Beer : Arrogant Bastard Ale

Man! This bastard is arrogant for a reason, and it's not the giant bottle it comes in. At 2% more alcohol than your standard domestic beers, this beer packs a punch! One bottle of this was enough to loosen my juice and ease into rocking gear. Add one more beer and you're out on the smoothness highway, cruising with beer-wind a-blowin' in your hair as you ease into fifth and slide towards the sweet spot of the zone of goodness. Today, my Miller Genuine Draft seems much less sweet, though. Damn you, Arrogant Bastard.

Recommend? Hells yeah. But it's not for beer-sissies. No sir.

Movie : Revenge of the Sith

Well, I saw that movie! It was pretty good. When we last saw our heroes, in episode II, they were mostly drooling and dozing off, or looking pixelated. This time around things have improved amazingly! Palpatine and Obi-Wan were the best by far, as far as characters and acting go, and computer Yoda has been improved greatly, no longer looking ridiculous in action scenes and actually managing to look like an effective character in slow scenes! The "love" scenes between Padme and Ani are still unbelievably terrible, both in writing and acting (Lucas was playing the "how many cliched one-liner love lines can I stick in this scene" game.) Thankfully, the love is kept to a minimum and Natalie Portman dies. I giggled everytime anyone said "Dooku," but that's just me.

I was totally grabbed at the beginning, then I wasn't too sure for awhile, but when everybody started getting killed, I was really into it. Man! What action and effects!

The ending was genius! Perfect set up! I wanted to go home and watch episode four right then! (but I only have it on tape, perhaps a DVD purchase is in order? Lucas wins!)

Recommend? Yeah, I do. It wasn't the best. Or the second best. But if you skip some of the middle, and every scene with only Padme and Ani, then it might have a shot at a tie for third best with "...Jedi" But man! Was it ever better than Eps I and II! By a lot!

Meal : Pizza, Hot Wings, and Beer.

Man! Maggie and me had beer, pizza, and hot wings for dinner. It was awesome! Wings too spicy? Have a sip of beer, which goes great with pizza! One leads to the other, see, in a perfect meal circle.

Recommend? YES! It's way manly, pizza and beer, and good ladies dig it too! Throw in a fast puzzle game and a Japanese movie, and you have it made.

Movie : Revenge of the Sith

Lucas did it! Yay! This movie was fantastic! I will see it two more times in the theater. At least.

First of all, the creativity/graphics/layout of the movie was probably the most cutting edge stuff I've seen since the original Matrix movies. The opening scene of the movie with the jedi ships cruising around the ... well, let's just say it was amazing. The depth of all the action was mindboggling. My eyes were wide (like this: OO.

I liked the story. I liked the acting (yup, I did). I believed in the conflict between Anakin and Obi-wan. I won't spoil, but I will say I got a bit teary eyed in the last half hour of the movie. It's a sad movie! Anakin was supposed to be the chosen one! And it's a brutal movie! Poor, poor jedi. Also, Revenge of the Sith makes all the other Star Wars movies better. Lucas gave us a perfect fit. I watched the first hour of A New Hope after seeing Episode III, and it was so much better! Amazing.

I must give one strong hint to anyone who hasn't seen this movie yet: FIND AND WATCH THE CARTOON NETWORK CLONE WARS series before watching the movie! It leads DIRECTLY into Revenge of the Sith, and helps it make more sense. Why is General Grevious aparently wounded, for example? Find out in the cartoon!

Recommend? YES. Even if you don't like Star Wars, this is an awesome Sci-fi action blockbuster adventure movie. And if you do like Star Wars, this is probably the best of them all.

Movie : Life Aquatic

Stop what you are doing and listen to me if you are interested in hearing about a good show! Life Aquatic is brilliant, with amazing special effects (hooray for a rebirth in clay-mation!), a supurb cast, and so much passion it will pop your eyeballs out. It is a tale of revenge and rediscovery. It is a swashbuckling adventure! It has a soundtrack of David Bowie songs played on guitar with lyrics in Portuguese that don't really even match the original lyrics!

Recommend? Of course! I bought this movie, and you should too.

Book : The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman

Here is the last book of the His Dark Materials trilogy. The ending was not what I expected, although I can't really say what it is that I did expect in the end. There were many new worlds, many new characters, and, well, how do I review this book?

I can't see how this was supposed to be a childrens book. What part of this book is for children? No part. Except maybe the daemons. Those were kinda cute. Maybe Iorek. Maybe.

Recommend? YES. Read the whole trilogy, and then explain it to me.

Movie : Revenge of the Sith

Ha ha! I get to review Star Wars first!

Okay. It was pretty good, I thought. Pretty good! The dialogue is all pretty cheesy, the actors are bad, but it all sort of makes sense now. Amazingly, in retrospect, the first two (meaning Episodes 1 and 2) seem better now that I've seen this one. Everything seems to make sense. And it all leads, totally, perfectly, right into the very first movie (meaning Episode IV), even though there's another 20 years of dead time in between.

Recommend: It's goofy and there are lots of retarded bits, but overall, I'd rank its good moments up there with the best from the original movies (meaning IV V & VI). There you go.

Book : Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami

Is Haruki Murakami one of the coolest writers on the planet? He gets my f*cking vote. Oh, this book is cool. Set in Japan in modern day. A young boy runs away from home. Mystery ensues. The characters ate a lot, and it was all Japanese food that sounded good, and it made me want to eat Japanese food. After a particular chapter, I was forced to make rice, Miso soup, and some teriyaki salmon. It was delicious.

Recommend? Yes! Murakami is cooler than me, and I must. Also, I recommend (even more so) Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. But this one is also good. So is A Wild Sheep Chase and Norwegian Wood. He's a smooth Japanese cat.

Book : Bone - One Volume Edition

I know, I know. A 1332 page long comic book? Yeah! In black and white? Hells yeah! With no super heroes? God, yes! From 1991 to 2004 Jeff Smith wrote and drew Bone, a sprawling, beautiful fantasy-humor-adventure comic. But it was a story line with a goal, and reaching that, it ended. Now all the issues of Bone are available in one massive book. This is the best comic book ever, imho (heh.) Let's run down the Master Comic Book Check List.

High adventure? Check.
Pretty pictures? Check.
Memorable characters? Check, check, check, check check...
Humor? Double-check.
Hiijinks? Oh yeah.
Epic fantasy scope? Yep.
World-threatening struggle? You betcha.
Dragons, talking bugs, and hard-punching old ladies? Check.
Cow racing and swindling galore? Check.
The best of everything ever? Check-yo-mama.

Recommend? YES. Go to a bookstore, grab a copy. Read it for an hour or so to make sure it's sweet, since it is 40 dollars, and then buy it.

Movie : National Treasure

This movie was like a warm, soft blanket. It had a predictable plot, bad acting and a number of bad lines, and virtually everything in it was implausible ("These are scrolls from the library at Alexandria!"). But like a soft blanket, we discover that the secret to eating is food. So if you expect a ham sammitch, and you're really hungry, then a ham sammitch is damned fine eating.

Recommend? Yes. With some melted cheese and a little spicy brown mustard.