The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 28,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
I’m a bit late on this post because of a bunch of craziness that happened over the last couple of weeks. I will write about said craziness in a later post. This post, however, is all about Christmas!
This was our first Christmas in a real, honest-to-goodness, house! We went from a one bedroom third story apartment to a three bedroom house with a living room big enough for more than one person and a rodent sized pet. With my obligations as a pastor we decided that this year the whole family would make the journey to rural Kansas for an early Christmas. We had Christmas a week early because plane tickets were much cheaper for my Dad to get back from the oil patch in North Dakota where he’s working.
We definitely had a full house for Christmas! We made good use of our new (giant) couch, chair-and-a-half sleeper, and the futon in the office. We actually had enough beds that none of the nine people had to sleep on the floor! The one downside is that we only have one bathroom and that proved to be an interesting bottleneck when it came time to get ready for church on Sunday morning. Thankfully the pastor got up before the morning rush and made it to church on time.
This was Liam’s first Christmas and he was showered with gifts from all sides. Everyone from both my family and my wife’s family got something for Liam. Liam’s stash of toys and outfits grew substantially after Christmas. He’s just big enough that he has really started engaging with objects. He (much to his parent’s dismay) likes to pull open drawers and cupboards and examine (a.k.a. eat) their contents and he has really started playing with some of his toys. Needless to say, the kiddo was in high demand all through the Christmas season.
In what will surely make Christmas 2011 a memorable one for my family, my sister bought some fake mustaches and distributed them to everyone. This resulted in some great pictures and general hilarity. We also had some fun with footie pajamas which my Mom had bought for everyone.
All told it was a great Christmas with the family. We had plans to also have my wife’s family come up here the week of Christmas, but those plans were changed when a family emergency came up. We’ll just have to try again next year. One thing is for sure, it was different and fun to have the family come to us for Christmas and be able to play the hosts.
Rear Window is a 1954 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. This film is considered to be one of Hitch’s best films and it went on to be nominated for four Academy Awards (Director, Screenplay, Cinematography -color-, and Sound Recording). The film has made a number of best of lists over the years. It has also been repeatedly remade and parodied with the latest retelling being the 2007 movie, Disturbia. So does Hitchcock’s suspenseful film rise to the level of being considered one of the all time greats and the coveted label of “classic?”
Should this film be considered a classic? Most definitely. In terms of scale (although it was built on a massive set), this film is small. The film takes place almost entirely from the apartment of L.B. Jeffries. Hitchcock draws us in by making us live the cooped up life of Jeffries and by making us a part of his disturbing voyeuristic tendencies. Even though the camera rarely leaves Jeff’s apartment, it is impossible not to be sucked in by the stories and characters that dwell in the surrounding apartments. Even though I know the ending, this is a film that always has me on the edge of my seat. Stewart and Kelly offer up wonderful performances and keep the viewer engaged. The real treat of the story is all the mini-stories that unfold in the surrounding apartments. I think it really is those peripheral stories that give the film an enduring and endearing heart that would be dramatically lessened had the story only focused on Jeff’s voyeurism at the expense of the secondary stories.
Would I own this film? When does the Blu-Ray version come out? As I said earlier, this is a film that maintains the suspense even if it has been watched multiple times. It is rare, in my experience, for a suspense movies to maintain that suspenseful element over multiple viewings, but Rear Window does. I think the real key is that Hitchcock really makes the viewer care about all the secondary characters. We want to see Miss Torso find happiness. We are sad when Miss Lonelyhearts can’t find love and rejoice when she finds solace in the work of her composer neighbor. That is the real genius of Rear Window. The suspense of solving a murder keeps me engaged but the mini-stories of the neighbors keeps me coming back to the film hoping to learn just a bit more about the fascinating little community Hitchcock created.
The Lady Eve is a 1941 film written and directed by Preston Sturges and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. The film is a slapstick and screwball comedy and has made a number of “best of” lists includings AFI’s “100 Years…100 Laughs” at number 55. The film was nominated for one Academy Award for “Best Writing” and the New York Times named it the best film of the year in 1941. So does this screwball comedy rise above the pack in order to be considered a classic?
Should this film be considered a classic? This is a film that I can give a hearty yes to. I had never seen or even heard of this film before I watched it and I immediately found myself drawn into the story and antics on the screen. The acting and timing are all spot on and the clumsy and passive Hopsie (Fonda) and smooth and aggressive Jean (Stanwyck) make perfect foils for each other. The pacing is brisk and the secondary characters all add some wonderful comedic elements with my favorite being the bombastic Horace Pike (Eugene Pallette). What really makes this comedy (and all other truly great comedies) work is the fact that it is timeless. The jokes are timeless and even seventy years after the release of the film are still laugh out loud funny. That is a great accomplishment for any film and especially a screwball comedy.
Would I own this film? Sign me up! This is a truly enjoyable picture. If you want a wonderful film to enjoy on a date night with your spouse this would be one to pick. I can definitely see myself revisiting this one many times in the coming years. I would also rate this film as one of my most pleasant surprises since starting this list. There are a handful of movies on this list that I had never seen or heard of before that have really appealed to me and this is one of them.
Here’s a clip of one of my favorite scenes in the film:
I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of time travel and multiverses. I also enjoy historical fiction. With the Bright Empires trilogy Lawhead attempts to meld the two together with an epic story that stretches across continents, universes, and centuries. The Bone House is the second book in the series and follows immediately after The Skin Map. If you have not read the first book you need to pick it up first otherwise you will be completely lost.
I really enjoyed the historical elements of the book. Lawhead does a good job of capturing the sites, sounds, and smells of the world that his characters inhabit. He takes great pains to make sure the reader experiences what the character experience.
The overall story arc is also fascinating. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil the plot, but he keeps the tension levels up by keeping a dark and mysterious tone throughout the whole of the work and a tension that something huge is bubbling right below the surface.
The things that didn’t work well for me were the often plodding pacing and rather boring characters. The one character that felt and sounded real to me (the same thing with the first book) was Mina. I wanted to skip to chapters about her because she was just much more interesting than any other character. Also, while Lawhead does a good job painting a picture of the environment he often does this to the detriment of the story. The story is needlessly bogged down by overabundant descriptions of things that could easily have been stated in a sentence or less but instead take whole paragraphs.
On the whole, if you enjoyed the first book you should enjoy this one. If you did not enjoy the first book you probably won’t enjoy this one. I like the concept and story arc enough and enjoy reading about the character of Mina enough that I will persevere through the sequels to see what happens. Hopefully Lawhead can pick up the pace in the storytelling department in the his future books.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
I got up dark and early on Black Friday. It was the first time I’d ever gotten up early to make a purchase on the busiest shopping day of the year. I had one goal in mind: get to Office Depot. I was buying an inexpensive laptop for my church and also hoping to snag a 32GB TouchPad for $150. It worked out perfectly because the TouchPad had to be bought along with an HP laptop.
I’ve been using the TouchPad for almost two weeks now. My iPad now spends most its time in wife’s hands because I’ve been a little enamored with HP’s late TouchPad. Here’s why I think this could have been a legitimate competitor had HP marketed it right and priced it right (maybe $100 less than the comparable iPad) from the get-go.
Those are the big positives for me. The mere prospect of being able to have a Windows 8 tablet for $150 was enough for me to try and pick one up. There are some negatives here that should be noted.
So there are my thoughts after actively using the device for nearly two weeks. I think it was well worth the price and if you have a chance to pick one up (I think it would even be worth it at the $200-250 range they are running on Amazon and eBay) and don’t mind a little easy hacking you should jump on the opportunity.
