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Archive for January 2012

Breaking Bad – Season 3

Jan31

Title: Breaking Bad

Genre: Contemporary Dramedy

Watched: Season 3, January 10-27, 2012

Summary: Even stronger

_

I got distracted by a lot of stuff (mostly involving the publication of my first novel) and stalled for a couple of weeks between the end of season 2 and season 3.

I really like how this show uses the section before the titles to foreshadow. In the second season this was mostly the coming plane crash, during the first half of the third this second is used primarily to characterize  the sinister Mexican twins. These two make one stylized, amusing, and downright creepy pair of assassins.

This first half season slowed the pace a bit to focus on character development. Part of the drag comes from the fact that Jesse and Walt are chronicled separately. Leaving me missing their interaction. There’s also a lot of family and Skyler time which — while well done — isn’t my favorite aspect of the show: The crime and the criminals. But things start to pick up when Jesse joins Walt in the lab and then at the midpoint the season goes into hyperdrive. After seven episodes of build up the showdown with the twins is no let down. Dean Norris is a particular standout.

The remaining seven episodes are pretty intense with the exception of the bizarre “fly” episode. And the last three hours is some of the best television I’ve seen in a long while. After having invested really heavily in character development the show cashes in with breakneck zigging and zagging that is all the richer. And the end leaves you breathless and clicking away to order Season 4.

Part of this show’s strength is the standout character writing and acting. Walt and Jesse are both awesome, but Hank also stands out, Saul is pure pleasure to watch reminiscent of Bill Murray in Wild Things, and I really love cleaner Mike and the coolest cucumber to walk the planet: Gus.

For more of my posts on TV, click here.

Related posts:

  1. Breaking Bad – Season 2
  2. Breaking Bad – Season 1
  3. The Sopranos – Season 3
  4. The Sopranos – Season 2
  5. The Sopranos – Season 1
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Television
Tagged as: Aaron Paul, AMC, Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston, Comedy-drama, Dean Norris, Jesse, Jesse Pinkman, List of Breaking Bad characters, Netflix, Television, Walt

Game of Thrones – Season 2 Trailer

Jan29

HBO just released a new trailer for Game of Thrones Season 2. This one finally contains a good bit of footage from the new season itself, so check it out.

I like the narration by Varys. He’s one of my favorite actors from the first season and he has such a deliciously cynical perspective. They even got his voice right. It’s a little known fact that one of the side effects of losing the family jewels before puberty (Varys is a eunuch) is that the voice never drops and so remains high and soft. This was frequently noted by historians in antiquity.

The producers also clearly play up Tryrion/Peter Dinklage, no surprise considering his well deserved Emmy win. But then again, A Clash of Kings (which season 2 is based on) is Tyrion’s book. He totally owns it.

Find out about my own fantasy novel here!

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Related posts:

  1. Game of Thrones Season 2 Peek
  2. Game of Thrones – Episode 2
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  5. Game of Thrones – Renly’s Armor
By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Television
Tagged as: Clash of Kings, Croatia, Emilia Clarke, Emmy Award, eunuch, Fantasy, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, Kanye West, Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire, Peter Din, Season 2, Season 2 Teaser, Season 2 Trailer, Stephen Dillane, Teaser, Trailer

Price is Going Up Soon

Jan29

I want to give you all warning that the price of my novel, The Darkening Dream, is going to rise shortly to $4.99. The hardcover is almost ready and I’m about done with the introductory period. So grab it now!

Find it Here

Given how much money I spent on editing, proofreading, typography, interior illustrations, cover illustration, three cover designs, review copies and the like, $4.99 is still a steal. I’ve never been one for anything but the best and The Darkening Dream is no exception.

Additionally, if you read your e-book’s on anything but the Kindle or Kindle app then grab it now. I’m probably going to take down the Google, iBooks, and Nook versions shortly in order to enter Amazon’s Kindle Select. From what my author indie author friends report this is turning out (for the moment) to be a pretty effective marketing tool.

Or find out more about the book here.

 

 

Related posts:

  1. Hardcover Mechanical
  2. The Darkening Dream for Christmas!
  3. All Things Change
  4. 11 reasons you should buy The Darkening Dream
  5. The Final Cover
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Darkening Dream, E-book, Google, IBook, Kindle, Nook, The Darkening Dream, Writing and Editing

Sam’s by the Beach – Mom’s Annual Dinner

Jan28

Restaurant: Sam’s by the Beach [1, 2, 3, 4]

Location: 108 W. Channel Rd.(PCH), Santa Monica, CA90402. 310-230-9100

Date: January 17, 2012

Cuisine: Cal French International

Rating: Stellar food and unparalleled service.

_

Sam’s by the Beach is one of our favorite local places. Normally, Chef/Owner/Host Sam serves up a modern French fare with tastes of the middle east and Asia. He’s a native of Damascus and his mother comes to town once a year to cook a traditional Syrian dinner. I love really well done traditional food so I was excited to try this out.


The menu for the night.


Our wine. Parker 93. “The 2006 Brunello di Montalcino is a beguiling wine laced with all sorts of black cherries, minerals, spices, licorice and menthol. All of the aromas and flavors are layered together through to the exquisite, refined finish. The 2006 shows a level of richness and density this bottling has lacked in some previous vintages. Today the tannins remain a touch austere, but another few years in bottle should do the trick. Anticipated maturity: 2014-2026.”


To start, “Shorba Bi Addes. Split Red Lentil in Vegetable Broth.” This is a typical “rustic” or homemade soup. Variant bean soups can be found the world over. But I like lentils and this was nicely done with subtle tastes of the east.


The red stuff in front is “Habra Bi Bandora. Ground Beef Patty Syrian Style.” These are basically meat balls in an onion, tomato, garlic sauce. I ate like three portions! They had a nice spicey kefta type thing going on.


On the left, “Salata Bi Sileck. French Swiss-Chard with Pomegranate Seeds, Walnut and Lemon Dressing.” A darn good green vegetable, something I’m normally not a big consumer of. On the right “Angynar Bi Jazzar. Braised Artichoke with Carrots and Leeks in Olive Oil.” Very nice marinated vegetables.


Finished the earlier wine. Moved on to this stellar 97 point Pomerol. “A sensational effort, and one of the two finest Clinets made before the 2008, this prodigious wine made by the late Jean-Michel Arcaute has always been a sprinter out of the gate. Even at age 19, it continues to strut its stuff. A dense blue/garnet/purple hue exhibits slight lightening at the edge, and the gorgeous nose offers up aromas of sweet blueberries, licorice, smoke, acacia flowers, and camphor. Full-bodied with silky tannins, low acidity, and terrific purity, this 1990 has hit its plateau of full maturity where it should remain for another decade.”


For the main. “Maqloupah. Layers of Roasted Eggplant, Ground Lamb and Rice served with Fresh Cucumber and Yogurt Sauce.” This had a very nice middle eastern flavor. The eggplant, lamb, and tomato thing with yogurt was something I had a lot in Turkey. The execution was spot on.


Here is the sauce. Pretty much a great raita.


“Mouhalabiha Bi Dibus. Milk custard with Rose Water and Grape Syrup topped with Toasted Sesame Seeds and Almonds.” A sort of Syrian panna cotta, this has a lovely soft texture (might be gelatinous for some) and a subtle rose water thing going on. I love rose water.

Sam’s Mom didn’t disappoint. This wasn’t wasn’t a super formal meal cuisine wise, but more an example of really well executed home cooking from his homeland.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Seconds at Sam’s by the Beach
  2. Sam’s by the Beach 3D
  3. Food as Art: Sam’s by the Beach
  4. Fraiche – Ultimo Wine Dinner
  5. Dinner Party – It all starts with Cheese
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Brunello di Montalcino, Damascus, lamb, Middle East, Pomerol, Rose Water, Sam's by the Beach, Santa Monica, Santa Monica California, Syrian Food

Tempest

Jan27

Title: Tempest

Author: Julie Cross

Genre: YA time travel

Length: 352 pages

Read: January 23, 2012

Summary: Great fast paced debut

_

This new YA time travel novel has a bit of buzz (I see it on many of the book blogs I troll looking for candidates to review The Darkening Dream), but I read it — and quickly — because of the superficial similarities to my second novel, Untimed. Both are YA time travel, both have a male protagonist (although he’s a 19 year old in this book, and 15 in mine).

But that’s about where the similarity ends. Although don’t get me wrong, Tempest is a great book (even if Untimed is better!). It’s one of the best YA’s I’ve read in the last year or so, on par with Before I Fall. The beginning is slightly awkward although the 1st person past voice is good. The author’s “I’m a time traveling teen intro” felt slightly forced, but as soon as he’s attacked by mysterious secret agent dudes and forced back from 2009 to 2007 (maybe 10% in) the book rocks along and I read the whole thing in a single sitting. Overall it nicely balances an interesting new scenario, likable characters, a compelling romance, a good mystery, and a touch of pathos. Good stuff.

Tempest borrows lightly from the brilliant The Time Traveler’s Wife too, and while it has a novel take on time travel it’s really more of an action mystery, and most importantly a romance. Untimed on the other hand, which is even heavier on the action, and has a romance (less emphasized), really focuses on the history part of time travel. I visit four centuries, all heavily researched, and explore the big impact individual people can have on the broad sweep of history. Tempest sticks mostly to the personal. The things that change in this novel are all of an intimate nature, having to do with the protagonist and his family. Namely the author is a woman and its all about the relationships: Jackson and his girlfriend, his father, his best friend, and his sister. Not that this is bad, as these relationships are really well done, its just different. The time travel action is confined mostly to a couple years back and is rarely intricate, avoiding most overlap and paradox. All the material stuff occurs between 2007 and 2009 with only a few touristic visits to the decade prior. It’s mostly all in New York city.

This leaves a lot of time to focus on the Jackson / Holly romance. We see it in three modes: as it existed before the novel opens, as he recreates it two years earlier from scratch in alternate 2007, and as he upgrades it on his return. As I said, this is a nicely done romance and really the core of the novel. Both characters felt natural to me, their passion genuine, young, and hopeful. Two major elements interjected a top fight bittersweet note: the problematic nature of a time traveler / normal romance and Jackson’s relationship with his dead twin sister (which because of time travel, lingers on, just a bit).

The mystery element was also good. The book succeeds in NOT revealing exactly what is really going on with the time travelers and even which of two (or even possibly three) factions is actually in the right. This is something I also tried to do in Untimed, and works pretty well here, even if the whole “secret agent” thing and nomenclature of “Enemies of Time” is a bit cheesy. Essentially Cross pulls it off. But the villains are nowhere near as cool as my Tick-Tocks 🙂

And I totally wanted to keep reading. But because of the lame pacing of the traditional publishing system we have to wait a year for the sequel!

Listen to a sample of the audiobook by Macmillan Audio here.

Or for more book reviews, click here.

Related posts:

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By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Book Review, Holly, Jackson, Julie Cross, romance, Tempest, Time travel

Drago New Years

Jan26

Restaurant: Drago [1, 2]

Location: 2628 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90403. T: 310/828-1585

Date: December 31, 2011

Cuisine: Italian

Rating: One of LA’s top Italians – but closing 🙁

_

Celestino Drago and his brothers have a bit of a mini Italian culinary empire here in LA with a number of different restaurants and concepts. These include the flagship Drago, a branch in Pasadena, Il Pastiao, Enoteco Drago and Piccolo Paradiso in Beverly Hills, Drago Centro downtown, Panzanella in the valley, a bakery, catering, and probably something I missed. All of these places are top notch and despite the expansion there is a real attention to quality.

Originally from Sicily the family blends tradition with the modern to make some of LA’s best Italian. Having eaten all over Italy I have to say that the two areas with the best food are in my mind the Piedimonte/Venato and Sicily. And the later wins hands down for desserts. Celistino doesn’t purely stick with Sicilian cuisine anyway, but very much pulls in the latest Italian culinary trends. In particular, the pastas, usually homemade, are phenomenal.

He’s also incredibly creative and adaptable. He’s catered about 8 or so of our events and that includes some whacky stuff. In 2006 we even did a party themed after the Ancient World where all of the dishes were based on the ancient Roman cookbook by Apicius. I just gave Celistino a copy with circled dishes and he adapted these VERY OLD (1900 years old!) recipes and brought them to life. Very interesting.

Anyway, Drago is the flagship restaurant of the empire, and its most formal. They have a big Menu well represented in every category, including good hearty meaty dishes. Certain favorites persist, but it’s always being adapted and changed (something I like), and includes seasonal stuff.

We went here for our last meal of 2011 and they had New Year’s supplements in addition to the normal menu.

Unfortunately, despite the food quality remaining high, business has slipped off at this particular branch of the empire and so it is rumored to be closing soon.


Being New Years, I brought some excellent (even by my standards) wines. Parker gives this 98 points. “The dense ruby/purple-colored 1997 Percarlo is compelling. Enormous in aromas, flavors, and persistence on the palate, it exhibits profound levels of concentration as well as unbelievably dense, black currant, blackberry liqueur notes infused with new saddle leather, licorice, truffles, and toasty oak. Enormously thick and viscous, with low acidity, and mouthcoating levels of extract, this wine’s tannin level is high, but largely obscured by the wealth of fruit, glycerin, and extract. It is an amazing accomplishment! Anticipated maturity: now-2020.”


“INSALATA DI BARBABIETOLE E BURRATA. Burrata, market beets, arugula, pistachio, fried shallots, white balsamic vinegar.” Most Italians have a beets and burrata these days, but this way a particularly good one with a very interesting sweet dressing.


“Angelhair pasta with tomato sauce.” For my three year-old.

“TORTELLONI DI ZUCCA. Mussels, clams, bay scallop, shrimp, squid, tomato sauce.” Another favorite and a Celestino classic. This is pumpkin ravioli in a parmesan cream sauce. Inside is a pure of pumpkin, slightly spiced. A homemade spinach pasta, and then a rich cream and cheese sauce. This is a varient on the truly tradition tortellini de zucca where a slightly smaller normal fresh pasta is used, and the stuffing mixes pumpkin and amaretti cookies, and then the sauce is just butter and sage. This version is richer obviously.


““Cavatelli al ragout di capriolo, venison and chanterelle ragout, chestnut.” This is one of the reasons I come here: for dishes like this. While this is a special, there are always many great pastas, and this is a level of pasta perfection that you WILL NOT find at 95% of LA’s Italians. This particular dish is a homemade larvae shaped Cavatelli (pasta perfection) coupled with this incredibly rich winter ragout. The chestnut adds a little crunch and further winter cheer — chestnuts being very popular/traditional in Italy in Dec/Jan. Stylistically I would have to say this is more a Roman or maybe mountains near Rome kind of dish than explicitly Sicilian, but I could be wrong. Doesn’t matter, it’s great.


“The 1989 Barolos include the 1989 Bussia Soprano, a huge, full-bodied, super-concentrated, powerhouse of a wine that exudes aromas of sweet black-cherries, truffles, spices, and some intriguing spring flower blossom scents. Extremely intense, full-bodied, and spicy, with oodles of rich, fleshy fruit, this profound wine possesses high tannin which is sweet rather than astringent, and a mindboggling finish. This awesome Barolo can be drunk at an early age, but it should keep for 25-30 or more years.
Every Italian wine authority, from the late Sheldon Wasserman, to Burton Anderson, to Victor Hazan, to Roberto Parkero, considers Aldo Conterno to be one of the great masters of his craft. The staggering display of wines he produced in 1989 and 1990 confirmed that no one in Piedmont is making greater Barolo than Aldo Conterno and his sons. If you love great wine, these are must purchases; if you love Barolo, a pilgrimage to your favorite Italian wine shop is in order!
It is virtually impossible to pick a favorite among Conterno’s 1989s and 1990s. However, the 1990s, which are not yet bottled, appear even more massive, structured, and tannic than the flamboyant, super-concentrated, flashy 1989s. Readers should keep in mind that the Barolo-Riserva Gran Bussia is released a year later than the other Barolos, so the 1989 will not appear in the marketplace until spring, 1995, and the 1990 a year later.
Wine enthusiasts throughout the world should be beating a path to their retailers to buy the 1989s and to reserve the 1990s when they arrive next year. By the way, Aldo Conterno is one of Piedmont’s sweetest people, proving that sometimes nice guys do finish first!”


“BRANZINO ARROSTO. Mediterrenean seabass, gremolata, parnship, potato, endive.”


“Salmon with stewed tomatoes.”


“PETTO DI POLLO. Porcini prosciutto crust, potato pancake, prosciutto parmesan cheese cream, king trumpets mushrooms, pearl onion.” I don’t normally order chicken, but this one called out to me for some reason. The breast was perfectly cooked with a nice textural quality to the crust. I didn’t really detect the prosciutto, so I would have liked a bit more of a statement there, but it was very tasty.

This is only a small selection of what Drago can do and they have excellent deserts as well. But we had some at home for New Years and old three year-old was getting restless.

Click here to see Eating Italy posts.
Or for more LA Restaurants.

Related posts:

  1. Sicilian Style – Drago
  2. More Drago – Via Alloro
  3. Ultimate Pizza – New Years
  4. Quick Eats: Piccolo
  5. Naughty Dog – 25 Years!
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Burrata, Celestino Drago, Drago, Drago Santa Monica, Italian cuisine, Italian Food, New Year, Panzanella, Santa Monica, Santa Monica California, Sicily

Hardcover Mechanical

Jan25

The The Darkening Dream‘s hardcover mechanical came in and I submitted a proof. This is the third version of the book, the e-book and the trade paperback already being for sale.

Look for them here

As a long time book lover (over 10,000 books in my library) I wanted a hardcover, even though the paperback will be cheaper, and it’s unusual for a small imprint like mine to do a hardcover edition. Plus it’s even more unusual for the hardcover to come out after the trade (a few weeks in this case), but I’ve never been much for doing it the normal way. I just love the feel of a nice hardcover. I’m printing it through Lightning Source which is the only POD printer I know that does real dust jacket hardcovers. And some people say the quality is better than Createspace too, but boy the sign up and interface are 100x more obtuse — which is one of the many reasons Amazon will continue to crush the competition.

Anyway, Apple also turned up the iBooks version the other day — finally! The whole process only took them a month! (I had to make a new iConnect account, as for some mysterious reason app accounts can’t also sell books!). But in any case, if for some odd reason this is better for you than the Kindle version, here it is:

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By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Apple, Cover version, Dust jacket, E-book, Hardcover, IBook, IBooks, Lightning Source, Paperback, Print on demand, The Darkening Dream

The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack

Jan24

Title: The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack

Author: Mark Hodder

Genre: Steampunk

Length: 376 pages

Read: Dec 29, 2011 – Jan 23, 2012

Summary: First rate steampunk!

_

This is certainly not your everyday read, although it’s certainly a good one. Set in 1861, the protagonist is Sir Richard Francis Burton, the explorer, not the actor. The first fifty or so pages feel like engaging historical fiction.

Then all hell breaks loose. In a good way. This version of 1861 isn’t what we read in the history books. It includes steam powered flying chairs, insulting messenger parakeets, genetically engineered werewolves, robotic street cleaners and all sorts of goodies. Most of the characters are famous Victorians, or in this world Albertians given that Victoria was shot to death in 1840 (a real life attempt that was fatal in this alternate history).

The voice of the novel is third person, medium tight and usually riding with Burton. It does, however, jump over to some others occasionally like his side kick the Marquis-de-Sade-loving poet Algernon Swinburne and the title character. The tone is slightly flip, as the inventions and wackiness is just left of possible. Yet things remain consistently period and the characters are well researched and full of era-appropriate dialog, but also clever and engaging.

About midway, the book, already getting weird, goes totally off the the deep end. Enter Spring-Heeled Jack, crazy time traveler, and a host of steampunk altered villains including a double-brain grafted Charles Darwin and an Iron Golemized Isambard Kingdom Brunel. But this zaniness only makes the novel better. I’m reminded of one of my all time favorites, The Anubis Gates, but TSAOSHJ is less magical, more grounded in technology.

Bravo! This book really shows off tremendous world building and research while remaining fast paced and easy to read. If it has anything that holds it back from being a complete classic, it’s that the characters, while well developed, don’t really illicit any significant pathos. Things are just a little too distant and weird for that. It’s not a huge book, and Hodder crams in an enormously distinct world, so it’s no surprise this isn’t a character study. Still, I do feel that the complex character of Burton was well profiled, almost like in a good biography. Impressive.

I read this right after putting down another steampunk book, Clockwork Angel, just 20% in. Wow, what a difference. Both are set in alternate 19th century Londons, but other than a couple random “period words,” CA feels exactly the same as the author’s contemporary paranormal YA, with all its forced faux-romance. TSAOSHJ, on the other hand, is an adult book, and makes use of one’s babbage augmented, steam-powered, glass jar encased, cybernetic brain.

For more book reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Algernon Swinburne, Anubis Gates, Book Review, Burton, Charles Darwin, Clockwork Angel, Literature, London, Mark Hodder, Marquis-de-Sade, Paranormal, Richard Francis Burton, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Spring-Heeled Jack, Steampunk, The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack, Victorian era

The Magic of The Darkening Dream

Jan23

Related posts:

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By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Andy Gavin, esoteric, Gabriel, Kabbalah, Magic, Occult, Supernatural, The Darkening Dream, vampires

The Bourbon Caramel Bacon Sundae

Jan22

Restaurant: Sweet Rose Creamery [1, 2]

Location:  225 26th Ave, suite 51, Santa Monica, 90402  310-260-CONE

Date: January 21, 2012

Cuisine: Homemade Ice Cream

Rating: Very REAL ice cream. And they have bacon!

ANY CHARACTER HERE

A local favorite of ours at the Brentwood Country Mart is Sweet Rose Creamery. They make real homemade ice cream using only the traditional and natural ingredients. None of those emulsifiers and artificial flavors.


The board of flavors.


My brother with his normal ice cream. Fresh mint and coffee on the left, caramel on the right.


But I’ve never been normal, check out the fourth sundae down.


The bacon sundae! Yes, it’s true. A scoop of caramel ice cream and a scoop of verve coffee ice cream with bourbon carmel sauce, candied bacon, pecan crumble and whipped cream.


The side view. This was a seriously decadent sundae. The caramel tasted pretty strongly of bourbon too, but it was the whole bacon and carmel thing that really made it. Bacon is so good with gooey sweet stuff. 10/10.

Check out the more ice cream oriented review of sweet rose.

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By: agavin
Comments (4)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Bacon, Bacon Sundae, Business, Dairy, Frozen, Ice cream, Santa Monica California, Sundae, whipped cream

Trio of Eats

Jan21

I updated three of my regular restaurants with additional meals, dishes, and photos. These are all great places. Click each photo for the detailed reviews.

Rustic Canyon

La Cachette Bistro

Josie Restaurant

Related posts:

  1. Quick Eats: La Cachette Bistro
  2. Quick Eats: Brunch at Tavern
  3. Quick Eats: Mon Ami Gabi
  4. Quick Eats: Pizzeria Mozza
  5. Quick Eats: Chan Dara
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Josie Restaurant, La Cachette, Restaurant, Restaurants and Bars, Rustic Canyon Los Angeles

Forbidden Mind

Jan20

Title: Forbidden Mind

Author: Kimberly Kinrade

Genre: YA paranormal

Length: 134 pages

Read: January 18, 2012

Summary: Fast and fun. Recommended.

_

This little novel caught my attention yesterday while running a Kindle Select free day. I was sold by the tag line, “She reads minds. He controls minds. Together, they might get out alive.” I like the notion of a couple stuck together by the inherent nature of circumstances. I tried to build this dynamic into my second novel, Untimed — only it’s time travel, not mind reading.

I pounded through this book in one sitting, as it is only 134 pages, making it more a novella. This is a new trend made possible by the Kindle store. Previously novellas were basically impossible to sell and besides, I was never really into them, being more the 400,000 word per volume, ten volume fantasy kind of guy (I have actually read all but the last of the Wheel of Tedium). But now, being older and having less time, I’m finding I dig ’em.

Forbidden Mind is written in tight first person past. The prose is very snappy and light, the way I like it. Perhaps it could use the tiniest bit of further line editing, but it’s good. We drop right into the character and the story and race from there. In a 134 pages, there isn’t room to dawdle and Kinrade doesn’t. Things are lean, with the bare minimum description. The protagonist is very likeable. She isn’t super complex, but she has a nice non-snarky teen voice. The setup here is that she’s a mind reader who lives in a kind of Professor X’s school for the gifted — but they aren’t so altruistic. In fact they rent out the paranormal kids for clandestine missions (slightly Dollhouse like). The scenario is very intriguing and the book so breathlessly fast that we race right through the “school” scenes and into Act 2 and the B story (romance), which likewise blur by.

I’ve always liked mind readers and what’s known in the literature as mind controllers, pushers, or coercers. Some of my favorite books are Firestarter, The Case of the Vanishing Boy, Carrion Comfort (best horror novel I’ve ever read, and Stephen King agrees with me), and Intervention.

In Forbidden Mind, the story is the girl’s perspective and so we get more of the mind reading than the controlling. This part is well handled, but I thought there was some juicy potential in the synergistic relationship between a mind reader and a coercer that was left on the table. Things move fast and character is more Kinrade’s strongpoint than complex action so their extraction from their predicament is quick and straightforward. Being a crazy nerd I’ve spent an insane amount of time thinking about physic powers and their ramifications. I love books that deal in complexity with a system of powers. The Julian May books do, as does Sheri S. Tepper’s remarkable True Game series. I would have loved to see this pair escaping using a mental version of the three legged race. Plus, this is a powerful pair of powers: unlimited mind reading and mind control, so they could easily overshadow obstacles without a very threatening antagonist (a Heroes Sylar type) or significant limitations (like Firestarter’s cerebral hemorrhaging). We don’t have these. But Kinrade constructs the story in such a rapid and straightforward way as to avoid the problem. And the ending comes equally quick, but satisfying.

Which leaves us room to explore this interesting dynamic in the sequel. If you like paranormal teen adventure, try it out.

For more book reviews, click here.

By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Book Review, Carrion Comfort, Case of the Vanishing Boy, Firestarter, Forbidden Mind, Julian May, Kimberly Kinrade, Literature, Mind control, Novella, Paranormal, review, Reviews and Criticism, Sheri S. Tepper, Stephen King, True Game, YA paranormal

Palm Springs – Tropicale Lounge

Jan19

Restaurant: Tropicale Lounge

Location: 330 East Amado Road, Palm Springs, CA. (760) 866-1952

Date: December 26, 2011

Cuisine: American

Rating: 50s fantasy

_

Continuing our brief Palm Springs foray we decided to check out a classic dining destination. And classic it was, so much so that it almost seemed like a 50-60 year time warp.


Even the sign is totally old school.


And the Neptune’s Lair style interior bar. The Cuban jazz music only added to the ambiance.


This was sort of a cosmo like drink. Not bad.


And a passionfruit mango one. This one tasted a little fake fruit flavored.


The menu.


“Salt-Roasted Beet Stack. Imported Gorgonzola & Toasted Pistachios.” Sort of attempt to be more contemporary.


But not this. The “pupu platter. An ‘exotic’ combination of chicken & beef satay, Vietnamese spring rolls, ahi nori rolls, and coconut shrimp.” Everything feel into that half-tasty half-lackluster category. But the sauces were pretty yummy. Edible, but not high art.


Cheese pizza.


“Miso glazed Atlantic Salmon Rice Bowl. Broccoli, snow peas, tomatoes, shitakes & soy.”


“Pan-Roasted Wild Sea Bass with Gingered Thai Red Curry. Pineapple rice, stir fried vegetables, Asian sprout slaw, gingered tomatoes.” This dish was entirely made by the red curry sauce, which was half-decent (not fantastic). I could have used more of it. The vegetables were pretty old-school steamed.

This was a fun evening, even if our three year-old was a handful, but this joint is running on pure kitsch!

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Palm Springs – Colony Palms Hotel
  2. Beverly Hills Hotel – Polo Lounge
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: bar, martini, Palm Desert California, Palm Springs California, PalmSprings, pupu platter, Restaraunt, Restaurant Review, Tropicale, Tropicale Lounge

Round 1 Winner Selected!

Jan17

I’ve official “sold” all 100 tickets in ROUND ONE of the Naughty Dark Contest. So I fired up the Ruby interpreter and asked it to compute the appropriate pseudorandom number, which turned out to be 6.

Counting from zero − I’m such a programmer − this turned out to be a ticket owned by Dorothy Beecher of New York!

She chose the following for her prize: A signed copy of The Darkening Dream!

Ain't it dreamy?

But just because ROUND ONE is finished, doesn’t mean you can’t win. Check out the rules and get submitting, round two is open. As soon as it sells out another 100 tickets, there will be yet another drawing. And the special prizes are available to anyone, anytime!

Which speaking of, Markus Grundnig of Austria is our latest special prize winner, having gone for the gusto and earned 25 tickets! He chose to get a signed copy of his (and my) favorite Naughty Dog game, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back.

Signed Crash 2 before heading East toward Austria

Crash 2, besides being the most painful year of my life (1997), represents IMHO the pinnacle of Crash gameplay. Some might enjoy Warped’s crazy vehicles (and they were fun), but I for one, like the classic platforming intensity of Cortex Strikes Back. Having cleaned up the crappy Crash 1 save system, revamped the technology, and smoothed the gameplay, Cortex really shines. Although don’t get me wrong, it’s a real close call.

Related posts:

  1. Special Prize Winners
  2. Announcing the Naughty Dark Contest
  3. Crash for Charity
By: agavin
Comments (20)
Posted in: Contests, Darkening Dream, Games
Tagged as: Crash Bandicoot, drawing, Naughty Dark Contest, New York, Pseudorandom Numbers, Ruby, The Darkening Dream

Game of Thrones – Croatia

Jan17

HBO has pushed out another “behind the scenes” that features filming in Croatia.

You can see some of the King’s Landing and Qarth sets. Mostly the spoken content of this little video is what Jason Rubin and I used to call “Cinecrap”* which is the entirely positive marketing spew. In this case talking about how wonderful Croatia is. But actually, cinecrap or not, it’s probably true, as the place does look gorgeous. Even the Roman Emperor Diocletian thought so as he built his giant pleasure palace there, declaring it to be one of the nicest places in the Empire. And his conquests had afforded him the grand tour. Plus I’ve wanted to visit for some time myself :-).

That it looks medieval doesn’t hurt either.

* By the way, the origin of the “Cinecrap” term stems from us reading a lot of Cinefex magazine in the early 90s. This cool special effects journal went in depth on the making of movies like Terminator 2, Aliens, and the like. The articles had long interviews with the effects directors who spewed out a lot of praise for whatever film making team was paying their salary. Still, it was a fun magazine.

King's Landing... achem... Dubrovnik Croatia

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By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Television
Tagged as: Cinefex, Croatia, Diocletian, Dubrovnik, Fantasy, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, King's Landing

The Trade Paperback is Launched!

Jan17

Glamour shot of my trade edition

I got the latest proofs back from CreateSpace for my novel, The Darkening Dream, and they are looking great. While there are perhaps a few little tweaks possible to make them perfect, the presses are ready to roll, so I turned it on.

Now it’s winding through the mysterious process at Amazon.

You can buy it here!

Or if you’re an e-book person, those editions have been for sale for a couple of weeks and you can find them here. Amazon is in the process of linking the two versions together and the like. They have a big system where every component is on different server clusters and updated on different timetables. It might even take them a couple days to get the page 100% sorted. But you can still order.

Now I only have the hardcover edition to do. Because it’s print on demand there is really no reason not to do one for those who like hardcovers (like myself). The only extra hard cost is the dust jacket mechanical and some minimal Lightning Source setup fees (they being the POD printer I know that prints hardcovers). What we can’t really figure is the several hours of time it took to fill out their 80 page contract and application and fax it back to them. No web form! They need to get with the times.

You can the trade paperback front and back here:

or the spine here:

The interior looks great also with all the nice chapter heading illustrations and proper typography.

Related posts:

  1. Paperback Getting Close
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  4. For sale at B&N and Google
  5. New Cover Art is here!
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Andy Gavin, CreateSpace, E-book, Hardcover, Indie Publishing, Lightning Source, Paperback, Publishing, The Darkening Dream, Trade Paperback

Palm Springs – Colony Palms Hotel

Jan16

Restaurant: Colony Palms Hotel

Location: 572 N. Indian Canyon Drive Palm Springs, CA 92262. 760.969.1801

Date: December 26-27, 2011

Cuisine: American

Rating: Solid cafe food

_

During the holiday break my wife, son, and I made a quick little visit to Palm Springs and I would be remiss as a food blogger in not chronically the culinary aspects of the journey. Foodwise, as in many other ways, this little desert oasis is a bit of a throwback.


The view from our hotel restaurant, which given the gorgeous 78 degree clear December weather was pretty darn fine.


Veggie burger with fries. Apparently, this was a very good example of the beast. The fries sure were good.


Cobb salad (I left out the tomatoes). I’ve had a lot of cobb salads. This was a 6/10 as they go.


At breakfast, French toast with creme anglais and apple soaked in calvados. This isn’t the prettiest dish but it sure tasted great. The creme was superb and the apples lent some addition cinnamony sweetness to the mix.


A berry smoothy.


And my scramble, with ham, bacon, caramelized onions, and goat cheese. Again, not a looker, but it tasted good.

As hotel restaurants go the Colony Palms one was solid. The food was tasty and the setting nice. It wasn’t anything to completely rave about, but on average at hotels you can do far far worse.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Eating Milano Marittima – Palace Hotel Breakfast
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  3. Eating Santa Margherita – Hotel Miramare
  4. Book Review: The Last Colony
  5. Gjelina Brunch
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Breakfast, Brunch, California, Coachella Valley, Colony Palms Hotel, Dessert, Eggs, French Toast, Palm Springs, Palm Springs California, smothie

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Jan14

Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Director/Stars: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara and Christopher Plummer, David Fincher (Director)

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Watched: January 9, 2012

Summary: Very stylish dark thriller

_

TGWTDT is a peculiar literary and cinematic phenomenon. Wildly successful, it’s not your typical story or route to success. It also proves that some people, at least, still have an attention span.

Broadly, this is a serial killer mystery blended with a taunt character driven thriller. The story itself has an odd structure. For those of you that don’t know, we have an old Swedish billionaire who hires a brilliant investigative journalist to investigate the forty year-old unsolved murder of his niece. This is wound together with the life of a hacker/investigator (the titular girl) who investigates first the journalist and then the murders. But oddly, they don’t even meet for half of the film. The first half is driven by the journalist’s investigation and by dark character study of Lisbeth (the girl).

Be warned, this film contains crime scenes, grisly crime photos, crazy homicidal dudes in their dungeons, and a very harrowing rape sequence which is all too graphic. Director David Fincher lends his natural taste and talent for the creepy to the material with great success. No surprise, he directed my all time most disturbing film, Seven. This TGWTDT is much more stylish than the Swedish versions (and that was good too). Plus this style doesn’t trivialize the material at all, but only serves to heighten the emotional impact. The story is somewhat streamlined from the earlier film and the book, but also without significant sacrifice.

Daniel Craig is highly competent in the role and the excellent supporting cast makes fine work of the host of swedish creeps (and occasional decent human being). But it’s Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth that absolutely steals the show. Of course this character is probably to a good degree responsible for the success of the franchise, but Mara does her justice. Her Lisbeth is detached, yet sexy and vulnerable, but also kick ass physically and intellectually. She’s a very complex character and both her striking visual presence and subtle performance are riveting. I particularly liked her sexual relationship with Craig. Here’s a man who clearly is used to being a man, and then she reverses the whole deal on him. He likes her, but doesn’t really know what to make of the whole thing.

But for us, that’s great movie making. Just be warned, this is not a film for the squeamish.

For more Film reviews, click here.

Or read about my current project, The Darkening Dream.

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By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Christopher Plummer, Daniel Craig, David Fincher, Dragon Tattoo, Film Review, Girl With Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander, Movie Review, Rooney Mara, Sweden, Swedish

Paperback Getting Close

Jan12

The “beta” of The Darkening Dream‘s Trade Paperback cover has come in and I submitted another proof. With any luck I might get it on sale next week, the week after for sure. The interior layout has been complete for almost a week too. I can’t wait to see this puppy in the flesh. It should look great.

You can see some of the old paper test versions below. My long standing Lulu (ick) ARC on the left and an older CreateSpace proof on the right. Even with that hybrid cover the CS proof is looking and feeling great.

Apple also finally turned on my iBooks account today and so the iBookstore version should be up in… well however long it takes them to approve it. Given that it took ten days just to validate the account it might not be instant. All the sites except for Amazon and slow slow slow. For example, I uploaded the new cover to Barnes and Noble a week ago and it still hasn’t updated!

Related posts:

  1. Cover Takes – Opinions Wanted!
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By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Apple, Book Cover, Cover art, Cover Design, CreateSpace, IBooks, iBookstore, Lulu, Paperback, The Darkening Dream, Trade Paperback

Crash goes to Japan – part 1

Jan11

It’s probably hard for younger gamers to recognize the position in gaming that Japan occupied from the mid eighties to the late 90s. First of all, after video games rose like a phoenix from the “great crash of ’82” (in which the classic coin-op and Atari dominated home market imploded), all major video game machines were from Japan until the arrival of the Xbox. Things were dominated by Nintendo, Sega, Nintendo, Sony, Nintendo, Sony… you get the picture.

And in the days before the home market eclipsed and destroyed the arcade, Japan completely crushed everyone else. Only the occasional US hit like Mortal Kombat even registered on the radar.

Miyamoto, creator of Mario, playing Crash 1. I’m standing behind him off frame

All of this, not to mention the cool samurai/anime culture and ridiculously yummy food (see my sushi index!), made us American video game creators pretty much all Miyamoto groupies.

But on the flip side, American games, if they even made it to the land of the rising sun at all, almost always flopped.

Japanese taste is different the wisdom went. Special. Foreign games even had a special name over there (which I have no idea how to spell). These “lesser” titles were stocked in a seedy back corner of your typical Japanese game store, near the oddball porn games.

So it was with great enthusiasm and limited expectations that we approached the mutual Naughty Dog, Mark Cerny, and Sony decision that we were going to take  the Japanese market really seriously with Crash. Sony assigned two brilliant and dedicated producers to us: Shuhei Yoshida and his then assistant Shimizu (aka Tsurumi-0600). They sat in on every major planning meeting and we scheduled the whole fall for me to localize the game in exacting detail (while we were simultaneously beginning work on Crash 2!).

For the most part, Yoshida-san made things happen and Shimizu, who has literally played like every video game ever made and read like every manga, worked the details. I (with a bunch of help from the artists) had to put in the changes.

Yoshida-san front and center, Shimizu on the far left, Rio (joined the team during Crash 2) on the far right

Somehow Yoshida-san was able to maneuver the game into being not one of those funny foreign games, but an official bona fide release of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. the first party Japanese studio. And it was to be sold and marketed pretty much like it had been made in Japan! Wow!

So to pull off this cultural masquerade Jason and I decided that Shu (as Yoshida-san was affectionately known) and Shimizu got pretty much whatever they wanted. They after all, knew the mysterious Japanese market. Which turned out to be pretty darn true. And, besides, both are really really smart and crazy hard workers (Shimizu is famous for sleeping under his desk) and so we all got along famously.

The gameplay itself wasn’t really too much of an issue. Shimizu did help us smooth out some sections and make them easier (often by adding extra continue points − opposite of Europe). But there were a lot of other changes.

The Crash 1 main titles, in Japanese

First of all, we had to translate the text. Some of this wasn’t so bad. But the main logo was a 3D object and Jason had to painstakingly create a version of the paper design the Japanese provided us — which required lots of checking from Shimizu as he doesn’t speak Japanese.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4XzmZyiIXA

Above is the opening in Japanese.

And things got even harder (for me) with the in game text. The Playstation didn’t have a lot of video memory and we were using a medium resolution 512 pixel wide mode anyway. What little there was, we had pretty much consumed. But the Japanese language has four alphabets! One is Latin, two are similar but different looking phonetic alphabets, and the last is the giant Kanji pictographic database. Kanji would’ve been impossible, but we needed to cram the two extra phonetic sets in. Plus the characters are more intricate than the Latin alphabet and need more pixels. I can’t remember what I did to squeeze them in, but I do remember it was painful. One part I do recall was implementing the sets of letters that vary only by an extra dot or ” mark by drawing them with two sprites (hence saving video ram).

Once the font was installed we had to input the crazy looking “shift JIS” text. One of the problems in those days was that the text editors all 8-bit, unlike today were 16-bit typesets dominate. And with a European language you can usually tell if a line of text had gotten swapped or mangled, but in Japanese… and even worse, in shift JIS it just looks like a bunch of garbage characters.

So again, Shimizu had to check everything. A lot.

Our opening and closing cut scene dialog was recorded in Japanese using very high profile Japanese actors (so they told me). We replaced those audio files (using one of my automated systems of course!). There were also a good number of cases throughout the game where we had placed text in textures. The configuration screens, loading screens, load/save screens and all sorts of other ones. These all needed new versions. We collected all of these textures, shipped them out to Japan and got back Shimizu certified versions in exactly the same sizes with the Japanese text. I used and upgraded the system that I had built for the European version so that any file (texture, audio, etc) in the game could be “replaced” by a file of the same name in the same directory with a .J on the end (or a .S, .E, .F, .G, .I for various European permutations). The level packaging tool would automatically suck up the most appropriate version and shove it in the J versions of the levels. I’m not sure we left ANYTHING untranslated. Even Japanese games usually had more Engrish. Achem, English. I so remember a Castlevania with “Dlacura’s grave.”

Then the Japanese came up with this idea of having Aku Aku explain various gameplay mechanics to you when you break his boxes, much like the raspberry boxes in Super Mario World. This was a great idea, except it meant that the game was suddenly filled with about 200 extra paragraphs of text. Undecipherable text. I had to squeeze that into the levels too. More problematic was the seemingly simple fact that when a big block of text comes up on the screen the game effectively needs to pause so the player can read it. You can’t just “hit pause” but need a separate state. This simple feature caused a lot of bugs. A lot. But we stomped them out eventually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WojXNCbHOmY&feature=related

Above you can see a walk through of the first level. A lot of the PITA localization work was in the save screens (big fun: character entry screen in three Japanese alphabets) and the various statistic screens at the end of the level. I think the Japanese allowed us to do away with the horrible password system and use memory card only.

The Japanese box and CD with its very strange Crash and Eve painting — it was nice and colorful

The Japanese also had some famous actor record a whole collection of really zany sounding grunts and noises that Crash was to make. Shimizu lovingly crafted long lists of extremely specific places in the game where exactly such and such exclamation was to be uttered. He was never one to spare either of us from a great deal of work 🙂 But his willingness to tackle any task himself, no matter how tedious, made him hard to refuse. I also had to squeeze all these extra samples into the extremely tight sound memory, mostly by downgrading the bit-rate on other sounds. This caused Mike Gollom, our awesome sound design contractor to groan and moan. “3.5k is pure butchery” he’d complain. I found this SGI tool that used a really advanced new algorithm to downgrade the sounds, they sounded twice as good at any given bit-rate than the Sony tool.

Anyway the really funny bit about these Crash sounds was the subjective feel they left us Americans with. Strange! They made Crash sound like a constipated old man. But the Japanese insisted they were perfect. I guess they were right because the game sold like crazy over there.

Another weird audio difference was that five of the songs were swapped out for new ones. Josh Mancell the composer put it this way:

An 11th hour decision made by the Sony people in Japan. They felt that the boss rounds needed to sound more ‘video game-like’. The only reference they gave was music from the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland. I only had a day or so to write all those themes. My favorite comment was about the original Tawna bonus round music. It roughly translated into ‘the sound of the guitar mixed with the tree imagery is too nostalgic-sounding’. I’m still scratching my head on that one.

You can find the different tracks here.

There were also a host of minor but strange modifications we needed to make. One was that a few characters originally had four fingers, which is typical of most American cartoon characters. Apparently the Japanese have a more than usual dislike of disfigured humanoids. Fingers were added (to make them the normal five). There were a whole bunch of little visual, audio, and gameplay changes Shimizu had us make to the game. Most of these I felt were neutral, different but not really better or worse, so I just trusted him and put them in. Occasionally if they were a really pain I pushed back.

Eventually, right around Thanksgiving, just in time for Jason and I to head to Japan to promote it, the Japanese version was ready!

Coming soon, I plan on a part 2 covering Japanese marketing and promotions!

If you didn’t catch it, I have a similar detailed post in the European localization of Crash.

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Cover of the hint guide in Japan

Related posts:

  1. Crash Bandicoot – An Outsider’s Perspective (part 8)
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  4. Making Crash Bandicoot – part 1
  5. Making Crash Bandicoot – part 2
By: agavin
Comments (142)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Atari, Crash Bandicoot, Japan, Japanese Localization, Mark Cerny, Mortal Kombat, Naughty Dog, Nintendo, pt_crash_history, Sega, Shimizu, Shuhei Yoshida, Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment, Super Mario World, Video game, Xbox
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