in no particular order:
Down the Hobbit Hole*
Grump and Grouch Tell You How It Is
Heckling From the Balcony
Miskatonic Epicurean Explorers Club
Ideally, I would love a blog name that makes one think of a proper British gentleman's club where the members sit in their overstuffed wing back chairs smoking their cigars and pipes while discussing literature, science, or what not. "The Diogenes Club" is the name of the club Mycroft Holmes belongs to (and believed to be a front for the secret espionage network he ran) and is perfect, but is already in use.
I would love to think of the name of a character, real or fictional, that represents the values of enjoying the good (but simple) life that we can use as the name....The Franklin Club or something like that.
two more:
The Imperial Highwaymen
Alexandrian Literary and Social Club
ooh ooh ooh, Mr. Kotter, I have it!!!
"Fezziwig's Review"
(RIP, Ron Palillo)
Friday, September 7, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Food Review: G Burger
I recently discovered G Burgers in La Habra a few months
back, and I keep going back because I absolutely love this place. It’s a
gourmet level burger for a good price and everything is fresh, cooked to order,
and excellent.
I normally get their regular burger with bacon and teriyaki onions
but I have also tried their caprese burger with fresh mozzarella and garlic
aioli. Both are extremely good, but the caprese may just be my new favorite…it’s
amazing how well the flavors all worked together.
The burgers are all cooked to order, with medium seeming to
be their default preference. I’ve tried their burgers at medium, medium-well,
and well done, and I find that for hamburgers, I really prefer them well done. It
must be a deficiency on my part. But that’s a digression…the important part
here is that if you do like your burgers cooked medium, you will love it here.
The real star of the show, however, is the garlic parmesan fries.
Dear lord do I love these—I would come out here to order these alone! Crispy
fries coated in garlic and parmesan cheese—this is truly where life does not
get any better.
GBurger
421 E La Habra Blvd
La Habra, CA 90631
La Habra, CA 90631
(562) 245-7208
www.gburger.com
Book Review: The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder
Not every review is going to be about something I love. Sometimes I will review things that disappointed me too. Things I thought were going to be great and had high exceptions for that ended up letting me down. Phantom Menace anyone?
Anyways, this one is about a steampunk novel I had really been looking forward to reading. It had a lot of great reviews, but we all know what a trap those can be sometimes.
This is a hard review to formulate
as I can't really decide if I loved the inventiveness of the plot or if
the author's awkward technical skills in writing ruined it beyond hope.
To be a little more specific, without revealing spoilers, I really
enjoyed the Richard Burton character, I loved a lot of the inventions
and contraptions that populated this steam punk setting, and I thought
the whole idea behind who and what the Spring Heeled Jack was, was
really clever.
However, the author's clumsy use of denouement and exposition derail the story every time they make an appearance...at one point their is a villain-reveals-his-evil-plot scene every bit as awkward as something from a child's cartoon, and it takes place half way through the book! The other big reveal is so contrived and awkward, I wanted to fling my Kindle across the room and break it. It involves Burton breaking into the villains' hide out just in time to hear their leader EXPLAIN IT ALL to his co-conspirators, as if they did not already have a part in what happened. And then launches into telling the Spring Heeled Jack's story, which takes up a significant portion of the book. It would have been much better to have done without this awkward framing device and just made Jack's story it's own part of the novel: Part 1 is from Burton's POV and experiences, Part 2 is from Jack's and explains the crazy things we saw in part 1 and did not understand, and then Part 3 is the resolution.
As I write my thoughts down, I relive the frustrations and sadly, they are the things that stay with me more than the enjoyment I took from the rest of the reading experience.
However, the author's clumsy use of denouement and exposition derail the story every time they make an appearance...at one point their is a villain-reveals-his-evil-plot scene every bit as awkward as something from a child's cartoon, and it takes place half way through the book! The other big reveal is so contrived and awkward, I wanted to fling my Kindle across the room and break it. It involves Burton breaking into the villains' hide out just in time to hear their leader EXPLAIN IT ALL to his co-conspirators, as if they did not already have a part in what happened. And then launches into telling the Spring Heeled Jack's story, which takes up a significant portion of the book. It would have been much better to have done without this awkward framing device and just made Jack's story it's own part of the novel: Part 1 is from Burton's POV and experiences, Part 2 is from Jack's and explains the crazy things we saw in part 1 and did not understand, and then Part 3 is the resolution.
As I write my thoughts down, I relive the frustrations and sadly, they are the things that stay with me more than the enjoyment I took from the rest of the reading experience.
2 and half
stars out of 5
Welcome to Life After 40
Today is my 40th birthday. Hooray me. After a year of cracking jokes about being nearly dead, nearly old, and nearly obsolete, the day is finally here and I woke up and felt...the same.
Not that I really expected anything to change, but hey, you never know.
Not that any of this really has anything to do with the creation of this blog--I've been meaning to do so for years and finally decided to create a few days ago. I wanted to talk about everything in life that makes things enjoyable to live it...great movies and books, excellent beers, fine cigars, etc.
But when it came time to submit a name to Blogspot, I drew a blank. Way back when, I wanted to call it Excelsior! but that did not grab me anymore. I thought about "The Good Shit" but was not sure that fly. Predictably, thoughts of my failure to start a blog because I could not find a name for it made me think of turning 40 (cause that's all I think about, right).
So I started thinking that, even being 40, there are still things worth doing in life...basically, the same things as being 30 (yep, books, beer, cigars), so this was going to be about the things that make life worth living even after turning 40...
Which it turns out there are already a lot of blogs out there with "life after 40" worked into it, but fuck 'em. This is my blog, and I can steal it's title from somewhere else if I want to. It's not like anyone will be reading it =)
So happy birthday to me and welcome to my little slice of cyberspace. Kick off your shoes, sink into one of the big overstuffed chairs, and get ready to read about some of the great things out there (and some not so great things to avoid) that make live worth living...at any age.
Not that I really expected anything to change, but hey, you never know.
Not that any of this really has anything to do with the creation of this blog--I've been meaning to do so for years and finally decided to create a few days ago. I wanted to talk about everything in life that makes things enjoyable to live it...great movies and books, excellent beers, fine cigars, etc.
But when it came time to submit a name to Blogspot, I drew a blank. Way back when, I wanted to call it Excelsior! but that did not grab me anymore. I thought about "The Good Shit" but was not sure that fly. Predictably, thoughts of my failure to start a blog because I could not find a name for it made me think of turning 40 (cause that's all I think about, right).
So I started thinking that, even being 40, there are still things worth doing in life...basically, the same things as being 30 (yep, books, beer, cigars), so this was going to be about the things that make life worth living even after turning 40...
Which it turns out there are already a lot of blogs out there with "life after 40" worked into it, but fuck 'em. This is my blog, and I can steal it's title from somewhere else if I want to. It's not like anyone will be reading it =)
So happy birthday to me and welcome to my little slice of cyberspace. Kick off your shoes, sink into one of the big overstuffed chairs, and get ready to read about some of the great things out there (and some not so great things to avoid) that make live worth living...at any age.
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