Pancakes, bacon, and strawberries and bananas. Meg and I talked about having pancakes on our way home, but then when dinner time came, she told me “I wanna cheese quesadilla pwease, Mama.” Huh?
05.13.12 Dinner
Grilled Italian sausage and peppers and onions with egg noodles. This has also been my lunch so far this week and it’s still good!
05.10.12 Dinner
Chili mac. Ours:
And, Meg’s, deconstructed:
Review: The Avengers
Let’s be honest: Was there really a chance this movie wouldn’t be good? When it was written and directed by Joss Whedon and contained just about every star imaginable from recent Marvel-based movies? When it’s rocking 93% on Rotten Tomatoes? When it made $1 billion in the span of less than 2 weeks?
Yeah. It was good. And it’s not very surprising.
There are a variety of reasons why the movie is very, very strong, from the quality of writing, to the effects, to the “star power,” to the “let’s throw money at it and surely something awesome will come out” mentality to its production. However, I’ll focus on two things in particular.
First, Joss Whedon had his work cut out for him because much of the “origin story” was already told in other movies, including Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Incredible Hulk. Almost every character that showed up in this movie was already introduced in a previous one, which allowed Whedon the freedom to spend his 2.5 hrs of screen time on the story at hand: not the description of each character and why we should care. I’ve talked with a few people that have seen the movie and now want to go back and see the “origin stories” of the characters they missed. It didn’t detract from their enjoyment of this movie, but it certainly inspired them to seek out additional material to help enhance the experience of this film.
Second, while I expected the dialog to be witty and amusing, I didn’t expect genuine laugh-out-loud moments. By no means is The Avengers a “comedy,” though it has its share of hilarious parts that don’t feel forced in the least. The theater cracked up on multiple occasions, typically centering on the Hulk, who ends up stealing the show during the latter 30 min of the movie. So even if you aren’t necessarily a “comic book movie” fan, I think you’ll appreciate the humor that comes of it.
Aside from these things, generally speaking, the movie is so well-paced that you forget how long you’ve been sitting in the seat. Each character is introduced so as to “ease you” in, rather than having the entire team show up together, leading to a longer slog through the film (Fantastic Four comes to mind). Heck, you don’t even see the Hulk until relatively late in the movie! But when you do, you’re ready for it. I guess I’m saying that no one over-stays their welcome and the characters all fit together in a very cohesive manner, which is very difficult to do when you’re dealing with a movie consisting of 8+ main characters. It’s obviously an ensemble cast.
I also paid the exorbitant fee required of seeing it in IMAX 3D. Let’s just say that this was another case where the money was worth it. The 3D wasn’t over-done and, overall, enhanced the viewing experience without too much “look at me, I’m in 3D!!” shenanigans. I’ll be satisfied with my Bluray release in a few months (when I definitely buy it…), but I’m glad my first exposure to the movie was in IMAX 3D.
To summarize, it’s a spectacular movie. In some ways, it’s a good thing that most of these characters have their own franchises, so we’ll have a few years of their own sequels before we get the inevitable “Avengers 2.”
To SSD, or not to SSD?
Last year, my laptop died. Rather than replace it, I opted for upgrading my desktop PC to make it gaming-capable, among other things, as it tends to be far cheaper and is much, much easier to upgrade when components go on sale. At the time, I did the bulk of the upgrades, but I didn’t get new hard drives, as they were still functional and I didn’t think they were as important to spend extra cash on when I could put that money into a new processor or RAM. So, since that time, I’ve been using a previous-generation hard drive on my next-generation motherboard.
The drive I was using was 160 GB, so not exactly a large capacity to work with. As lots of stuff is moving toward cloud-based storage, and as we have a 400 GB external hard drive, 160 GB was still enough to do most things, though it felt “cramped” at times. Hard drives are relatively cheap things to upgrade, where you can get a 1 terabyte hard drive (that’s 1000 GB) for about $100, and frequently cheaper. However, that upgrade would give me all kinds of capacity, but not a huge jump in “speed.”
There are a variety of reasons for this, but part of it is that traditional hard drives actually have spinning parts, much like a record player. As an illustration, in the image above, you can see the compact disc-looking thing, and what also looks like a needle. Obviously, the drive’s operation is far more complicated than “it’s just like a compact disc,” but in many ways, that’s really all it’s doing. Bigger and faster, but the same basic concept (well, and without lasers…).
Enter the “solid state drive,” or “SSD.” Unlike a regular hard drive, this one has no moving parts. In fact, it works much more similarly to the SD card you put in your camera. For this reason, these guys tend to be fast in comparison with a traditional drive. However, the cost is also far higher when in a “price per gigabyte” paradigm. The highest volume SSD I can find sits at 960 GB, and is running $3,150 right now.
In order to run Windows and an array of programs (comfortably), you need over 100 GB, and then a second drive to store your pictures, videos, music, documents, and so on. Thus, when this 120 GB drive from Mushkin hit $100, I was ready to take the plunge. $100 for 120 GB was my “benchmark” price for such a thing, when it would be worth it to spend the cash on a low-capacity device when I could get 1 TB in a traditional drive for the same money.
After some hiccups concerning the cable I was using, I finally got the thing installed this past Sunday, up and running with Windows 7 Ultimate, a variety of games and “useful” programs, and a formatted 160 GB traditional hard drive (my old one) to be used exclusively for media storage. In running a Windows-based test on my various components, where the old hard drive was definitely limiting in my overall performance, now my drive is the fastest thing in there, and my processor is what’s lagging (though not my much). The computer boots up and is ready to use in about 20 sec, which is far faster than the minutes it used to take.
Overall, I’m a believer. Where people used to say “add some RAM to ‘pep up’ that old computer,” the SSD is, increasingly, what people are going to suggest. For $100, you can improve your computer’s speed to a ridiculous degree, turning it into the speed demon it once was when you first bought it.
A Nice Weekend
Awhile back, Kristen mentioned that Switchfoot was returning to Springfield, MO and that the venue they were going to play in was pretty sweet, the Gillioz Theater. Thus, Brooke and I made the arrangements for Meg to hang out with her grandparents this weekend, for Rachel to stay at our house with Edie and Sam (and the chickens), and for Brooke and I alone (gasp!) to go to Springfield for the weekend.
We made it out of St. Louis early enough to stop at Heinrichshaus for a picnic lunch and a bottle of Chardonelle before continuing on to Springfield. As always, we had a great time tasting Heinrich’s wares (he’s an old German guy who wears American-ized lederhosen, if you can imagine such a thing) and enjoyed the warm, summery afternoon outside. After a few more hours, we hit Springfield and went directly to the concert. The Gillioz Theater is definitely cool, as it’s an ornate, old-style theater with good acoustics and comfy seats. I can’t say I was a huge fan of all the kids I had to sit with, though, as this event was apparently quite popular with the “Christian Youth” crowd (i.e. I think we enjoyed Switchfoot’s show at The Pageant more, if only because there was a cordoned off area for “Over 21” with a full bar…). I was unimpressed with Switchfoot’s opener, The Rocket Summer, who acted like a pretentious emo wannabe.
Switchfoot, on the other hand, was amazing as always. Their set was pretty similar to the one we saw two years ago, mostly songs off the last 3-4 albums and only two songs from their first few, but the new stuff is good so I can’t complain all that much. As with the last time around, their lead-singer, Jon Foreman, ventured out into the crowd to sing with the fans. This time, however, he ended up climbing around the theater-style seats, holding hands as he made his way to the center of the theater. He happened to make this trip inward directly in front of us, to the point that Brooke, Kristen and her friend, Maggie, all held Foreman’s hand as he passed by. I was trying to get pictures of this, of course, as these things usually go. Regardless, while we got pretty close two years ago, we were close enough to touch the man this time around.
We joke that, at our next concert, the subsequent logical step is for Jon Foreman to sit on Brooke’s lap and sing. 😛
Regardless, we spent the next day hitting up quite a few different things, including a visit to The Home Brewery in Ozark, MO (I picked up a bottle washing attachment for our basement sink…should make life easier!), a trip down to Copper Run Distillery (where we tasted vodka, “moonshine,” whiskey and rum…the latter of which, we grabbed a bottle of…), then later to Mother’s Brewery to taste their beers and have one or two pints before heading to the Springfield Cardinals game ($6 lawn tickets…can’t beat that!).
After the game, we went to a bar to hear some of Jake’s co-workers play in their retro 80s cover band (who were pretty good, to be fair). Overall, it was a busy, yet good day!
In the end, while we obviously missed Meg, it was nice for the two of us to get out of St. Louis for a weekend, not to be tied down by a dog to take out or a toddler to watch…er…”toddle.” We had a great time and will probably have to do it again, once Jake and Kristen finish filling their pool… 🙂
METAL n/
I guess it started a few years ago when Stu came in to St. Louis to hear a band play at Pop’s, over in East St. Louis, and wanted to crash at our place for the night after the concert. I ended up going along, mostly because Stu was paying for the ticket, but also because I’d never experienced what can only be described as a “death metal concert.”
The first thing we did was went to Walgreens to get ear plugs. Bear in mind that I’ve gone to more than a few concerts in my times and I’ve never needed ear plugs. I always felt it was counter-intuitive, as you’d think you want to listen to the music, not reduced the sound by 30 dB.
I’m glad I had the plugs. Then, and each subsequent time I’ve joined him at one of these things.
This past Sunday, on his birthday, Stu wanted to go see some bands at Fubar, a concert venue near SLU. Before that, Stu, his roommate, and I went to La Vallesana, a Mexican place on Cherokee Street, which was pretty spectacular. The menu was very reasonable (one could even say it was “cheap”) and much more varied than the “traditional Mexican restaurant,” especially in the different meats they offered. I had a Quesadilla “Al Pastor,” which involved a dry-rubbed pork and pineapple concoction. Mmmmmm… They don’t serve beer, though, which I find interesting for a Mexican restaurant (though they did have Mexican Coca-Cola, including real sugar, not that “high fructose corn syrup” shenanigans).
After that, we went to Fubar. If you dare flip on the YouTube link above, you’ll hear the style of music being played there by the headlining band, Origin. It was a lengthy music fest, of sorts, with six or seven bands participating, starting at 5:00 (we didn’t get there until after 7:00…thankfully…as we didn’t leave until after 11:00…).
I should note that my favorite band name was “Cattle Decapitation.” No joke. That’s their name. They’ve put out 10 albums since 1996.
Regardless, it’s always an interesting experience to go to these concerts with Stu. This is a guy that had long hair back when I met him in high school (and has since chopped all that off and is a software developer), so I was first exposed to this style of music back then when we’d go out to lunch during band camp my sophomore year. While I can’t say I’ve grown to like death metal, as a genre, I have always appreciated the speed at which their drummers play. What these guys lack in “finesse,” they have orders of magnitude more in brute strength and stamina, where it isn’t unusual (heck, it’s the norm) to see them play constant sixteenth-notes with their feet using the double-bass pedal for a full song, or multiple songs in a row, without much of a break. It’s nuts. I’d be curious how many of them run marathons…
At the same time, while I stand there, watching the bass player and the electric guitar player move their hands across their respective fretboards very quickly, all I hear is a low “E” tone. I pulled out my phone and used a “guitar tuner” app to verify this fact. Yup. All I heard was a single, low tone, while I could see their hands moving all over the place. It was likely an effect of the deafening live sound, leading to dissonance that my poor ears couldn’t handle. When I say “it all sounded the same,” that’s what I mean: it was one friggin’ note.
It’s also interesting to see the characters that go to these concerts. This Sunday, I was wearing a striped polo shirt and Stu had a grey-ish t-shirt on…and I’m pretty sure we were the only people there with any colored clothes besides black or white (we mostly stayed in the back, by the bar…). Most folks had long hair, there were very few women there. I didn’t see a ton of piercings (though, more than a few of those giant rings in some dudes’ ear lobes). I noticed only one obviously drunk guy: everyone else either had nothing in their hands, or water, or a soda. A “mosh pit” opened up a few times, but really, the participants seemed like they were skipping around in a circle, pushing each other.
The thing that really gets me, though, is how very little these guys all probably make on a given night. The advance tickets were $18; at the door, they were $22. There were maybe 100 people there when we walked in, though surely some people came and went. Let’s say they sold 200 tickets to this thing and sold all of them at $22: $4400 would have been the ticket sales. Divided among 6 bands (though, I’m sure the divisions wouldn’t have been an even split), that’s $733 per band (not per person)…and that assumes that the venue would take no money from the ticket sales, which obviously isn’t the case. In the end, each band member was probably lucky to walk out of there with $100.
Point is: the bands themselves make practically nothing from tickets, so they must make up the difference in merchandising. I saw some folks going up, buying things, but I can’t say I saw large crowds around the merch table. It makes me wonder how bands like these expect to “make it.” Bear in mind that these are national, touring bands, that people (not me…) have heard of before. These are the popular groups.
So yeah, it’s always an interesting exercise for me to tag along to these concerts. I’d kinda like Brooke to come along sometime, so I can get her “sociological perspective” on these people. Not sure Stu wants to be buying two extra tickets, though… 😛
04.21.12 Dinner
I had been planning this dinner for nearly a week before we got around to it: grilled turkey and swiss with carrot slaw. I think I had something sort of similar at a restaurant once that was better than this, but was probably a lot more complicated to make.
04.23.12 Dinner
The Jack In The Box near our house has this huge, tempting sign up advertising their chili cheese fries. A freezer clean out earlier this week led me to a healthier version with sweet potato fries as the base and zucchini and black bean chili on top. Satisfied the craving for now…
04.20.12 Breakfast
Muffins (or “muppinS” if you’re Meg). Chocolate chip with oatmeal, whole wheat flour, flax, and yogurt. I’ve been eating them all week for breakfast and they’re still good!
