Scooter Chronicles

During this past weekend, Marcia and I watched “City Hall”, starring Al Pacino, John Cusack, and Bridget Fonda.

Thanks to IMDB and Tim Horrigan, here is a plot summary:

One seemingly routine morning, a little boy is shot dead in the cross fire between a drug dealer and a narcotics detective in a predominantly black New York City neighborhood. John Pappas (Pacino), the idealistic mayor of the city, cleverly prevents a race riot, and everything seems to be OK. However, things get complicated again when Kevin Calhoun (Cusack), the deputy mayor, who is even more idealistic than Pappas himself,...

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Over this past weekend I finished reading “The Crash of Hennington” by Patrick Ness, his debut novel. I was led to this one through Corey Redekop’s Blogger profile. He listed it as one of his favorite novels. This is the second book in the past couple of months that I have read that were “suggestions” by Redekop. With his novel “Shelf Monkey” included, he’s 3-for-3 now.

The only good description I found was from Amazon.CA (the Canadian version):

The world of “The Crash of Hennington” is so strange that nobody pays...

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One of my favorite science fiction authors, the one who’s work introduced me to the possibilities that can be had with the power of imagination, Arthur C. Clarke passed away early this morning in Sri Lanka.

Even those that don’t read science fiction may be familiar with Clarke’s most famous work, “2001: A Space Odyssey”. He wrote the book at the same time he was writing the movie script with Stanley Kubrick.

It is strange, because just last week I was thinking about him. I had been reading some write-ups about both the book and movie, along with it’s sequels,...

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Sometime last week I stumbled across Blender Magazine’s “50 Worst Things Ever to Happen to Music” list. I found one of them very amusing.

31. Jazz fusion
It’s a rule of thumb that any music that uses “jazz” as a prefix will make you want to saw your head off in boredom (see also: jazz-funk, jazz rap, jazz house). But none is as wearying as the genre that thought what rock really needed was month-long bass solos and time signatures Stephen Hawking wouldn’t understand.

Yes sir! Very funny. But I still like jazz fusion.

Hats off to Marquette High School and Orchard Lake St. Mary’s High School, both in Michigan. The two teams were named co-champions in the Michigan high school hockey state championships. Why were they named co-champs? Because the officials felt that it was dangerous for the players to continue playing another overtime period after completing the EIGHT prior! You can read two articles about the event: HERE and HERE. (In case you don’t want to read them, they were worried about the safety of the players. Also, regulation periods in Michigan...

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Dewey has created a book meme about negative reviews of books. Here is my take on it.

1. When you dislike a book, do you say so in your blog? Why or why not?

Yes I do. Though there haven’t been too many. I do it mostly for the fact that those reading my blog should know. My blog isn’t a book blog, but if someone reads my reviews, they can get a good idea of what I like and don’t like. It may also help them make a decision on wanting to read or not to read the book. And I try to give the reasons why I didn’t like it. To some, they may not see them as obstacles. I know I have read a few negative...

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This past week Marcia and I watched “The Brave One” starring Jodi Foster and Terrence Howard. It happened to be on Howard’s 39th birthday.

The movie centers on Erica Bain (Foster), a public radio show host in New York. Her and her fiancé David go to walk their dog in the park one evening, and are brutally attacked. Erica is knocked unconscious, only to wake up in the hospital weeks (?) later to find out that not only was David killed, but his family has already had his funeral. Erica finds it hard to move on, and ends up illegally buying a gun to protect herself. Then one evening while in a...

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Truly, one of the worst songs in rock ‘n roll history. (”Lumberjack” by Jackyl, for those that need to know.)

The video is really bad, too. And speaking of bad videos, here is another one, “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider.