorified G," "Rearviewmirror," "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town"
Filler Track: "Leash"
Runner-Up: Ten (1991) - "Black"

To be continued...

I'm--of course!--saving the top ten albums for part two, which should be up early next week. For a tease, the top ten includes five albums from the 90s and five albums from the 00s, where: 10 begins with hypnosis; in 9 the summer is always slipping away; 8 has no percussion; 7 ends with a question; 6 is from a band that didn't have any representation in my Soundtrack, not even the honourable mentions; 5 feels that it's at 45 degrees; 4 is from a band that made the honourable mentions in my Soundtrack with a song from a different album; 3 pretends to have ten songs by splitting one long song into two tracks; 2 has an album-ending track that refuses to end; and 1 is the best album from 1994.

Edited to add: part two is here.

The Big Move, 2010

2010-08-19T18:10:00.001-06:00

It's done. Christina has moved in.

Er, no, not really. Not quite yet. Yes, most of Christina's stuff has been relocated from Calgary to Regina, but the majority is still occupying my garage, and Christina won't be back in Regina to start unpacking until Monday. She's back in Calgary cleaning her old place right now and is going to spend the weekend with her mom in Hanna before heading back.

The move itself went reasonably smoothly. I drove to Calgary on Tuesday, leaving Duke and Daisy in a kennel in Regina. With some help, and over the course of a few hours, we packed most of Christina's stuff into her mom's horse trailer on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning, we finished the last of the packing, and then hit the road. Christina came with me in my car, and Christina's mom drove the truck and horse trailer with one of Christina's younger cousins that came along to help carry the heavy stuff. (Aside: I did not appreciate the "Here's something light for Scott to carry" meme.) In Regina, we unpacked most of the trailer into my garage. And while Christina and her cousin assembled her bed, her mom and I sat outside and enjoyed a fire pit.

When I first mentioned that Christina was going to move in with me, I noted at that point that it could only be derailed by something crazy. And something pretty crazy did happen in the last week. But it derailed nothing. Our arrangement is on solid ground until September of 2011, which not coincidentally is the same time that my financial obligations to her will end.

So, what does this all mean for me? For the next year, I will benefit from the following life improvements: more diverse and interesting meals, because left to my own devices I eat sandwiches and hot dogs almost every day; someone to watch my daily TV with, which helps it feel a lot less empty; a dogsitter for Daisy to minimize her destructive tendencies; a partner for exercise activities and ballroom dancing classes; and a subject matter expert of sorts to help me once again navigate the soul crushing world of online dating. On the negative side, there will always be a part of me that is frustrated that we can be such good friends yet fail at marriage.

I will have no shortage of alone time, something that I think everyone needs every once in a while, because Christina will be spending a third of her time not in Regina. I will, more or less, spend both my alone time and Christina time doing the exact same things I've been doing over the last year. There really wasn't much difference between the last year and the one before, other than population. I'm ultimately completely content with the ways I choose to spend my time at home.

I am less content about how much time I spend at home. And I don't mean just getting out of the house to go to a restaurant or bar or club or whatever. What I really need to do is get the fuck out of Regina more often.

So, as silly as it seems to drive to Calgary one day and drive back the next, I actually quite enjoyed the trip. And I definitely made it worth my while. While in Calgary, I visited Zyn, an awesome booze store near downtown, and spent $140 on thirteen big bottles of beer (including one growler). I picked out ten beers from Rogue, two from Tree, and one from Cannery. I've had a couple of them before, but most are beers I've never seen in my life. I'll work my way through them slowly over the next few weeks. Awesome.

A Month in Review, Jul 5 to Aug 7

2010-08-07T19:21:00.001-06:00

I don't normally blog on Saturday nights, but I'm also not usually this sober on Saturday nights. As much as I adore brew days and was fucking bored today (so bored that I spent a couple hours rearranging kitchen cupboards and cleaning the fridge), not being hammered drunk on Saturday night is a pleasant change. Well, then, don't drink so much on brew days, dumbass!--yeah, yeah, fuck you.

The Month in Music

As big a part of my life as music is, I hardly mention it in the Week in Review posts. My bad. Err, no, not my bad; there simply doesn't seem to be much new music coming out lately that is worth mentioning.

But Avenged Sevenfold's "Nightmare" is worth mentioning. It's awesome; not quite "City of Evil" awesome, but damn close.

And Broken Social Scene's "Forgiveness Rock Record," which was released way back in May, is pretty fucking sweet, too, possibly their best album to date.

To make up for the dearth of music-related content on this blog, I have a new blog post in the works focused entirely on my favourite albums of all time. Coming soon... I hope.

The Month in Books

I did it! I finally finished Steven Erikson's House of Chains, book four of the super awesome Malazan Book of the Fallen series. What do you mean there are another six books to read in the series, not to mention a few novellas and a second interlinked series from a different author? Motherfucker. House of Chains was my least favourite entry in the series to date, but that's like saying that The Two Towers is my least favourite The Lord of the Rings movie. It was still amazing. I have now moved onto book five, Midnight Tides, which introduces a bunch of new characters on a whole new continent while also providing the backstory for a character that was introduced in House of Chains. This series isn't hugely concerned about linear storytelling, which is cool with me. House of Chains was a direct sequel to book two, Deadhouse Gates, and took place more or less concurrently with book three, Memories of Ice. Midnight Tides happened earlier, possibly concurrently with Deadhouse Gates, I don't know; I'm sure I'll find out shortly. I always find it tough to initially get into a new Erikson novel that isn't Memories of Ice, but once you make it around halfway, suddenly it's hard to put the fucking thing down. Problem is, at halfway, you still have a good three to five hundred pages left to read. I'm nowhere near halfway into Midnight Tides yet, but I am reasonably confident that I can now meet my read two Malazan books goal for summer 2010. Maybe I can read three? Forget I said that; that's ridiculous.

It was just over a year ago that a friend gave me two books written by Charles Bukowski to help ease the pain. I started reading Love is a Dog From Hell (1977), one of many collections of poetry written by Bukowski, last year, but as it was a book of poetry, it was easy to pick up and put down numerous times over the course of the year. I finally finished it in July, fitting in a few poems between each chapter of House of Chains as a breather. And then I read Bukowski's novel Women (1978) this week. There is a lot of overlap in content between Bukowski's poetry and novels. His work is very autobiographical, and his poetry is narrative style, not at all flowery and with no rhymes in sight. Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski, not coincidentally a poet and a drunk, is the protagonist of Women, and you can easily picture Chinaski writing many of the poems in Love is a Dog From Hell as the story proceeds. For me, Women was a lot more enjoyable than Love is a Dog From Hell--but I'll always choose prose over poetry--a quick, entertaining read, endlessly amusing despite its blatant misogyny. The lesson I take away is that writing and performing (good?) poetry is a gateway to an endless parade of women, no matter how much of an ugly, old asshole you are.

And now I understand Modest Mouse's "Bukowski" a whole shit load more:
"Woke this morning and it seemed to me
That every night turns out to be
A little bit more like Bukowski
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read
But God, who'd want to be
God, who'd want to be such an asshole?"

The Month in Video Games

If it wasn't for coffee breaks at work (World of Goo--fuck, yeah!), I don't know if I could even call myself a video gamer lately. I've barely touched Mario Galaxy 2 and have tons of Mass Effect 2 DLC to play, but I've been focusing my spare time on TV and books this summer. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Winters are long in Saskatchewan; video games make winters tolerable.

But I did play the Special Edition of Monkey Island 2 with my brother. Monkey Island 2 was a big part of our childhood, so this was a fantastic nostalgia trip for both of us. Awesome.

The Month in Television

I am now almost caught up on Eureka. I had never seen a single episode of the series previously, and frankly wasn't interested based on its silly premise, but with its currently airing fourth season came a Warehouse 13 crossover and a Wil Wheaton guest appearance, so I decided to finally give the series a shot this summer. And it's okay. The premise of a small town full of scientists causing weekly science disasters is silly, and the average episode is at best dumb fun, drawing upon thoroughly cliched and overused sci-fi plotlines. But every once in a while, the writers find a fun twist on those classic cliches and make watching the series worth my precious (ha!) time. In particular, "I Do Over," a third season time loop episode (almost always awesome--think Groundhog Day) was pretty fantastic. And even when the plot is retarded, the characters can usually be counted on to make it at least palatable and sometimes even enjoyable. Like the show itself, the characters are all pretty middle of the road; there are no characters that I love, but there are also no characters that I hate. Eureka is not a series that I would recommend to anyone, but I don't regret my time with it. It's pretty fitting that the Warehouse 13 and Eureka universes are now overlapping, since both shows are so similar in so many ways.

I've also started watching the ridiculous British comedy series Peep Show. I didn't realize that it starred David Mitchell and Robert Webb, also stars of hilarious sketch comedy series That Mitchell and Webb Look, or I probably would have watched it earlier. Peep Show is filmed in a quite unique way, placing the audience right inside the heads of the two main characters, and is awkwardly hilarious--so awkward that sometimes you just wish you could look away and pretend this shit wasn't happening. It is regarded by some as the best British comedy series of all time. I've only seen series one of six so far, so I'll reserve judgment.

Another Big Catch-up

Loved: Futurama (7x4-8), Penn & Teller: Bullshit (8x5,7), Sherlock (1x1), True Blood (3x7)
Liked: Entourage (7x3-5), Hung (2x2-5), Mad Men (4x1-2), Penn & Teller: Bullshit (8x6,8,9), Sherlock (1x2), So You Think You Can Dance (7x12-21), Top Gear (14x3-6), True Blood (3x4-6), Warehouse 13 (2x1-5)
Meh: Entourage (7x2)

That looks like a lot of shows, but other than Sunday nights--really, does every fucking show have to air on Sunday night?--my TV schedule right now is pretty light overall. And I actually have to download all of those Sunday night shows, so it's really my Monday night that is packed. And then the rest of the week is pretty boring. But I prefer this to what is coming in September. Well, then, don't watch so many shows, dumbass!--yeah, yeah, fuck you.

The best thing I watched on TV in July was the fantastic pilot to the BBC's new Sherlock series. Despite having little to no interest in Sherlock Holmes stories, I checked the series out because of creator and writer Steven Moffat, current head writer on Doctor Who. And it was bloody brilliant. Goddamn, that was good! Episode two--or should I say movie two, because each of the only three episodes is an hour and a half--wasn't nearly as good, but not much can be. I don't know who Benedict Cumberbatch is, but his Sherlock Holmes is genius--almost Doctor Who genius. And Martin Freeman always plays a good everyman.

Some Futurama fans have complained that the reborn Futurama is not as good as the first four seasons before cancellation, but those people are ungrateful assholes. I have thoroughly enjoyed every episode so far, and would present episodes six, "Lethal Inspection," and especially seven, "The Late Philip J. Fry," as more than worthy of the Futurama legacy.

For the first time ever, I am watching Mad Men and True Blood as they air this season. So far, so good. Mad Men is rarely a show that I love, with the odd exception (the third season finale, for example); I appreciate the quality of the show more than I enjoy the show. True Blood's third season is definitely shaping up to be better than its second, with last week's seventh episode being a particular gory highlight. I am also watching Warehouse 13 as it airs for the first time, but that's less of a big thing since it's only in its second season, and also it's a much lesser show than those two. Still, it keeps me coming back for more, somehow.

The two stand-out episodes of Bullshit this season (so far; next week is the finale) for me were "Easy Money" and "Criminal Justice." I know tons of people that need to see "Easy Money" for a reality check on the futility of multi-level marketing, and "Criminal Justice" just made me sad. The latest episode, "Self Esteem," was pretty timely as I am currently struggling with serious self esteem issues. Affirmations are bullshit, so here's my personal affirmation: "What the fuck, dude?--get your shit together."

After a slow start, Entourage has improved throughout this current seventh season and is actually quite entertaining again, something it hasn't been in a number of years. Hung also had a slow start to its season, but its last few episodes have been very strong, balancing the drama and comedy very effectively.

In my amateur opinion, Top Gear had a good season this summer. I loved the silly Caravan segment the most, and enjoyed the recurring Reliant Robin gags. I don't tune into Top Gear for the cars nor the car reviews, because, hey, I couldn't care less about cars; I tune in for these three hilarious guys doing stupid shit together, and this season had a lot of good material there.

And that's more than enough talking about TV.

Brewblog, Entry Six

2010-08-06T12:35:00.004-06:00

Tasting Notes

I meant to have a section in the last brewblog to discuss how some of the beers we've made recently have turned out. But with four brew days to cover in that post, I forgot the tasting notes.

Promising beers going sour has been the biggest frustration of the last four months for me. I'm mostly annoyed by the disgustingness of the soured 112, ruining our attempt to make a simple experimental beer with only Goldings hops. The remaining bottles of 112 will be around for a very long time. The soured Belgian IPA is not quite as unpleasant as the 112, but will also have plenty of time to age. Simon's Sour Blonde was actually quite drinkable and vanished weeks ago, and Anniversary Bitter 2 is mostly gone and only a tiny bit sour. It's too early to judge what will happen with the Sour Strawberry Wheat.

But that's enough about fucking sour beers; everything else we've made lately has been good to excellent and met my taste expectations. Trevor will say that the best thing we've made is the excellent Trevor's Blonde. Simon was a surprisingly big fan of our very good Blackout Stout, amusingly mistaking it for the Bushwakker Imperial Stout from ALES' Big Brew Day. While I understand Trevor's point of view, because Trevor's Blonde is a very good example of the style, I rarely reach for one in the fridge. And Blackout Stout is pretty great considering that I made the recipe by throwing in whatever black malts we happened to have in the pantry. But I am quite confident that Blackout Stout 2 will be even better.

I am very happy with the newest iterations of our Brewniversity, Scott's Stout, and Matrimonial Ale series. The 114, where I took the 124 recipe and replaced the hops with Willamette, is an interesting bitter brew that always hits the spot for me. The 224, where I took the 124 recipe to the next level, could turn out to be a citrus masterpiece, but it's too early to really judge. Scott's Stout 4 is an evolution of the Scott's Stout 2/3 recipe, roasty and toasty and right up my alley, but not the revolution I thought it could possibly be. Matrimonial Ale 5 is pretty fantastic, crisp and refreshing despite its 8% abv, and just the right amount of piney hoppiness; however, I agree with Trevor that Matrimonial Ale 6 should return the series to its citrus hops roots.

There is a lot of potential greatness in the Honey Nut Brown and Wee Heavy, but those have yet to be bottled, so I'll revisit them with the 224 in the next Tasting Notes.

It's tough to rank our beers due to the diverse styles in play, but I've done it before and I'll try it again. So, as of this moment, the top 5 of all time from my perspective, faulty memory and all:

1. (Tie) Matrimonial Ale 4 & 5

Despite coming from the same series, Matrimonial Ale 4 and 5 are very different beers. 4 is citrus hops, 5 is piney hops. 4 is 6%, 5 is 8%. 4 has awesome aroma, but hop gunk; 5 has pleasant aroma, and no gunk. Both are fantastic, big and bitter, arguably the best beers we've made, and my hand will always gravitate towards them when they are in the fridge. The goal with Matrimonial Ale 6 will be to capture the best aspects of 4 and 5 in one awesome bitter beer.

3. Scott's Stout 3

I've liked all of the Stouts and Porters we've made, but Scott's Stout 3 is the current king. When we made Scott's Stout 2 and it turned out very, very well, I was overjoyed, especially since Scott's Stout 1 had been an early, mostly failed experiment. Scott's Stout 3 was theoretically exactly the same as Scott's Stout 2, but it has a little extra something something that I can't really describe. For Scott's Stout 5, I will be attempting to recapture this magic, but without abandoning the important changes in 4 that made it officially a Stout and not a Porter. Actually, a new Scott's Porter might be a good idea for carrying on the Scott's Stout 2 legacy...

4. 122 American Pale Ale
5. 124 American Pale Ale

The 122 is the only beer to maintain a spot in the top five list since my first ranking. Of all our Brewniversity beers, it still stands in my memory as the best we've made, perfect in every way that counts. When there was a 122 in the fridge, which sadly there never will be ever again, it was always the first thing I pulled out, because drinking it made me happy. Some other people that shall remain nameless ridiculously prefer the 124. Bah! Okay, it's pretty good, too. And there are actually a few competition bottles of 124 still around, so it's not gone for good like the 122. But the 224 (and Honey Nut Brown?) will hopefully boot both off the list shortly.

August 1, 2010 - Brewed Radical Saison (RS)

I have had a Wyeast Saison yeast in my fridge for months, so this brew day was definitely overdue. Saison is a style that I am unsure about as a whole. I have never had a Saison that was "holy god, that's awesome," but they have all had interesting elements and were very drinkable. Our brew club made a Ginger Saison during our first month of all-grain brewing, and it was definitely decent, and after a year of aging, the last bottle was quite pleasant.

Lately I have been creating my own recipes, or modifying recipes from our previous batches, for almost everything we've brewed. With BeerSmith Brewing Software as the ultimate beer recipe creation tool, I feel quite comfortable creating my own recipes for India Pale Ales, American Pale Ales, and Stouts. With a little internet research, I am also now comfortable creating my own Brown Ale and Scottish Ale recipes. But there was no way I was going to try to make up a Saison recipe. And I wanted to create something more interesting than the old Ginger Saison, so I went to one of my favourite sources: Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher.

I did, unfortunately, have to change one major component of that recipe, substituting Pale for the expected Pilsner Malt, because we are out of Pilsner. It remains to be seen whether this substitution was a mistake. In general, we have had better results with Pilsner than Pale, but this recipe is quite complex in unique ways that will likely disguise the limitations of the base malt.

The recipe also used Wheat Malt and Munich Malt for the mash, Northern Brewer, Saaz, and Goldings hops for the boil, and--here's the fun part!--one sour orange peel, twenty grams of coriander, and a gram of pepper for spice. I freshly ground the coriander and pepper and added them to a hop bag with the orange peel for the last five minutes of the boil. If my hydrometer sample of the unfermented wort is any indication, this beer is going to be a spicy bitch.

I haven't discussed our process in a while, so some brief comments are warranted. Earlier this year, we successfully introduced a 30 minute mash to our process, but we haven't actually had that many 30 minute mashes in the interim. We have had a lot of 45 minute mashes lately, including this Saison, usually because it took 45 minutes to bottle whatever previous batch was ready that day. And for big beers like the Wee Heavy and Matrimonial Ale 5, I still insist on at least 60 minutes because of the quantity of grain. Also earlier this year, we started boiling for 90 minutes regularly, theoretically to improve caramelization, but we've noticed little change and have now pretty much abandoned the 90 minute boil, with the notable exception of India Pale Ales where the extra minutes of boil give you extra hop bitterness. The Saison was boiled for the typical 60 minutes and I know it will be fine.

Next time on Brewblog

No brew day this coming weekend, so... that sucks. Boring Saturday. I might still get drunk. A little. By myself. Pathetic.

Next weekend, Matrimonial Ale 6?

Brewblog, Entry Five

2010-07-28T16:33:00.003-06:00

Has it really been a month and a half since the last brewblog entry? Yes, yes, it has. Catch-up time!

June 26th, 2010 - Brewed Sour Strawberry Wheat (SSW)

There is a large bin full of Wheat Malt in my brew studio. There was a time that we thought we'd do a lot more wheat beers than we have been doing, but difficulties with stuck sparges and a general overall dissatisfaction with our end products has left that Wheat Malt more or less untouched for months.

But every once in a while, we decide to give it another shot. This American Wheat Beer recipe had a simple 50% Pale Malt, 50% Wheat Malt base, with just a touch of Crystal 40 for body, in an attempt to make a light and refreshing beer for summer consumption. Winter Wheat 2, which scored very respectably in the ALES competition, was the template for the recipe, but we had a Wyeast American Wheat Beer yeast to use in place of the Safale yeast used previously. I also substituted Hallertau hops for Tettnang in the new recipe, although the quantity of hops is so low as to make that change likely imperceptible.

I have no idea if this beer (originally dubbed Beat the Heat Wheat) would have turned out better than Winter Wheat 2 or not, because it was unfortunately soured during primary fermentation. Goddammit!

This Sour Wheat is hopefully the end of the sour beer scandal that rocked our brew club this summer. As a refresher, a few months back we had the not-so-bright idea to attempt to make a sour beer on purpose. Sourness is caused by wild yeasts, and with time and aging often lends an interesting complexity to a beer. Our problem started when the wild yeasts somehow started infecting unrelated batches, beginning with Simon's Blonde and ending with the 112... or so we thought. We thoroughly cleaned all equipment that we thought had come in contact with the sour beers, and we crossed our fingers that it was over. But it next came out of seemingly nowhere to rear its ugly head in the Belgian IPA. And then the same apparently infected equipment was used for the Beat the Heat Wheat, before the sourness had been detected in the Belgian IPA. This equipment has now been marked as "Contaminated?" and set aside to never be used for regular beers again.

I think it was Trevor that had the bright idea how to possibly save the Sour Wheat. I was commenting on how many strawberries I had in the garden this year, more than I could eat myself, so it was suggested that it couldn't hurt to add a pound of sliced strawberries to the Sour Wheat. I ended up adding a kilogram.

We've now bottled the Sour Strawberry Wheat, but it isn't quite ready for consumption. From our sampling, I'm not sure that adding the strawberries made it good, but it definitely made it much more drinkable and appealing than the Belgian IPA and 112, so it'll do.

July 10, 2010 - Brewed Brewniversity #6 (224)

Our first 200-level Brewniversity recipe, 224 was a refinement of the very well received 124. Brewniversity recipes are always quite straightforward, generally using only Pale Malt as a base and Munich and/or Crystal Malt as an adjunct. For yeast, we continued our recent trend of using Wyeast liquid yeasts; Simon had a yeast cake of European Ale that was healthy and ready to go.

The 124 was our first attempt at staggered hop additions, adding a small amount (17g) of Cascade hops at every 15 minute interval (for a total addition of 85g). For the 224, I slightly increased the overall quantity of Cascade to 112g, and scheduled 10 minute hop additions. My problem with the 15 minute additions was that it only hit one of the three hop utilization peaks that are often key to recipe formulation. Bitterness is easy; the longer the hops are in the boil, the better the bitterness utilization. For hop flavour, the recommended addition time is approximately 20 minutes before the end of the boil. For hop aroma, the recommended addition is between 5 and 10 minutes before the end of the boil. Understanding this, the 10 minute interval makes much more sense than 15, although it requires you to stay on top of the clock more, which isn't always easy while thoroughly drunk.

The end result is in its carboy right now, awaiting bottling on this coming weekend. I will be dry hopping the 224 a few days before bottling to maximize the hop aroma in the beer. The sample I had after primary fermentation showed no signs of sourness--so, yay!--and was very, very good. I have high hopes.

July 17, 2010 - Brewed Honey Nut Brown (HNB)

After racking the 224 to its carboy, I noticed that the Wyeast European Ale yeast was still looking quite healthy. Having failed to plan a recipe for this brew day in advance, I decided to look at what other beer styles Wyeast recommended for the yeast. Southern English Brown Ale stood out to me in the list. We hadn't yet made a Brown Ale of any style (at least on purpose), and I am quite a big fan of Browns personally.

I browsed a few Brown Ale recipes on the internet, not really finding anything that excited me. I then pulled out Radical Brewing, which reminded me about the Oud Bruin that was aging in my basement and had recently ruined four batches of beer (how could I forget?). The base recipe for the Oud Bruin was a quite good Brown Ale, from what I could remember of the pre-sour sample I had tried months back.

But I decided I wanted to take that Oud Bruin base to the next level for this beer. And the easiest way to do that was to go crazy on the malt profile. Over the past year, we have accumulated some interesting adjuncts that were only used once or twice, and I decided that my Brown Ale was going to use as much of them as I could. I grabbed the rarely used Honey Malt, Melanoidin Malt, and Special B out of the pantry, as well as some much more common Biscuit, Crystal 40, Munich, and Chocolate Malts. The base malt would still be Pale, but only just barely (42%). And thus was born Scott's Honey Nut Brown. For hops, which should be more or less undetectable in the sweet maltiness of the final product, I went with Fuggles.

The end result is sitting in its carboy alongside the 224, waiting for a later bottling date. The sample I had after primary fermentation was pretty much exactly how I hoped it would taste at that stage--and again, no sourness, yay! So, again, I have high hopes.

July 24, 2010 - Brewed Wee Heavy (WH)

A Wyeast Scottish Ale yeast had been sitting in my fridge for quite some time, awaiting this day. A bag of Peated Malt had been sitting in my pantry for quite some time, awaiting this day. Our previous attempt at a Scottish Ale, technically a Scottish Export 80, made with Safale dry yeast, had been a reasonable example of the style, although with some unfortunate off-flavours, but all of its bottles were long gone. It was time to make a Wee Heavy.

The recipe for the Wee Heavy was an extension of the first Scottish Ale, but with all quantities of malts and hops effectively doubled. To give it an extra kick of booziness, I also added a pound of table sugar.

My work for this brew day started earlier than normal. On the morning of July 23rd, I prepared my first yeast starter. I followed Wyeast's instructions: 100g of light dry malt extract in 1L of water, with one-half teaspoon yeast nutrient added, boiled for a few minutes for sanitation, and then added when cooled to a sanitized container with the yeast. I have to say that the yeast starter worked like gangbusters.

The Wee Heavy's original gravity was a very strong 1091, and after only three days of seemingly mild fermentation (from visual inspection of the krausen), the specific gravity dropped to an unexpectedly low 1022. Wow. At this point, I'd describe the flavour of the 9% Wee Heavy as peat and burning. It will need time to mellow, but I'm quite confident that we have a winner on our hands there.

Next time on Brewblog

It looks like we will be brewing on Sunday of this coming weekend. I have a few more Wyeast liquid yeasts in my fridge that are begging to be used. Saison is on the top of the list.

Blogging about summer (Part 3 of 3)

2010-07-20T17:05:00.010-06:00

Previously on "Blogging about summer," Christina and I decided that being roommates was a good idea, attended a "family" wedding "together," and then killed rainy time in Calgary watching Queer as Folk.

Like last time, to keep this blog relevant and not rooted in the past, I'll start with some current event updates.

A divided/shared home once more

Context! Get your context here!

I have previously mentioned that Christina will be moving into the guest bedroom of my house, and that I have to remove all of the guest furniture that is in the room to make space available for Christina's shit. (So, where will guests stay now? In a hotel, apparently. Or, if they don't have an aversion to cat hair and biting, there's a hide-a-bed in the basement.)

Talks have now progressed to sharing the rest of the house. Just as I was getting used to not having to share, this happens, and now I have to rethink everything about the common areas. It's probably a good thing this is happening now and not a year from now, because my selfish tendencies would have just gotten worse and worse. And it's also (maybe) a good thing this is happening with Christina, because I at least know that we made this work in the past, so we should be able to make it work now. There will likely be copious fighting, though, probably more than we ever fought as a couple.

What's especially fun is that Christina and I were never good at sharing. There was always a "this is mine, this is yours," division. Amusingly, that attitude is now the appropriate way to handle our property and shared living areas. If we are going to pay for our own living expenses, there needs to be a clear way of recognizing mine vs hers.

Some areas of the house that I claimed after Christina vacated are not reverting to enemy control. I am still owner and occupier of the master bedroom, and thus the walk-in closet and en suite are still all mine. Yes! Christina now gets to slum it in the upstairs guest bathroom, ie. what used to be my bathroom. She can have it. The en suite is so much sweeter. And Christina has her own closet in the guest bedroom, albeit a small one.

Christina's old art studio, ie. the third bedroom, is now prime brewery real estate. There was a time that the brewery operated out of the basement, but a certain cat pissing and shitting on the floor initiated a redesign of the process. And there is no going back there. The new system works so much better than the old. It's clean, inaccessible to animals, and handy in all the right ways. The only way it could be handier is if I lived in a bungalow. However, with smart use of shelving, and the removal of a few heavy storage bins full of books, it is theoretically possible that the third bedroom could become a dual purpose art and brew studio.

But now Christina is asking for space for her stuff in the kitchen and pantry. Pretty demanding one, that ex-wife of mine. Saturday brewery services require ample space in both the refrigerator and pantry. I can't give that up. Not for her... Ha! I kid. I kid. Just jokes. The brewery and I will adapt to these changes.

When we were married, I had one dedicated shelf in the refrigerator. It was full of bread and beer. (That's all you need!) After Christina left, the beer multiplied. And the bread got its own dedicated shelf. Not being a dick, I have been planning in my head a reasonable way to deal with Christina's return to the refrigerator, and the solution was quite simple--although it did cost $200. I have purchased a 4.4 cu. ft. bar fridge. During summer (not sure about winter), it will sit in the garage, as its primary application is brew day refreshment disbursement. It will also hold all yeasts and hops that currently occupy the refrigerator. The bread will keep its dedicated shelf, though. That's essential.

One of the big benefits of Christina moving back in is that I get some of my stuff back. One of the major items that I sacrificed to the gods of divorce was our large upright freezer. The return of the freezer will provide ample room for the brewery's 10 (maybe 8 now?) pounds of frozen hops. Now we can buy more hops! Although there is still most of a grass-fed cow in that freezer...

Sharing the pantry, aka "brewery storage," is a bigger challenge. One shelf in the pantry is wasted on recycling bins; those can easily be moved to the floor of a nearby closet. And, sure, an outsider to the brewing operation would look at all of the small competition bottles of beer and say, "Why do those need to be here?" I may even have been asked that question already. The answer is pretty much, "Because. You just don't get it." But it looks like I'm going to have to compromise here. Bah. There is a large storage cabinet in the brew studio that is currently full of Christina's "junk" that she left behind last year. That cabinet will henceforth be full of competition bottles of beer, not to mention whatever else I can fit into it, which may end up being most of everything that's currently on the floor of the brew studio.

So I have some big projects ahead of me in the next three weeks: empty the guest bedroom; remove heavy bins full of books from the brew studio; relocate all competition bottles of beer to the brew studio from the pantry; stock my new bar fridge with almost everything beer-related from the kitchen refrigerator (leaving a reasonable quantity of beer in there for regular daily consumption); and rearrange shit in the basement to make room for additional storage. But I won't complain too much, because I have it easy compared with Christina, who has to pack her entire apartment into bins. Fun!

The Days Were Golden

Fun factoid. When Christina was planning her exodus from Regina last year, she was initially fixated on moving to Golden, B.C. Personally, I didn't understand why, but she had recently visited the town and came back raving about it. As you all know, in the end, she moved to Calgary, but since those days, I've been very curious about this amazing Golden place.

So, that's why we chose to visit Golden on our day trip to the mountains on June 17th. Leaving Calgary, it was still raining, but the weather cleared up as we drove deeper into the mountains. In our five years together, Christina and I have visited Banff numerous times, but this was the first time we had driven into British Columbia together. We didn't spend much time in the town of Golden itself, which did seem somewhat charming, but mostly unremarkable, instead driving through it to get to a nice nearby campground, where we had a hot dog and smokey camp cookout for lunch. We then drove around the Golden area all afternoon, doing touristy things like taking numerous pictures of everything. Pro-tip: the Kicking Horse gondola doesn't run on Thursdays in June. In late afternoon, we returned to the campground, took a quick paddle-boat tour of the lake (goddamn, paddle-boats are hard work!), and had another hot dog and smokey camp cookout.

For those with an aversion to Facebook, here's some of my favourite pictures from the day, presented without explanation or comment:

On the way back to Calgary in the evening, I suggested that we check out scenic Lake Louise, which I haven't visited in summer since I was a kid. Since we hadn't purchased a National Park pass, we couldn't access Lac Louise and instead had to settle with Moraine Lake, which fortunately turned out to be the prettiest site we had seen all day:

I love the mountains. I mean, who doesn't love the mountains? They are fucking awesome!

A Spontaneous Trip to Northern Saskatchewan

As we packed my car to leave Calgary on June 18th, we found that we now had more stuff than would fit. We decided that we would leave the camping equipment behind in Calgary, and then on the long weekend, we would return and actually try camping in the mountains this time. As the long weekend approached, we started second guessing the plan to return to Calgary for numerous reasons. For something different to do, Christina suggested that we check out La Ronge.

For reasons beyond the scope of this blog, Christina is very interested in Northern Saskatchewan right now, so it's not really surprising that she wanted to travel to La Ronge. What is surprising is how quickly and easily I agreed to this spontaneous plan to drive as far north as paved roads will take you.

The farthest north I had previously been in Saskatchewan was Prince Albert National Park, and that was many years ago. La Ronge is actually not much farther than Waskasiu, but there is a major change in scenery in that extra hour and a bit of driving as you enter the Canadian Shield. La Ronge is approximately six hours (although I was expecting it to take longer, based on Google Maps's estimation) from Regina on highway two, and we also traveled the extra hour on less quality roads to Missinipe on one of the days.

We stayed in a decent hotel in La Ronge with Duke, Daisy, and little Buffy the Finger Slayer on her first and last trip with us. Daisy slept in my bed, Duke slept in Christina's bed, and Buffy slept in the bathroom.

We arrived mid-afternoon on July 1st. After checking in to our hotel, we avoided the Canada Day crowds at the town beach and instead drove around looking at the various campgrounds in the area. We eventually found a beautiful, private beach north of La Ronge, in Wadin Bay, where we probably would have spent a couple of hours if not for the arrival of the horse fly infestation.

I have never been bitten by a horse fly, so when Christina started freaking out about the horse flies at the Wadin Bay beach, I was like, "What's the big deal?" She assured me that if I had ever been bit by a horse fly, I would know what the big deal was, so we fled to our car as quickly as we could. The horse flies concentrated their attacks on the dogs, but they were circling us as well the whole time. Neither of us got bit over the course of the weekend, but that didn't stop horse flies from quickly becoming the weekend's nemesis.

On July 2nd, our plan was to rent a boat and explore Lac La Ronge in the morning, and then drive to Missinipe in the afternoon. Boating into the middle of a giant lake and picking a random island to hang out on for a while was probably the highlight of my entire year so far. It was awesome. But, damn, the horse flies! Horse flies really fuck with skinny dippi--oh, wait, pretend I didn't say that. They chase boats and sometimes out-run boats. They bring their friends. They mercilessly attack dogs. They apparently crash every party in Northern Saskatchewan. Motherfuckers!

The trip to Missinipe was pretty uneventful. The road is shit, but the Neon survived. Christina wanted to meet with some people that she may get to know quite well in the coming years, so we did that. And then we had some ice cream and headed back to La Ronge.

And on Saturday morning, we packed and headed home. It was a short but thoroughly memorable trip.

Once again, for those with an aversion to Facebook, here are some of my favourite pictures from this fantastic trip, presented without explanation or comment:

Unquestionably, I will be spending more time in Northern Saskatchewan in the coming years. Next time I hope to camp, rather than stay in a hotel, and it would be nice if it was not the peak of horse fly season.

All aboard the Caribbean Princess, winter 2011/2012?

Christina and I never had a honeymoon. Regrets, I've had a few. It's not like we made the decision to not spend a bunch of money on an expensive vacation lightly, and there was seemingly no rush; we had lots of time to get our finances in order and then take a great memorable trip together. Burn.

Early last summer, I started planning for a Caribbean cruise, because we had both agreed that a cruise would be a nice late honeymoon. I decided to not cheap out, so budgeted $10,000 for everything, and planned to have a luxurious room with a balcony aboard the Caribbean Princess liner.

When Christina left, I was pretty frustrated (for many reasons, including) that my cruise plan would now be scrapped, but she told me that if I still wanted to go on a cruise someday in the future, she would go with me. I scoffed at that idea. It would be pretty silly to go on a cruise with your ex-wife, am I right?

As Christina and I traveled from Saskatchewan to Alberta to British Columbia and back this summer, I realized pretty early on that there was no good reason that we couldn't travel together to other places. And the idea of the Caribbean cruise popped back into my head. On the way home from La Ronge, I asked the burning question, would she still go with me on a cruise with the understanding that she would now have to pay for herself. And she agreed.

We are still early in the planning stages. We haven't settled on a cruise liner or destination yet. My personal preference is the 7-day Classic Southern Caribbean cruise aboard the Caribbean Princess. It is a nice island hopping route with minimal long stretches on the water. And I did a lot of research on the various cruise companies back in summer 2009, and I think Princess is the best for our wants and needs.

There is also the matter of when. I had hoped to plan the cruise for summer 2011, but that's not an option with the cruises that I have been looking at. Instead, a winter cruise is most likely. I would like to plan the cruise during a week that Christina's mom is available to house and animal sit for us, so I could go away with no worries about what I am leaving behind, the biggest problem I have with traveling.

I want to travel more than I do. I like seeing new places. I have never left this continent, which is silly. And now that my financial situation is stabilizing quickly, I will soon no longer have any excuses. A trustworthy house-sitter that could deal with the local zoo is essential to my getting away from home peace of mind. Christina is likely the best bet to take on this role in the near future. United Kingdom, summer 2012?

The End

I'm sure glad I decided a week and a half ago to break "Blogging about summer" into three parts. I banged the first part out quickly, but I felt (quite accurately) that it would take me a while to get to the end of the story. Part two took forever to write (forever = one week of sparse writing), and then my new editor delayed its posting by a day. I don't normally post blog entries on Saturdays, because I'm not normally in any condition after a brew day to write anything sensible. Have you seen my Saturday Facebook posts? I can't stop myself from drunk Facebooking, but I do try to avoid drunk blogging as much as possible.

Now that I'm at the end of part three, which took more time to write than part one but significantly less time than part two, I realize that I've neglected the regular posts on this blog. I'm going to need another Week in Review catch-up post soon, but next I have another somewhat infected brewblog to write. And maybe I should do some work.

Blogging about summer (Part 2 of 3)

2010-07-17T20:01:00.008-06:00

Last week in "Blogging about summer," I blogged about a major upcoming change in my life that has gone a long way towards getting me out of a many month long funk. And then I started talking about my summer, the supposed topic of the post, just in time to throw in a "to be continued." That was a little fun misdirection; now I will continue the actual (exciting) summer narrative.

After this quick news break

Before getting into old news about my summer vacation from a month ago (ha!--got ya!), I wanted to quickly update the blog with some more recent events.

Christina is currently back in Calgary, beginning the long process of sorting and packing. The big move is on August 18th, just short of one year from the last big move in the opposite direction. I will be driving to Calgary to help pack the trailer on the 17th, and then driving back to Regina to help unpack the trailer on the 18th. Prior to this, I need to remove all of the furniture from what will soon be Christina's bedroom, as she will be bringing her own bed and dresser with her. (Does anyone want a good quality, ultra plush, 10-year-old double bed mattress and box spring? For free?)

Household pet population has now been reset to the 2009 standard of two dogs and four cats because Duke and Squeak have already moved in permanently. Christina wasn't originally planning to leave Duke behind, as she really does love that stupid fucking dog, but I offered to keep him to make it easier for her to deal with her coming month of near constant stress. If you are wondering where the fourth cat came from, I'm impressed by your attention to detail. Hang in there.

My focus for the coming month of complete and utter boredom will be catching up on as many shows that I know Christina has no interest in (Eureka, for a start) as is possible, and reading as much Malazan as my stupid newly-ADD-addled brain can handle. And fucking yardwork. I love strawberries and raspberries, but goddamn I hate picking them.

A Wedding in Hanna

For those that haven't been paying attention, or possibly haven't read my earlier posts on this topic, my ex-wife Christina's brother was getting married on June 12th in Hanna, Alberta. I actually booked my summer vacation to start on June 11th so I could attend this specific event, have some time to visit with Christina's family for the first time since things fell apart, and then hopefully hang around the Calgary area for a while.

I don't want to bore you with details. I know you don't give a fuck about every stupid thing I did on this weekend. But, for a quick time-line, the wedding weekend went a little like this: on Friday, June 11th, Christina and I drove to Hanna, checked into our hotel room, helped decorate the hall, and attended the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner; on Saturday, June 12th, we dropped off the dogs in Christina's mom's barn, met Buffy (more on this later) for the first time, I squeezed into my suit, we attended the wedding ceremony and reception, Christina MCd, I picked up the dogs from the barn, and I returned to the hall in time to dance; on Sunday, June 13th, we attended the gift opening, relocated from the hotel to Christina's mom's farm, and visited with family; and on Monday, June 14th, we drove to Calgary.

(It is disturbing for me to imagine what this weekend would have been like if circumstances in Christina's life had worked out differently. Although I had suggested otherwise, I know I would have still attended the wedding, out of a desire to appear stronger than I am. And everything about that day would have been completely different and awkward and painful. (This comment was intentionally vague and will only be understandable by friends of Christina that are in the know about what her life has been like since our separation.))

Duke and Daisy

I spent a fair bit of time this weekend on Duke and Daisy duty. After weeks and weeks of steady rain, June 11th and 12th were two beautiful, hot, sunny days in the Hanna area. That would normally be a good thing, especially for a wedding, but with two big dogs in tow that can not stay in a hot car by themselves, nice weather is a bit of a hassle. While Christina helped decorate the hall, I walked Duke and Daisy around the town of Hanna until there was finally enough shade outside the hall for the dogs to not die of heatstroke inside the car. On the day of the wedding, we had initially planned to drop the dogs off in a kennel, but the only kennel within reasonable driving distance insisted on Bordatella (ie. kennel cough) shots that our dogs don't have (they do have rabies shots!) and are, to paraphrase Christina, complete bullshit (it's apparently the equivalent of humans getting a shot for the common cold).

So, instead, Duke and Daisy got to spend the day of the wedding in a barn. Dropping them off in the morning at the barn was uneventful. Picking them up was a different story. We decided that it would be unnecessarily mean to leave them in the barn over night, so then the question was when to pick them up. I figured foolishly that I could pick them up between the end of the wedding reception speeches and the beginning of the dance, therefore avoiding trying to stumble through an unfamiliar farm yard in the dark. I'm not saying I didn't accomplish this task successfully, but here were the flaws in my plan.

1. I wasn't exactly sober at this point in the evening.
2. Hanna has some of the most randomly placed stop signs I've ever encountered.
1+2. I accidentally ran a stop sign and nearly smashed my car to bits in a huge depression in the road. Apparently that stop sign wasn't so random after all.

3. I was wearing my suit.
4. Said suit was ridiculously tight. (Twenty pounds ago, it fit great!)
5. The mosquitoes on said farm were the most insane I have ever encountered.
6. I didn't exactly want mosquito bits and blood on my suit jacket, and bug spray was not an option because I was heading back to a wedding dance.
1+3+4+5+6. Me running madly away from swarms of mosquitoes in my tight suit must have been thoroughly comical. Fortunately, no one was there to witness that.

Still one of the family

It should come as no surprise that my biggest worry about this wedding weekend was how I would be greeted by Christina's family. I had no reason to worry. And how would they react to Christina and I being unusually friendly for a recently separated couple? Some weirdness is to be expected, but overall I was treated like I'm still a member of their family.

Right away, during Friday's rehearsal, I learned that I was still considered a member of the family by the bride and groom and would be seated in the front row. Seeing as I had a month earlier been offered the chance to be a groomsman, this seemed reasonable.

The reactions from the rest of the family to my presence in Hanna on this weekend varied quite a lot, from "Holy shit, is that Scott?" to complete disinterest. Some, like Christina's mom, already knew I would be attending and were just happy to see me again. Some, like Christina's dad's wife, were shocked but delighted that I was there. On average, Christina's parents and grandparents were happy to see me, but her extended family didn't give a shit (with some notable exceptions: hi, Karen!). And that sat fine with me.

During the wedding reception and dance, I attempted to sit with each group and let them see that I was doing okay. The best conversation was had with Christina's dad and his wife. They admitted that they had been very worried about me being alone in Regina and were happy to see that I was doing okay, although I had to insist it was true before they would believe me.

My favourite WTF moment of the weekend came early Sunday morning during the gift opening. Christina's bible-thumping (irrelevant but fun detail) grandfather (on her dad's side) said the following to me about Christina (paraphrasing): "Hang onto that one. She's a keeper." I laughed, quite hard, initially thinking that he had just cracked a pretty damn good joke. But then Christina and I started discussing the comment and were left wondering if it had in fact been a joke. It was entirely possible that, despite MC Christina's groan-worthy jokes during the reception about not being an expert on making a marriage work, he had forgotten that we were no longer together (or, ridiculously, assumed by our non-asshole-ishness that we were back together). To this day, I still don't know how I was supposed to take that comment. If he had meant it seriously, what did he think when I laughed out loud?

Even better, when we told this story to Christina's mom later that day, her response was that he had gotten it backwards (Christina's unnecessary clarification: implying that she should have held onto me). BURN! And Christina's grandmother (her mom's mom) immediately and hilarious echoed that sentiment. It's pretty awesome (for me, not so much Christina) when your ex-wife's family thinks she made a huge mistake leaving you.

Buffy the Finger Slayer

I have a new kitten! Buffy the Finger Slayer!

The second reason, besides not wanting my dad to have to deal with cat shit on the floor every day when he was looking after my cats, for putting down Cinnamon in May was because there was a strong possibility I would come back home from Hanna with a new kitten. ("I'm not heartless" context.) And I did!

Buffy is lucky to be alive. Luckier than the rest of her family, certainly. Christina's mom rescued her, bottle fed her, and apparently turned her into a completely psychotic monster. Christina's mom could not keep her, so she offered the kitten to me, her favourite ex-son-in-law.

I had to arm wrestle Christina's brother for her, but I won handily. (This blog has no fact checkers.)

Buffy fanboy alert! I have always wanted to name one of my cats Buffy. Furlicity was going to be Buffy, but Christina wouldn't have it, so I picked an even stupider name that I assumed she would reject and say, "Okay, fine, call her Buffy." Didn't work. This time, Christina couldn't stop me, because Buffy is my cat, not our cat, as per Christina's mom's insistence. However, after meeting Buffy, I strongly considered going with Darla instead. Buffy is a little monster and loves to bite the shit out of you, making her very much worthy of being named after a vampire. In the end, I stuck with my original plan, because she's also a worthy Finger Slayer.

Resting in Calgary: Yay, Softcore Gay Porn!

Due to unending rain, the plan to spend a few days camping in the mountains during the week of the 14th was scrapped. We instead decided to wait for a reasonable day to do a day trip. That ended up working fine, but that story is coming in part 3.

So, with tons of inside time on our hands, we naturally decided to watch a shit load of TV. (We also visited the super cool and educational Body Worlds display at the science centre and checked out the large and growing Cross Iron Mills mall, but there's not a lot to blog about there, other than to say: "We had fun. Yay!")

Christina has wanted me to watch the Showtime version of Queer as Folk with her for years, so this seemed like as good a time as any to start. She had scared me away from the show earlier by overstating the gay-porn-ishness of the show. While gay sex is definitely a big component on the show, it does not dominate the screen the way she made me think it would.

So imagine my surprise to learn that it is actually a pretty good show, with equal parts humour and drama, diverse characters, and only a couple storyline missteps in the two seasons that I have watched so far. On the downside, it's not exactly the most unpredictable show in the world. I saw the season one cliffhanger coming from a mile away, but I didn't expect the brutality and the effect it would have on early season two episodes. I also correctly predicted a major character's sudden death out loud to Christina minutes before it happened on screen, which was greatly amusing to me. The show also has a hilarious conceit in that every handsome guy that comes along is 90% likely to be gay.

One thing that I find interesting is that I am somehow able to enjoy the show despite not being able to identify with any of the characters' lifestyles at all. Usually I get attached to a show because I can identify with one or two of the characters on screen. And I'm not saying this because they have gay sex. If I am to believe Queer as Folk's depiction of the gay lifestyle, only one in five gay men has a healthy, stable relationship, and nearly every gay man parties at gay clubs every weekend. I can't identify with that shit at all.

To be continued...

Next time: a day trip to the mountains, and a surprisingly spontaneous (for me) Canada Day long weekend trip to Northern Saskatchewan.

Blogging about summer (Part 1 of 3)

2010-07-09T18:06:00.002-06:00

I realize that for most people summer is just starting, but for me, my summer is effectively over. Other than the odd long weekend, I'll be working throughout the rest of July and all of August. And I'll be on-call from my job for half of that time. But that's okay; I packed a lot of goodness into June and early July, and I'm content.

Going into my summer vacation, I had four goals: finish two Malazan books; get in shape; and survive a wedding and a reunion. The reunion was canceled, so that was easy. The wedding somehow turned into something enjoyable instead of torturous, so check. But I failed miserably at the other two goals; I'm only halfway through House of Chains and I'm most likely in worse shape now than I was in May. And I don't care. Because it was a great month full of unexpected highlights. (And I can keep chipping away at House of Chains on weekends. And I'll hopefully resume getting in shape right about now.)

The primary reason this summer took a different path than expected was because I didn't spend it alone.

The blog comes full circle... kinda

My first rule for this blog is that I don't talk about other people's personal lives, so when I tell the following story there will be a lot of gaps. I can only focus on how these events relate to me and affect me. My second rule has been a no names policy, which was as awkward to write as it probably was to read. My ex-wife, herein called by her actual name, Christina, got so annoyed by the frequent "ex-wife" references that she made a special request for me to stop that nonsense.

This story starts in August of 2009 when terms of our marital separation were being discussed. I have previously mentioned that I have financial obligations to Christina, but details have been sparse for none of your business reasons. But for this story's purpose, a few extra details are required. The major terms we both accepted (and had lawyered) were as follows: for two years, I would pay monthly equalization payments of a fixed amount (that was selected on the basis of her rent payment in Calgary); and at the end of the second year, I would refinance my mortgage to buy out her share of our home's equity (that will be a big cheque). Under the table, we had an understanding that if she had financial difficulties, I would assist by drawing unofficially from the equity amount that was owed.

It is beyond this blog's scope to discuss the hows and whys Christina ended up having financial difficulties, but it is relevant to note that I have drawn from that equity amount significantly to help her in the past ten months. I am willing to do so, to a reasonable extent, because Christina could easily have insisted that I refinance my mortgage immediately upon signing of our separation agreement. That would have financially destroyed me, but it was within her rights. Fortunately, we weren't jerks and we mutually worked out terms that we could both live with.

In March (or possibly April) of this year, Christina came for a visit, and the topic of discussion eventually turned to the monies. My monthly equalization payment was all going to her rent, and therefore wasn't quite cutting it when it came to keeping up with living expenses in Calgary. I suggested that she look for a different place to rent at the end of her one-year lease, to hopefully save a couple hundred dollars a month or so. This is virtually impossible in Calgary, so naturally other locations were discussed. At some point, I (half-jokingly) offered that she could rent the spare bedroom in my house for a very reasonable sum.

I don't quite remember how she initially reacted to that offer, but I certainly did not expect her to accept. I wouldn't have made the offer if I didn't think it was doable, but I knew it was also fucking crazy. I believed the offer was off the table until a couple of days later when she mentioned that her friend in town had told her that she should take me up on it. I was flabbergasted. I believe all I said at the time was, "Oh?"

And then we started planning. And this is the crazy result (unless something even crazier happens in the next two months, derailing everything): at the end of August, my ex-wife Christina will move back into my house, living out of my (formerly) spare bedroom. She will pay rent, which includes her share of the utilities, and she will cover her own additional living expenses. The separation agreement will still be executed as planned. And we are both free to halt this roommate arrangement at any time.

The first question that always comes up here, understandably, is "Are you guys getting back together?" The answer is no. Christina wanted out of the marriage for reasons that have not gone away.

Although I've never explained the main reasons for our break-up--nor will I, not anytime soon--I will say that it definitely had nothing to do with how we get along as a couple. Throughout all this crazy shit, we have remained good friends. I'm not saying there weren't some tough times; there were definitely times I felt I'd be better off if she was out of my life for good. But in the past four months, the friendship has been renewed in a big way, and we have thoroughly tested the efficacy of this proposed roommate arrangement.

It's become a cliche for us to say, but it holds true: other people are way more weirded out by this arrangement than we are. Ultimately, large stretches of this past year were complete hell for me primarily because I missed the companionship of having a friend always around. I had previously brought up the idea with Christina that all I really needed was a roommate to fend off the crushing loneliness. Who would have guessed that she would end up being that roommate? Not me, that's for fucking sure.

Proof of concept: May

In May, Christina's best friend broke her leg. Christina offered to help her friend out with chores and looking after her baby for a few weeks. This provided an excellent opportunity for us to test out this roommate arrangement for a reasonable length of time. And it obviously worked out fine.

Vacation: June

Christina was still in Regina when my summer vacation started on June 11th, so it made economical sense to travel together back to Alberta for the big wedding festivities. And I'm saving the rest of this story for part two...

A Month in Review, Jun 7 to Jul 4

2010-07-07T20:39:00.005-06:00

Shit, I'm far behind on this blog now. My absence started with two weeks off for vacation, but then was extended because I felt overwhelmed with the thought of trying to catch up with my television reviews, and I had a long-term houseguest keeping me busy. I have racked my brain for a way to catch up quickly with minimal effort, and here it is!

I will put a lot more effort into my next post, where I will discuss my summer vacation, pet populations, some very interesting personal developments, and probably include the next brewblog.

The Month in Television

Before diving into the month of new shows, I need to do a quick review of Breaking Bad, now that I've completed watching its third season. In one word: awesome! In eight words: my favourite non-genre drama series of all time. I threw the non-genre qualifier in there for one major reason: it's very hard to compare a series like Breaking Bad to a series like Angel or Star Trek. They come from completely different places. And I will always have a soft spot in my heart for sci-fi or fantasy television, and the rewatchability of sci-fi or fantasy shows is higher for me. But no matter; Breaking Bad is consistently fantastic; intense, shocking, devastating, exhilarating... I could go on and on like this. The third season somehow managed to deliver some of the best moments of the series, culminating in a terrifically dark ending that sets up a very interesting fourth season. Vince Gilligan, you fucking rock! (Vince Gilligan was the best thing about the last five or so seasons of the X-Files, and I'm thrilled that he's kicking so much ass with his first series.)

The Big Catch-up

Loved: Doctor Who (5x12,13), Futurama (7x1-3), Glee (1x22), Party Down (2x8-10), True Blood (3x1,2)
Liked: Doctor Who (5x11), Penn & Teller: Bullshit (8x1-4), So You Think You Can Dance (7x4-11), Stargate Universe (1x20), Top Gear (14x1,2), True Blood (3x3)
Meh: Entourage (7x1), Hung (2x1)

Holy fuck, I still watch a shitload of shows during the supposedly slow summer. I'm not going to go through each and every episode of each and every show; I'm going to just mention the highlights.

The best thing I watched on my TV during June that was not Breaking Bad was Doctor Who's two-part finale, "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang". (The previous episode, "The Lodger" was inconsequential but quite fun, far better than most episode elevens in new Doctor Who history.) While I have greatly enjoyed previous new Who finales, none were nearly as satisfying as this. Everything fell into place beautifully. Very fairytale-like, which seems strange for a supposedly sci-fi series, but I love it. Although there weren't any single episodes this season on the level of Steven Moffat's previous work on the series, he pretty much nailed this season as a whole.

In other positives, Glee ended its first season with what was easily its strongest episode since the mid-season finale, True Blood came back stronger than ever for the first three episodes of its werewolf-enhanced third season, and Party Down ended its second season with three more hilarious episodes. Party Down has now been canceled, which is sad, but like similarly ratings challenged and hilarious Better Off Ted, I'm just glad I got two seasons out of it.

Less satisfyingly, Stargate Universe's season finale was quite good, but very incomplete in terms of storytelling, leaving a lot of material for the second season premiere in the fall. Penn & Teller: Bullshit is always entertaining, but the topics they have left to cover after so many seasons are not nearly as interesting. The first two episodes of Top Gear's new season were above average for episodes I've seen (which is not many), but frustratingly inconsistent. And So You Think You Can Dance (shut-up!) is... nevermind.

Entourage's seventh season premiere was thoroughly weak sauce. And Hung was also a little lacking in its second season premiere, although I expect things to pick up soon there.

Phew. That wasn't so hard.

Edited to add: How could I forget Futurama's return to TV? It could be just the fact that it's new Futurama and I loves me some new Futurama, but I laughed my ass off at the first three episodes of this unexpected season. Yay, Futurama!

Next week: the thoroughly dumb but entertaining Warehouse 13 returns, and I start trying to catch up on similarly dumb but entertaining Eureka. And maybe I'll finish some fucking books already...

This Brewblog is Infected

2010-06-10T12:02:00.004-06:00

My two week (and one day) vacation starts tomorrow. Yay! During those two weeks, this blog will mostly likely be inactive, seeing as the majority of my blogging occurs while I am at *cough*work*cough*.

Today's random blog post has a sour brewblog and then some sad pet news.

Brewblog, Entry Four

May 22nd, 2010 - Brewed Scott's Stout 4

Scott's Stout 2 and 3 were only marginally different from each other (2 had Crystal 80, 3 had Crystal 120; that's the only difference), but for Scott's Stout 4, I wanted to make some changes. Firstly, as mentioned in the last brewblog, I wanted to use a (theoretically) better quality yeast, a Wyeast London Ale yeast instead of our usual Safale S-04. Secondly, I wanted to actually use Roasted Barley in this Scott's Stout.

There has long been a debate about what defines a Porter vs a Stout. Both are roasty black beers, very similar in most regards. But if you research Porters vs Stouts, you will frequently come across a claim that the roasted flavours in a Porter are from Black Patent Malt and the roasted flavours in a Stout are from Roasted Barley. While this claim has some merit and is often true of many commercial examples of the styles, there are numerous exceptions. Two of those exceptions are our very own Scott's Stout 2 and 3, which only used Black Patent Malt but were very definitely Dry Stouts in my mind.

So, this time out, I wanted to actually follow the style guide for a Dry Stout and used a generous amount of Roasted Barley in the recipe. Scott's Stout 4 has not been bottled to date, so I can not comment on the differences in taste between 3 and 4 until probably the next brewblog.

We sampled the first bottle of Simon's Blonde on this brew day. The Amarillo hops gave it a distinctly grapefruity flavour and it was quite pleasant. It was Trevor that first commented on how it seemed to be sour.

May 28th, 2010 - Panic!

On the previous evening, I had had another bottle of sour Simon's Blonde, herein sometimes referred to as Sour Blonde. I didn't put much thought into the whys and hows it had gotten sour. Sour Blonde was not ruined by its sourness--in fact the sour grapefruit flavour is quite good--so no big deal.

I was home bored this Friday, having planned to plant my garden but been stymied by rain, so started drinking early. My first beer of the day was an Anniversary Bitter 2. It was very reasonable, significantly better than our first Bitter attempt. But there was a hint of sourness. Nothing quite so blatant and obvious as the Sour Blonde, but there was some sourness there that did not belong.

It was then that I remembered the Oud Bruin, aka Sour Brown, we were aging in my brew studio. "Oh, shit, the Sour Brown is infecting our other beers," I thought, starting to panic. "What else is sour?"

The fourth "brewniversity" beer, aka 112, aka Goldings Ale, was next to be bottled, so it was the first beer I sampled from its carboy. And it was unquestionably sour. And not in such a good way as Sour Blonde and Bitter 2 had been. "Fuck, that Goldings hops experiment was ruined! What else is sour?" And I was now full-on body-shakes panicking.

I next sampled Trevor's Blonde. I was particularly worried about this batch, because Trevor was particularly excited about it. But thankfully it seemed fine. Phew!

I had a big bottle of Blackout Stout, the Russian Imperial Stout I made up, in my fridge, so as I drafted an email to the group (subject: Hope you all like sour beers...), I drank that down. It was not detectably sour, but it sure got me fucking drunk.

My email kicked off a long discussion about possible causes. I was worried about proximity of the new beers to the aging Sour Brown, but that didn't make sense with the numerous air locks involved and was eliminated as a cause. That did not stop me from relocating the Sour Brown into my basement, away from beers that shouldn't be sour. Equipment infection didn't make sense, because the Sour Brown was only supposed to be dangerous after the wild yeast was added, which was done in the glass carboy after the beer was racked. And, according to our research, the sanitizing product we use should prevent the spread of infection (if used consistently and properly) anyway. But, we had (at least) three soured beers somehow!

I eventually formulated a reasonable train of events to explain the spread of sourness. Sour Brown was racked on April 20th, at which point the wild yeast was added, and Simon's Blonde was brewed on April 24th. It appears that Simon's Blonde was somehow infected by the wild yeast in its primary fermenter. The hows of that infection are still a complete mystery, as I thought I was pretty damn careful with that nasty stuff. But everything else that follows Simon's Blonde getting infected makes perfect sense. The 112 was brewed on May 8th and was fermented using an unsanitized scoop of yeast cake from Simon's Blonde. This helps account for why the 112 is the most disgustingly sour of the three beers; it was infected from day one. On May 15th, we bottled Simon's Blonde; the sourness at this point was rather subtle and was not detected by anyone. Immediately following the bottling of Simon's Blonde, we rinsed (!) the racking cane and bottled Anniversary Bitter 2, which was absolutely not sour at this stage; I remember its original taste quite clearly. Bitter 2 was infected by the unsanitized racking cane and only started souring in bottles, which is why it is still subtle.

In the evening, the brew group came over to help me sample the rest of our beers, sanitize equipment, and bottle the infected 112. We detected no sourness in any of our other batches.

And we will hopefully not detect sourness in any other beers in the coming weeks.

May 29th, 2010 - Brewed Willamette Ale, aka 114

Although the Goldings Ale (112) experiment had gone sour, I didn't let that interfere with my plan of next doing a simple beer with all Willamette hops. The 114, so named because of its similarities with the 124, required 4 ounces of Willamette hops divided evenly into seven additions, one at every 15-minute interval during the boil. The only malts used were Pale for the base and Munich for sweetness. For yeast, I stuck with our typical Safale US-05.

June 5th, 2010 - Brewed Matrimonial Ale 5

Matrimonial Ale is basically our experimental American (India) Pale Ale series. Every Matrimonial Ale has been different, despite the fact that we would be happy to repeat the fluke success of the original batch each time. MA1 was a quite nice American Pale Ale created with citrusy Columbus hops, MA2 was similar but accidentally boozier and somehow better, MA3 was less boozy and slightly less successful because of a change of hops, and MA4 was (in theory) the refinement of all of the lessons learned from the first three MAs as well as the Punk IPA clone.

MA5 was a further refinement of the excellent MA4, but with the booziness of MA2--on purpose!--and, new to the series, piney Chinook hops. It may go down as an unsuccessful diversion from the series like MA3, but I suspect it will be amazing.

All Matrimonial Ales have had effectively the same malt recipe: Pale for the base (where increased quantity equals increased booziness) with 500g of Crystal 40 for sweetness. In MA5, I added some Munich malt for additional sweetness, in an experiment that will probably go unnoticed in this super high IBU beer.

In terms of aroma, MA4 is by far the best of the series, with a pleasant citrusy Amarillo hops aroma from 2 ounces that were added in the secondary a week before bottling. I have not decided what aroma hops I will be using for MA5, but I intend to add the aroma hops only a couple of days before bottling to maximize freshness of the aroma.

MA5 was also planned to be the first test beer for the liquid yeasts we have ranched over the past few weeks. I used the Denny's Favorite 50 Wyeast that was collected from the Bushwakker Imperial Stout yeast cake. I made at least one mistake, and quite possibly two, in this process, which was a complete failure this time. My first mistake was forgetting to do a starter, thus not really giving whatever small amount of yeast cells had been collected half a chance with this big, big beer. My second mistake may have been a misunderstanding of what to keep from the yeast washing process in the first place. In the end, Safale US-04 to the rescue!

Because I am heading out of town for the week, I will not be hosting a brew day this coming weekend, and I have to make sure I remember to rack MA5 tonight, as it is still in its primary. All of our other beers will get an extra week to age in their carboys. The Belgian IPA is next to be bottled, followed by Scott's Stout 4 and the 114. The Bushwakker Imperial Stout could also be bottled at any point, I think.

Pets

My 13-year-old cat Cinnamon was euthanized yesterday. It was a long time coming, but that doesn't make it easier. For most of the past year, she has been very un-cat-like in using my basement carpet as her bathroom instead of one of the two litter boxes available for her. She was also throwing up after almost every meal, and then eating her own throw-up. Yeah, gross.

Cinnamon was a very cuddly, friendly cat, almost always monopolizing my lap. Although I was frequently angry at her for the pissing and shitting and throwing up all over the place, I couldn't bring myself to put her down without having a better reason than that. As long as she seemed happy and healthy--and she always did, right up to the end--it seemed wrong. The tipping point this week was the fact that I am having my dad look after my cats while I am away. I may be willing to put up with cleaning up shit and piss and puke every day, but there is no way I am subjecting someone else to that, especially someone that is doing me a favour like looking after my cats.

While Cinnamon was doing her thing, I was also embarrassed to ever invite anyone into my basement--because it always smelled like cat pee!--so while it is sad that I had to resort to euthanasia, I am also very relieved to be done with that huge frustration. It will probably take me months to destroy/hide the smell of cat pee that is now ingrained in the carpet, but I will give it my best shot. And no more worrying about stepping in fresh cat piss or shit on my floor while stumbling around in the dark.

So, the basement cat population is now only two. The remaining basement cats, Furlicity and Fritzy, should be with me for many more years yet; many more years of being complete shits and destroying my basement. Fun!

You may notice that I specified "basement cat population." Total cat population is now three, because lately Squeak has been back as a full time resident of my house. She will most likely spend some time later this summer back in Calgary, but don't be surprised to hear that she's back with me come September. That's presuming that she is still alive and annoying come fall, which I expect will be the case. I'm starting to suspect that Squeak is immortal.

Vacation!

Countdown is at 4 hours...

Week in Review, May 31 to Jun 6

2010-06-07T20:24:00.003-06:00

The Week in Television

Most of my inside time this week was spent revisiting the ridiculously entertaining first season of Glee with my house guest. And we also started watching the first season of House, which I have never seen. I only managed to fit in one episode of Breaking Bad this week: the excellent penultimate episode of season two.

Tuesday, June 1st
Loved: Glee (1x21)

While Glee's titular anvillicious theme of the week concept is really growing old, "Funk" was one of the better examples in a while. The musical moments were above average, especially "Loser" and "Good Vibrations," Terri! was back and awesome, and Will seduced Sue in the most absurd storyline in the short history of this absurd series (edit: make that second most absurd, because I was just reminded about the Olivia Newton John and Sue Sylvester "Physical" video).

Wednesday, June 2nd
Liked: So You Think You Can Dance (7x2)

Thursday, June 3rd
Liked: So You Think You Can Dance (7x3)

Yeah, I'm watching SYTYCD again this year. What? Fuck off. If it's good enough for Mightyfuckinggodking to review on a weekly basis, it's good enough for me to watch but never, ever mention ever again on this blog.

Friday, June 4th
Liked: Party Down (2x7), Stargate Universe (1x19)

Stargate Universe's "Incursion" was better than last week's first part to this Lucian Alliance storyline, but it still felt too SG1ish (not a compliment). There were more character moments at least, but it was still very plot heavy and not entirely convincing in that regard. I have low expectations for next week's finale.

While the "Party Down Company Picnic" was an enjoyable change of pace for the series, it didn't quite have the magic of the past few weeks for me. There is just something slightly lacking when the Party Down crew is not screwing up someone's well-planned (except for the hiring of Party Down) party.

Saturday, June 5th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x10)

I wasn't sure at first what to make of Richard Curtis' first stab at writing for Doctor Who, "Vincent and the Doctor," but this was an episode that got better and better throughout. And one of the single best scenes in new Doctor Who history is in this episode; it brought tears to my eyes. Fantastic!

Week in Review, May 24 to 30

2010-05-31T16:34:00.002-06:00

The Week in Video Games

I picked up the new Super Mario Galaxy 2 earlier in the week, but I haven't put a lot of time into it yet, collecting only 10 stars so far. The original Galaxy is easily one of my favourite Wii games, so it's no surprise that I am greatly enjoying my time in Galaxy 2. Nintendo kept everything that was awesome about the original and improved everything that was merely good. The first few levels are each interesting and unique, and the new power-ups I've been introduced to so far are terrific. Nintendo's Mario games rarely fail to impress (I had to say "rarely" instead of "never" because of Sunshine, which had moments of brilliance but was overall only good), so I can't say I'm surprised by the superlative quality of this game.

The Week in Television

I originally started watching Californication to break up the darkness of Breaking Bad with something lighter, but then I became hooked on Californication instead, and whipped through all three seasons in a couple of days. I have always enjoyed David Duchovny (I really don't know why I didn't watch this series until now...?), and his Hank Moody is a hilarious asshole, constantly fucking up, redeeming himself, and then fucking up all over again. The third season, especially, was very, very entertaining, establishing a ridiculous sex farce and running with it. I'm now impatiently waiting for a fourth season.

Once I was done with Californication, it was back to Breaking Bad's second season, which quickly hooked me in its own way. This series is by turns intense, hilarious, heart-breaking, and depressing. Shocking events are the norm. I have two episodes left in the second season. And this can not possibly end well.

Monday, May 24th
Loved: Chuck (3x18/19)
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x23)
Meh: How I Met Your Mother (5x24)

Chuck already had a terrific season finale earlier this year, so when the season was extended by NBC, the writers must have felt challenged to top it. And, wow, they succeeded--big time! "Chuck Versus the Subway" and "Chuck Versus the Ring, Part II" were awesome. Simply fucking awesome. I'm glad they aired both of these episodes on the same evening, as they worked so well together, telling a great focused story of Chuck, with much assistance from family and friends, versus Shaw and the Ring. There was maybe a touch more cheese than I would have preferred, and some story details were retconilicious, but those are nitpicks. The Chuck and Shaw Intersect showdown in the Buy More with Jeffster's "Blaze of Glory" in the background was one of the best things this show has ever done. And the ending was simply jaw dropping, providing an intriguing setup for a fourth season. Holy hell am I glad this show was renewed.

The Big Bang Theory's season finale, "The Lunar Excitation," was somewhat underwhelming. It was funny throughout, but it was awkwardly structured, and the best moment of the entire episode was the end tag with Sheldon meeting his online dating match. And that scene was completely spoiled for me numerous times throughout the past week in promos for this episode--promos that effectively ruined this episode for me, because they made it seem like the episode was going to be about Sheldon meeting his match. But it was actually more about Penny getting drunk and regretfully having sex with Leonard.

"Dopplegangers" was a much better episode of How I Met Your Mother than last week's nonsense, but I gave last week a Liked nod... what gives? The difference is that "Dopplegangers" was the season finale for the ultra lame fifth season, and therefore my expectations for some substance and redemption for the season as a whole were much higher. And almost completely unmet. Sure, there was some funny stuff, and even a little storyline progress with Lily and Marshall and Robin and Don, but what's the title of this fucking show again? This entire season of How I Met Your Mother was a giant fucking waste of time. And it's a damn shame.

Tuesday, May 25th
Liked: Glee (1x20)

"Theatricality" was an okay episode of Glee. Musically, it was all Lady Gaga for the girls (and Kurt!) and Kiss for the guys, so bleh! "Beth" was okay. "Poker Face" was just fucking bizarre. The scene of the night belonged to Burt as he came to Kurt's defense over Finn's use of the word "faggy." Hopefully at some point in the future it will be acknowledged that Finn was not entirely in the wrong when he became angry at Kurt's stalkish behaviour. The other major storyline was Rachel meeting her mother, which had an unexpected ending.

Friday, May 28th
Loved: Party Down (2x6)

"'Not On Your Wife' Opening Night" was a farce-tastic Party Down, cleverly plotted, making good use of every character, and simply hilarious from beginning to end.

Saturday, May 29th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x9)

Doctor Who's "Cold Blood" at times felt much like an episode of Star Trek. This is not a bad thing, but the Trek vibe made it rather easy to predict the direction that the Silurians storyline would take. They thankfully aren't Cybermen or Daleks, but the Silurians weren't that much more impressive as villains, rarely feeling like the threat that last week built them up to be. In the end, though, this episode will be remembered for its devastating final minutes. Never before has new Doctor Who made such impressive use of a season long story arc. I realize that this ending will most likely be undone in the finale, but it was still a dark place to go.

Week in Review, May 17 to 23

2010-05-23T21:34:00.003-06:00

The Week in Television

After this week's numerous season and series finales, next week will be rather quiet. Other than most of the Monday night shows, which are one week behind and airing their finales tomorrow, only Glee will be left on TV for me to actually watch as it airs. Everything else has to be downloaded; the remaining shows (Party Down, Stargate, Doctor Who) all air on channels that I do not receive.

In between the numerous season finales this week, I had some time to watch a few more episodes of Breaking Bad, finishing off the short first season, which ended as gritty, dark, and fantastic as it had started. And, for some much needed levity, although the series is more dramatic than I expected, I have started to watch the first season of Californication as well. It's also much better than I expected it to be.

Monday, May 17th
Loved: The Big Bang Theory (3x22), Chuck (3x17)
Liked: How I Met Your Mother (5x23)
Meh: House (6x21)

"Chuck Versus the Living Dead" was a return to form for the series, ramping up the Ring storyline considerably while bringing back the awesome Scott Bakula, and we are presumably building to a big Intersect showdown between Chuck and Shaw in the finale. But, wait one second? What was that about Shaw and the Intersect? Of all the crazy, episode ending twists, Shaw downloading the Ring's secret Intersect is quite possibly the biggest WTF moment in Chuck history. This could be awesome; this could be not at all awesome. I guess I'll find out in next week's two-hour finale.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Big Bang Theory's flashback episode, "The Staircase Implementation." Seeing the gang coming together for the first time was an undeniable treat.

"The Wedding Bride" was a strange episode of How I Met Your Mother. Half the running time was taken up by a purposefully awful romantic comedy adaptation of Ted's history with Stella. And the other half focused on Ted's latest "not the mother" relationship and a pretty amusing gag involving literal baggage. Overall: it was okay.

House's season finale, "Help Me," was another one of those "mix up the formula" episodes that they actually did an admirable number of in this sixth season. But... this one wasn't good. In one word: boring!

Tuesday, May 18th
Loved: Glee (1x19), Lost (6x16)

Lost's "What They Died For" was awesome, feeling very much like a part of the big finale. Jacob explained himself! Jack stepped up! Sawyer felt remorse! Desmond was the fucking man! Any worries that I had that the finale was not going to rock, due mostly to last week's surprisingly low-key disappointment (because I have loved this season as a whole), were completely washed away here.

Joss Whedon! Neil Patrick Harris! Glee's "Dream On" was pretty much guaranteed to be a winner in my books. And it was; easily eclipsing the previous five episodes. The "Dream On" duet was cool, although Matthew Morrison smoked NPH. The twist in the Jesse and Rachel storyline was pretty awesome. And Artie's "Safety Dance" was unquestionably the highlight of the episode for me.

Wednesday, May 19th
Loved: Modern Family (1x24)

Modern Family ended their season with "Family Portrait," a nearly perfect finale to a great first season. Phil's experiences at the basketball game made me laugh harder than anything else this week. And I can't remember a time that Claire was as funny as she was here.

Thursday, May 20th
Loved: Fringe (2x23), Parks and Recreation (2x24)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x22), The Office (6x26)

Fringe's season finale, "Over There, Part Two," was not what I was expecting after last week's action-packed introduction to this storyline. The big apocalyptic finale that seemed to be hinted at in part one was nowhere to be found here. Instead of an apocalypse, the climax was a kiss. But it worked--quite well. So, despite my expectations, this episode was still terrific for what it was, and maybe ever more for what it has set up for the third season.

Parks and Recreation continued their king of Thursday night comedy reign (note to fans of Community: I watched its finale as well, and while it was quite good, I still struggle to connect with most of the characters) with "Freddy Spaghetti," a finale episode that gave me welcome flashbacks to The Office's amazing second season finale. I'm not saying that this episode was as good as "Casino Night," but goddamn, what is? This episode was simply a great finish to a surprisingly good season of a show that I nearly wrote off one year ago. These things were awesome: Ron caring about Leslie keeping her job, April and Andy finally getting in sync (briefly, at least), and Rob Lowe, who is fucking killing it as "good cop."

The Office's "Whistleblower" was a good episode, but it didn't really deliver much that we have come to expect from season finales of this series. I guess the promise of Holly returning and what's going to happen with Dwight's purchase of the office complex are the cliffhangers...? Not that there needs to be a cliffhanger in a finale. The episode as a whole worked quite well and was satisfying as a standalone story. I loved Nick the IT guy calling out everyone in the office, and was pleased to see Andy and Erin briefly reconnecting.

I did not enjoy 30 Rock's season finale, "I Do Do," as much as last week's episode, but there were plenty of laughs to be had, and WTF moments, and Matt Damon (!). It definitely felt more like a season finale than The Office. Storylines were resolved, sometimes in questionable ways (pregnancy?--you're poking fun at other series, right, Tina Fey?) and sometimes in surprisingly sad ways (when did Wesley became so sympathetic?). And drunk Kenneth was pretty great.

Friday, May 21st
Loved: Party Down (2x5)
Liked: The Ricky Gervais Show (1x13), Stargate Universe (1x18)

Stargate Universe felt very SG1-ish this week with "Subversion," bringing the underused (justifiably?--they are pretty lame...) Lucian Alliance into play for the first time since the premiere. This episode was somewhat underwhelming in its reduced focus on Destiny and the characters I actually care about, and over-reliance on communication stone contrivances (again!), but this storyline has two more episodes to impress me.

This week, Party Down's crew were given the day off to party at "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday." This hilarious episode made inspired use of Steve Guttenberg (yet another in a long line of Veronica Mars vets to show up in Party Down) and gave us a taste of Roman's "hard sci-fi" writing while also introducing his awesome writing partner.

Saturday, May 22nd
Loved: Doctor Who (5x8), Legend of the Seeker (2x22)

"The Hungry Earth" was another strong Doctor Who episode, a surprisingly low-key reintroduction to the Silurians in the form of a slow paced character-focused episode with a palpable feeling of building tension. The ending of the episode promised a bigger story for next week's second part. I'll offer my opinion on the Silurians as (new to me) villains and on the two-parter as a whole next week, because this episode by itself only told half a story and is therefore difficult to review.

The problem with a series like Legend of the Seeker where one of the main characters is an all-powerful wizard, and there are no clear rules of wizardry, is that anything can happen and sometimes victories feel thoroughly unearned. The fundamental flaw of season finale "Tears" was that the storyline was effectively an endless sequence of "a wizard did it!" moments, starting with the far too easy way last week's cliffhanger was wiped away and ending with the single biggest unexplained plot contrivance I have ever witnessed. Sounds pretty awful, right? Wrong; it was great! It was a big, dumb masterpiece--the epitome of everything that was awesome and terrible about this second season. I'll miss you, show.

Sunday, May 23rd
Loved: Lost (6x17/18)

I watched four and a half hours of Lost-related content on Sunday evening, starting with the two-hour recap special, which was the only one of the hundred or so Lost recap specials over the past six years that I actually watched from beginning to end. It was more or less a waste of time. And then it was time for "The End."

The fascinating thing about "The End" is how completely satisfying and unsatisfying it was at the same fucking time. If you look at the finale from a perspective of character resolution, overriding series themes, and premiere to finale symmetry, it was brilliant. Emotionally powerful, action-packed, and never boring; the finale worked wonderfully in terms of storytelling. If you look at it from a perspective of "Where's my fucking answers, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof?!?" it was a crushing disappointment. Because there were NO ANSWERS. Well, okay there was ONE ANSWER: the sideways flashes were explained, at least. The island remained a complete enigma. Maybe there could be no satisfying answers, so this was the best approach? "Across the Sea" was certainly evidence for that idea. In the end, this series finale does not tarnish Lost in my eyes in any way, because I primarily watched for the characters and their stories, not the mysteries, but I would also completely understand it if someone else sees this finale as a travesty.

Now it's time for me to find out what the rest of Lost fandom thought, starting with Television Without Pity... this should be entertaining.

The Revenge of Brewblog

2010-05-21T12:04:00.004-06:00

Brewing, exercising, vacationing--two of those things are way more awesome than the third (guess!), but all three are the subjects of today's random nonsense post.

Brewblog, Entry Three

Another two weeks have passed with another two Saturday brew days. We will need a well stocked beer inventory to get through summer, so there will hopefully be another two May brew days and then one in June before summer vacations and weddings and life interrupt.

On May 8th, we brewed our fourth experimental--for science!--beer, aka the Brewniversity series, a Blonde Ale made with a simple grain bill of Pale and Munich Malt and only US Goldings hops for bittering, flavour, and aroma. Previous Brewniversity beers have included: the not-so-great 101, originally known as "Ten, One, and One," which is a reference to its simple recipe of ten pounds Pale Malt, one ounce of Cascade hops for bittering, and one ounce of Cascade hops for flavour; the much, much better 122, which added specialty malts to the mix and more Cascade hops; and the arguably even better (I still prefer the 122, but it's close) 124, which was similar to the 122 but with slight modifications to the grain bill and a notably different Cascade hops addition schedule, and the unusual dry hop addition of loose-leaf Perle. The recipe for Brewniversity #4, aka Goldings Ale, aka the 112, was primarily formulated in the spirit of the 122. If it turns out as good as I think it will, a 124-style recipe may be attempted at a later date. Or maybe we'll do Brewniversity #5 as a 124-style Willamette Ale?

With Trevor's Blonde done its primary fermentation, the plan for May 15th was to make use of the Belgian Abbey yeast cake that had formed at the bottom of the primary fermenter. We had originally thought we'd attempt a second Tripel, but ultimately there isn't a huge difference between most Tripel recipes and the recipe we'd used for Trevor's Blonde. This gave us an opportunity to try something different.

Not to toot my own horn too much, but the following story is an illustration of my growing intuition for beer recipe formulation, with notable aid from Beersmith Brewing Software. Since late last fall when brew days moved to my garage, I have been responsible for formulating 90% of the recipes for brew day. Most of the early recipes came directly from external sources such as books or the Internet, and I was simply transposing them to Beersmith. But, more and more, I have been creating the recipes on my own, sometimes with inspiration from similar recipes, often with inspiration from past brew days, but increasingly pulled straight out of my head (or, if you prefer, ass). It is worth noting that beer recipe formulation is actually not that hard (for most beer styles that we regularly make) with the help of brewing software, but it is a critical component for creating an excellent beer and I take it very seriously--and I'm always striving for improvement. The 122 and 124 are examples of beers that I made up and am quite proud of. I also made up our Vanilla Porter (some minor adjustments could take it from good to awesome), Blackout Stout (jury's still out), and Scottish Ale (significant room for improvement). And I am always tweaking our recurring beers such as the Matrimonial Ale and Scott's Stout series. This whole paragraph is just a long preamble to the actual story.

We often plan our brew days through email while I am at work, which puts me in the shitty position of not being able to browse beer recipes (blocked by Internet filters!). But I do have the PDF of the BJCP Style Guidelines with me at all times. So, with a Belgian yeast to use, and no recipe selected, I opened up the style guide for inspiration. And there it was: Category 16E, Belgian Specialty Ale. From a quick read it appeared that you could make any base beer style but use a Belgian yeast, and you just might have an entry for Belgian Specialty Ale. And it immediately came to my mind that we should do an IPA--a Belgian IPA! And, with that inspiration, I started formulating the recipe in my head. We could use a similar malt profile as the Matrimonial Ale series, with minor tweaks, but use different hops (our Matrimonial Ale almost exclusively uses Columbus hops) to give it a more Belgian feel. For bittering, I selected Chinook, an American hop which had worked quite well in our Punk IPA clone. For flavour and aroma, I decided to go with the traditional Saaz, as you will find in many, many Belgian beers. I quickly drafted up an email, sent it off, and got very positive response from the group. When I got home, I pulled out Radical Brewing, my favourite of my books on hand for recipe ideas, to see if Randy Mosher had a Belgian IPA recipe. And he did. And it was exactly the same as the recipe I had made up in my head at work. Same malts, same hops. Awesome. I took that as pretty strong validation that I know what the fuck I am doing.

Saturday mornings before brew days are often busy for me. I frequently start by cleaning my house, vacuuming up as much of the dog and cat hair as I can. Typical brew day preparation includes recipe finalization, measuring out the grains, cleaning equipment, checking our propane stock, warming up the mash cooler, and stocking the fridge with precious brew day fuel. The morning of May 15th was even busier than usual, as I had to rack the 112 (aka Goldings Ale) into a carboy to free up a primary fermenter, and I had to sort bottles, because that day's plan included the bottling of our Anniversary Bitter 2 and Simon's Blonde during the Belgian IPA mash.

At the tail end of the brew day, we had to rack Trevor's Blonde to allow us to reuse the Belgian Abbey yeast cake. We took one scoop of yeast for the Belgian IPA and a second scoop to try our first experiment with yeast ranching. That second scoop of yeast is sitting in my refrigerator right now in a large plastic container also filled with water. At some point I will attempt to decant the cleaned yeast into a smaller container and store it until the next Belgian brew day. I need to do some more research on exactly what I am doing here...

The plan for tomorrow's brew day is Scott's Stout 4. I don't intend to modify the Scott's Stout 3 recipe much, as it is pretty much exactly what it was supposed to be, but there is one major change in that we will be using a liquid Wyeast (1028 London Ale) instead of the standard dry Safale yeast we have used in the past. At the end of primary fermentation, I intend to try to ranch this yeast as well, because it should come in handy over and over again, but my fridge can't hold much more containers of yeast than that. With nothing to bottle tomorrow, it will likely be a 30-minute mash day. And this will be the first 90-minute boil for a Scott's Stout, which could have interesting results.

The one additional task I have for tomorrow, or possibly tonight, is the racking of the Bushwakker Russian Imperial Stout that was created on May 8th at the ALES club Big Brew Day. I don't want to go into too many details about that day, but effectively: the brewmaster at Bushwakker brewed over 600L of wort, we collected our 20L share, and we added our own yeast. We used Wyeast's Denny's Favorite 50 for this beer, which is an interesting all-purpose yeast that I will also try to ranch for future experimentation.

Shaping Up!--for reals

I have now biked to work on nine out of the last ten days. That definitely counts as shaping up. I now see no reason why I can't continue to bike to work every (reasonable) day this summer.

To counter that, I have been slacking heavily on the 100 Push-ups and 200 Sit-ups challenges. I can't help but notice that both push-ups and sit-ups are much harder when you have twenty extra pounds in your stomach area. I also need to step up the strength training for my arms before I start losing whatever little muscle I have there.

I'm already starting to see evidence of weight loss, and I am definitely feeling much better about myself. The daily bike rides are only one piece of the puzzle. I have also significantly improved my diet by eliminating the consumption of bags of chips (which is easy when you simply skip that aisle at the grocery store). One of the biggest unhealthy kicks I was on for the past few months was Tostitos and salsa, often consumed a bag and a jar at a time. Thanks to some smart thinking by a couple of friends, I have now replaced the tortilla chips with celery and cucumbers with acceptable results.

Daisy would probably appreciate more walks, but when I get home after biking from work, I don't exactly feel like going for a walk. Especially when there are TV finales to watch! But that excuse runs out on the coming Monday, so... fuck.

My Summer Staycation (now with 50% less Stay?)

My two-week holiday in June was always going to start with a weekend trip to Hanna, AB, to attend the wedding of my ex-brother-in-law. And I was hoping to follow that up with a short visit to Calgary. But now I may end up spending most of my first week in the Calgary area, with some of that time spent camping in Banff--which is by no means at all a bad thing. I can read a book in a camping spot in Banff just as easily as I can in my backyard. And I don't really care about the extra costs--although National Parks do rip you the fuck off with their park entry fees...

The major thing in my life that keeps me stuck at home (or quite possibly it's just an excuse) is my pets. Daisy will be coming with me to Alberta in June, which does make the situation easier in this trip's case, but there will still be three cats left at home. I will have to get someone to pop in to see and feed the cats a couple of times, which is not in itself a big deal, but that also means training that person to use the alarm system and trusting that person alone in my house. What can I say?--I worry about stupid things sometimes. I wonder if my dad would be up for doing this...

There was very nearly some big news re: that wedding of my ex-brother-in-law last week. In the most shocking question asked of me in all of 2010, my ex-brother-in-law (that I never talk to anymore) asked if I would be one of his groomsmen. Surprisingly, I actually considered the offer for a good ten minutes before turning it down as gracefully as possible in 140 characters--because this important conversation was via text messaging! Kids, today!

Week in Review, May 10 to 16

2010-05-17T16:44:00.002-06:00

The Week in Television

What's that? NBC renewed Chuck for a fourth season and finally put Heroes out of my misery? Awesome.

Also good news: this television season is nearly at its end.

Monday, May 10th
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x21), Chuck (3x16), House (6x20), How I Met Your Mother (5x22)

"Chuck Versus the Tooth" had some interesting ideas and cool dream sequences, and it makes sense that the Intersect would fuck with Chuck's brain like that, but this episode's biggest flaw was that there were no hints of this storyline in previous episodes. One or two similar dream sequences in the past couple of episodes would have gone a long way toward making this episode a winner. The best thing to come out of this episode was Ellie's storyline and how that is leading to the return of Chuck's dad.

"Robots Vs. Wrestlers" was another iffy How I Met Your Mother episode. Lots of funny stuff, sure, such as Mexican Wrestler Ted and Pretentious Ted in his element, but the episode had a bizarre message that I can not support. Enjoying the company of fellow intellectuals makes you a douchebag? No.

The first half of The Big Bang Theory's "The Plimpton Stimulation" was terrific, with Sheldon welcoming his new lady friend (but not in that way) to their apartment, and Leonard getting a surprise visit in the night. The episode went a little off the rails in the second half, although Raj did his best to redeem it, and it was lacking an ending in a big way.

This week's House episode, "Baggage," the first I've commented on in ages, was actually quite good, with the writers finally remembering that House was in mental institution for two hours at the beginning of the season--although if they expect us to believe that House has been in therapy this whole time, they should maybe have mentioned that once or twice. I liked the slick way the therapy session was entangled in the medical mystery of the week. And I enjoyed the return of Alvie, although that character is definitely a case of a little goes a long way.

Tuesday, May 11th
Liked: Glee (1x18), Lost (6x15)

"Across the Sea" was easily the biggest disappointment of the season for many Lost fans. How could the origin story of Jacob and the Man in Black be one of the lesser episodes of this season? For those expecting an episode on the level of the Richard Alpert centric "Ab Aeterno," it wasn't to be. Awkward acting, very few solid answers--instead, we got answers that are still vague and confusing--and a story that could have been told in half the time. Having said all that, I still liked it quite a bit and felt it was thematically consistent with the series, but I'm one of a select few. With only 3.5 hours left in the series, which I am still very much looking forward to, it remains to be seen if this episode will look better in retrospect, or if it will look much, much worse.

Glee's "Laryngitis" had a couple of great storylines (Puck being a dick, and anything involving Kurt and his dad) and one completely awful storyline (Rachel losing her voice, but being inspired by a paralyzed friend of Finn--really, show, really?). The music was above average this week with great renditions of "Jessie's Girl," "The Lady is a Tramp," and "[Kurt]'s Turn," but also included a questionable version of "One" that tied into the awful paralyzed guy story. (Nintendo fanboy nitpick: if you are going to make jokes referencing the Super Mario Bros series, do better research! Star World was introduced in Super Mario World, not Super Mario Bros 3. Sheesh!)

Wednesday, May 12th
Liked: Modern Family (1x23)

"Hawaii" wasn't as good for me as last week's airport-based Modern Family, but it still had plenty of good moments. Phil's futile efforts to turn the family trip into an overdue honeymoon for him and Claire was the strongest through story, and easily had the best ending with a surprisingly well-handled dramatic moment. Also excellent: Manny and Luke as mismatched roommates.

Thursday, May 13th
Loved: Fringe (2x22), Parks and Recreation (2x23)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x21), The Office (6x25)
Meh: Survivor (20x14)

The best thing on TV this week was Fringe's "Over There, Part One," the first part (obviously) of a very cool game-changing season finale. Awesome: two universes, two Walters, and two distinct Fringe teams, as well as the return of the Cortexiphan kids (with a nod to Heroes), the ZFT, Peter reunited with his real mother, and William Bell. Not quite so awesome: the Heroes are all dead, already?--dammit show!

Parks and Recreation introduced new cast members Rob Lowe and Adam Scott with the fun "The Master Plan," where proposed budget costs threatened Leslie's world and, hilariously, amused Ron to no end. April's birthday party led to the best moments, including Tom's hopeless attempt to court a bar full of women, Ann getting wasted drunk, and April and Andy still unable to get in sync.

The Office's "The Chump" was anther solid episode. The Dwight and Angela storyline was quite funny, and had the best payoff when it tied into Jim and Pam's sleeping on the job storyline. Pam's plan to keep Michael's spirits up after the expected end of his relationship with Donna was amusingly elaborate, and Andy's terrible plan to introduce Michael to Donna's husband brought the awkward in a big way. Also good: Toby hate.

30 Rock's absurdly titled "Emanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land" was very funny. Liz's attempt to give her old boyfriends second chances worked out about as well as would be expected, with "future husband" Wesley somehow looking better and better to her because the only thing wrong with him is that she hates him. Brilliant.

This week's Thursday Survivor was pretty uninteresting, with the next member of the jury being obvious from the start, and no major moves made to change shit up. Family reunion episodes always come up a little short for me, because I don't fucking care about these people's families, although I did laugh at how pissed Colby got with his brother during the challenge. And it's very lame that the show kept setting up immunity challenges that strongly favoured tiny Parvati.

Friday, May 14th
Loved: Party Down (2x4)
Liked: The Ricky Gervais Show (1x12), Stargate Universe (1x17)

Stargate Universe's "Pain" was an okay episode, well-constructed for the most part, with good character development for Chloe, Scott, and Rush, as well as less used characters Volker and James. Greer's storyline was the weak link for me, and when the episode devolved into Greer taking Rush and Camile captive, it lost my interest.

If you hire Party Down to cater a funeral, you get what you deserve. "James Ellison Funeral" was full of ridiculous moments, many cringe-worthy and awkward, but just as many laugh out loud funny.

Saturday, May 15th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x7), Legend of the Seeker (2x21)

"Amy's Choice" was a pretty fantastic standalone Doctor Who episode, with a terrific villain in the Dream Lord, crazy old people doing their best zombie impressions, a cool twist ending that actually makes beautiful sense, and good characterization of everyone. I'm still really enjoying the addition of Rory to the crew of the Tardis.

I certainly did not expect the big two-part season/series finale of Legend of the Seeker to go the direction that it went in "Unbroken," but after my initial WTF-ness, I completely got behind this concept and enjoyed the hell out of it. And, holy shit, that was a pretty bleak ending, leaving a lot hanging off the cliff for part two to pull up. The biggest problem with taking an alternate universe approach to the story telling is that they did the exact same thing with the first season finale. Way to rip yourselves off, guys! Next week: the last Legend of the Seeker ever... sad.

Saturday, May 16th
Liked: Survivor

This Sunday was the big three-hour Survivor finale event. Which means, as is typical: shit loads of filler, such as the 15-minute recap of the season and the silly and boring walk of fallen tribe-mates; the jury being bitter; and the least deserving of the final three winning the game. The reunion show was actually the most enjoyable of the three hours, with Russell being an ass about wanting to change the rules of the game to favour his shitty social play style. But the best thing about the three-hour Survivor finale event: this means that the show is over for a few months--yay! It was a good season, well above average, but watching Survivor is overall a thoroughly empty experience. I probably won't be back in the fall; I'll wait for the next all-stars season.

Week in Review, May 3 to 9

2010-05-10T16:56:00.001-06:00

The Week in Television

This was an unusually busy week (OLP concert, ALES meeting, family gatherings), so I didn't have a lot of spare time. On Sunday, with shitty weather outside again and a few hours to kill, I finally started watching the first season of Breaking Bad. So far, so very, very good. Each episode has had one or two "holy shit!" moments, often with one as a cliffhanger. I don't know how this series can be in a third season as it seems like such a time-limited concept, but I'll definitely be finding out in the coming weeks.

Monday, May 3rd
Loved: The Big Bang Theory (3x20)
Liked: Chuck (3x15), How I Met Your Mother (5x21)
Meh: House (6x19)

"Chuck Versus the Role Models" was a goofy, mostly inconsequential episode, feeling more like an episode from earlier in the series. There is nothing wrong with that, and a lot of the fans want exactly this, but I was amused but unmoved. The ending provided hope for bigger episodes to come.

How I Met Your Mother revisited both Barney and Robin and Ted and Robin with "Twin Beds," an episode that had some good ideas, and some quite funny Drunk Ted scenes, but was fundamentally flawed because Don has been such a non-entity in the series that it makes no sense for Robin to be changing her entire life philosophy for this guy that we know nothing about. The title actually refers to the amusing B-story of Marshall and Lily experimenting with twin beds to get better sleep.

The Big Bang Theory writers came up with a great idea for "The Spaghetti Catalyst," sticking Sheldon uncomfortably between the now broken up Leonard and Penny. This is the kind of Sheldon episode that I can get behind, and consequently I really enjoyed it. It was a little much when Leonard and Penny started explicitly treating Sheldon as a child in a custody battle, but I still laughed at the absurdity of it all. I also watched this episode with my grandma, who had never seen the show before and got a pretty big kick out of both Sheldon and Raj, which maybe made it funnier than if I had watched it alone.

Tuesday, May 4th
Loved: Lost (6x14)
Liked: Glee (1x17)

Holy shit! Did all of that really just happen?!? Lost's "The Candidate" kicked the season ending action into gear in a big, big way, while finally answering some questions about Not!Locke's motivations and continuing this season's trend of Jack actually being kinda awesome. The sideways flashes were used this week to help the audience catch their breath, telling a quieter but no less interesting story about the other Jack and Locke.

"Bad Reputation" was a much better Glee episode than the last few, with a number of excellent musical moments, most notably "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (which has a bad reputation now?) and "Can't Touch This" (which had the best payoff of the night). A lot of people hate when Matthew Morrison raps, but his "Ice Ice Baby" was also enjoyable for me. The storylines were also much more interesting (and absurd!--Olivia Newton John, really?) this week, with my favourite moment being Emma confronting Will about his dishonesty.

Wednesday, May 5th
Liked: Modern Family (1x22)

There was lots of funny stuff in Modern Family's "Airport 2010," the first episode in a two-part Hawaii trip storyline, including Jay's exasperation about "Gloria's money," Dylan getting trapped, and Mitchell reacting to Phil's driving. But Manny getting taken away for questioning by airport security was thoroughly unbelievable.

Thursday, May 6th
Loved: Parks and Recreation (2x22), Fringe (2x21), Survivor (20x13)
Liked: The Office (6x24)
Meh: 30 Rock (4x20)

While "Telethon" was not quite as good as last week's Parks and Recreation, it was another hilarious episode with smart use of the entire cast. Written by Amy Poehler! There were many great Jerry jokes, some cute April and Andy moments, drunk Tom, Ron being his usual awesome self, and Leslie in way over her head.

"The Moms" was not a great episode of 30 Rock for me. It frequently crossed the thin line from stupid funny to just stupid.

"The Cover-Up" was a solid episode of The Office. The series is typically more fun with Michael in good spirits, although that had to inevitably crash and burn somehow. In light of the episode ending twist, Donna's strange behaviour in last week's episode makes loads more sense. I also enjoyed Jim and Pam's Morse Code prank on Dwight and Andy and "Darnell" learning about Sabre's dirty secret.

"Northwest Passage" was a strong Peter focused episode of Fringe, effectively tying the series' ongoing arc to a monster (er, serial killer) of the week storyline. Despite being heavily foreshadowed, the ending still packed a hell of a punch.

I am willing to admit when I am wrong. And I was wrong that the rest of this season of Survivor was going to be boring and predictable. After last week's episode, I never would have predicted the two new members of the jury this week. Candice got what was coming to her in a very satisfying boot, and then Russell destroyed any hope he had of winning in a jury vote by turning against his own alliance and orchestrating Danielle's early exit. Rupert surprised me again this week by actually playing the game, hard, and not once whining about his toe.

Friday, May 7th
Loved: Party Down (2x3), Stargate Universe (1x16)
Liked: The Ricky Gervais Show (1x11)

Stargate Universe's "Sabotage" was another strong episode, continuing the alien threat storyline while dealing with the last episode's cliffhanger as if it was an afterthought. There was also clever use of the communication stones to introduce an interesting new character that will hopefully be back again.

New cast member Megan Mullally was surprisingly key to a lot of best moments in Party Down's hilarious "Nick DiCintio's Orgy Night," as she absurdly attempted repeatedly to partake in said orgy. Guest star Thomas Lennon was also fantastic as the bitter divorcee throwing this poorly planned party.

Saturday, May 8th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x6), Legend of the Seeker (2x20)

"The Vampires of Venice" was a fun Doctor Who episode, with the Doctor reacting perfectly to the crazy ending of last week's episode by bringing Amy's fiance Rory along for the adventure. The sparring between the Doctor and Rory was actually the highlight of the episode, bringing the funny numerous times. The alien creatures were cool, the story was pretty good if a little confusingly open-ended, and the scenery and architecture were quite spectacular (I had flashbacks to playing Assassin's Creed II).

In Legend of the Seeker's pretty good "Eternity," Kahlan and Richard rescued the Stone of Tears (finally!) from a creepy Creator cult while Cara and Zedd were captured and tortured by a newly re-bad-ass-ified Darken Rahl. The episode-ending twist, which I should have seen coming from a mile away but did not, nicely set up the big two part season/series finale.

Sunday, May 9th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x13)

So, my favourite team, the cowboys, didn't pull off the win, but awful Brent and Caite didn't win either, so that was a decent ending to an average season of The Amazing Race. And I don't think we've ever seen a sour grapes bitch fest at the finish line like we got here with Caite vs Brandy.

About Me - Skeptic

2010-05-06T20:44:00.004-06:00

In one of the first posts on this blog, The World As I See It, I established my skeptical leanings pretty clearly. Ten days later, I focused on Atheism in its own About Me post. This long delayed post is about my many other areas of skeptical inquiry.

Of all the terms in my About Me list, skeptic is probably the easiest to abuse. Even the most gullible people in the world think they are skeptics of one thing or another. But, most of the time, these people aren't using skepticism properly.

Some re-frame skepticism in terms of conspiracy theories, usually involving government cover-ups or mysterious shadow groups that secretly hold all of the world's money and/or power. These tin-foil hat wearing lunatics are my favourite type of phony skeptic, because they are at least usually fucking hilarious. Their campaigns of misinformation are generally harmless and thoroughly inane.

Some misapply skepticism to well established scientific theories that they can not even begin to understand. No one person can know everything, but when the scientific consensus among the specialists in a field is that one theory unifies all of their evidence, who the fuck are you to think you know better? That's not skepticism; that's stupidity. And these stupid motherfuckers are continually working at spreading their bullshit and compromising human knowledge, because if there is one thing that science is terrible at, it's public relations. How is it possible that in two-thousand and fucking ten, there are still numerous people out there that are skeptical about evolution, the approximate age of the Earth, and anthropogenic global warming? Leaving aside the unavoidable impact of religiously inspired ignorance, this stupidity is possible because in public debate, it is much, much harder to explain scientific evidence in terms that everyone will understand than it is to distort that scientific evidence with lie after lie after fucking lie. And, sadly, it is the nature of the beast that there will be gaps in the scientific evidence. (But a gap in the fossil record proves that the Christian God created us in his image 10,000 years ago how? To briefly continue this tangent, it is amusing to realize that every transitional fossil that is discovered actually creates two new gaps where previously there was one. Science can never defeat the fucking god of the gaps!) Scientists can only do their best to develop theories that fit the available evidence, with continual improvement as more evidence is discovered, or--and this is where science is awesome!--a complete rethinking if contradictory evidence is ever discovered. Now, please remember that this paragraph was about established scientific consensus. It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of new scientific ideas, at least until corroborating evidence is available.

Expanding upon both of those groups into not at all hilarious and extremely dangerous territory, some of these phony skeptics misapply skepticism to modern medicine, notably targeting the safety of vaccinations. This group both distrusts science and sees conspiracies everywhere. You will know you are dealing with one of these assholes if there are any mentions of conspiracies involving "Big Pharma," derogatory usage of terms like "Western Medicine" or "Allopathic Medicine" (as opposed to "Holistic Medicine"), inane "quantum" babbling, or an unwavering belief that a vaccine caused their child's autism, evidence to the contrary be damned. I'm not saying that no one should ever be skeptical of the medical industry or new medical treatments, because any time corporations and profit motive are involved, there is going to be some bullshit, but you can't ignore evidence when the medicine works.

Skepticism depends on reason, rationality, and, as already mentioned a hundred times, evidence. Skeptics are often accused of having a closed mind, but skepticism is the correct application of an open mind. Skeptics are also willing to be proven wrong. Many people claiming to have open minds are actually so unwilling to consider the possibility that they are wrong in their personal beliefs about the world, that they have the most closed mind of all. Maintaining a contrarian position on a generally accepted truth with mountains of available evidence is not skepticism.

This post is not about providing evidence that the three groups of phony skeptics that I have identified above are the lunatics and assholes and stupid motherfuckers that I have labeled them as. (The evidence that they are wrong is freely and widely available.) This post is about my personal skepticism. I just wanted to introduce the topic by establishing what skepticism is not. And maybe tweak some people for fun.

This is a little redundant with the last few items on the previously mentioned The World As I See It post, but I am primarily skeptical of the following: the efficacy of alternative medicine, which includes seemingly plausible but unproven ideas like herbal medicine, chiropractic medicine, and naturopathy, as well as blatant quack nonsense such as homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture, and Chinese medicine; the existence of the supernatural, which includes "I would love to be proven wrong!" shit such as psychic powers telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance, obviously fictional creatures such as vampires, werewolves, Bigfoot, and Nessie, as well as religious nonsense like ghosts and demons (and god, but I've covered that topic enough); and the presence of extraterrestrial life on Earth, which, again, I would love to be proven wrong about, and obviously includes alien abduction stories and anything relating to the general public's perception of Roswell and Area 51.

In the case of the first two of those topics, something interesting happens if any of these concepts are proven to be true: the alternative medicine becomes medicine, and the supernatural becomes natural. Science will always welcome new effective medicines with open arms, provided they meet the required standards of testing (oh, sorry, how dare science insist on that?!?), and scientists would be thrilled to test a genuine psychic, fundamentally altering our understanding of how the human brain works. Goddamn, who would not love to suddenly acquire fucking psychic powers? And I would be just as happy (but absurdly jealous) to meet someone that could move shit with his fucking force powers. Sadly, this awesome person does not exist. And, despite everything science fiction has taught me about advanced human evolution, it does not necessarily lead to advanced human brain power. Damn!

Along with the previously mentioned "closed mind" canard, one of my favourite silly misconceptions about skeptics is that we have no sense of wonder. How dare we reject a wonderful idea just because we haven't yet found evidence for that idea? Here's the thing: science is a wonderful thing; the universe is full of wonders that we do have evidence for. I reserve my sense of wonder for the true wonders of this amazing universe we live in.

And then there's always the classic tack of insisting that you can't prove a negative. Fair enough, I guess I can't prove that there is no one on Earth with psychic powers. But the burden of proof for your ridiculous idea is on you, not me. A famous Carl Sagan quote is appropriate here: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." And the people claiming psychic powers repeatedly fail to offer that extraordinary proof. Damn my insistence on evidence!

Oh, what's that? You heard a psychic say some amazing things on TV one time? The psychic couldn't possibly have known those things? Actually, I really hope that no one reading this blog is that fucking naive, but in case you are: please educate yourself on hot and cold reading. Google is your friend. While you are at it, also look into confirmation bias and anecdotal evidence.

Now, I'm not actually going to go into any more details on the topics I am skeptical about (in this post, at least). We've already established that the burden of proof for a wacky idea is with the originator of the wacky idea. There are oodles of information already available on these topics at places like Quackwatch, The Skeptic's Dictionary, and the James Randi Educational Foundation, among hundreds of other excellent educational sites.

And, of course, you will just as easily find hundreds of sites claiming that I am wrong about all of these topics. Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing? Yes, yes, it is. What's the difference between the sites I have listed and the quack sites? Ignoring quality of web design, although an awful colour scheme and ridiculous text fonts are pretty good indications that you are on a quack site, the important difference is the lack of evidence. It always comes back to the evidence. The quack sites will usually try to fake it, relying either on scientific sounding words arranged nonsensically ("I do not think that word means what you think it means.") or completely untrustworthy anecdotal evidence. But if their claims are true, there should also be corroborating evidence elsewhere. And there won't be.

When I first started this blog, I was expecting to spend more time writing about skepticism. Being a skeptic is important to me, something that truly defines me, but it is also a subject that is well covered on many blogs elsewhere, so I haven't felt the need to contribute. I'm not saying that this is going to change, but this post is at least a good introduction to the topic if it does.

The Return of Brewblog (and more!)

2010-05-05T16:04:00.005-06:00

This slapped together blog post includes more homebrew discussion, which I quite enjoying writing about actually, so expect to see a lot more of these type of posts, followed by a couple of my standard monthly "Blogging about..." topics. And I finish with a hopefully entertaining story of a rock concert and a girl.

Brewblog, Entry Two

Since the last Brewblog entry, we have created two Blonde Ales on two Saturday brew days.

The first, an American-style Blonde Ale, which I have dubbed Simon's Blonde, was made with a medium-sized grain bill of Pale and Wheat malts, and only Amarillo hops. It should be a malty, light beer with moderate hop bitterness and low hop aroma. We attempted the 30-minute mash again on this brew day, with the far less encouraging result of 72% efficiency. It does appear that the size of the grain bill greatly affects our efficiency, but I haven't been able to figure out the exact equation yet.

The second, a Belgian-style Blonde Ale, which I have dubbed Trevor's Blonde, was made with a larger grain bill of Pilsener and Biscuit malt, plus a sugar addition, and only Saaz hops. It should be slightly sweet with a dry finish, well balanced by the hops, and because of the Belgian yeast used, have some pleasant fruity esters in the aroma. Our efficiency was just under 72% on this day, but that was with a 60-minute mash. Of the two Blonde Ales, I am most looking forward to Trevor's Blonde, as we have had interesting and promising results with Belgian beers in the past.

During the Trevor's Blonde mash, we bottled our month and a half old Imperial Stout, which I dubbed Blackout Stout when it was supposed to be 9% abv--but it's only 7% in actuality, because our efficiency was below 70% on that day (HUGE grain bill), and its gravity finished higher than expected. (I have seen the same result of gravity finishing higher than expected with Scott's Stout 2 and 3, as well, so it may simply be an issue with Brewsmith's predictive abilities with dark roasted grains.) Blackout Stout is a strongly bitter, roasty stout, but it would not do well in competition as a Russian Imperial Stout. If any bottles last the year (extremely unlikely), I may try entering it into competition as an American Stout.

For the coming Saturday brew day, I have proposed doing a simple mostly (or possibly only) Pale malt recipe with a single variety of hops used for bittering, flavour, and aroma. We have done interesting experiments of this nature in the past with Cascade hops, but I'm curious about what results you'd get with Goldings, Fuggles, Hallertau, Chinook, or Northern Brewer, to name a few of our lesser used hops.

In terms of beer ingredients, up until a month ago our biggest expense was hops. Purchased locally, a one ounce bag of hops costs $5. Knowing we were getting hosed, we found a supplier online that sells hops for an average of $10 per pound. With shipping and taxes, we are now getting hops for just over $1 per ounce, which is a huge cost savings. I now have nearly ten pounds of hops (AWESOME!) in my refrigerator freezer (uh oh) in ten different varieties (AWESOME!), specially selected to cover pretty much any beer style I could think of, allowing for reasonable substitutions.

The next biggest expense is probably specialty grains, or maybe liquid yeasts, but it's not easy to maintain a large stock of either of those ingredients. As much as I'd love to have a giant bag of roasted barley on hand for easy stout creation, that is completely impractical for the size of our operation and the size of my house. There has been some discussion of trying to reuse liquid yeasts, since they cost $10 a shot, but if we were going to start doing that on any kind of large scale, I'd need a second refrigerator for sure.

And that's about all I have to say on the subject of homebrewing today.

Shaping Up?

Yes!

Finally.

I noticed a couple weeks ago that my face was getting fat. That was the turning point. I had been ignoring the ever expanding gut for a couple months, but once my weight gain spread to my face in such an obvious way, I could no longer pretend that my lazy ass lifestyle was not harming me. A quick Wii Fit weigh-in confirmed that I had gained 20 pounds in the last few months. Holy fuck.

Not only have I restarted both the 100 Pushups and 200 Situps challenges (because a structured program will always work best for me), but I've been regularly running on my elliptical machine and doing a little bit of strength training (or best approximation thereof possible with the Total Gym that my ex-wife bought a few years ago). I was also walking Daisy on a daily basis, until the weather went to shit.

I also bought a new bike on my birthday. It is a Trek Allant, part of Trek's "Urban" series. I have only ridden it once to work so far, but I couldn't have anticipated the awful fucking weather we are getting now when I bought it. Buying a new city bike was pretty much the only way I was going to motivate myself to bike to work this summer, because my mountain bike is hurting. A tune up would probably go a long way, but a new bike goes a lot longer.

How quickly can I shed 20 pounds? Stay tuned.

Oh, thank jebus!

My fifteen year high school reunion has been canceled due to lack of interest. Ha! Awesome.

The ALES club annual BBQ was scheduled for the same day in June, so now I can attend that instead. Awesome.

My June vacation is looking better and better. I am even now looking forward to a certain wedding. Weird. But also: awesome.

A Story About a Girl

On Monday night, I attended "An Evening With Our Lady Peace," a cool concert at the Conexus Arts Centre where OLP played their entire album Clumsy in the first set and then played the rest of their hits in the second set. No opening act necessary.

This story is not so much about the concert itself (which was very good) as it is about my harrowing experience during the concert. Harrowing? That might be a tad strong.

Side story that has nothing to do with the rest of this: when I drove up to the Conexus Arts Centre before the show, I spotted a familiar face. The one and only girl that I met online and then in person in 2009 was standing on the sidewalk waiting for a friend. I had totally forgotten that she was a huge Our Lady Peace fan. I doubt she noticed me as I drove past, but when walking up to the front door, I nearly ran right into her and did an obvious about-face dodge to start walking the other direction, pretending to take a call on my cell phone. God, I am so lame.

So, anyway, inside the theatre, my seat was second from the right in the fourth row on the floor. That's a mouthful to establish that it was quite close to the stage. Easily the best seat I've ever had for a concert of this size. The seat next to me, on the aisle, was empty. During the first set, everyone on the floor stayed in their seats, which was a nice surprise for me because I fucking hate standing. Therefore, the first set was extremely enjoyable. Sit back and listen to a great band play one of their best albums? Fuck yeah.

As the band came out for their second set, people starting standing up. Specifically, the three douchebags in the third row that were directly between me and the majority of the stage were the first people to stand up in the entire fucking theatre. After a few minutes, Raine Maida encouraged everyone to stand for this "fucking rock show" and so I reluctantly did. The couple on the left of me were the last people in the theatre to stand, and definitely the grumpiest rock concert goers I've ever encountered, but more on that in a bit.

I must note that I was wearing my ThinkGeek "geek." shirt on this night. It's a surprisingly important detail.

With an empty seat to my right, and the entire crowd now standing, I guess it was inevitable that some people would take advantage of that gap in the audience so close to the stage. It started with one girl, before I even stood up. As I was standing, taking off my jacket (which I wore all through the first set), and draping it over my seat, the first girl's fucking hammered friend (herein referred to derogatively as "drunk chick") joined her. Rather than stand to the right of her friend, where there was room in the aisle, she instead forced her way past her friend to stand right beside me (or, more accurately, right behind me, because I was standing at an angle). Where there wasn't actually any room to stand. Within seconds, she had knocked my jacket onto the floor. Grumpily, I bent over to pick it up and rehang it, and it was then that drunk chick noticed my shirt.

Apparently, she liked it. As her friend apologized for drunk chick knocking my jacket onto the floor, drunk chick cooed something about "Oh, geek..." and giggled. In response, I nodded my head, smiled politely and turned my attention back to the show. Unfortunately, it became very hard to keep my attention on the show when drunk chick decided that she did not need to respect my personal space at all. I spent the next few songs standing rigidly still while drunk chick rubbed her entire fucking body all over my back and right side. She wasn't grinding on me, or anything quite that absurdly or overtly sexual, but she was basically dancing against me. I certainly have not been touched by that much boob in a while.

Now, some of you out there might be thinking, "Holy hell, that's awesome!--lucky guy!" You obviously don't know anything about me if you think I would feel that way, but whatever. (A tongue-out emoticon would be appropriate here, if I wasn't so opposed to using emoticons on this blog.) I have not commented on her appearance at all because that is irrelevant to my reaction. (Okay, to be perfectly honest, if she had been a fat drunk chick, I might have fled.) If you have ever watched The Big Bang Theory, picture Sheldon Cooper in this situation. Yeah, that's right; that's me. Although Sheldon would have probably said something. Me, I was just frozen in a state of perpetual WTF.

I have to thank the guy beside me, whom upon seeing the predicament I was in, gave me as much space as he possibly could without pissing off his grumpy wife by standing completely sideways during the entire show. It didn't really help, because drunk chick was attached to me no matter how far to the left I moved, but "Thanks, dude" for trying.

After a few songs, drunk chick tried to tell me something. I couldn't hear, so responded, "Sorry?" and pointed to my ear. She then whispered into my ear, "Will you help me rush the stage?" Shaking my head "No" and mouthing, "Sorry, what?" prompted her clarification, "If you let me past, I can rush the stage."

With great relief, I let her walk past me and watched her force her way towards the centre of the theatre. I have no idea how she thought that would help her rush the stage, but I didn't fucking care, because I now had my personal space back. Finally able to look to my right again, I couldn't help but notice that now standing to the right of drunk chick's friend, in the aisle, were two guys, almost certainly their boyfriends. Nice.

The friend, eventually noticing that drunk chick was gone, asked me where she went. I pointed towards the middle of the the theatre and shrugged my shoulders. Her friend laughed and said something to the two guys. She then offered me gum for some reason. I wasn't interested.

My attention was now back on the show, finally able to enjoy it again. For three songs or so. And then drunk chick was back, better than ever.

She reintroduced herself by laying her hand on my chest and drawing her finger along the word "geek." She giggled and gurgled something unintelligible about geeks. I looked back at her, nodded politely (my standard reaction to crazy shit), and her friend, looking rather aghast, stepped in to pull her away, scolding her, "No, no, no." (This was easily the second funniest moment all night. The funniest is coming soon, and surprisingly has nothing to do with drunk chick. Actually, other than this one moment, there wasn't much that was funny about the drunk chick situation--at the time. Now, however, it's pretty funny...) I glanced over to their boyfriends and saw that their eyes were on the stage.

Although blatantly touching my chest was apparently a no no with drunk chick's friend, drunk chick was still allowed to dance against me for a number of songs. She also now enjoyed screaming at the stage, right into my fucking ear. My tolerance for putting up with bullshit and desire to avoid conflict are apparently extremely high.

At some point, she finally made good on her plan of rushing the stage, this time with the smarter plan of walking up the right aisle to the stage. I laughed as she was rebuffed by the bouncer two times. When she returned, her new plan to draw Raine's attention to her (which admittedly worked like a charm) was to sit on her boyfriend's shoulders. By this time, the couple in the third row directly in front of me had left or moved somewhere else, so she of course chose to sit on her boyfriend's shoulders right in front of me, but only blocking my view of bassist Duncan Coutts, which: who gives a fuck. In the last instance of a recurring theme throughout the night, her friend apologized for her. And then her friend's boyfriend also gave me an apologetic shrug as if to say, "Sorry, dude, she's fucking drunk." In my personal opinion, if you are that drunk, you shouldn't be sitting on someone's shoulders, but no major accidents followed, despite my expectation that this evening would end with drunk chick fucking falling backwards onto me. She also surprisingly kept her shirt on.

Remember those three douchebags that were first to stand up at the beginning of the second set? One of them now had the bright idea of standing on his chair, blocking my view much more than drunk chick had. Awesomely, in the funniest moment of the night, grumpy girl to my left reached out and slapped that fucker on his back, nearly knocking him to the floor.

With the concert winding down, I was able to reclaim my spot and give the couple to my left some of their personal space back. Even after getting off her boyfriend's shoulders, drunk chick decided to stay in the third row, thankfully. I stuck around until the end of the encore, now able to relax and enjoy the music, although my feet were sore from standing for so long, and then rushed out of there with no further incidents.

What a night! It's too bad that OLP, despite a great selection of songs that were all well played, was so overshadowed by a fucking crazy drunk girl. I barely even remember the second set; I just remember drunk chick.

Week in Review, Apr 26 to May 1

2010-05-02T21:23:00.003-06:00

The Week in Video Games

On Sunday afternoon, I finally played through the two Assassin's Creed II DLC packs, "Battle of Forli" and "Bonfire of the Vanities." Other than some minor issues with buggy audio in a couple of scenes, I really enjoyed both DLC packs. Because (I believe) these DLC packs were content that was cut from the retail game at the last minute due to production issues, they don't feel out of place in the overall storyline, and in fact add some interesting new elements. I whipped through the first pack in just over an hour, so it's arguably pretty sparse for content, but the second pack is quite substantial, even including a new section of Florence to explore. And one of the assassinations in the second pack is easily the hardest in the entire game.

The Week in Television

The first half of the week was pretty light for TV, and with Chuck out of the way and the weather being shitty, I needed something to watch. Not quite ready to dive into Breaking Bad, I remembered that I still had two Top Gear episodes from the 2009 series to watch. One of which was the South America special (14x6). I don't know why I didn't watch this special earlier, but goddamn, it was bloody fantastic. And easily the funniest thing I watched all week. So now I need to track down the rest of the specials and watch them. I generally enjoy the regular episodes, just not quite enough to dip into the back catalog, but that special was... uh, well, special.

Monday, April 26th
Loved: Chuck (3x14)
Meh: House (6x18)

With "Chuck Versus the Honeymooners," the writers have thrown down extremely strong evidence that they can make Chuck and Sarah work as a couple. Almost everything about this episode was fantastic, starting with Chuck and Sarah being adorable as well as an impressive spy team (the hand-cuffed fight sequence at the end of the episode was probably the best fight sequence this series has ever produced), but also including Casey and Morgan as a hilarious yet effective support team, General Beckman as a secret 'shipper, and Jeffster making their triumphant return to the series.

Tuesday, April 27th
Liked: Glee (1x16)

I was actually pretty unimpressed with the musical moments in Glee's "Home." But, fortunately, the story was stronger this week, especially in the case of Kurt's machinations to get Finn living under the same roof as him. I became a fan of Glee not because of the music, but because of the twisted shit these characters were doing to each other early in the series, and it's nice to have that element back.

Wednesday, April 28th
Liked: Modern Family (1x21), South Park (14x7)

South Park headed into its summer hiatus with "Crippled Summer," an inconsequential but funny episode with two loosely linked storylines. In the first, Towelie returned, still as high as ever, and was forced into a pretty great parody of Intervention. The frequent title cards and faux-dramatic music made this parody work, despite Towelie being really played out. Towelie's job (as a towel) at a summer camp for handicapped kids was the link to storyline number, involving Jimmy (and to a lesser extent, Timmy) and his rivalry with hilarious nemeses Nathan and Mimsy.

"Travels With Scout" was another solid Modern Family episode, bringing the awesome Fred Willard back as Phil's dad and establishing Cameron's mad drummer skills in a pretty hilarious B-plot. The C-plot with Jay accidentally exposing Manny to a horror movie was less successful. Most importantly, Luke as a dog was comedy gold.

Thursday, April 29th
Loved: Parks and Recreation (2x21)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x19), Fringe (2x20), The Office (6x23), Survivor (20x12)

Parks and Recreation was the best of NBC's comedies this week. "94 Meetings" was pretty fantastic, making great use of the entire cast. Having Ron hire April as his assistant was a genius move this season, along with having April fall for Andy. This series now has the heart that The Office has mostly lost.

The Office had a good week with "Body Language." Dwight and Kelly, and to a slightly lesser extent Darryl and Gabe, were hilarious in their storyline. Micheal's awkward flirting with Donna was hard to watch, but the ending provided the perfect redemption. And Jim and Pam were cute together again.

"Argus" was another consistently funny, thoroughly nonsensical 30 Rock episode. I don't know how they made a peacock so damn funny.

Fringe's "Brown Betty" was easily the most fucked up thing on TV this week. In a drug induced state, Walter told a noir-ish, slightly musical story that was basically a big crazy metaphor for his relationship with Peter. With mechanical hearts. I felt the episode could have embraced the musical element much more than it did; if you are going to do something this weird, you should go all the way.

After last week's crazy awesome tribal council made the rest of the season pretty predictable, it wasn't surprising that this week's Survivor was pretty predictable. Good-bye Heroes, one by one.

Friday, April 30th
Loved: Party Down (2x2), Stargate Universe (1x15)
Liked: The Ricky Gervais Show (1x10)

"Lost" was definitely one of the best Stargate Universe episodes to date. Lots of cool sci-fi, lots of excellent character moments, an unexpectedly bleak ending (again!), and interesting backstory. I'm totally back on board with this show again.

"Precious Lights Pre-school Auction" was a pretty great episode of Party Down. It's too bad nobody watched it. I love the new dynamic this season with Ron as employee and Henry as conscientious boss.

Saturday, April 31st
Loved: Doctor Who (5x5), Legend of the Seeker (2x19)

There was a lot to love in Doctor Who's "Flesh and Stone," another strong entry from Steven Moffat. The story was resolved satisfactorily, the character work was well above par for this series, the Weeping Angels were scary (mostly), and it zipped along at an amazing pace. There were a couple questionable moments, though. Moffat created the Weeping Angels, so I guess he can make up whatever rules he wants to for them, but there was a scene in this episode that didn't really fit what we've previously been shown about them. And then there was the crazy ending scene. Wow, WTF was that?

Now that Legend of the Seeker has officially been canceled, it's a tad bittersweet. This second season has not lived up to the first for me, so in some ways I'm glad the series won't have a chance to fall any further, but at the same time, I will miss my weekly fantasy fix. And it would figure that the series would finally start getting awesome again this week with "Extinction," an episode that finally had the dramatic weight that this Stone of Tears arc deserved.

Sunday, May 1st
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x11)

Ugh, how did Brent and Caite make it into the final? I have to admit that it is pretty awesome that Caite is always claiming that her actions on this show are going to help erase her reputation as an ignorant idiot, and then she is the only person that can't fucking count in a challenge. Sorry, Caite; it's not working. Anyway, next week (ie. the finale), go cowboys!

Week in Review, Apr 19 to 25

2010-04-26T06:32:00.003-06:00

Friday's weather did not cooperate with my birthday plan of sitting outside and reading a book, and Sunday was even worse, so instead I sat inside and wrapped Chuck season two. Love that season finale! In the next couple of days I will have to pick another show to kill time with, and I'm leaning towards finally watching the critically acclaimed Breaking Bad.

I have a lot of downloaded video game content for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed II that I've yet to play, mostly to avoid getting sucked back into those worlds and not have any time left for the real world. Instead, I've put a few hours into The Longest Journey, a recent Good Old Games purchase. Tales of Monkey Island got me back into the point and click adventure gaming mood, and I have been curious about The Longest Journey for nearly 10 years, so it's interesting to finally play it.

And that's about it for this week. Except for the multiple hours of TV I watched, of course...

The Week in Television

Monday, April 19th
Liked: How I Met Your Mother (5x20)

"Home Wreckers" was the most consequential episode of How I Met Your Mother since episode 100 way back in January, so that was nice to see, but unfortunately the jokes were extremely hit or miss. Ultimately, thanks to the return of the series' heart, and a great final scene, I consider it a winner overall.

Tuesday, April 20th
Loved: Lost (6x13)
Liked: Glee (1x15)

With "The Last Recruit," Lost successfully and seamlessly dropped the single-character focus of most of this season, and began tying up the various characters' flash-sideways storylines while also significantly forwarding the action on-island. The episode was completely enjoyable from beginning to end and it sucks that we have to wait two weeks for the next ...

I'm not a Madonna fan, so Glee's "The Power of Madonna" was never going to appeal to me as much as some. But I have to admit that the episode was well written (although rather heavy-handed in its misogynistic themes) and very well directed by series creator Ryan Murphy. Standout moments included an awesome parody of the "Vogue" video and the best all-time use of fucking awful song "Like a Virgin."

Wednesday, April 21st
Loved: South Park (14x6)

"Scott Tenorman Must Die" is one of my favourite episodes of South Park, so how could I not love "201," the Scott Tenorman enhanced continuation of the 200th episode extravaganza? It wasn't all good, however, as the line between censorship to make a humorous point and actual Comedy Central censorship is very unclear with this episode. I am very interested in seeing what bleeps remain in the DVD release of this episode.

Thursday, April 22nd
Loved: Fringe (2x19), Survivor (20x11)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x17/18), The Office (6x22)

Fringe is on a roll since its return from hiatus. "The Man From the Other Side" was a terrific mythology/arc episode, introducing a promising new villain with the yet unseen (but if you don't know who it is, you haven't been paying attention) Secretary. The impact this episode will have on the best relationship of the series, Peter and Walter of course, is yet to be felt, but I'm more excited about this series right now than I've ever been.

This week's Survivor was absolutely fantastic, as merge episodes often are, featuring the gutsiest tribal council move I can recall. If Parvati's decision to spread her two immunity idols out to her Villains tribe mates had not worked out so well, it could have fallen into the dumbest Survivor moves of all time territory, but she correctly read her opposition, specifically Amanda. JT cemented his idiot persona with his unflinching trust in good ol' boy Russell, and, shockingly, fucking Rupert was the only voice of reason on the Heroes side. With the balance of power now securely on the Villains side, the next few episodes will probably be boring as shit, but that's life with unscripted TV.

Once again, for the second time in two months, I posted this Week in Review without the Thursday comedies. So, The Office's "Secretary's Day" and 30 Rock's double shot of "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" and "Khonani" must have been forgettable, right? Actually, no, they were three pretty good episodes. (When I write these blog posts, I rely pretty heavily on what I wrote last week to remind me what shows I watch, and none of these shows were on last week.) In the case of The Office, I enjoyed Cookie Monster Kevin, but I wasn't a big fan of crazy Erin. And, as per usual, 30 Rock made me laugh repeatedly, but I'm at a loss to explain why.

Friday, April 23rd
Loved: Stargate Universe (1x14)
Liked: Party Down (2x1), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x9)

Stargate Universe's "Human" finally provided some backstory on the enigmatic Rush, humanizing him significantly with clever use of his memories. I could have done without the cave-in storyline, but I liked seeing Eli and Chloe together again and I appreciated the fact that the crew was not amazingly saved in the last second.

Along with Better Off Ted, Party Down was one of the best new comedies last year. Airing on Starz, like the also awesome Spartacus, Party Down is not well known, and I only know about it because of its significant production connections to the series Veronica Mars. The second season premiere, "Jackal Onassis Backstage Party," had some hilarious moments but was not one of the better episodes. Because this series relies rather heavily on improvisation in the same way as Curb Your Enthusiasm (ie. the writers propose scenarios and certain beats that must be hit, and then the actors go at it), it can be much more inconsistent than a cleverly written show like Better Off Ted, but there's room on TV for both types of comedy.

Saturday, April 24th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x4)
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x18)

"The Time of Angels" was an awesome episode of Doctor Who, bringing two of Steven Moffat's best creations, River Song and the Weeping Angels, back in fantastic ways. Matt Smith still rocks, and the rest of the cast hit all the right notes. Dialogue was fantastic throughout, set design and CGI was above par for Doctor Who, and it was part one of a two-parter, thus giving the story some time to breathe. There's a reason that most of the best new Whos are the two-parters.

"Walter" was a strange episode of Legend of the Seeker, to say the least. If Craig Parker wasn't so awesome, it probably would have crashed and burned, but other than wondering what the writers were thinking when they proposed this storyline as a part of the season's arc, I enjoyed this episode's goofiness. Next week's payoff of this silly nonsense will hopefully be much better.

Sunday, April 25th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x10)

This week's Amazing Race featured the last of the non-elimination legs, saving the puzzle-challenged detectives this time, leaving (I think) only two legs left to the finish line. I'm still cheering for the cowboys and was happy to see them back on top of their game with this leg.

Brewblog and some other stuff

2010-04-20T16:07:00.005-06:00

It's been nearly a month since this post, so it's that time again for some updates on the other stuff in my life. Mostly beer.

Brewblog, Entry One

In the month of April so far, we have had two brew days. Due to ugly weather and other commitments, we did not brew on the weekend of the 9th. We can afford to take some weekends off now, though, because we have developed a fairly sizable stockpile of beer in the first three months of this year.

On Friday, April 2nd, we brewed an Oud Bruin aka Flanders Brown ale. This beer will be aged in a glass carboy for one year with some crazy yeasts and bacteria, souring the beer and hopefully giving it complex flavour and aroma. Normally we like to start drinking our beers within a month and a bit of making them, so it'll be strange to let this batch do its thing for so long. Writing this blog entry right now reminds me that I need to rack this thing into that carboy and soon.

On Saturday, April 17th, we took a second crack at brewing an English Pale Ale aka Bitter. Our first Bitter was a drinkable, low alcohol, mostly unmemorable malty beer, so with this second batch, we upped the hop quantity and slightly adjusted the malt recipe. The end result will not be to style at all, with hop bitterness well above recommended, but this beer won't last until a competition anyway, so we might as well create beers that we will enjoy. I will have more to say on this topic of homebrew competitions in the next section.

The most interesting element of the last brew day was that we successfully implemented a major process improvement. While talking with Dave Rudge, guru of Half Pints Brewery in Winnipeg, this week (while drunk on his Pothole Porter at an ALES Club volunteer appreciation night), he suggested that with Regina water we should have no problems completing our mash starch conversion within 30 minutes.

When we started all-grain brewing, we began with a 60 minute mash. (I'm not going to bother explaining here what the mash is. You can Google it, if curious.) As time went on, we extended this to 75 minutes, and on rare occasions when recipes called for it, 90 minutes. The thought was that the longer we let the mash do its thing, the more sugars we'd get in our wort. It made rookie brewer sense.

On Saturday we tried the 30 minute mash that Dave Rudge recommended, and we didn't seem to lose any efficiency, where efficiency is the percent of available sugars extracted in the mash. Thanks to that 45 minutes of time savings, we completed the entire brew day easily in four hours, including a 90 minute boil. (90 minute boils are also a recent process change, although in this case we have lengthened our day by 30 minutes. In theory, the extra boiling time gives you better hop utilization and possibly wort caramelization.)

The longer mashes were rarely a waste of time, because we tried to take advantage of that 75 minutes of sitting around waiting to do miscellaneous important tasks like bottling previous batches. But I suspect that it will be a long time before we do another mash that is longer than 30 minutes.

We hit 84% efficiency on this last brew day, which is excellent and well above our average of 72%. With our first Bitter, we hit 79%, so we have had above average results in the past with smaller grain bills (ie. less grains in the mash). I'm not going to attribute the 5% better efficiency with this second batch to the shorter mash, as that is nonsense, but it is solid evidence that we didn't lose anything. There are likely more efficiency gains to be found in the running off and sparging processes, so we are always experimenting with those tasks as well.

We are brewing again on the coming Saturday. We have not picked a recipe yet, but Blonde Ale has been suggested.

Competition Results

We entered 11 beers and 1 mead in the ALES Homebrew Open 2010 competition. We were mostly seeking feedback and constructive criticism, if not a little validation. We believe we make good beers, but were any of them competition quality beers? The answer to that question was mostly "No," sadly.

Our average score was a solid if unspectacular 27.6 out of 50. That score sounds worse than it is (it's more C+ than D), because it is incredibly hard to score above 35. But at the same time, unless your beer is the worst thing a judge has ever tasted, you will rarely score below 20. So, yeah, we are halfway between really good and really terrible. We didn't win any medals, which you earn if a beer places in 1st to 3rd place in one of the 20ish categories.

Our Biere de Garde rebounded from its poor showing in Calgary in February, where the judges thought the beer may have been infected and slammed it with an average of 24.5, to be our top scoring beer here with a 38.7 average (impressive scores of 40, 40, and 36). I'm sure glad we gave the Biere de Garde another chance. It didn't win a medal, but I have it on good authority that it was very close. It was competing in its category against Saisons and other Belgian beers, so it was tough.

Scott's Stout 2, my favourite of our 2009 brews, scored a very respectable 37.5 (39 and 36) in Calgary. Unfortunately, with Biere de Garde doing so well at the ALES competition, the universe insisted on balancing that result out by turning Scott's Stout 2 into a bottle bomb that yielded our second lowest score ever with a 20.7. Because the bottle gushed for a couple of minutes into a pitcher, it was completely flat by the time the judges drank it. The judges were not fans and also detected off-flavours that had not previously been present. Shitty.

Here's a quick rundown of how the other ten entries performed: Winter Wheat 2 (32.7), Raspberry Mead 3 (31.5), Sour Cherry Ale (30.7), Vanilla Porter (29.0), Matrimonial Ale 2 (27.3), Scottish Ale (27.3), Pilsner (25.3), Paul's Tripel (25.3), Punk IPA (22.0), Anniversary Bitter (20.3).

The biggest disappointments for me, other than Scott's Stout 2, were: the Sour Cherry Ale, which tastes like delicious cherry pie, but unfortunately doesn't really fit the BJCP guidelines for a Fruit Beer; Raspberry Mead 3, which is very raspberry-y, but is apparently not meady enough; and the Vanilla Porter, which wasn't quite ready for this competition, but might be my new favourite of our beers. Winter Wheat 2 did better than expected, validating me at least amongst our little group, as I was the only one that thought it was good. We didn't expect much from the Pilsner nor Paul's Tripel nor the Scottish Ale, entering them just to get feedback. Punk IPA is great, but not an IPA. Matrimonial Ale 2 was entered as an American Pale Ale, despite its 9% abv, just to fuck around. Anniversary Bitter, our lowest scoring beer, had a skunky bottle apparently; I have a hard time believing that it deserved the 18 that it received.

It's a little depressing to see all those mid-20s scores. I have been extremely happy with the beers we have been making lately, so much so that I have only purchased one six-pack of beer in the last few months. But we still clearly have a long way to go before we are making excellent beers. We are all driven to improve our process, improve our recipes, and improve our scores for next year's competition.

Novice Beer Judge Extraordinaire

I skipped the March meeting of ALES Club due to sickness, so I missed out on the volunteer sign-up sheet for stewarding (ie. serving beer to the judges) at the 2010 ALES Homebrew Open competition. At the April meeting, I asked the competition coordinator if there was anywhere he could fit me in, and he suggested that Monday night could probably use me.

So I showed up at Bushwakker on last Monday evening at 6:45 to steward for the first night of the competition. As I arrived downstairs, the competition coordinator informed me that I was judging this night instead of stewarding. I thought he was joking and laughed it off. I'm not a beer judge; I've never judged beer. It took a good minute of him trying to reassure me that it would be okay for me to agree. I even emphatically said no at one point, but he didn't let it go. When he led me to my table, where I was to be judging with him and the manager of Bushwakker, I saw that he had printed labels with my name on them already.

We were judging category 19, Strong Ales. Strong Ales includes three subcategories: 19A, Old Ale; 19B, English Barleywine; and 19C, American Barleywine. There were 11 entries, 3 Old Ales, 5 English Barleywines, and 3 American Barleywines.

I can only recall drinking one Barleywine previous to this night. I'm not sure what the brand or source was, but I think it fit into the English Barleywine category. I note this to establish the fact that I was not familiar with the style at all going into judging.

On the table in front of each judge was the 2008 BJCP Style Guide and a stack of score sheets. To prepare for judging, I quickly read through category 19. I am pretty familiar with some of the other categories, having had to read them to ensure I was submitting our beers into the correct categories for competitions, but 19 was new. We have never made a Strong Ale.

I don't want to bore you with too many details. But here's a quick summary of the process. One by one the beers are brought out in three sample glasses. Each judge individually and silently assesses the beer in the five areas on the score sheet [aroma (12 points), appearance (3 points), flavour (20 points), mouthfeel (5 points), overall impression (10 points)], writing comments as they go, and then adds up their score. The scores are compared and the difference between the highest and lowest judge must be 7 or less to reach a consensus. The outliers will then discuss their reasoning and adjust their scores if necessary.

Even knowing very little about the category, and accepting that my sense of smell is not really up to snuff, I followed the BJCP Guide carefully and was able to score nine of the eleven beers entirely in line with the other two judges (ie. within 7 points). On one beer, I penalized it heavier than the other two judges and ended up relenting and raising my score. On another beer, I was too high, and I adjusted down a few points while another judge adjusted up. The rather brilliant English Barleywine that won the category got a 41 from me and one other judge, and a 40 from the third, which was amazingly consistent.

If scoring the beers was all you had to do, I would have had a great night. I repeatedly proved that I had a good feel for what a beer should get as a score. Unfortunately, you can't just award a score; you have to provide comments and notes to support your score. And this was the part of this evening that I disliked. My comments were so inane and dumb and unhelpful that I felt embarrassed to hand the score sheets in to the head judge. Ultimately, I have a hard time recognizing and describing the complexities of beer. (This extends to basically everything I eat or drink. I know what I like, and I know generally why, but my senses of taste and smell struggle to detect subtleties.)

The entries were quite solid throughout the night, very few scoring below the upper 20s. There was only one sample glass that I did not finish, because I found the beer to be borderline awful. One clear indication of my lack of judging experience was the fact that my judging partners did not finish any of their sample glasses. That was amazing to me, because I felt like I needed every millilitre of liquid in those cups to make my assessments.

At the end of the evening, I was quite drunk. Eleven samples of 10% beers will do that to me. And after judging, we were permitted to sample the victors of the evening's other categories. I found a couple Bitters that I really liked, but was ultimately not in the mood to do much extra drinking.

I was asked a couple times that evening (and many times later in the week) if I enjoyed judging and if I would do it again. I always answered yes to both questions.

Shaping Up?

I took Daisy for a walk yesterday. Does that count?

33...

...is how old I will be on Friday. Fuck me.

I'm taking Friday off to sit outside, drink, and read my book. If the weather does not cooperate, I will still partake in the drinking part of that plan.

Week in Review, Apr 12 to 18

2010-04-19T16:08:00.000-06:00

The Week in Books

With the very welcome arrival of 20+ C sunny days, my desire to sit outside in the backyard and read a book returned with a vengeance this weekend. So, on Sunday, I finally jumped back into Steven Erikson's epic fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen, reading the first quarter (200+ pages) of House of Chains, the fourth book in the series. I will wait until I finish the entire book (which will be a few weeks yet) before I do any reviewing.

It is actually a bit of an understatement to call the Malazan Book of the Fallen epic. I have never read anything with the depth of detail in world-building and storytelling as this series. (You could argue for Tolkien's Middle-Earth, but Erikson takes it to the next level in my opinion.) And no other author that I have ever read has so dared to confuse the fuck out of his readers with random shit happening at random times without explanation. When I read Gardens of the Moon, the first book in the series, a couple years back, I had no idea what the fuck was going on on most of the pages. But I kept reading because it was fascinating in its details, thoroughly well-written, and many of the characters were quite interesting.

I read both Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice last summer in numerous marathon backyard reading sessions, and I appreciated that both of those books were much more coherent. There were still many moments of confusion and random gods doing random shit, but I was better able to follow the through-stories this time. Memories of Ice, the best book of the first three, also did a fantastic job of explaining retroactively many of the most confusing moments from Gardens of the Moon, so I found myself jumping back and forth between the two books, trying to get a better understanding of this world and its rules. I have never done that with any book series previously, because I haven't had to.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen also features a staggering number of characters, and I often have a hard time remembering who is who. I can't even imagine how many characters I'll have to keep straight by book ten. (Thankfully, each book includes a handy "cast of characters" list!) If I have one complaint with the series, it is that I sometimes feel like an outsider watching these characters go through their motions, rarely knowing their motivations. The reader does not spend as much time inside the characters' heads as I am used to from other similar fiction. This sounds like a big complaint, but it's actually a minor quibble, because the scope of the action that surrounds these characters generally dwarfs their individual significance. This series is telling a truly epic story about a unique world and its powerful gods and vengeful demons and diverse peoples and endless wars.

The Week in Television

Monday, April 12th
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x19), How I Met Your Mother (5x19)
Meh: House (6x16)

The Big Bang Theory's "The Wheaton Recurrence" was a solid episode, reuniting Sheldon with his newest nemesis, Evil Wil Wheaton, for (of all things) competitive bowling. The important storyline in this episode, tightly interlinked with the bowling games, was a rift in Leonard and Penny's relationship due to a mismatch in depth of feelings.

"Zoo or False" was an unapologetically silly episode of How I Met Your Mother, but I laughed at many of the dumb jokes, so I guess it gets a pass. I imagine that Ted's children in 2030 were as confused as I about what any of this had to do with how he met their mother.

I recently caught up on the multiple weeks of House that I was behind on, so I was able to watch this week's episode, "Lockdown," in a timely fashion. And it was okay. Wilson and Thirteen's game of Truth or Dare provided most of the episode's entertainment. House's storyline was a snoozer, Cameron and Chase were depressing, and Foreman and Taub took drugs and did a bunch of silly nonsense.

Tuesday, April 13th
Loved: Lost (6x12)
Liked: Glee (1x14)

While it wasn't as revelatory as last week's episode, "Everybody Loves Hugo" continued the trend of using the alternate reality to do awesome things, such as reuniting Hurley with Libby (!) and having Desmond be all cool and mysterious and then murderous. On island, there was all kinds of crazy shit going down, including another hilariously shocking death due to unstable dynamite, Hurley taking over as leader, and Not!Locke throwing Desmond down a well. Is it next Tuesday yet?

Glee made its long awaited return (okay, not really--it's a good show, but omigod the hype!) with "Hell-o," an episode that did a great job of crapping all over the supposedly happy endings from the mid-season finale. The musical highlights were (unexpectedly) Rachel rocking out with The All-American Rejects' "Gives You Hell," a duet between Rachel and new guy Jesse on Lionel Richie's "Hello," and the whole gang taking on The Beatles' "Hello, Goodbye."

Wednesday, April 14th
Loved: South Park (14x5)

I adored South Park's love letter to long time fans, "200," so titled because it was the 200th episode of this long running series. This was an episode that relied entirely on call-backs to previous episodes, and for me, it was brilliantly done. Also, it ended with a hilarious redo of the first season's cliffhanger, "Who is Eric Cartman's father?"

Thursday, April 15th
Loved: Fringe (2x18)
Liked: Survivor (20x10)

This week's Survivor was marketed as featuring the dumbest move in Survivor history. While JT giving Russell his immunity idol was certainly a dumb move, he at least thought he had sound strategic reasons for doing so (and he seemingly had his tribe's support, except for possibly Amanda), which is better than James not playing one of his two idols and getting voted off or Eric giving his idol away and getting voted off. So, no, not the dumbest move in Survivor history... but if Russell somehow uses that specific idol to engineer JT's elimination, maybe I'll come back to this point. With the merge coming up next, it is tough to say where this game is going to go, but with two idols in their hands, Russell and Parvati (and the rest of the Villains?) are in good shape.

"White Tulip" was an excellent standalone episode of Fringe, making extremely good use of time travel. The heart of the episode was in Walter's sympathy with the time traveler's motivation, and his and Olivia's continued struggle with whether Peter should know the truth of his origins.

Friday, April 16th
Loved: Spartacus (1x13)
Liked: Stargate Universe (1x13), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x8)

Spartacus' "Kill Them All" was a thoroughly satisfying season finale, brutally setting up a second season that will (by necessity) barely resemble the first. My early season concerns that this series would grow stale and boring with the same old, same old every week were completely eradicated by a blood bath of unimaginable proportions. There was nothing on TV this winter that I enjoyed more than Spartacus Blood and Sand.

"Faith" was a welcome return to the entirely character driven Stargate Universe of the first half of this season, but with the added plus of no fucking communication stones. As you can guess from the title, this episode was concerned with issues of spirituality and fate, which I am okay with in my sci-fi. I appreciated that the story offered no easy answers and that the resolution was not tidy.

I find it fascinating, or maybe it's more accurate to say disbelieving, that Karl would so willingly hand over his hilarious diary for Ricky and Stephen to read on their podcast. What is the fucking deal with that guy?

Saturday, April 17th
Liked: Doctor Who (5x3), Legend of the Seeker (2x17)

Doctor Who's "Victory of the Daleks" was the weakest episode of this season so far, but it was still enjoyable for its character moments. Making the ultra-cheesy Daleks seem like a threat is often challenging, and the introduction of a new breed of super (colourful!) Daleks was particularly silly. I'm sure they'll be back later this season, and I hope they bring a better story with them.

I had high hopes for Legend of the Seeker's "Vengeance," seeing as it guest starred John Rhys-Davies as Panis Rahl, but it was a bit disappointing. The episode featured a number of interesting flashbacks to Zedd's past, providing suitable back story, included one hell of a Zedd-on-a-rampage sequence, and I appreciated the return to the Stone of Tears storyline, but the ending of the episode didn't pack the punch it should have.

Week in Review, Apr 5 to 11

2010-04-12T22:54:00.002-06:00

Just got back from pretending to be a beer judge tonight (future blog post there, for sure!--for now, see Facebook), and now I need to finish off this fucking Week in Review post while drunk and tired. Awesome!

This was one of those "all TV, all the time" weeks, except for the new task of spring yardwork. Yay! In my spare moments, I've been enjoying revisiting the second season of Chuck. Next week I will hopefully have time for the new Mass Effect 2 DLC, and maybe I'll dive into Dragon Age Awakenings. I'd also like to start READING A BOOK, for fuck's sake.

The Week in Television

Monday, April 5th
Loved: Chuck (3x13)

"Chuck Versus the Other Guy" wrapped up season 3.0 very nicely. As expected, there was some reset button action, but there were also a couple major changes that should make season 3.5 rather interesting. The writers have now given the fans exactly what they wanted, but they have also written themselves into a corner that few series can escape from.

Tuesday, April 6th
Loved: Lost (6x11)

Lost was back on top of its game with "Happily Ever After," a Desmond story that almost entirely took place in the alternate timeline, but never felt like a waste of time. For those that were worried about the time wasted in this final season with the flash-sideways, this episode almost single-handedly redeemed them, confirming that the flash-sideways have a mysterious purpose beyond just simply being an alternate timeline.

Wednesday, April 7th
Loved: South Park (14x4)

South Park took on Facebook this week with "You Have 0 Friends," easily the best episode of this new season so far. Randy's obsession with Facebook friends, Stan's reluctance to join, and Kyle's new "friend" were the highlights for me. The episode lost a little of its momentum and charm when Stan was literally sucked into Facebook, amusingly depicted with Tron graphics, but everything else was so good that the episode as a whole still worked.

Thursday, April 8th
Liked: Fringe (2x17), Survivor (20x9)

Fringe's ridiculously titled "Olivia. In The Lab. With The Revolver." (the episode only marginally involved the game of Clue) was a solid standalone episode that ended up tying into the series mythology in a satisfying way.

Up to this point in Survivor Heroes & Villains, Sandra has been doing nothing, flying under the radar, apparently hoping to win the game again with the same lame play style. But in this week's episode, without Boston Rob to hide under, Sandra had to make a move, and she deviously turned Russell against Coach. Even though Courtney is more skeletal and useless than ever, the smarter members of the Villains tribe couldn't sway Russell from his mission to boot "the Dragonslayer." Bravo, Sandra!

Friday, April 9th
Loved: Spartacus (1x12)
Liked: Stargate Universe (1x12)

As the penultimate episode of this first season of Spartacus Blood and Sand, "Revelations" promised a lot of changes to come for this series in next week's season finale. The titular revelations didn't come until the latter half of the episode, but when they started coming, hoo boy... Almost every secret from this first season was revealed in a series of tightly plotted scenes, some expected, some startling, and some extremely satisfying.

In Stargate Universe's "Divided," the civilians took advantage of various military distractions to attempt mutiny, with relatively mild consequences to their inevitable failure. The alien threat from last week also returned to throw a wrench into the works. The character work this week was stronger than last, reminding us viewers who some of these people are and why we should care.

Saturday, April 10th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x2)
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x16)

"The Beast Below" was a rather silly episode of Doctor Who, but I still enjoyed it a hell of a lot. Matt Smith continued to be terrific as the new doctor, Amy Pond (the super cute Karen Gillan) continued to be a great companion, and Steven Moffat continued to be a great writer. The dialogue elevated this episode above other similar themed episodes from the Davies era.

Legend of the Seeker's "Desecrated" was decent, introducing crazy new mummy mythology to the series, borrowing some of its premise from awesome 80s movie Dragonslayer, and pairing up Kahlan and Cara (always a good idea) for some fun, albeit cliche, bonding. Somehow I didn't even notice (until the pretty promising preview for next week) that the Stone of Tears storyline was completely ignored.

Sunday, April 11th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x9)

Good riddance to Carol and Brandy. Hopefully Brent and Caite are next. Now for a brief treatise on Amazing Race gameplay and the morality of the U-Turn. It always amazes me when teams describe using the U-Turn as a dirty move. Sure, if you are U-Turned, you have every right to be pissed off, but it's not dirty. It's a smart move to U-Turn a team, to ensure your continued survival in the hunt for one million fucking dollars, and possibly eliminate a team that is challenging you for that one million fucking dollars. I always shake my head when teams elect not to U-Turn anyone. Are you fucking retarded? This is a game that you are trying to win. To win ONE MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. Why wouldn't you do anything you could to help your team win. You don't need to be popular. There is no vote at the end. There is no social game. It's your team against the rest of the teams. Be unpopular. Be assholes. Use the fucking U-Turn so you have a better chance of winning one million fucking dollars. Okay? Okay.

Week in Review, Mar 29 to Apr 4

2010-04-04T18:55:00.000-06:00

The Week in Video Games

The only gaming I did this week outside of a little Rockband 2 was the few hours it took me to complete Tales of Monkey Island Chapter Five, "Rise of the Pirate God." This final chapter was as good as everything that came before it in most respects, especially the clever puzzles resulting from being able to switch between Zombie Guybrush and Ghost Guybrush in the latter half. Insult sword fighting made a far too brief appearance, all of the major characters played into the storyline in effective ways, and I really enjoyed the fact that you could never die in any of these games, instead entering sometimes hilarious endless loops of combat. My only complaint with this final chapter is that the ending cinematic was too abrupt and rather unsatisfying. I'll assume that the brief scene after the credits is the setup for Tales of Monkey Island 2, which: awesome!

The Week in Television

Monday, March 29th
Loved: Chuck (3x12)

"Chuck Versus the American Hero" was originally planned to be the penultimate episode for season three, until NBC extended the season with six more episodes, so it makes sense that it felt so much like part one of a season finale. Other than being slightly hampered by a low budget, everything about this episode was excellent, including Morgan, Awesome, and Casey teaming up to help Chuck win Sarah back, Chuck laying it all on the line with Sarah, and Shaw's turn to the dark side. The reset button is still looming, because the show can obviously never follow through with Chuck transferring to Rome, but I hope there are at least some changes that are permanent.

Tuesday, March 30th
Loved: Lost (6x10)

"The Package" was a good episode of Lost, moving pieces strategically around the board in the island storyline and answering some minor questions in the alternate universe storyline. Although their episodes have never had the twists and turns of some of the other major characters, I have always enjoyed the Jin and Sun episodes of past seasons, and this one was no different in that respect. And, most importantly, Desmond!

Wednesday, March 31st
Liked: Modern Family (1x19), South Park (14x3)

A few days after watching this week's South Park, "Medicinal Fried Chicken," my brother asked me what I thought about it, and I honestly couldn't remember what the episode was even about. I knew I had found it quite funny at the time, but my mind had blocked it out, possibly due to alcohol consumption prior to the viewing. As I remembered bits and pieces of it, slowly, I remembered certain elements pretty fondly, such as the sight gag of Randy bouncing around on his enlarged balls. The rest of the episode? Forgettable.

It would be easy to look at Modern Family's "Game Changer" as a pretty damn funny 30-minute iPad commercial. I didn't really see it that way, because I was glad they had Phil be obsessed with an actual product rather than make some gizmo up, and because Phil's interest in a product is the opposite of an endorsement to me. The non-iPad elements to the episode were also solid.

Thursday, April 1st
Loved: Fringe (2x16)
Liked: Survivor (20x8)

"Peter" was a terrific episode of Fringe, completely unique to the series, consisting almost entirely of flashbacks to Walter's past when Peter was a sick child. It may not have provided many new answers, instead simply confirming suspected answers, but complaining about that would be missing the point. This was an undeniably important episode for the series, arguably the best one to date, and I am excited for the rest of this season.

Son of a bitch! I knew Rob was going to be in trouble when Tyson voted himself out last week, but I hoped it would be a few more weeks before the shit would hit the fan. I fucking hate Russell so much. On the Heroes side, Colby's redemption arc felt almost like it was scripted by a Hollywood hack.

Friday, April 2nd
Loved: Spartacus (1x11)
Liked: Stargate Universe (1x11)

Spartacus's "Old Wounds" didn't quite have the wow factor of the previous few episodes, but it still had plenty of goodness, including some surprising plot developments involving Batiatus and Ashur, Crixus' return to glory, and Spartacus learning the truth about his wife's death. The next two weeks will be very interesting.

Stargate Universe returned for the second half of its first season with "Space," an episode that finally introduced a mysterious external threat to the crew with mostly positive results. I liked seeing the communication stones used for something other than repeatedly visiting Earth, and the resolution to the mid-season finale's cliffhanger was reasonable. This episode only really suffered because it's been so long since I've spent any time with these characters that I have sort of lost interest in them, and there weren't enough good character moments here to remind me what I liked about them originally.

Saturday, April 3rd
Loved: Doctor Who (5x1)

This was a strong week for TV, but the triumphant series return of Doctor Who trumped everything. "The Eleventh Hour" was my favourite Doctor Who episode in ages. There were some iffy plot mechanics (cell-phone viruses?), but the episode zipped along at such an amazing pace that none of that even mattered. This was all about the characters, establishing the new doctor and his new digs, and his new companion and her world, and it rocked in all of those regards. Matt Smith completely won me over within minutes, but then somehow still managed to get better and better throughout the episode. The doctor's roof top showdown with the alien threat was awesome, especially the unexpected acknowledgment of his ten previous incarnations. And I'm going out on a limb and proclaiming after only one episode that Amy Pond is the best companion of the rebooted series. This episode and the season preview that followed left me giddy with excitement for what new showrunner Steven Moffat has planned.

Sunday, April 4th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x8)

This week's leg in Malaysia was a classic example of Amazing Race "taxi trouble." A good taxi driver helped the cowboys regain first place, despite the extra Speed Bump challenge, and bad taxi drivers plus bad decisions finished off Steve and Allie. No big loss there. I'm cheering for those damn lucky cowboys, the cops, or the brothers to win.

Blogging about the other stuff

2010-03-30T17:32:00.003-06:00

It's been a while since I've blogged about my life outside TV and video games, so it's time for some updates on other topics. For your reading pleasure, this post starts with the light stuff and slowly builds to the not-so-light stuff.

Brewing

Other than this introductory post, I rarely talk about brewing on this blog, instead posting Facebook statuses every Saturday about what was brewed on that day. At one point, I was thinking about using this blog to keep a journal of homebrewing activities, but instead I've been relying entirely on BeerSmith Brewing Software for that purpose. And that works quite well.

It's been nearly one year since the first all-grain batch, Centennial Blonde Ale on April 4, so I figured that this was a good time to note some of our more interesting brewing achievements and factoids from the past year of all-grain brewing.

Number of all-grain beers brewed: 32
Approximate total volume: 575 L
Mass of grain used: 156.2 kg
Most popular base malt: 2-Row Pale Malt (89.6 kg)
Most popular adjunct: Crystal Malt 40L (6.3 kg)
Mass of hops used: 2.3 kg
Most popular hops: Cascade (444 g)

Average competition result: 29 / 50
Best competition result: 37.5 / 50 for Scott's Stout 2
Worst competition result: 24.5 / 50 for a supposedly infected Biere de Garde

Personal picks for best beers so far:
1. Scott's Stout 2, brewed 2009/12/05
2. 122 American Pale Ale, brewed 2009/12/30
3. BrewDog Punk IPA Clone, brewed 2009/01/23
4. Scottish Ale, brewed 2010/01/16
5. Matrimonial Ale 2, brewed 2009/11/14

I have very high hopes for a few of our more recent brews, including the Vanilla Porter, Scott's Stout 3, Matrimonial Ale 4, and last week's awesome Imperial Stout.

Shaping Up?

No, not yet.

Pets

There has been a change to the population of my animal playhouse. New tally: 1 human, 1 dog, 3 cats.

Squeak has moved to Calgary to live under the capable care of my ex-wife, a former unofficial veterinary assistant. Basically, Squeak has now been put in a nursing home.

I have done test runs with letting Furlicity roam upstairs in Squeak's old domain, but I can't commit to letting that demon cat roam unsupervised just yet.

Monies

With a full six months of post-separation data compiled in my budget spreadsheet, I can now assess the financial benefits of living alone. The only benefit I can see to living alone is financial, so how much of a benefit is it really?

The first area where I expected to see significant cost savings was my utilities. My ex-wife worked out of the home, and often at night, which had obvious implications on power and gas usage. Comparing the last six months to the same six months of the previous year, my utility savings (usage, not dollars) were as follows: power, 30%; gas, 20%; water, 34%. So, in summary, there were utility savings, but certainly not enough to be considered much of a benefit.

It is worth noting that the water savings would have been in the 50% range easily, if not for homebrewing. In the month of September, prior to the start of brewing at my house, my water usage was 55% lower than the previous year. I have only that one data point, but I strongly suspect that pattern would have continued. Water usage being half with half as many people in the house makes perfect sense.

The gas data is the most surprising to me. I have kept my house significantly cooler (a couple degrees) on average this entire winter, including dropping the temperature threshold while I was out of the house, something I was unable to do last year, but the savings were still rather minimal. I haven't adjusted for weather differences between this winter and the last, so maybe that would help account for the disappointing results.

The area that should see the biggest financial benefit is the following of a budget and the paying down of debt. With only myself to worry about and blame, I am definitely better able to control overall household spending. I had to deal with numerous separation expenses in September and October of 2009, plus I definitely (justifiably) indulged myself with some major purchases for myself in those months, so I didn't see any benefits in this area until November. I have monthly financial obligations to my ex-wife that take a large chunk out of the household spending, but even including that chunk, my overall household spending is down 23% on average so far. I fully expect that percentage to increase as this year continues. Even with a newly revised, much more forgivable, easy to follow budget, I am solidly on pace to be debt free (you may recall from an earlier post that I do not consider my mortgage to be debt) in the first quarter of 2012.

Dating

In response to some recent self-discovery (an epiphany of sorts), I have pulled all of my online dating profiles and am in the process of reassessing what I am looking for in a relationship. "Physically fit, atheist geek girl without kids" (to paraphrase my profile) doesn't quite cover it anymore.

An idea was implanted in my brain a few months back as a result of some innocuous reading, but the gears only really started spinning a few weeks ago. I can't remember if there was a specific event that got those gears spinning, but it definitely involved more reading, and I quickly realized that there was a lot of truth in this idea. It explained a lot of things that had for a long while defied/demanded explanation. I have discussed this idea with the only person I can have this type of discussion with (my ex-wife) and have been convinced to let the gears keep spinning a while longer before writing something I might regret on this blog.

No, I'm not gay. Not that there would be anything wrong with that.

No, I don't have some weird fetish. Not that there would be anything wrong with that, either, although I certainly wouldn't talk about that on this blog.

For me, this was a profound realization that caused me to reevaluate my entire adult life. For you, you would probably just not understand nor care.

Summer

My summer staycation is scheduled for June 11th through 27th. This will be a time of great joy (two weeks away from work!) and... uh... awkwardness? Not only do I have a fucking 15-year high school reunion six fucking days before what would have been a fucking 5-year wedding anniversary, but my ex-brother-in-law is getting married the week before that, and I am quite possibly attending both events, apparently because I am a fucking idiot.

This is the worst possible year for a high school reunion--goddamn! I never thought I'd say these words: I wish we would have had a 10-year high school reunion. 2005 would have been the perfect year for a high school reunion. I was as happy as I will ever be, everything was going well, and I could have walked into that reunion with my head held high. 2010? Gah. The obvious question of why attend is tough to answer. Because I'm curious about my fellow grads? Because it might be interesting to see some of my old friends again? Because I can't come up with a good excuse not to?

Compared to the high school reunion, the wedding of my ex-brother-in-law might actually be fun. At least the drinks will be cheap at that party. It will certainly be awkward at first to see and talk to my ex-family-in-law for the first time since the separation (other than my ex-mother-in-law, whom I've seen and talked to a few times), but since my ex and I are still friendly, that awkwardness might fade. Seeing as there was always awkwardness between her family and I, as there is typically awkwardness with me and any group of new people, it actually might not be too much different from every other family gathering. It's mostly different because instead of being part of the family, I am now just one of the friends.

Week in Review, Mar 22 to 28

2010-03-29T16:31:00.000-06:00

The Week in Video Games

Again this week I had limited video gaming time, but I did manage to finish Tales of Monkey Island Chapter Four, "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood." While it wasn't quite as enjoyable as Chapter Three, it was certainly another worthy entry in this very good point & click adventure series. The story ramped up significantly, as it should in act four of a five act series, and the laughs were still plentiful, thanks in particular to the return of Stan (and his amazing jacket) and the hilarious Bailiff Hardtack. This chapter featured a huge cliffhanger ending, so I couldn't resist briefly diving into Chapter Five, which definitely has a very memorable opening sequence. I should have time during this coming long weekend to finally wrap this series.

The Week in Television

Monday, March 22nd
Loved: Chuck (3x11)
Liked: How I Met Your Mother (5x18), The Big Bang Theory (3x18)

"Chuck Versus the Final Exam" defied my expectation of tidy resolutions to last week's hanging threads and instead took the series and characters to new and even more interesting places. I know that eventually all of these changes will be somehow reset to normal, because that's how TV series in this genre (that are not Alias) work, but the ride is certainly an entertaining one and I'm glad I'm taking it. It is amusing (but somewhat distressing) that much of the Chuck fandom is frustrated by this third season, while I think the show is leaps and bounds better this year than it was in its first two seasons. In the last half of the second season the writers started a trend of tighter storytelling and continuity, and that's the direction the series has continued on in its third season. But Chuck fandom wants a return to the "good ol' days" of Chuck stumbling humourously through lame standalone missions. It's true what they say: people know what they like, and they just want you to keep giving them that. Except that they also want Chuck and Sarah to get together, without acknowledging that consummating central relationships is always a huge game-changer for a series, and it's often a move that a series will never recover from ("jumping the shark," if you will). Anyway, none of the fandom whining will matter, as the ratings this season have now hit a level where cancellation is very probable. However, everyone thought Chuck was a goner at the end of season two as well...

"Say Cheese" is the type of How I Met Your Mother episode that made me a fan of the series, with smart use of continuity and flashbacks, and effective use of all of the characters. There were a few misfired gags that slightly tarnished the quality of the storytelling, but on the whole, this was much better than most episodes of late.

I am conflicted about The Big Bang Theory's "The Pants Alternative." On one hand, I enjoyed the first three quarters of the episode without reservation, but on the other hand, Sheldon getting drunk and going all stand-up comedian didn't really work for me. I also felt that this episode needed a stronger end tag than seeing more of drunk Sheldon (although the title is a reference to the tag's gag), such as seeing some of the fallout from Sheldon's activities.

Tuesday, March 23rd
Loved: Lost (6x9)

Lost's "Ab Aeterno" finally told the sad story of poor Richard Alpert, mysterious ageless assistant to Jacob, and it did so very, very well. Surprisingly, they managed to tell his story without spoiling too many of the island's secrets, other than showing us the Black Rock's dramatic and statue destroying arrival on the island, and presenting a little bit more background material on the Man in Black and Jacob. But answers to the big questions won't come until the big series finale, so until then, I'll continue to enjoy the Lost ride, which is easy with storytelling as good as this.

Wednesday, March 24th
Liked: Modern Family (1x18), Survivor (20x7)
Meh: South Park (14x2)

This week's Survivor was much better than the last episode, probably because we finally got to see some strategic action from the much more interesting Villains tribe. The way Russell played Tyson was fantastic, even though Tyson's idiocy will likely have damaging effect on Boston Rob's standing in the game, and then I will be pissed. On the Heroes side, they wised up enough to take out injured James, but they are still idiots for taking out Tom last tribal council. And I don't get why no one ever suggests getting rid of Rupert; I'm pretty sure even an injured James is more useful than that fucking guy.

I appreciated the message of South Park's "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs," but much of the humour fell flat for me. When my biggest laugh was due to Matt Lauer spitting a couple times after vomiting, you know the episode was a little lacking.

I am finding that I have very little to say about Modern Family's "Starry Night," another solid if unremarkable half-hour of family comedy. The family sitcom is a genre of show that I normally don't watch, because it usually doesn't add up to much. I can laugh throughout an episode of Modern Family, but after a few hours I have a tough time recalling what all happened. It's funny, but it's also forgettable. Don't get me wrong, Modern Family is a damn good family sitcom, and the characters are great, but the threat of boredom is definitely looming.

Thursday, March 25th
Loved: Parks and Recreation (2x20)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x16), The Office (6x21)

Parks and Recreation had the most enjoyable Thursday half-hour with "Summer Catalog," a consistently funny episode that made great use of all of the characters. I'm a big fan of Andy and April as a couple, as anyone that has been reading these posts for a while should have noticed, and this was a big episode for them. Also great: Ron's hunger, Tom's photo-shoot, and an awkward picnic.

I enjoyed The Office's "Happy Hour" much more than the previous couple of episodes. Other than a few frustrating (but admittedly awkward-funny) moments with "Date Mike," this was a light, enjoyable excursion out of the office with the characters. Each of the couples had some good moments, including pre-"Date Mike" Michael with Pam's friend. I'm frankly shocked by how well Dwight and Isabel worked as a couple in this episode.

The part of 30 Rock's "Floyd" that worked the least for me was actually the title story with the return of Liz's old boyfriend. The rest of the episode was quite hilarious.

Friday, March 26th
Loved: Spartacus (1x10)
Liked: Caprica (1x9), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x6)

Wow. I did not see that coming. Another Friday, another awesome Spartacus episode. "Party Favors" started off as an unusually fun, light episode, especially coming on the heels of last week's darkness, and I should have known some ugly shit was going to go down in the end. Fuck. I was worried that this series might stagnate and get boring if it was just gladiator fight after gladiator fight, but the writers have avoided that trap very nicely in this first season by constantly switching things up.

Wow. I did not see that coming. Or that. Or that! WTF just happened!? Caprica's mid-season finale, "End of Line," had so many cliffhangers and deaths and surprises, that it was almost too much. There is certainly no way anyone can accuse this series of being boring anymore. Next week, Stargate Universe is back for the second half of its first season. I would much rather see the rest of Caprica's already-in-the-can first season... fucking Syfy.

Saturday, March 27th
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x15)

Legend of the Seeker's "Creator" was pretty good, despite the fact that it was a clip-show, and ignoring the egregious use of clips from LAST WEEK's episode. The first season's clip show was rather awful and pointless, but this episode's framing story was much better, tied directly into the season's main storyline, and actually introduced some interesting new mythology into the series. I wish they didn't have to resort to clip shows with this series, but producer Rob Tapert has always used clip shows to allow certain bigger episodes to go way over-budget.

Sunday, March 28th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x7)

The cops were finally knocked out of first place this week by the first major bunch-up in a few episodes, allowing perpetual middle-of-the-packers Steve and Allie to win a leg. And I'm pretty happy that the cowboys were saved by the second non-elimination leg. They may be complete idiots that make numerous dumb mistakes, but they are quite entertaining despite themselves. I'd like to see a final three of the brothers, cops, and cowboys.

Week in Review, Mar 15 to 21

2010-03-22T18:02:00.002-06:00

The Week in Video Games

In the limited spare time I had this week (I had a couple house guests this week--not complaining!), I completed Chapter 3 of Tales of Monkey Island and started Chapter 4. Chapter 3, Lair of the Leviathan, was easily my favourite chapter so far, featuring some of the funniest moments of the entire series and some of the best puzzles. I especially enjoyed the face-off battle and manatee date that captured some of the magic from the insult sword fights in the original Secret of Monkey Island. Chapter 4, like all of the chapters before it, is quite different so far--the diversity in this series has definitely been one of its strengths--but I'm too early into the game to judge its overall quality.

The Week in Television

Monday, March 15th
Liked: Chuck (3x10)

"Chuck Versus the Tic Tac" was an important episode because it finally provided some background information on John Casey, but the storytelling wasn't quite up to the standard set by this season. The best scene had Morgan and Captain Awesome learning that they both now know the truth about Chuck. I imagine that the unexpected ending will be quickly resolved in next week's Chuck, but I'd love to be wrong there.

Tuesday, March 16th
Liked: Lost (6x8)

"Recon" was a lesser episode for this final season of Lost, although there were many good moments, and con-man Sawyer is one of my favourite characters. It didn't seem like much of importance was established on the island, except for the minor reveal that Not!Locke had a crazy mother. The alt-reality storyline was enjoyable, with Miles continuing to be awesome, but it didn't really have any pay-off.

Wednesday, March 17th
Liked: South Park (14x1)

South Park returned to the air this week with "Sexual Healing," hilariously making fun of the media's shoddy handling of celebrity sex scandals. The Tiger Woods jokes were initially lame and unfunny, but once it was revealed that the scenes were a part of EA's new Tiger Woods golf video game, I laughed pretty hard. I enjoyed Butters' and Kyle's struggles with their newly discovered sex addiction, and loved how the voice of reason was not Stan but a random extra.

Thursday, March 18th
Loved: 30 Rock (4x15)
Liked: The Office (6x20), Parks and Recreation (2x19)

"Don Geiss, America and Hope" was a terrific 30 Rock episode, picking up where we left off last week with Liz's completely incompatible future husband and Jack's transition from GE to Kabletown. Tracy's struggle with being outed by the media as a faithful husband was also hilarious.

The Office's "New Leads" featured a jarring main storyline that could have used some more build-up. I just didn't buy the fact that suddenly all the sales staff were a bunch of dicks and the office had this huge schism. If we had seen some of this schism hinted at in previous weeks, it may have worked better in this episode. Laughs-wise, this episode was also below average for me.

"Park Safety" was a really funny Jerry-centric episode of Parks and Recreation. Jerry has been the go-to office punching bag, so it was nice to have an episode that humanized him a little while still delivering plenty of laughs at his expense. Also good: Andy Samberg had a great guest-turn as the loud-talking park ranger, Ron taught everyone self-defense, and Anne finally realized that something is going on between Andy and April.

Friday, March 19th
Loved: Spartacus (1x9)
Liked: Caprica (1x8), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x5)

Goddamn, Spartacus Blood and Sand is a twisted motherfucking series. For a series that started out as a mediocre Gladiator meets 300 bore, it has come a long way, now reliably delivering awesome fight sequences, political intrigue, shocking violence, and softcore pornography on a weekly basis. "Whore" was another fantastic episode, developing all of the major storylines and characters, and ending with a completely unexpected game-changer.

Caprica's "Ghosts in the Machine" featured some tense moments as Daniel tried to torture the truth out of Cylon Zoe, culminating in a frightening sequence where Zoe was ordered to shoot the family dog. Is that worse than being forced to tear off your own arm? The other major storyline was also strong, with Joe Adama running wild in New Cap City.

Saturday, March 20th
Loved: Legend of the Seeker (2x14)

Sister Nicci returned in "Bound," a very good Legend of the Seeker episode that diverged quite far from its source material to interesting effect. With Nicci and Kahlan bound by a nonsensical (but dramatically useful) maternity spell, Richard was forced to work with Nicci to do Rahl and the Keeper's bidding, ultimately introducing elements of the awesome Faith of the Fallen very early into this canon. We were also introduced to Kahlan's father in a surprisingly effective storyline with some of the best guest acting this series has ever featured. I'm still unsure about the new actress playing Nicci; she had some good moments here, though, easily besting her first awkward appearance.

Sunday, March 21st
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x6)

The cops finished first again!? I have to admit that they ran a clean leg, while a number of the other teams did not. One of the clues in this leg was rather tricky, and it led a lot of teams astray, including Team Big Brother who were at the back of the pack all the way until their well deserved elimination. Brent and Caite's bickering was quite entertaining in its immaturity, but they are hopelessly stupid and are surely the next team to go home.

Week in Review, Mar 8 to 14

2010-03-15T19:22:00.002-06:00

Seeing as I was busy skiing in the mountains for the last half of this week, I didn't have much in the way of free time to do anything. Just catching up on the television I missed while in Alberta was time consuming enough.

The Week in Television

Monday, March 8th
Loved: Chuck (3x9)
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x17), How I Met Your Mother (5x17)

"Chuck Versus the Beard" was an awesome episode, changing up the series in ways I did not see coming. I've always been iffy with Morgan, liking him some times, finding him annoying other times, but I'm excited about the possibilities for Chuck's best friend now.

The Big Bang Theory's "The Precious Fragmentation" was an okay episode. In theory, a The Lord of the Rings themed episode should have been an automatic winner with me, but the jokes were mostly stale and predictable.

"Of Course" was a much better How I Met Your Mother episode than the past few, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. It finally provided some fallout from the Barney and Robin relationship (late is better than never), and it had some great moments with Ted's "super date" song and the recurring ridiculousness of the "bang, bang, bangity, bang" song. But the resolution of Jennifer Lopez's character's storyline was frankly stupid.

Tuesday, March 9th
Loved: Lost (6x7)

"Dr. Linus" was a fantastic episode of Lost. But Ben has always been one of my favourite characters, so it's not too surprising that I would love this one. Everything about this episode worked, including the extremely unlikely coincidence of Alexandra Rousseau being alt-reality Ben's star pupil, giving him a second chance at redemption. In the island reality, there was more good material with Ben choosing his side, but the highlight for me was Miles' hilarious and unexpected call-back to Nikki and Paulo. The Nikki and Paulo flashback episode in season three was a contentious one with fans, but it is actually one of my favourites.

Wednesday, March 10th
Liked: Modern Family (1x17)

"Truth Be Told" was an average Modern Family episode. The biggest laughs came from the usual sources (Phil, Manny, Alex, Cameron), and the individual stories were thematically linked to the title. I don't mean to sound negative, though, as an average Modern Family episode is better than the best of most family sitcoms.

Thursday, March 11th
Liked: 30 Rock(4x14), The Office (6x19), Parks and Recreation (2x18)
Meh: Survivor (20x5)

Parks and Recreation's "The Possum" had some hilarious moments and some stupid moments. The depiction of the Animal Control department was terrific and any scenes involving Andy or Ron were great, but April and Tom were a little misused at times.

I wasn't a huge fan of The Office's "St. Patrick's Day." It just didn't add up to much, despite oodles of potential. I appreciated the return of some fun Dwight and Jim rivalry, Andy and Erin were cute as ever, and Michael surprisingly managed to be an effective boss in the end, but this was the least (and last?) of Kathy Bates' appearances, and the laughs were pretty minimal throughout.

I love that 30 Rock managed to get even more comedy out of Liz's dentist visit with "Future Husband." The rest of the episode didn't do much for me, other than make me laugh repeatedly at all the stupid shit that was going down.

After last week's awesome blindside, this week's Survivor sucked balls. Dammit, Heroes, WTF?

Friday, March 12th
Loved: Spartacus (1x8)
Liked: Caprica (1x7), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x4)

Caprica's "The Imperfections of Memory" was an important episode for story/plot maneuvering and development, but the episode on its own was somewhat boring and uneventful until the very last line of dialogue. I think that this episode would play much better in a marathon than as the weekly fix.

"Mark of the Brotherhood" was another strong Spartacus episode, firmly establishing Spartacus as the bad-ass gladiator champion and finally bringing Crixus back into the fold. Also important: Ilythia stepped up her game, Ashur's loyalty was tested, and Varro reacted poorly to his wife's news from last week.

It is hard to believe that Karl Pilkington is a real person. Goddamn.

Sunday, March 14th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x5)

It is hilarious that something as straightforward and easy as Morse Code took out asshole Joe. The cops are idiots that have somehow finished first twice in a row (but, if the cowboys can do it, anyone can), and delivered the WTF line of the night when they nonsensically compared the impressive war simulation to their detective work, but using the U-Turn on Joe and Heidi was an awesomely effective move.

Week in Review, Mar 1 to 7

2010-03-07T20:55:00.004-06:00

The Week in Video Games

I didn't do much gaming this week, but I did put a few hours into Telltale's Tales of Monkey Island series, completing Chapter 2 (The Siege of Spinner Cay) and starting Chapter 3 (Lair of the Leviathan). While I didn't enjoy Chapter 2 as much as I had enjoyed Chapter 1 when I played it way back in July, and had to sadly resort to a walkthrough for a couple of the trickier puzzles, it was still an entertaining and funny game with great dialogue throughout, and Chapter 3 seems like it will be even better based on what I've experienced so far. I like this concept of episodic gaming, and I wish I had been able to continue playing these chapters as they were released, but between July 7th (the release of Chapter 1) and August 20th (the release of Chapter 2), life interrupted. Now that I'm able to put Bioware's big games on the backburner, I should be able to get through the rest of the series in a few weeks.

The Week in Television

I stayed home for half of this week with the worst cold of my adult life, which gave me ample time to complete the BBC series catch-up I started two weeks ago. First, I watched the rest of the second and third (mini-series) seasons of Torchwood. And I pretty much loved all of it. There aren't many series that could make a multi-episode story arc revolving around a dead character work. There were a couple weak episodes in the second half of the second season, but the two-part season finale was terrific. The Children of Earth mini-series was even better. Bring on season four! Once I was done with Torchwood, I jumped back into the second season of Merlin. While I certainly could have done without the two-parter involving a farting troll queen (yeah), there were a number of quality episodes, and the darkness of the series was ramped up significantly. I was a little disappointed in the series' insistence on maintaining the status quo, which is actually unique for BBC series that I have watched (Torchwood and Doctor Who are certainly examples of the opposite), but there were some welcome developments with Morgana and the dragon at least. I will likely watch season three as it airs next fall, instead of saving it for another marathon, which is a good indication that I am more interesting in where the series is going now.

Monday, March 1st
Loved: The Big Bang Theory (3x16)
Liked: Chuck (3x8)
Meh: How I Met Your Mother (5x16)

"Chuck Versus the Fake Name" was not my favourite episode of this season, but it was still a typically entertaining and fun episode of Chuck. It was a little tough to buy Chuck's impressive thespian skills as he impersonated an assassin, but I loved the two mobsters he was working for. And I wasn't too pleased with an early break-up in one of the new relationships, but I'm hoping that was only a blip in a longer storyline. As an aside, I have recently started re-watching Chuck's first season, and I think I am appreciating the early episodes more now, knowing how good the show gets in its second season.

"The Excelsior Acquisition" was my favourite episode of The Big Bang Theory in a long while. It was consistently funny throughout, a quality that has been lacking in quite a few episodes this season, making good comedic use of all of the main cast. Pairing up Sheldon and Penny usually leads to good things, and this episode was definitely not an exception. And I loved Raj's Personal Soundtrack t-shirt (a great Thinkgeek product).

How I Met Your Mother has always had silly episodes like "Hooked," mediocre attempts to be a new Seinfeld with lame catch-phrases such as "on the hook" and "right now," but since I watched most of this series in a couple of days, these episodes would blend in with the good ones and be mostly forgotten. Watching on a week to week basis, these episodes just come off as dumb. For a show as normally concerned with continuity as this one, giving Ted a desperate "on the hook" co-worker out of the blue for the plot's sake was particularly glaring. And having Scooter show up as a lunch lady for the sole purpose of giving Lily and Marshall something to do in this episode wasn't much better.

Tuesday, March 2nd
Loved: Lost (6x6)

Lost brought the action with "Sundown," an awesomely dark Sayid episode. Sayid kicked some ass in both realities, trying his damnedest to kill Not!Locke, giving Keamy his second death in the series, and then viciously killing the leaders of the Temple Others. I also loved an early hand-to-hand fight between Sayid and Dogen. Even Ben was scared shitless of hardcore Sayid. Sides are being chosen for the island's war, and the coming battle is going to be awesome.

Wednesday, March 3rd
Liked: Modern Family (1x16)

"Fears" was a solid episode of Modern Family about, unsurprisingly, the characters' fears. Specifically, Manny's fear of roller-coasters, Haley's fear that she would fail her third driver's test, Alex's fear of not being asked to dance, Phil's fear of the dark and confined spaces, and Mitchell and Cameron's fear that their daughter's first word would be "Mommy." The biggest laughs of the episode, as per usual, followed any time Phil, Manny, Cameron, or Alex spoke.

Thursday, March 4th
Loved: The Office (6x17/18)
Liked: Parks and Recreation (2x17), Survivor (20x4)

Is it wrong that I felt bad for Coach during his emotional breakdown in this episode? It must be because I didn't see his first season, because I know the fan consensus of Coach is much more negative. However, he did completely undermine that empathy shortly afterward by ridiculously comparing himself to legends like King Arthur. And I certainly found Tyson's advice to him hilariously on-the-nose. As for the rest of this episode, it was actually nice to have two challenges again, the immunity idol hunts spiced up the game, and I absolutely loved the blindside at the end.

I'm so used to The Office not being on TV (due to its Olympics hiatus) that I forgot to review this week's episode when I first hit the post button. Anyway, to quickly throw some comments together: the hour-long "The Delivery" was quite good, one of my favourite episodes from this season. In particular, Dwight had some great moments, which has been sadly rare lately. Plus, Andy asking out Erin in the worst way possible was perfect. I also enjoyed this week's Parks and Recreation, with Ron hilariously winning a "Woman of the Year" award.

Friday, March 5th
Loved: Spartacus (1x7)
Liked: Caprica (1x6), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x3)

Spartacus's "Great and Unfortunate Things" was a critical episode for the series, because it had to give the main character a reason to continue fighting, and it was pretty successful in that regard. However, the best material in this episode centered around Doctore, first kicking Spartacus' ass for his actions last week, and then investigating Barca's freedom and Ashur's involvement. There were also some unexpected and depressing developments for Varro and Pietros, and a satisfying death-by-cliff for one particularly nasty gladiator.

"Know Thy Enemy" introduced a couple major villains to Caprica. Daniel's nemesis Tomas Vergis was particularly effective, providing some much needed tension in Daniel's storyline. Fanatic STO terrorist Barnabas (James Marsters!) didn't have as much screen time in this episode, but the promise for that character is also quite high. Also great this week: Philo's date with Zoe and Joe Adama trying to use a holoband. Caprica still hasn't quite knocked me over with an episode yet, but they are getting closer every week.

The Ricky Gervais show was more of the same this week, which is to say pretty damn hilarious. I'm almost tempted to listen to some "spoilers" by downloading the podcasts.

Sunday, March 7th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x4)

Non-elimination legs are a necessary evil for The Amazing Race, to allow the show to get 12 legs out of 10 teams each season, and thus be as cost effective as it is possible for the most expensive and elaborate reality show on television to be. I still remember the good old days of the first couple of seasons, when during the opening credits of the show, Phil would actually give away whether an episode featured an elimination or non-elimination leg by saying "Who will be eliminated tonight?" or "Who will be eliminated next?" Now it's always "next." Anyway, I actually would have missed the idiotic bumbling of Team Big Brother if they had gone home this week, so I was relieved by this first non-elimination leg.

And, as I do every year, I also watched The Academy Awards, despite having seen so few of 2009's movies. (Quick tally: Star Trek, District 9, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Up, Avatar... that might be it. Fuck, I used to be a movie buff.) Or at least had it on in the background while finishing up this blog post. Pretty lacklustre show this year. Neil Patrick Harris' opening song was decent, but Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin bored with their opening mono--uh, dialogue? Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr had the best moment of the entire show, by far--so far, anyway, since the show's not yet over as I'm posting this.

Week in Review, Feb 22 to 28

2010-02-28T21:53:00.002-06:00

Although I did play some Mass Effect 2 this week, it wasn't much, and I didn't accomplish anything of note, so it's all TV in this Week in Review.

The Week in Television

I watched a lot of Olympics events this week, much more than I did during the first week. I got sucked into the Canadian hockey drama, as well as curling and short-track speed skating.

When I wasn't watching the Olympics or the few series below that dared air opposite the Olympics, I was watching Torchwood. The show has grown on me a lot, improving significantly from a very rocky first five or so episodes. It's a much more adult series than Doctor Who, often surprising me with language and themes I didn't expect to see in the Doctor Who universe. The characters are the most important element here, much more so than the stories, and I have developed an attachment to every member of the main cast. The cheese factor I mentioned last week, most exemplified by "Cyberwoman," my least favourite episode of the series so far, has mostly subsided. The storylines improved as the Cardiff Rift, Torchwood's version of Buffy's Hellmouth, was explored with more detail, and the first season ended much stronger than it had begun, even though the series didn't have nearly the budget it would have needed to do its final twist justice. Early into the second season, the series seems stronger than ever, with tighter storytelling and interesting character development. I'm sad now that there are only two and a half seasons of Torchwood to watch.

Tuesday, February 23rd
Loved: Lost (6x5)

"Lighthouse" wasn't quite as good as last week's Lost, but Jack episodes are never as good as Locke episodes. There were some bones thrown to fans to say, "Yeah, we remember stuff from the first season," but the main revelation of this episode felt a little redundant after last week. It was still very entertaining, particularly thanks to some great lines from Hurley, and was obviously an episode about moving pieces around to setup a bigger payoff in the coming episodes. The flash-sideways storyline could have been a problem, what with introducing a new character and all, but it was actually quite emotionally effective.

Thursday, February 25th
Liked: Survivor (20x3)

I wonder if it was Boston Rob's idea to put Randy up against James--such a hilariously absurd match-up. This season's trend of only having a single challenge in each episode is new to me, but it seems so far to be a good thing, giving more screen time to the machinations of the players. One thing I've come to expect from Survivor definitely hasn't changed: the editors still make it obvious which tribe is going to lose the immunity challenge by giving that tribe much more screen time before the challenge.

Friday, February 26th
Loved: Spartacus (1x6)
Liked: Caprica (1x5), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x2)

"There is Another Sky" introduced a new area of V-world to Caprica and spent most of its running time with Tamara Adama, a character that I had previously thought would be a minor player at best. And she was pretty awesome, developing Neo-like powers and kicking all kinds of ass. Outside of V-world, the Adama family came together for an interesting ritual, and Zoe was forced by her dad to rip her own arm off in the episode's best scene.

"Delicate Things" was another kick-ass episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. This show is really bringing it now. The political machinations took an ugly turn last week, and that element of the show reached new heights of ugliness in this episode. Even good-guy Spartacus was lying his ass off and manipulating events to his purposes this week. In the end, Batiatus still managed to win with the dirtiest betrayal of all. And, holy hell, that bath scene...

I forgot to mention the premiere of the animated The Ricky Gervais Show last week. As someone that has not listened to the podcasts that this show is regurgitating (now with visuals!), I am greatly enjoying my first exposure to the inanity of Karl Pilkington. The second episode was not quite as genius as the first, but there was still copious amounts of funny.

Saturday, February 27th
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x13)

"Princess" was a strangely amusing episode of Legend of the Seeker, even though the setup and plot were completely absurd. This was another standalone episode, but the stalling on the Stone of Tears story wasn't quite as blatant as last week. The focus again this week was on Cara, but in a goofy way this time, and Tabrett Bethell actually brought the comedy like a pro. And the return of Nicci was welcome, although the new actress was awkward in the role.

Sunday, February 28th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x3)

It amazed me how many teams had trouble with the "Horse Sense" Detour in this week's Amazing Race. Best of all was Joe, who thought he had it in the bag because his watch has a compass on it, but then failed miserably to understand the challenge. The cowboys continued to impress despite themselves. Jeff had the line of the night with "We definitely shouldn't reproduce," after failing to read his clue properly. And I certainly won't miss the Philiminated team who thought simply being moms made them special for some reason.

Shapin' Up 2: Electri--uh, no.

2010-02-26T12:20:00.004-06:00

Way back in September, my second post on this blog was about how motivated I was to get in shape and improve my physical appearance and health and all that nonsense. Yeah, that went well. I'm writing this blog post to try to motivate myself again to get out of a long funk.

It may just be the standard winter funk, but I think it's more than that this year. Because I don't work out in a gym ever, and instead typically rely on outdoor activity to get in shape, winter is often a period of laziness and weight gain. I tried to put an end to that pattern this year by purchasing some personal exercise equipment. That went about as well as it does for most people.

Ultimately, I really dislike exercising. It is so aimless and unsatisfying; so much effort for so little return. It would obviously be different if I found lifting weights or running to be fun, but I don't. (Maybe they're not supposed to be fun, maybe I'm missing the point, but then why do so many people do these activities every day?) I've gotten most of my winter exercise from shoveling snow, which is certainly not fun in the least. Things that are fun in the winter: sitting on the couch playing video games or watching TV, brewing and drinking beer, alpine skiing, and curling. Only the latter two involve any physical activity, I don't do either nearly enough, and it's not really that much exercise in either case. And the former two are how I spend most of my time, leading directly to weight gain, with the notable assistance in 2010 of bags of chips.

With the pending arrival of spring--what do you mean, March isn't spring yet?--in past years I would be itching to get out on my bike (or, if I go back 5 years, in-line skates) again. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling that urge this year. Ultimately, I don't find biking to be much fun either; but it's more fun than running, at least. Biking to and from work is just a good excuse to do something physical with a purpose. (I also save a tiny amount of money by not driving my car.) In the same way as I'd rather go for a long walk to visit Best Buy than just go for a long walk, having a destination for my biking makes it feel less aimless and unsatisfying. But it's still not really fun. At this point, I honestly don't think I'll be biking to work much this summer. I have better, lazier things to do with the hour of my life I'll save each day.

By writing that last sentence down in this blog post, I'm trying to convince myself that it is the stupidest thing I could possibly think. I'd take one more hour of video gaming over a healthier lifestyle and improved self image/esteem and general well-being? God, I hope not.

At least when I was married, I felt motivated to exercise to keep up with my wife's weight loss. After she left, I initially felt motivated to exercise to try to look my best for any future prospects. Fun didn't matter. I had a purpose.

For the first few months after separation, I was desperately searching for someone to replace my wife. I needed to feel like there was still hope for me and relationships. I'm almost completely over that feeling now. Three months of online dating was enough to destroy any hope. If there's someone out there that fits the admittedly restrictive criteria of what I am looking for, she's certainly not involved in the Regina online dating scene at this time. And I have my doubts that she ever will be. It seems like all the single women are single for a good reason.

And I'm probably a single man for a good reason. The more time I spend by myself, the less I have to offer someone else. My house is now one-third a home, one-third a brewery, and one-third an animal playhouse. (Well, to be fair, it was always one-third an animal playhouse.) I'm not saying I don't like it that way, because I do. But would someone else?--doubt it. Other than the empty half of a king bed, there isn't any room in my house for another person. I'm starting to feel the same way about my life in general.

Okay, that was a bit of a divergence from the topic at hand. The point of the past few paragraphs was to say that I don't see myself dating anyone any time soon, so there's no motivation to exercise to look my best for that purpose. (In my year in review blog post, I mentioned possibly joining some clubs or something to expand my social circle. Maybe later this year?) I need to motivate myself to exercise for myself, which is really hard when most of me would rather just play video games; thus the existence of this blog post.

I do care about living a healthy lifestyle. Other than the bags of chips, I eat reasonably well. (I used to eat bags of candy instead of bags of chips, so it's possibly a net zero situation, anyway. My teeth are happier about the current arrangement, though.) Lots of fruits and vegetables. Whole wheat/grain everything. Lots of protein. Most importantly, a reasonable overall calorie intake. I know this because I haven't gained much weight despite sitting on my ass for three straight months. If I wasn't drinking beer like it was water, especially on Saturdays, I wouldn't be concerned about my health at all.

It's probably been a year since I last saw a doctor, so another visit is likely a good idea. I had a completely clean bill of health last time, but the heavy drinking in 2009 may have something to say about that. There's also a pressing issue of risk factors for colon cancer that needs to be addressed. Fun!

They ("They") say you need 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day to stay healthy. I'm obviously well below that level. My thumbs have been getting a pretty good workout lately, but the rest of my body must be suffering. Well, probably not. This has not been an unusually lazy winter by any means. My main concern is not really with how lazy I've been through the cold months this year (although I am disappointed with myself because this year was supposed to be different), but with how I'm thus far lacking any urge to hop on my bike in spring. Maybe I'm getting worried way too early. There's still tons of snow on the ground. Maybe this blog post is premature. But, hey, that's my prerogative.

Also, I'm once again backing away slowly from any plans to run a half-marathon this year. As much as I'd like to just do it so I could say I had done it, I really dislike running--so why would I want to train to be a runner? I had hoped to get my stamina up with some regular exercise through the winter, but we already know that didn't happen, so here I am reset to zero again.

Rather than thinking about half-marathons that I'll never be ready for, maybe I should be looking at getting back into biking shape for something like the MS Bike Tour. The two MS Bike Tours I participated in in 2003 and 2004 were easily the most fun I ever had doing strenuous physical activity, despite how not fun biking is most of the time. The fundraising is annoying, but I can skip that by simply donating the minimum amount to myself. (Yeah, that's right, I'm a terrible human being for thinking about participating in a charity event but not putting any effort into the charity part.) So, anyway, that's something for me to think about, anyway. I'd need to sucker someone into joining me, though, because the previous events were mostly fun thanks to those that biked with me.

So, there, I guess that's a goal. Having a goal is the first step toward motivation. I need to get off my couch and start doing something for my well-being soon.

About Me - Browncoat and Whedonite

2010-02-23T19:40:00.003-06:00

There are numerous TV writers that I respect immensely, including but not limited to J.J. Abrams (Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe), Tim Minear (Lois & Clark, The X-Files, Angel, Firefly, Wonderfalls, Dollhouse), Ronald D. Moore (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica), Carlton Cuse (Brisco County, Lost), Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies) and Ira Steven Behr (Star Trek, The 4400), but TV writing does not get any better than the work of Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse. The first three of these series are three of my favourite TV series of all time.

And it is no coincidence that many of my favourite episodes of these series were penned by Joss himself (and often directed by as well), except for Angel where it was more of Tim Minear's show ("Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," "Reprise," "Lullaby," "Home"). From Buffy, there's game-changer "Innocence," the awesome "Becoming" two-parter, the silent "Hush," the devastating "The Body," and brilliant musical "Once More, with Feeling." From Angel, there's the hilarious "Spin the Bottle" and the shocking "A Hole in the World." From Firefly, there's the deceptive "Our Mrs. Reynolds," the philosophical series finale "Objects in Space," and the terrific feature film Serenity. From Dollhouse, there's game-changer "Man on the Street" and the "I can't believe Fox never aired this episode!" genius of "Epitaph One."

Joss Whedon's fans, most much more fanatic than I am, refer to themselves as Whedonites. Browncoat is a more specific label for fans of the short-lived Firefly series. There are no specific labels for fans of Buffy or Angel, otherwise they would have also been listed in my About Me.

My interest in Joss Whedon's work obviously started with Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Not so much the movie (1992). Although the movie was penned by Joss, the director had a different vision than the writer, and the end result was a silly, inconsequential film. When Joss was given the chance to bring his vision for Buffy to the small screen in 1997, I don't think anyone really believed it would be much better. Including me. I initially had no interest in a series based on that silly movie.

I was an active member of a different but similar show's online fandom (more details in a future About Me), and word of mouth for Buffy the series was very strong. And through channel surfing during the summer months when I was at home and actually had cable (I had no cable in university--and yeah, that fucking sucked!), I would occasionally catch an episode on YTV. And it seemed way better than I expected.

Prior to collecting TV series on DVD (and now Blu-ray), I used to collect series on VHS. Unfortunately, the pattern for TV series on VHS was two episodes per tape, three tapes per set, and a "Best of" strategy for which episodes were chosen. Until the DVD sets were released, there were actually several episodes in the first and early second seasons of Buffy that I had never seen. (There was no option for downloading TV episodes at this time. You actually had to try to catch an episode in rerun if you missed it the first time.)

I finally started watching Buffy as it aired (still on YTV--YTV later regretted carrying the series, once they realized that Buffy wasn't a kids show) late in its second season, coincidentally at the height of the series' run. To this day, I have yet to see a TV series match the quality of the Angelus arc of Buffy season two. A few series have come close (Angel's Darla arc, Battlestar Galactica's and Dexter's first seasons), but "Surprise" through "Becoming" is simply TV at its best. (It should go without saying that all of this is personal preference.)

But it is not just the great dramatic arc stories and threatening "big bad"s that made Buffy a terrific show. One of the best things about Buffy was how damn funny it was. Joss's dialogue was superbly witty and clever (too clever, for some), and some of show's Valley girl phrasing still finds its way onto my tongue at times.

At the end of Buffy's third season, the character of Angel was spun-off into his own series. The Space Channel aired Angel in Canada, instead of YTV, since it was clearly not a kid's show in any way. Initially, I had no way to watch the new series (last year of university, still no cable, still sucked), so I again missed most of the first season until DVDs were released. Somehow I managed to catch the last episode of the first season at least, and that episode was absolutely fantastic.

Starting with the second season, I was watching and loving Angel as it aired. Much like Buffy's second season, Angel's second season featured some of the series' strongest episodes. In fact, early in the second season of Angel, I had already concluded that Angel was a superior show to Buffy. This remained true for the entire run of both series. Although Buffy had the best season of both series with its second season, Angel was much more consistently good throughout. Buffy's last two seasons are regrettably below par, albeit not without a spattering of excellent episodes. Anyway, both shows are so interlinked with crossover stories and characters that watching all episodes of both series is essential to the enjoyment of either.

In fall 2002, with Buffy in its final season and Angel in its second last, Joss Whedon brought another series to TV: the awesome Firely. If Firefly had lasted longer than its truncated 15 episodes, it's quite likely it would have gone down as my favourite TV series of all time. It certainly featured my favourite Joss Whedon character with Captain Malcolm Reynolds, marvelously depicted by Nathan Fillion. Mal Reynolds was hilarious and heroic, and as an added plus, an atheist (just like his creator). Firefly was treated poorly by the Fox network, aired out of order, stuck in a Friday death slot, and therefore struggled in the ratings. On DVD, the series flourished somehow, enough that Universal was willing to bank the creation of a movie. Serenity is an effective conclusion to the series, so thank you, Universal!

After Serenity, Joss Whedon took it a little easier for a few years. 2008's web series Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog was a fun musical comedy, and the DVD even features a brilliant musical commentary. In 2009, Joss strangely decided to try to launch another TV series on Fox, the network that fucked over Firefly, and although Dollhouse certainly got less screwed than Firefly, because it at least got two seasons and a finale, it still begs the question, "Why Fox?" Dollhouse is the least of Joss Whedon's series, but in typical Joss fashion, its second season was pretty fucking awesome. Goddamn, what would a second season of Firefly have been like?

Joss Whedon is not perfect, despite what some of his more ardent fans would have you believe. His feature film writing work has been spotty, although it's possible that his scripts (which I've never read) are better than the finished products. And, as previously mentioned, the last two seasons of Buffy were not that great. A fair bit of blame for that lies with interim showrunner Marti Noxon, but it was Joss who left her in charge of Buffy while he was busy working on Firefly. But nobody is perfect. Joss Whedon has had more hits than misses, by far, and that's all that really matters.

I certainly look forward to Joss Whedon's next project, whatever it is, wherever it is. I am unquestionably a fan for life. And I will continue to re-watch and enjoy Buffy, Angel, and Firefly for many years to come, while also reading the ongoing comics continuations of these three amazing TV series.

(Thanks, Olympics!--for giving me some background noise to blog to so I could complete this long overdue About Me post.)

Week in Review, Feb 15 to 21

2010-02-21T20:00:00.002-06:00

The Week in Video Games

Lots more Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 this week. I completed my 30-hour second playthrough of Mass Effect on the Hardcore difficulty, beating the Pinnacle Station DLC for the first time, and then transferred my renegade character (ie. bad guy) into Mass Effect 2 to experience the impacts of the different moral choices. My first playthroughs of both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were with a paragon character (ie. good guy). It's funny that I often have a difficult time making the renegade choices, and almost always feel bad about making them afterward, even when I'm specifically playing that angle. There were a couple renegade choices in Mass Effect that I absolutely couldn't make. But, likewise, I didn't make all paragon choices in my first playthroughs. Most notably, the choice I made at the end of Mass Effect 2 on my paragon playthrough is considered the renegade choice. I felt it was the smarter choice to make for the story, so I didn't let my dominant alignment influence my decision. At the end of my ongoing renegade playthrough of Mass Effect 2, I will probably make the paragon choice in that moment, so I'll be able to experience the impact of both options in Mass Effect 3.

I love that Mass Effect 2 let me switch the class of my character at the beginning of the game, so I could play as a Vanguard this time instead of another Engineer. I've only ever played the original Mass Effect as an Engineer, although I will have to play as an Adept at some point to complete the Achievements. So far, I really miss the Engineer's attack drone, and am having a hard time getting used to the Vanguard's close combat attack style. But it's definitely fun to play the game in a completely different way, while also making all the different moral choices.

For "fun," I also simultaneously started up third playthroughs of each game with my original paragon character, but on the Insanity difficulty level. It's called Insanity for a reason. Mass Effect might be beatable on Insanity, with some patience and tenacity and strategy, but Mass Effect 2 has been completely ridiculous on Insanity so far. Thinking about some of the battles that are coming up in later missions, I've already convinced myself that it will be impossible to complete.

The Week in Television

With the Olympics providing me with some breather room from my typical weekly series, I had some time this week to try to catch up with a couple of BBC series, namely Torchwood and Merlin. While Merlin series two is actually showing some pretty significant improvement from series one, Torchwood so far has been pretty weak. Torchwood has the Doctor Who cheese factor, but without the wit and humour that makes Doctor Who's cheesiness enjoyable.

Tuesday, February 16th
Loved: Lost (6x4)

Locke episodes are typically above average for Lost, and "The Substitute" was no exception. The off-island Locke scenes were emotionally engaging and loaded with interesting unexpected character appearances. The on-island Not!Locke scenes were even better, with some fascinating revelations (still more new questions than answers, though), cool Smokey-vision, Sawyer being awesome, and the return of the numbers. Also: the weirdest damn funeral.

Thursday, February 18th
Liked: Survivor (20x2)

The best thing about all-star seasons of Survivor is how invested I get early on in the voting. In a normal Survivor season, there isn't enough time to get to know the first few people to get the boot, so I don't care who goes at this stage. But there are a number of people that I want to see stick around in this all-star season of Survivor, so I'm actually nervous about who is going to get voted out each week. So far, so good. But some of my favourites are definitely in a shitty spot right now, unless the standard tribe shakeup comes soon.

Friday, February 19th
Loved: Spartacus (1x5)
Liked: Caprica (1x4)

"Shadow Games" was an excellent episode of Spartacus, easily the best to date. A slow, quiet build-up led to an amazing climax in the gladiatorial arena. Forcing bitter rivals Spartacus and Crixus to team up to fight the giant Theocles was brilliant. For a bonus, Batiatus went to a surprising place morally.

Caprica's "Gravedancing" was an okay episode, focusing on the not really all that interesting Graystones. A tense sequence with Sam and Amanda was easily the the highlight, although the Zoe dancing scene was memorably fucked up.

Saturday, February 20th
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x12)

Legend of the Seeker's "Hunger" was an obvious filler episode, even though the story primarily involved banelings. There were a number of questionable moments in the plotting, but the episode was otherwise pretty good.

Sunday, February 21st
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x2)

I spent most of Sunday watching the Olympics for the first time since the opening ceremonies, enjoying some curling, speed skating, ski-cross (pretty fucked up event, there), and hockey, but took an one hour break in the evening to watch this otherwise unremarkable episode of The Amazing Race. I am surprised by how much I like the cowboy team.

Week in Review, Feb 8 to 14

2010-02-14T23:52:00.001-06:00

The Week in Video Games

My original plan for this week was to take a break from video gaming. That lasted a couple of days until I found myself with tons of free time and no plan for what to do with it.

So, as I thought I would last week, I started a second playthrough of Mass Effect. The original: complete with awesome but flawed Mako, complicated inventory system, slow elevators, and a confusing cover system. I'm playing a New Game +, which means you get to use your character from your first playthrough when you start over again, keeping your experience level and your equipment. You'd think that would be super easy, but I'm also playing on the Hardcore difficulty level this time around. My first playthrough of the original Mass Effect apparently took me 34 hours. I am now just under 20 hours into playthrough two.

I also started playing Tales of Monkey Island episode two, The Siege of Spinner Cay, this week. I have only put about an hour into the game so far, but it seems very similar to episode one in structure, and that's mostly a good thing. I love me some point & click adventuring. But at the same time, these games require so much trial and error to solve most of the puzzles that they are a little too frustrating to play than my current mood will tolerate.

The Week in Television

With the Olympics now hogging TV (not that I don't enjoy watching the Olympics every once in a while), next week's Week in Television will be ridiculously sparse. But that's next week. This week was pretty packed. And it was a week of Valentine's Day episodes! Great! I loved being reminded every day this week that a shitty Valentine's Day was coming...

Monday, February 8th
Loved: Chuck (3x7)
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x15)
Meh: Heroes (4x19), How I Met Your Mother (5x15)

Heroes's uneven and uneventful fourth season came to an end this week with the wholly unremarkable "Brave New World," possibly the weakest season finale in a series that is notorious for having weak season finales. Tim Kring, you fucking suck. The only plotline that could be called good in this episode was the bittersweet resolution of the Hiro and Charlie relationship. The resolution to the season long carnival storyline is only deserving of a "That's it?!?" I think I might just be able to say "I'm fucking done with this show" if it manages to somehow get a fifth season in the fall.

There was a lot to love about this week's "Chuck Versus the Mask," beginning with some Mission Impossible style silly spy stuff and ending with some major relationship shake-ups. I am enjoying Chuck and Hannah together much more than I thought possible.

How I Met Your Mother had its second straight off week with "Rabbit or Duck," an episode that had one good moment with a funny group argument about whether rabbits or ducks are better, and numerous awful moments, mostly involving Robin or the fallout from Barney appearing on TV during the Super Bowl holding up a sign with his phone number on it. Two weeks in a row of man-whore Barney, really?

"The Large Hadron Collision" was a pretty good The Big Bang Theory Valentine's themed episode. The show has been overdoing the crazy Sheldon lately, and this episode still had a big chunk of crazy Sheldon, but there was more balance with Leonard and Penny this week. And I love that, in the end, it was poor lonely Raj that got to join Leonard on his trip.

Tuesday, February 9th
Liked: Lost (6x3)

Lost's obligatory early season Kate episode, "What Kate Does," was a bit of a letdown from the premiere, but on the scale of Kate episodes was actually one of the better ones. The advantage this episode had over past Kate episodes was the presence of the long missing (and missed) Claire. Also unusually good this week: Jack.

Wednesday, February 10th
Liked: Modern Family (1x15)

Modern Family's "My Funky Valentine" had one hilarious storyline (Claire and Phil roleplaying), one okay storyline (Mitchell, Cameron, and the always awesome Manny), and one didn't go anywhere storyline (Jay and Gloria seeing a comedy show). So, overall, pretty good.

Thursday, February 11th
Loved: 30 Rock (4x13), Parks and Recreation (2x16), The Office (6x16)
Liked: Survivor (20x1)

All it took to lure me back to Survivor was another all-stars season, this time the silly "Heroes vs. Villains." I skipped out on seasons 18 and 19 after watching the first 17, but I really don't think I missed much. Especially since Coach and Russell, the only cast members that were memorable from those seasons, are on the Villains team this season. The first episode of this 20th season, "Slay Everyone, Trust No One," was very entertaining, getting a lot of mileage out of all of the strong personalities that returned for this season. The highlight for me was when Boston Rob, always a favourite of mine, made fire from scratch. Who needs flint? Not Boston Rob. Also great: James being James, Tom kicking ass, Jerri & Coach flirting, and Amanda's bikini. Not so good: was Russell always this annoyingly delusional? Fuck that guy.

I'm pretty sure that this is the first week since I started these weekly reviews that all three NBC Thursday comedies earned the Loved tag. I guess Valentine's Day is great inspiration for comedy.

Maybe it's lowered expectations from a below average season, but "Manager and Salesman" was an excellent The Office episode. There was a lot to love and nothing that I disliked. Seeing Jim in Michael's office and Michael at Jim's desk was a highlight of the season. The Valentine's aspect was a cute side story involving clueless Andy and Erin that also made the best use of Kelly in a long time (probably because Mindy Kaling was the writer).

"Anna Howard Shaw Day" was the best 30 Rock episode in a long time for me. The entire episode was a completely cynical and hilarious look at Valentine's Day, and Liz's episode ending hallucinations of her old boyfriends (Dennis!) and Jon Bonjovi made it even better. And I even enjoyed crazy Jenna's storyline this week, which is amazing.

Parks and Recreation's "Galentine's Day" was the weakest of the three comedies this week, but it was still very good with numerous great moments. I just love everything involving Andy and April.

Friday, February 12th
Liked: Spartacus (1x4)

Spartacus's "The Thing in the Pit" was quite strong throughout, offering an intense and disturbing look at underground pit fighting, and featuring some of the most gruesome sequences I have ever seen... Yikes! This episode marks the turning point for me from watching this show because it had interesting potential to watching because I actually really like it.

Saturday, February 13th
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x11)

Legend of the Seeker went to the ol' "character split into two" well (best exemplified by Buffy's "The Replacement") with "Torn," and it actually worked quite well. Key to the success: choosing to split Kahlan and providing a believable justification for the two distinct personalities of the new Kahlans. This episode also took the series to Aydindril for the first time--and that was long overdue!

Sunday, February 14th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x1)

The 16th season of The Amazing Race started strong with "Nanna is Kickin' Your Butt!" There are not many bland teams this season, so there's no risk of all of the interesting teams losing out early as has happened in the past couple of seasons, and there were a surprising number of amusing mistakes made for a first leg. This might just be the stupidest cast of all time. Plus, I'm pretty sure that this was the first time that a team wasn't able to even finish the first leg.

Week in Review, Feb 1 to 7

2010-02-07T20:44:00.002-06:00

The Week in Video Games

I finished Mass Effect 2 this week after 42 hours of gameplay. That includes the completion of all optional quests (or at least all that I found). Like the original Mass Effect, the ending sequence was impressively cinematic and left me begging for more. In terms of pure storytelling, I prefer Mass Effect's surprise-packed conclusion, but Mass Effect 2 definitely nailed the drama and intensity of a foolhardy suicide mission. Since you spend most of Mass Effect 2's playtime bonding with your crew and earning their loyalty, I appreciated how you were able to make use of all of them in the final mission, much like Dragon Age's conclusion. That's an element that Mass Effect never had. Also improved from Mass Effect: being able to get almost all of the achievements in one playthrough, instead of requiring FOUR. And, despite the simplification of the RPG elements and the loss of the planet exploration, it is also hard to argue that Mass Effect 2 doesn't kick the shit out of the gameplay of the original.

There are a lot of things that are impressive about Mass Effect 2, but the aspect that I think is most interesting and most promising for Mass Effect 3 is how many of the choices made in Mass Effect affected events in Mass Effect 2. This concept is so brilliant that it makes me want to go back and play through Mass Effect again to make different choices and see how that carries into Mass Effect 2. None of these changes were hugely significant in the big scheme of things, but they affected the details. I can't even imagine playing Mass Effect 2 without having played Mass Effect; the callbacks are some of the best and most satisfying moments. And, looking forward to Mass Effect 3, there is a choice made at the end of Mass Effect 2 that should have major consequences on the coming war, so I can't wait to see how that plays out.

Already this year I have taken two days off from work for the sole purpose of playing video games, one day for Dragon Age (and then a genuine sick day a week later to finish it off) and one day to finish off Mass Effect 2. This is only noteworthy because I can't remember the last time before 2010 that I took a day off to specifically play video games. In fact, I barely played video games at all in the year 2009, excepting music games, work coffee-breaks (fuck yeah!), and the post-Christmas period. All it takes to flip my switch from casual gamer to hardcore gamer is Bioware releasing two masterpieces in three months. It'll be interesting to see where my renewed video game interest takes me for the rest of this year without new Bioware games to suck me in. Well, for starters, I definitely have to revisit Mass Effect 1...

The Week in Television

Monday, February 1st
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x14), Chuck (3x6)
Meh: Heroes (4x18), How I Met Your Mother (5x14)

"Chuck Versus Nacho Sampler" was a bit disappointing in execution considering the excellent premise of Chuck having to be Sarah to his own Chuck. It's hard to explain what was wrong with it, but I think I just didn't buy into the character of Manoosh at all. I did, however, really enjoy Morgan's storyline this week, especially his shift from Hannah stalker to Chuck stalker due to some suspicious activities.

Last week's Heroes was pretty good and the series seemed to have good momentum heading into the final two episodes of the season. Ha!--I should have known better. "The Wall" squandered all of that potential by focusing on some filler nonsense involving Peter and Sylar and a mental brick wall. And despite the fact that Noah is my favourite character on the show, his retcon flashbacks in this episode were bizarrely irrelevant.

The Big Bang Theory's "The Einstein Approximation" was another over-the-top Sheldon episode, but this one worked better for me than the last because this time his obsession was a difficult physics problem. Also, Penny's reactions to Sheldon's antics were much funnier, and there was a hilarious scene with Bernadette playing stern mother.

How I Met Your Mother's "The Perfect Week" was an okay episode. It was well structured and the baseball metaphor wasn't lost on me, but it also wasn't particularly funny. The jokes were very hit and miss this week.

Tuesday, February 2nd
Loved: Lost (6x1/6x2)

The premiere of Lost's final season was undoubtedly the TV highlight of the week, both in terms of anticipation and delivery. It's hard to talk about "LA X" without some minor spoilers, so spoiler alert! If you don't want spoilers, skip the next two paragraphs entirely. And, what are you waiting for? Watch the damn episode already! It's fucking great!

When the screen flashed white at the end of the fifth season, the big question for fans of Lost was whether the writers of the show would have the guts to push the big flashing reset button for the entire series going into the final season. And the answer is a surprisingly genius "Yes and no." Bravo, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof! Bravo! When the flashback structure of the first three seasons became dull, season four's flashforward structure rejuvenated the series. Season five cleverly relied on time travel for most of its flashes. And now season six is flashing to an alternate timeline. In retrospect, that is an obvious solution to the season five finale, but I didn't see it coming.

So, anyway, the structure and flash-parallels of this premiere episode were the highlight, but those weren't the only good things about it. We met another group of Others that seem to know more about what's going on with the island than Ben's group did. We got a little bit more information about Jacob and Richard and Not!Locke. And in the episode's biggest "answer," we got definitive proof of the smoke monster's identity. Awesome!

Wednesday, February 3rd
Liked: Modern Family (1x14)

Modern Family's "Moon Landing" had some of the spark of my favourite episode, "Fizbo," in the way that a number of disparate elements built to a hilarious pay-off in Claire and Phil's storyline. The other two storylines in this episode featured new character pairings, which was a nice change, with Jay and Cameron's storyline hitting its mark but Mitchell and Gloria's storyline feeling like filler.

Thursday, February 4th
Loved: Fringe (2x15)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x12), Parks and Recreation (2x15), The Office (6x15)

I enjoyed most of The Office's inconsistent "Sabre," especially Andy and Erin's song tribute to their new employer, unsafe "Scissor me!" scissor-tossing, and Michael's visit to the newly unemployed David Wallace's house. Less good: Jim and Pam unsuccessfully trying to get their kid into the best daycare in town.

Parks and Recreation had another solid week with "Sweetums." I laughed loudly at the brief visit to the library (nice callback!) and how Tom dealt with moving his stuff. Also very good: the progress on April and Andy. Less good: the main plot dealing with the evil candy company was only intermittently funny, and the silly town meeting didn't help.

30 Rock's "Verna" was my least favourite of the Thursday comedies this week, focusing as it did on Jenna and her annoying mother, but there were still plenty of good laughs to be had, mostly from Liz and Frank and their brief time as roommates.

I complained last week that Fringe needed to get back to the alternate universe storyline already, and this week they delivered--just in time for another long hiatus. (Fuck you, Fox.) "Jacksonville" was an excellent and important episode, establishing new rules for interaction with the alternate universe and reestablishing Olivia's special powers. I saw the ending coming from the first moment Walter mentioned the glimmer, but that didn't make it any less awesome.

Friday, February 5th
Liked: Caprica (1x3), Spartacus (1x3)

"Legends" was the first episode of Spartacus to actually make smart use of the over-the-top 300-style fight sequences by employing them primarily for the myth-based stories of various gladiators. The rest of the episode was quite similar to last week's in content and execution. The machinations and struggles of Batiatus and Lucretia are still the highlight of the series, although I am also enjoying the rivalry between Spartacus and Crixus.

With Mass Effect 2 out of the way, I had some spare time this weekend to catch up on Caprica. I wasn't a huge fan of the movie-length pilot, but it had enough interesting content and ideas--and, hey, it's the Battlestar Galactica universe!--to convince me to try the second episode. And "Rebirth" was quite good. At first, the dramatic conceit of Cylon Zoe appearing to the audience frequently as human Zoe was weird and distracting, but by the end of the episode, I was enjoying the creepy visuals this conceit brilliantly leads to. The second episode also introduced two enjoyable new characters, gave us our first look at the cool as shit opening titles, and ended with the shit hitting the fan--already! This week's third Caprica episode, "Reins of a Waterfall," continued that shit hitting the fan motif. Plus, more new characters and an entertaining look at Caprica's media circus.

Week in Review, Jan 25 to 31

2010-01-31T22:00:00.003-06:00

The Week in Video Games

Bioware sure knows how to make games that will completely take over my life. Last week (last month?) it was Dragon Age, this week it was Mass Effect 2. I knew Mass Effect 2 was going to be pretty damn good, seeing as the original Mass Effect was my favourite Xbox 360 game to date, but in many ways this sequel exceeds my expectation. Nothing has been lost in the quality of the storytelling, cinematics, or characterization. If anything, Mass Effect 2 tops the original in these areas. But I have not completed the game, so I don't want to judge the whole works too soon. Mass Effect's ending was killer, so the sequel has a lot to live up to there.

Not everything is improved from the original game, however. I'm in the minority here, but I miss the ridiculously elaborate inventory system from the original game. The RPG elements in Mass Effect 2 have been simplified and streamlined (or dumbed down), and that's a little sad. It hasn't really hurt the game; if the original had been like this, I would have loved it just as much. It's just a little disappointing in how much of the customization has been eliminated from one game to the next.

I generally don't play first person shooters on consoles because of the challenges in dual analog aiming (technically, Mass Effect is a third person shooter, but the point I'm going to make still stands), but Mass Effect makes this palatable by allowing you to pause the action easily, aim your cross-hair, and then fire off some bullets or an awesome power. You can play Mass Effect 2's battles without ever pausing if you choose, but for me, I pause as much as I paused Dragon Age's battles. Bioware made a lot of refinements to the battle system in Mass Effect 2 to improve play in real time, but I wouldn't enjoy the game nearly as much without the option to use that pause button.

But that's enough about Mass Effect 2 for this week. By next week's review, I will most likely have completed the game and will definitely have more to say about it.

While waiting for a tow truck that never came on Monday (long story), I had a lot of time to play Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box on my DS. It took me most of the day to finish the game, putting total play time to complete the story at over 15 hours, although I did tackle almost all available optional puzzles in that time. The story was full of typical Japanese craziness, but that was fine; it was always enjoyable in its craziness. With the story completed, just like Curious Village, I now have unlocked some of the toughest puzzles in the game in the Layton's Challenges area. Goddamn, some of these are hard! I am nowhere near done with this game just yet.

While drunk on Saturday night and in no condition to attempt dual analog aiming--even with pausing--I started a 10 day free trial of a certain ridiculously popular MMORPG that shall not be named in this post. The reason: I was drunk and curious and a friend mentioned his interest in the game. I don't know what will come of this, but I'll likely have more to say in coming weeks.

The Week in Movies

This section should have been in last week's post, but I somehow completely forgot that I include movies in these posts--probably because I see so few movies that I rarely do include movies in these posts. (I also rushed that post due to preoccupation with certain video games.)

So, anyway, last week I finally saw Avatar in 3D. And it was awesome. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

It's almost like I should've just not bothered including this section this week either...

The Week in Television

Monday, January 25th
Loved: Chuck (3x5)
Liked: Heroes (4x17)

"Chuck Versus First Class" was a terrific episode, my favourite so far of Chuck's strong third season. Chuck's first solo mission was an enjoyable romp from beginning to end. With Casey stuck at home, he found himself sucked into the Buy More storyline this week, and nothing makes a Buy More storyline more enjoyable than Casey. And, as someone that grew to hate Kristin Kreuk's Lana over the six seasons I watched of Smallville, it was nice to see her in a role where I felt her appeal once again.

Heroes rarely has an episode as good as "The Art of Deception." It's too bad that the episodes building up to it were so weak that it didn't have the impact it should have had with its twists and turns.

Tuesday, January 26th
Loved: Better Off Ted (2x11)

Better Off Ted's "Mess of a Salesman" may be the last episode that ever airs. Sad day. (I believe that there were 13 episodes created for the second season, so the last two may only show up on a future DVD release.) This episode wasn't as good as the past couple of weeks, but I enjoyed Ted's brother and especially loved how Lem and Phil reacted to him.

Thursday, January 28th
Liked: Fringe (2x14)

Another week, another solid Fringe standalone episode. "The Bishop Revival" had plenty of good moments and a neat if thoroughly implausible case of the week, and provided more interesting character development for Walter. I'd have enjoyed this episode more if it wasn't the third standalone episode in a row (fourth, if you count the fucking out of order season one episode) and if there wasn't this crazy alternate universe villain on the loose just begging to appear again.

Friday, January 30th
Loved: Dollhouse (2x13)
Liked: Spartacus (1x2)

Dollhouse's series finale, "Epitaph 2: Return," was an even better episode than I was expecting. Continuing from where the first season's unaired finale, "Epitaph One," ended, this episode managed to satisfactorily and impressively tie up most of the series' loose ends. I have nothing but good things to say about this episode. The series may have been hit and miss, but the second season was pretty fucking good. Bring on the next Joss Whedon series!

I mentioned last week already that it was Spartacus's second episode, "Sacramentum Gladiatorum," that convinced me that this series might be worth watching. Less slo-mo fight scenes and silly CGI blood, more talking, more quiet moments, more quirky Roman sexuality, and, most importantly, significantly increased screen time for John Hannah's Batiatus, clearly the character that this show's quality will hinge upon.

I still haven't watched Caprica. Damn Bioware.

Saturday, January 30th
Loved: Legend of the Seeker (2x10)

Legend of the Seeker continued their interesting Sisters of the Light/Dark story arc with "Perdition," another solid episode that I thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, this was my favourite episode of the arc (I'd say "so far," but this was most likely the last episode of the arc). I was a little distressed by one character death that puts a real damper on the series borrowing some of the better later book storylines, but this series won't be on TV long enough to get to those later books anyway. Enjoy it while it lasts. Enjoy it for what it is. That's what I'm doing.

Week in Review, Jan 18 to 24

2010-01-24T22:58:00.003-06:00

When will it stop snowing? Fuck, you can no longer distinguish between my driveway and the huge piles of snow on my grass from three months of shoveling. That's not fair. I'm pretty sure my car is going nowhere tomorrow morning. The wind is blowing all the snow right up against my garage door.

The Week in Video Games

This was a good week for video gaming. Relief! I finally completed Dragon Age: Origins after 65 hours of play and Assassin's Creed II after 20 hours of play. Both games had satisfying conclusions; and both games need sequels stat. There is DLC coming very soon for both games, which: yay! I also made major progress on Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box and will likely finish that off within a few hours. Getting all of these games off my plate was important for this coming week, because Mass Effect 2 is coming...

Now that I've completed Dragon Age and experienced only one of the many available endings, I am feeling the temptation to try another playthrough. Maybe after Mass Effect 2. Dragon Age, like many of my favourite games from recent years (Fable II, Mass Effect), offers a lot of flexibility in moral decisions throughout the game. I mostly played Dragon Age as a goody two-shoes character this first playthrough, although on two occasions I made deals with devils (that will hopefully come back to bite me in the ass in Dragon Age II) to avoid life-threatening confrontations. Entering into the final battle, I made a third deal with a devil to avoid having to sacrifice the character I had spent 65 hours developing. So, basically I was a bit of a weasel, pretending to be goody two-shoes to get into Leliana's pants. (What does the way I play a game like this say about me as a person? Sounds like a blog post--but I need to stop saying that and not following through...)

I've mentioned it before, but Dragon Age's conversation system was a bit of a letdown for me after Mass Effect's brilliant wheel (the same awesome developer, Bioware, makes both game series). One of the best parts of Mass Effect's conversation system was that it let me play Scott Shepard (who may or may not bear a striking resemblance to my fantasy image of myself) as a snarky, sarcastic asshole whom was still a goody two-shoes in moral choices. It was awesome. I have high hopes that this will continue in Mass Effect 2.

The Week in Television

Monday, January 18th
Liked: Chuck (3x4), How I Met Your Mother (5x13)
Meh: The Big Bang Theory (3x13), Heroes (4x16)

Chuck had another strong Awesome-centric episode this week with "Chuck Versus Operation Awesome." The episode lost a little of its momentum with the introduction of Agent Shaw and the shifting of Awesome to the background, but it was still very good throughout.

I didn't really like The Big Bang Theory's "The Bozeman Reaction." I tend to get annoyed when the show takes Sheldon way over the top, and that's what this episode was all about. How I Met Your Mother's "Jenkins" was a much funnier and entertaining 30 minutes. I didn't even care that it had nothing to do with Ted meeting his future wife.

Oh, Heroes writers, why? "Pass/Fail" was not good. There may have been some plot momentum at the end of last week's episode, but that went nowhere this week. Instead, Sylar had a heart to heart with Claire for some reason. And Hiro got stuck in his own imaginary time travel court. And Samuel got pissed when his girl wouldn't stay with him and destroyed an entire town. I can't wait until the gang takes Samuel down in some laughably contrived way like Hiro stabbing Sylar way back in the first season.

Tuesday, January 19th
Loved: Better Off Ted (2x10)

Only one Better Off Ted this week. Sad. But "Lust in Translation" was another great episode, maybe even the best of this second season. Using Phil's voice on the translator was a stroke of genius.

Wednesday, January 20th
Loved: Modern Family (1x13)

Modern Family's "Fifteen Percent" was another excellent episode. Phil and Claire's battle over the user-friendliness of the universal remote control was great--I've been there. The highlight for me, though, was seeing Flight of the Conchords' Kristen Schaal as Manny's date.

Thursday, January 21st
Loved: Parks and Recreation (2x14)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x11), Fringe (2x13), The Office (6x14)

So, it's come to this: an Office clip show. "The Banker" had approximately 50% content and 50% clips from previous episodes. The new content was pretty good, mostly because of Toby's stonewalling, and the clips were obviously funny, because, hey, The Office has had a lot of funny moments.

The best show this Thursday was easily Parks and Recreation. "Leslie's House" was actually quite brilliant, a very smartly plotted episode with numerous hilarious moments, including notably our first glimpse of said house. It's impressive how this show's writers have managed to take a main character that was abrasive and annoying only one year ago and make her funny and relatable now. 30 Rock also had a good week with the aptly titled "Winter Madness."

Fringe stuck to standalone territory again this week with "What Lies Below," a good dramatic episode built on a rather overused story concept. As is always the case, Walter and Astrid stole the show again.

Friday, January 22nd
Meh: Spartacus (1x1)

New show! Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Gladiator by way of 300. Created by Steven S. DeKnight of Buffy and Angel fame. Although only the pilot aired on this particular Friday, I had an opportunity to see the second episode this week as well. Seeing the second episode helped me forgive the major flaws of the first. In the pilot, which was basically one slo-mo fight scene after another, the CGI blood was overused to ridiculous extremes. The second episode slowed things down and let characters talk, thus letting us get to know them, and was therefore much better. Neither episode was great, but the series has potential.

I forgot to watch the two-hour pilot of Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica this week, so I will have to cover that one next week.

Saturday, January 23rd
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x9)

"Dark" was Legend of the Seeker's attempt to tell the main storyline of the 1000 page Stone of Tears novel in 42 minutes. It was about as successful as you would think. To be fair, it was an above average Seeker episode. It was enjoyable and interesting, dealt with Richard's headache problem efficiently, and provided plenty of the WTFness I expect from this series with the Zedd, Kahlan, and Cara B-plot. We were also introduced to Jolene Blalock as Sister Nicci, who goes on in the book series to be one of the most important and interesting characters. Next week also continues this storyline somewhat, so that's cool.

Week in Review, Jan 11 to 17

2010-01-18T21:24:00.003-06:00

The Week in Video Games

This week in video gaming continued to be almost all about Dragon Age. (More accurate: this week in general continued to be almost all about Dragon Age. Addicted, remember?) I fit in a little more Assassin's Creed II time, and also completed the Lego Rock Band story, but there is nothing I spent more hours on this week than Dragon Age. And I'm still not done with the game. Getting there, though.

On my Friday day off, I completed all of the available DLC quests and finished the Mages Tower and Brecilian Forest storylines. Over the course of the weekend, I completed the long Orzammar storyline. Since reducing the difficulty to Easy, I haven't had much trouble with the battles, and since adding golem Shale to my party, I haven't had a single Your Journey Ends screen. (I think Shale might be invincible on Easy difficulty.) The game is much less frustrating and much more enjoyable when you aren't constantly dying. My main interest is in experiencing the story and characters, both of which continue to be top notch in their presentation, but in the Normal difficulty level, the dying was getting in the way of the experience.

The Week in Television

Monday, January 11th
Loved: The Big Bang Theory (3x12), Chuck (3x3), How I Met Your Mother (5x12)
Meh: Fringe (2x11), Heroes (4x15), House (6x10)

This week I watched my first How I Met Your Mother in real time. And it was an excellent episode to start with: the 100th episode, "Girls Vs. Suits." Actually, I knew this episode was coming, which is one of the main reasons I marathoned the shit out of this series over the holidays. The obvious highlight was Neil Patrick Harris's musical moment, but I really enjoyed the progression in Ted's storyline as well. (I realize, sadly, that it'll probably be another 10 episodes before we get any more progression there.)

I also really enjoyed The Big Bang Theory's "The Psychic Vortex." Both storylines were quite strong. In a storyline that was played pretty straight, other than brief interjections of craziness from Howard and Bernadette, Leonard and Penny had a realistic conflict about Penny's belief in psychics. Most of the episode's comedy came from Sheldon and Raj's storyline, where Sheldon somehow met the perfect girl for him. I hope we see more of Martha, but I suspect we will not.

Chuck's third season has been great so far. "Chuck Versus the Angel de la Muerte" was very entertaining, awesomely featuring Awesome prominently. Also awesome: no time wasted in the Buy More this week.

"Close to You" was an okay episode of Heroes. The gang is finally coming together to do something about Samuel, so that's good, I guess. It's too bad so little of this makes any sense. Parkman was back after an extended absence, but considering what went down last we saw him, he should be in jail. After borrowing his mother's power to see Emma's ugly future, Peter smashed Emma's cello, without considering that her power probably works with any instrument, or that his smashing of the cello leads to the very future he was trying to stop. Stupid, stupid Peter. Hiro and Ando rescuing Mohinder from the asylum was pretty funny, but so, so stupid in so, so many ways. And Noah was just spinning his wheels when he could have just talked to his daughter. Oh, Heroes, when is NBC going to fucking cancel you, already?

Fringe's "Unearthed" wasn't a bad episode. It was actually a pretty good standalone story. However, it was an episode from the first season that was not previously aired for unknown reasons (and was also not on the first season DVD set... WTF?), and Fox just aired it in the middle of the second season on a random Monday night without explanation. It was especially jarring because of the presence of a certain dead character. WTF, Fox, WTF?

Tuesday, January 12th
Loved: Better Off Ted (2x8/2x9)

I feel a little like I'm repeating myself when I say that Better Off Ted had another two great episodes this week: "The Impertence of Communicationizing" and "The Long and Winding High Road." The misspelling of the first episode title is deliberate, as the story was about the fallout from a typo in an official memo. There were numerous hilarious moments throughout both episodes. As far as I'm concerned, the cast and crew of Better Off Ted can do no wrong.

Wednesday, January 13th
Loved: Modern Family (1x12)

"Not in My House" brought back my Modern Family love. I especially appreciated the absurdity of the dog butler statue. And Phil's talking head moments are always gold. I didn't get much out of Mitchell and Cameron's storyline this week, but that didn't affect my enjoyment of the show.

Thursday, January 14th
Liked: 30 Rock (4x9/4x10), Fringe (2x12), Parks and Recreation (2x13)

What? No Office this week? Why? Instead, we got two times the 30 Rock, so I won't complain too much. Both episodes of 30 Rock were pretty good. "Klaus and Greta" was better than "Black Light Attack!" for me. But Parks and Recreation had the best 30 minutes of the night with "The Set Up." where Leslie was set up with one of Ann's horrible co-workers (Will Arnett!). We also got some more movement on the super cute (pretend I didn't just say that) Andy and April front.

The first Fringe episode this week was arguably a better standalone story than Thursday night's "Johari Window," but, well, I already ranted about that nonsense above. This actual second season Fringe episode told a decent X-Files-style "town with a secret" story, while also providing some excellent character moments for Walter.

Friday, January 15th
Loved: Dollhouse (2x12)

"The Hollow Man" was effectively the season finale to Dollhouse's second season, tying up all of the season's storylines with a bang--or two. This episode didn't feel as rushed as last week's, but there are definitely elements that I would have liked to have seen more of (for example: Boyd), if the series had been given more time to tell this story. The next episode, airing in two weeks--is it insensitive of me to whine about a Haiti telethon?--is the series finale, "Epitaph Two: The Return." I can't believe that Fox never aired the first season's awesome "Epitaph One," really undermining (for fans that didn't buy the season one DVD set) the impending doom that season two was all about.

Saturday, January 16th
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x8)

It was around this time last season that the writers of Legend of the Seeker brought us "Denna" and "Puppeteer," two of the rare episodes of this series that actually (half-assedly in the case of "Denna") follow key plotlines from the Sword of Truth books. Now there's "Light," which introduced the Sisters of the Light and Verna to the series. Richard's ordeals in the Palace of the Prophets is my second favourite storyline in the entire book series, so I'm a little worried... but that's next week's episode. For this week, we just got Richard and Verna traveling, and Richard getting distracted on the way by another village needing his help. And there was a bunch of weird stuff with Zedd and Denna, and Kahlan and Cara--but who cares about that? Verna! Sisters of the Light! Don't screw this up, writers of Legend of the Seeker!

Week in Review, Jan 4 to 10

2010-01-10T22:21:00.003-06:00

I had to go back to work this week, which really cut into my gaming and TV marathoning time. In fact, there were absolutely no TV marathons this week. There was no shortage of marathon gaming sessions, though. No all-nighters this week, but numerous late nights, including work nights. Sleep is overrated. The more times I stay up late playing video games (the only way I can stay up late), the easier it gets...

The Week in Video Games

I was worried this would happen. Ultimately, the problem with my mouse's scroll wheel that kept me from playing Dragon Age for quite a few weeks was just an easy excuse. I was really avoiding playing Dragon Age because I knew that once I started I would get hooked and then wouldn't be able to do anything else. Yep.

In the last post, I mentioned that I was struggling with the Tower of Ishal, but I conquered that challenge the next morning. I did resort to patching the game, which was supposed to slightly reduce the challenge of the Normal difficulty, but I don't think that's a big deal. It was a bigger deal when I found myself getting destroyed by a group of dogs in the Redcliffe castle basement and had to resort to decreasing the difficulty level to Easy. Easy is significantly easier than Normal, not only because the enemies are weaker, but also because there is no friendly fire damage from magic. Avoiding friendly fire was always a challenge in Normal, but now I can spam fireballs right in the middle of battle and not worry about destroying my own party. Now that the battles have become a lot easier--still challenging, mind you, just not fucking ridiculous anymore!--I am enjoying the game a lot more, and thus: addiction.

My travels in Ferelden have taken me to Lothering, Redcliffe, Denerim, Haven, and the Circle Tower so far. My elven mage, Tosc (get it?), is now level 12, specializing in evil, dirty Blood Magic. The quality of the storyline so far is incredible, with plenty of surprises and intense moments, very detailed histories and backstories, and the characterization of the NPCs is very strong. The gameplay has some annoyances, because the interface is somewhat clunky, the dialogue tree feels like a step back after Bioware's Mass Effect, and I spend way too much time micromanaging inventory because it is constantly filling up; but that's mostly nitpicking. As there should be in any good RPG, there is a ton of flexibility in solving many of the game's conflicts. Multiple playthroughs are definitely encouraged, especially because of the different origin stories, but because there's always some new game that needs to be played (Mass Effect 2 is next), I doubt I'll be doing multiple playthroughs. But I'll surely enjoy the hell out of this one playthrough.

I did manage to sneak some more Assassin's Creed II playtime in this week, mostly before getting hooked on Dragon Age, and this game just gets better and better. I was really happy when the game unexpectedly introduced a new climbing mechanic. The new battle mechanics have been terrific, especially dual hidden blades, but that jump climb maneuver is awesomely helpful. I estimate that another six to ten hours of playtime will be required to complete the game, but then I will still have a lot of secrets to track down for achievement points. I could write a whole blog post about the Xbox 360's achievement points--and I probably will.

And I've been playing a few puzzles from Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box most nights in bed before falling asleep. As expected, it is every bit as good as Curious Village. I wouldn't describe it as better just yet, but I'm only (estimating) a quarter into the game.

The Week in Television

Monday, January 4th
Liked: Heroes (4x13)
Meh: Heroes (4x14)

Heroes recovered a little from its last 2009 episode with "Upon This Rock," the first of two episodes aired this week. My favourite scenes featured Hiro finally reuniting with his sidekick Ando, and deaf girl Emma learning what her true powers were. Unfortunately, Hiro and Ando were left out of weaker second hour, "Let it Bleed," an episode that was more concerned with Sylar's return to his body--boring! Throughout both hours, Peter dealt with the loss of Nathan and Claire tried to learn more about Samuel's carnival, with both storylines offering bits of good stuff including a well done funeral sequence.

Tuesday, January 5th
Loved: Better Off Ted (2x6/2x7)

Another two terrific Better Off Teds this week: "Beating a Dead Workforce" and "Change We Can't Believe In." Both episodes had numerous laughs and many great character moments. One of the highlights was Phil and Lem's struggle with reporting directly to Veronica.

Wednesday, January 6th
Liked: Modern Family (1x11)

Modern Family's "Up All Night" was not one of my favourites, mostly because it was inconsistent in the funny department, and none of the three storylines were particularly strong when compared with previous episodes of this series.

Friday, January 8th
Loved: Dollhouse (2x11)

Dollhouse's "Getting Closer" is an interesting example of accelerated storytelling. It is easy to picture the many important plot moments in this episode being played out over a multi-episode arc or even a full season, but circumstances have forced Joss Whedon to play his hand early. This did lead to some logic gaffes in this episode necessary to expedite the plot, mostly regarding the complete lack of security in the Dollhouses and Rossum's headquarters. However, none of that mattered in the least, because this episode was awesome! There were two moments in this episode that blew the freakin' minds of Dollhouse fans everywhere. How many series give you two mind blowing scenes in one episode? Not many.

Saturday, January 9th
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x7)

Legend of the Seeker's "Resurrection" had some great moments and some questionable moments. Denna vs Cara had potential, but it never really lived up to that, mostly because neither actress is that great--hot, yes, great actors, no. Pretty impressive battle sequence to start the episode, though; I never get tired of seeing Zedd tossing out wizard's fire.

Sunday, January 10th
Liked: Chuck (3x1/3x2)

During the first season of Chuck, I thought the show was okay. Goofy, silly, cute fun, mostly. However, something changed halfway through the second season when this show became must see TV. I'll attribute my increased interest mostly to the well plotted Orion storyline and Ellie & Awesome's wedding. At the end of the second season, it looked like the show would be canceled, even though the second season finale had ended with a clever cliffhanger. But, here we are: Chuck season three. I will be shocked if there is a Chuck season four, so I will enjoy this ride while it lasts.

The first two episodes of the third season, "Chuck Versus The Pink Slip" and "Chuck Versus The Three Words," were pretty good. Chuck's new Intersect 2.0 powers are appropriately ridiculous, but Chuck is still Chuck and still bungling his way through missions. Unfortunately, these episodes pretty much restored early season two status quo: Chuck and Sarah's relationship has been effectively reset and the original Buy More gang is mostly back together. This is not really what I was expecting from the game-changing episodes at the end of season two, but that's TV for you: got to keep giving the fans the same show they always loved.

Week (and a bit) in Review, Dec 24 to Jan 3

2010-01-04T06:48:00.002-06:00

It was only a matter of time before I readjusted these Week in Review posts from Thursday to Wednesday to a more sensible Monday to Sunday. Now is that time.

The Week in Video Games

Video gaming was a huge time killer this week. I received three games for Christmas: Lego Rock Band, Assassin's Creed II, and Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.

Lego Rock Band is Rock Band with the goofy sensibilities of Traveller's Tales Lego video game series. I still plan to do a full post about the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises soon, so I won't write much about this game here, other than to say that I have enjoyed it quite a bit. I have not finished it yet, which is unusual for me with a game of this type, but I had a lot of games to play this week.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box is very similar in structure and execution to Curious Village, which is great because Curious Village is my favourite DS game. I haven't put a lot of time into Diabolical Box yet, because I don't really feel the urge to play DS games when in my house with an Xbox 360, Wii, and PC available to play, but what I have played has been excellent. Now I need to travel somewhere with my DS.

I asked for Assassin's Creed II for Christmas, despite having never played the original Assassin's Creed, because the reviews made it sound like something right up my alley (I also fucking loved Ubisoft Montreal's 2008 game, Prince of Persia), and because every reviewer made a big deal of pointing out how much better II was than I. And it is; more on that later. But before I dove in to II, I decided that a playthrough of the original would be a good idea, at the very least to get some familiarity with the Desmond storyline (no spoilers here!). So, late in the day on Boxing Day, I braved the crowds to pick up a copy of Assassin's Creed for $15. And then on the 27th, I played Assassin's Creed for nearly 20 hours straight, staying up until 4AM on the 28th.

I am nearly 33. I don't do all-nighters. I am too old for that shit. I am tired at 10PM most days. When I started my marathon play session of Assassin's Creed, I had no intention of completing the entire game in one day, but I just kept going, and going, and going, and it happened. When I thought I was nearly done the game around midnight, it made sense to just keep going and finish it, but then the end sequence was much longer than expected...

Anyway, Assassin's Creed is pretty awesome. I don't play a game for 20 hours in a row if it's not. I understand the complaints that many people have with the game, but the mechanics of assassination and the storyline are so good that the slogging through civilian rescues didn't bother me much at all. And Assassin's Creed II is even better, removing the slogging, and introducing some even cooler new mechanics. I'm still pretty early in II, so I haven't yet experienced the exhilaration of some of the sweetest assassinations from I, but I have no doubt that that is coming.

I ended the week by finally putting in some awesome quality time with my Dragon Age elvish mage Tosc. In six hours of playtime, I completed the origin story for the character and then fought my way through the Wilds. In that short time, I have already learned to not get attached to party members, because Bioware is not afraid to fuck with your expectations. I stayed up late on Sunday night trying without success to fight my way through the Tower of Ishal on Normal difficulty. I have heard that the first patch for the game actually makes Normal difficulty easier, but I haven't resorted to that just yet.

The Week in Books

Although it would seem a natural fit for me, I am not a comic book geek. I know enough to converse with comic book geeks in general terms, but my comic book reading has been limited to major graphic novels like Watchmen and a couple projects from favourite authors like Neil Gaiman (The Sandman).

But in the last year, I've been reading an above average amount of comic books, thanks to the ongoing Buffy Season 8 and Angel After the Fall series. Not to mention a couple Serenity/Firefly comic books and Fray, Joss Whedon's story of a future vampire slayer. Many of these comic books are written by members of the writing staff from the shows in question, including Joss Whedon himself, and all of them pick up where the TV series left off. Rather than making frequent visits to comic book stores to pick up the newest issues, I have been waiting for the compilation books to be released. Each compilation book typically includes five issues of the comic series.

This week I read Angel Aftermath, the fifth volume from the Angel After the Fall series. In general, I have enjoyed Angel After the Fall much more than Buffy Season 8, and these five issues continued the trend. These issues were the first created without the input of Joss Whedon or After the Fall mastermind Brian Lynch, instead entirely written by Kelley Armstrong, but the storyline is still strong and still feels faithful to the series. My only problem with Angel Aftermath was the artwork: Franco Urru pretty much nailed the look of every character in the first four volumes, but Dave Ross's illustrations look nothing like the actors in question.

The Week in Movies

I haven't gone to see Avatar yet. Really, I haven't left my house much at all this past week. Starting to feel like a hermit. Too much stuff to do right here!

I did watch one awesome movie this week, though. I love everything Pixar creates, with the notable exception of the only pretty good Cars, but for some reason, I haven't gone to see their movies on the big screen since The Incredibles. I was six months late in watching Wall-E last year, I was six months late in watching Ratatouille in 2007, and this year I am six months late in watching Up. Ratatouille and Wall-E are both amazing, but Up might be my favourite Pixar movie to date. I would rave about this movie for the unexpectedly touching and adult introduction to the character of Carl alone. The fantasy storyline that follows is also right up my alley. And talking dogs!

The Week in Television

Although the all-nighter with Assassin's Creed was the craziest thing I did all week, it wasn't the only crazy thing I did. I've always been curious about How I Met Your Mother. Look at the cast: Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Segal, Alyson Hannigan. But I never watched it for an unknown reason... although it was probably the retarded title and premise that turned me off. That changed this week in a big way, because I managed to watch the whole fucking series to date (four and a half seasons worth!) in only few days. Marathoning TV is something I do a lot, usually only one or two days at a time once in a while, but this was a sustained multiple day marthon of epic proportions.

So, obviously it turns out that I like How I Met Your Mother. TV marathons only happen when I am addicted, and I was addicted. I'm not saying that I love the show however. The premise and title were a misguided attempt to provide an unusual hook to a pretty standard "group of friends" sitcom, and the lack of progress in the meeting of the mother in four and a half seasons is ridiculous. But the show has clever editing, unusually strong continuity, and is pretty damn funny most of the time. Most importantly, the characters are not caricatures, except maybe Neil Patrick Harris's Barney. I think the main reason I connected to the show so quickly was because I can really identify with and relate to these characters. They feel like real people. Many of the situations they encounter--this is a situation comedy after all--are silly and forced, but the reactions still seem realistic somehow. And the show has real drama. In a way, we know how things are going to end for Ted, but I'm still frequently surprised by the journey. Too bad the journey is so damn slow, and these surprising dramatic moments occur only once or twice per season...

I also watched the last few remaining episodes of Warehouse 13's first season this week. This is not a show that I would recommend to many people, because it is a borderline guilty pleasure. It's very derivative, and very, very cheesy, but I love it despite itself. Wonderfully and frustratingly, the season ended on a ridiculously awesome cliffhanger.

Friday, December 25th
Meh: Doctor Who

Christmas Day in the UK featured part 1 of "The End of Time," the final Doctor Who special for David Tennant and showrunner Russell T Davies. Part 1 is pretty much a complete mess. I honestly had no idea what was going on most of the time, although part 2 did resolve some of the confusion, but more problematic was the fact that I didn't really even care.

Tuesday, December 29th
Loved: Better Off Ted (2x4)

The first of two great Better Off Teds this week, "It's Nothing Business, It's Just Personal" introduced a red lab coat, a tiny office, and a magician named Mordor, all with hilarious results.

Friday, January 1st
Loved: Better Off Ted (2x5)
Liked: Doctor Who

The obvious highlight of Doctor Who's "The End of Time, Part 2" was David Tennant's final 20 minutes. My first Doctor Who was Christopher Eccleston, but David Tennant was easily my favourite. Matt Smith has some big shoes to fill, but judging by his first minute or so, he's going to do fine. More importantly, Russell T Davies is out and Steven Moffat is in as showrunner. Oh, as for the rest of "The End of Time:" it was okay. Part 2 was solidly better than part 1, but that wasn't hard, and Bernard Cribbins was terrific as the Doctor's companion.

Poor Better Off Ted: nobody wants to watch you, and now you are being burnt off by ABC on random days like New Year's Day, and then two episodes will air on each of the next few Tuesdays. I guess I don't mind, because I'll get to see all of the episodes sooner rather than later. I'm not really sad about the cancellation, because it didn't make sense that this awesome but super low rated show got a second season at all... hm, that all sounds very familiar--oh, right, Dollhouse! Anyway, "The Great Repression" was another great episode, but that's nothing new. There is nothing funnier than sexual harassment!