And with a blast the ThanksGavin 2011 is off. Canonically, in a tradition developed over the last twenty years, the gavin Thanksgiving weekend is defined by four major meals. The Wednesday night dinner (out somewhere, usually in downtown Philly), the main event on Thursday, the Friday night dinner at my cousin Abbe’s, and the Saturday deli brunch. For this year’s kickoff a downtown intimate French restaurant was chosen. This was a very good meal. Classically French, yet with a slightly updated palette and a deft touch. If you are in Philadelphia I highly recommend.
As we rapidly approach the season of ThanksGavin I would like to take a moment to relive last year’s week of ultimate gluttony in anticipation of another fat and flavor filled week of food blogging. The full list of ThanksGavin 2010 posts…
I’m happy to announce that Jak & Daxter will make its PS3 debut this February with the launch of the Jak and Daxter Collection. This is an awesome way for a new generation of gamers to experience (or re-experience) three of Naughty Dog’s PS2 masterpieces.
While the first season of this show was great, the second is even better! It starts off with a bang resolving the “Tucco situation” and then keeps rolling from there. The pre-titles scene for each episode employs the effective (when done well) TV device of cryptic flash forwards to the season’s last episode, leaving us with the “uh, oh, what’s coming?” and “how the hell are we going to get to that” feeling. Breaking Bad keeps this lean and creepy, without a ton of information. It doesn’t do the kind of sophisticated and deliberately misleading layering that say, Damages (another excellent show) uses.
Finally, a bit of Game of Thrones season 2 footage. Yummy. I can’t wait for more.
Sfixio is a brand new Italian in downtown Beverly Hills with a modern Tuscan slant. It’s owned and by a husband and wife pair: Chef Massimo Denaro in the kitchen and his wife managing the front. LA is full of Italian restaurants, and there wasn’t anything radical here, but this is certainly a chef operating at a high level, with a good palette, excellent ingredients, and really solid execution. So I recommend, and we’ll go again.
Eclipse is clearly the lame duck of the three pre-Breaking-Dawn Twilight films. It’s so cheesy that it makes the original and New Moon seem high art. First of all, the A-story is about as weighty as a sesame seed. It’s the B-story (romance) that holds the focus this this film.
In honor of the upcoming return of everyone’s favorite sparkly vampires, I rewatched the earlier offerings. Oh, where to begin. The cheese is so thick in this series that it might as well be set in a Paris fromagerie. But it does have a certain charm. Hands down the best part of the whole series is Kristen Stewart. I have to admit, I do kind of like her. Here she’s severely hampered by the script, but she still makes the best of it. In better movies, like the brilliant Adventureland, she shines (and I’m not talking the CGI sparkle kind of shine).
This time of year we have a lot of birthday parties to go to (my son is three). Due to rain (drizzle) one got moved to this western (Texas) style BBQ joint! Boy, is that a lot better than luke-warm delivery pizza! This isn’t a fancy joint, but tasty.
I’ve been waiting for Maison Giraud, the new local (just blocks away!) Pacific Palisades restaurant bakery from acclaimed LA French chef Alain Giraud to open for what seems like forever. Finally, the day has happened. Today is the first time they are serving at all, bakery and breakfast. By next monday they plan to be open from breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Continuing the big upgrades on my website, I’ve built out new pages for my books: The Darkening Dream and Untimed. These pages are an attempt to look less bloggy, more like typical author and book sites. I’ll, of course, be continuing to refine and add. One of the nice things about using Wordpress is that it’s easy to continually modify. I’ll add reviews and promotional information. Sample chapters, etc.
The trailer actually looks pretty good. A hair cheesy, but not all Twilighted out or anything. For those of you who haven’t read it, the book (at least the first of the three) is pretty darn excellent. The second two devolve into pseudo-political nonsense reminiscent of the Zion scenes in the later Matrix movies. But the first is a fantastic and intense read.
I’ve officially signed a cover artist for The Darkening Dream. His name is Cliff Nielsen and he’s a very experienced artist using a cool ethereal multimedia style. You can check out his work on his website but I pasted two into this post. I originally found him though this image of the dude with the watch and I had to find out who the artist was. Then I discovered I already owned a decent collection of books he drew the covers for (e.g. City of Bones, which I reviewed recently).
I added a gallery to the site and populated it with some of the standard images I had on hand for my games and books. At the moment this is mostly my draft book covers and tons of Crash Bandicoot photos…
I’m slowly expanding the site from a mere blog into a professional author and book site — one page at a time. To that effect, I wrote a new longer form bio yesterday. Also a formal contact page, but that’s boring,…
The pilot opens with a serious bang, starting with the episode’s chaotic conclusion then flipping back to the turn of events that brought us there. It’s an interesting premise: what happens when a nebbishy High School science teacher, dying of cancer, tries to take care of his family by becoming a Meth producer. But shows are all about execution and this one really kills.
Dark Souls is an interesting entry into the 2011 holiday game rush. At one level, it has state of the art graphics and physics-based ultra-visceral hand-to-hand fantasy combat. But it’s also a throwback to old school RPG game design. Relentlessly cruel, but I can’t help but want to keep playing.
I just added comments by Disqus, which are a pretty major upgrade on the default wordpress commenting system. Particularly given how Disqus is all javascripty and supports various logins such FaceBook, Twitter, and OpenID. Let me know how the new…
I’ve moved the blog over to self hosting on MediaTemple. Welcome! As you can see, it looks a little different. I’ve switched to a new iThemes Builder based theme that I’m in the process of customizing. It looks a little…
I’m moving my hosting from WordPress.com to MediaTemple in the next 24 to 48 hours. The site should remain up but I won’t be doing my daily posts until things are settled out with the move. Expect theme and feature…
