Scooter Chronicles

New Job
I am busy already. And that’s a good thing. Right away they got me started on something. It was also a great project to start back with, refreshing my memory of a particular software they use.

Posts
Because of being busy, I haven’t been able to post much. Home life is busy with other things, and we don’t ever get to do all we want to begin with. I had been doing many of my posts from work, and post dating them. I liked the idea of having one new post a day. Why do four or five in one day? So in this respect it looked like I was always running behind on reviews of books or movies or other things in general. Now I may be running behind with them but it will...

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Another friendly reminder that I am to host the next Bookworm Carnival. The theme is Urban/Contemporary Fantasy. For suggestions or help you can look at the PAGE I set up for it. You can email me with any further questions.

And as I mentioned before, there is an added incentive to get involved. I will have a drawing of one name of those that submit a review to win a book of their choice (so long as it is under $20 and available through Amazon.Com). So send in your submissions!

On Sunday Marcia and I watched (surprise, surprise) another movie with Al Pacino in it. This time it was “Glengarry Glen Ross”, also starring Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce, and Alec Baldwin.

Here is a rundown on the plot, thanks to Patrick Dominick and IMDB, with a few changes by myself:

Times are tough in a Chicago real-estate office; the salesmen, Shelley Levene (Lemon), Ricky Roma (Pacino), Dave Moss (Harris), and George Aaronow (Arkin) are given a strong incentive by Blake (Baldwin) to succeed in a sales contest. The prizes? First prize is a Cadillac...

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On Monday afternoon Marcia and I continued our “Al Pacino Fest” by watching “Carlito’s Way”, starring Sean Penn and Penelope Ann Miller as well.

Here is a quick rundown on the plot, thanks to IMDB and Keith Loh:

A Puerto Rican ex-con pledges to stay away from his former drug dealing ways but finds himself being dragged back by his past connections and the naive machinations of his lawyer and best friend (Penn). Hoping to raise enough money to get away from New York, Carlito Brigante takes on the job of running a nightclub, renews an affair with a dancer (Miller) but old...

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On Monday morning I finished reading “Bad Monkey” by Matt Ruff. This was the third book of mine and David’s Mini Brew and Book Club. We have an elimination process we go through when choosing a book, and this was the first book that was one of my nominations.

Thanks to Amazon.Com and Publishers Weekly, here is a rundown on the plot from their review:

In this clever SF thriller from Ruff, almost everyone is a bad monkey of some kind, but only Jane Charlotte is a self-confessed member of The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons. Or is she? In a series...

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I really don’t like delving into politics on my site. However, this is something that I deeply believe in. I feel that Senator Barack Obama is the best choice, and not only in this primary. I know that if he wins, he is not going to be able to accomplish all he has set out to do. But I agree with most all that he wants to do. More importantly, I believe he understands that so many of us Americans are hoping for a change to make our lives, and the lives of our families better. And I believe that he is going to remember that...

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Marcia and I have been joking around, or more like hoping, that we would run into Sen. Barack Obama somewhere in the last six weeks with the focus being on Pennsylvania. Well, we missed a golden opportunity yesterday. Sen. Obama showed up at one of my favorite establishments: The Bethlehem Brew Works.

Of course, even if he had shown up at a much lesser liked restaurant, we still would have loved to have been there.

On Saturday afternoon, Marcia and I watched “Bang the Drum Slowly”, starring Michael Moriarty, Robert De Niro, and Vincent Gardenia.

Thanks to David Landers and his post at IMDB, here is the plot description:

The story of a New York pro baseball team and two of its players. Henry Wiggen (Moriarty) is the star pitcher and Bruce Pearson (De Niro) is the normal, everyday catcher who is far from the star player on the team and friend to all of his teammates. During the off-season, Bruce learns that he is terminally ill, and Henry, his only true friend, is determined to be the...

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On Tuesday night I finished reading “The New York Trilogy” by Paul Auster. This book contains three “novels” that are all linked to one another, but not by conventional ways.

Here are the novels and their descriptions (the first two from Amazon.Com, the third by me):

City of Glass

Daniel Quinn, author of a series of detective pot-boilers, accepts an assignment as a real private investigator from a woman who dials his phone number by mistake. His mission: to keep an eye on her husband’s father, a former linguistics professor...

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It has finally arrived! As I mentioned a few months ago, I am to host a Bookworm Carnival. This is where readers from around the Blog-o-sphere submit reviews of books they have read that fit the theme of that particular edition. This month’s edition is Urban/Contemporary Fantasy. You can find out more from the PAGE I set up about it. The deadline date for submissions is May 9th.

So, if you have a hankerin’ to read a novel that falls into the category of urban and/or contemporary fantasy, or you read one previously and reviewed it, and you have it posted on your blog, then send me a link!

Added...

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