Idoru by William Gibson

I started reading this one before Virtual Light, because I'd found it on paperback and didn't know it was the 2nd in a trilogy. And as it turns out, I didn't need to start with the first book, as this one follows its own set of characters in its own setting, Tokyo, as rebuilt by nanobots.

Much of this story follows the dangrous misadventures of Laney, a man who works in celebrity technology, predicting fortunes with his unique ability to find nodes and patterns in data. He has this special gift because as an orphan in Gainesville Florida, he was injected with an experimental medication for adhd. While this gift is more dangerous than valuable.

Idoru is Japanese for Idol, a name used to define an era of japanese popular music. Idoru fandoms have always been a huge part of the economy and general consciousness over there, so it's only natural for this paradigm to take an occasional turn for the dangerous.

But what if the most powerful celebrity was generated by a computer, and lived in all places at once? If you're wondering, I strongly recommend this book. For a few days, it consumed me in such a fantastic, exciting way.

Lennie's Brewpub of Bloomington Indiana

Lennie's is a pretty cozie joint on the Kirkwood strip of collegiate eateries, where you can get sandwiches, salads, pizzas, and expensive beers. Per tradition, I bought lunch for my buddy Mitch's birthday, and he was especially down to join in my endeavor to try every pizza in town. While Lennie's offers two varieties of crust, thin and "traditional", we went with the traditional. More bang for the buck.

The pie we got had a ratio of 4cr/2ce/2ch. While cooked in a nice looking brick oven, the traditional crust was your regular pan pizza, like at Pizza Hut, Mother Bears, or Domino's. It gets a score of 3 out of 5. It was somewhat bready and lacking in goo. Also, this type of crust ought to have a little more butter on the bottom. The fact that it was cooked in a nice oven had no effect on this style of pizza. But altogether it was pleasant and enjoyable.

Their sauce gets a somewhat generous 4 out of 5. It was somewhat bland, but very enjoyable. It was of medium thickness with lovely chunks of tomato, really amping the comfort factor of the pie. For overall quality, Lennie's gets a Bloomington 5 out of 5. The top wasn't cooked as much as I think it could have been, even though the cheese had some stretch to it. But I guess with a brick oven, you can't control that kind of thing.

Finally, for style, Lennie's gets a 2 out of 5. For a pizza that doesn't stand out at all, $18 for a 12 inch one topping is a lot to ask. I feel like Lennie's deserves better than an overall score of 70%, but I really don't see myself considering it again. It was delicious, but for the cost there are much better options.

The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games by Bitmap Books

I don't know about you, but I have wonderful memories playing adventure games on my family's old 486 pc with DOS and Windows 3.11. Even a terribly callibrated joystick, I was enchanted by the fun scenes, characters, and stories in the games of Lucas Arts. I was one of the lucky ones to experience the end of this golden age of adventure gaming, highlighted in this book.

This hefty volume dives deep into the careers and methods of the guys who made not just the ones I've experienced, but hundreds of other adventures. A good half of present pages are comprised of screen shots, show-casing scenery and perspective as a powerful tool in story telling. There are a few editorials, but the bulk of the text is in interview form.

And I like that. The designers of the games themselves are likely to have the most astute things to say about their work. However, a lot of these interviews go over the same kind of stuff, starting with the same types of questions. While I'm interested in what it might have been like to work at Lucas Arts' Skywalker Ranch and make the transition from working with EGA graphics to VGA, I didn't find much value in the recounting of similar experiences. But that's a small peeve.

That's a small peeve, and I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone who loves game design. While most games have an element of story telling and adventure, there's a lot to be learned from the releases that, for decades, did it best. The Art of Point-And-Click Adventure Games leaves it readers with something more meaningful than its nostalgia trip, and I'm looking forward to reading everything Bitmap Books has to offer.

Baldy's Pizzeria of Bloomington Indiana

It's been a few years since the first time I went to Baldy's, and I liked it then. I like the theme of bald men, since I'm going to be bald someday, with a wizardly skullet of some kind. I like the vibe of the cozy family restaurant, not fancy but done right. As of now the dining room is closed, and I was greeted by several friendly employees who weren't busy making pizza. Then I had to wait in my car while my pie was prepared, but that's fine.

The pie I received has a ratio of 2cr/3ce/3ch. Their crust, lighter than it looks in the picture, gets a 5 out of 5. It's crisp, yet fluffy and deliciously sweet. A real treat with mucho gluten, begging to be devoured. It's what I call a midwest style crust, a pan pizza that's not especially thick, cooked with just enough oil to give it that crisp that melts in your mouth. Their sauce also gets a 5 out of 5. It's thick and packed with delicious tomato flavor. I'm surprised this pizza didn't make a stronger impression on me the first time. Perhaps I was distracted by the decor, or resigned to the fact that I wouldn't be making it this far south very often.

For overall quality, I'll give Baldy's a Bloomington 4 out of 5. It was somewhat of a gooey, sloppy affair. And I admit, I started eating it fresh from the oven, without a plate or a spatula. If I'd waited a good half hour, the cheese might have held onto each slice a little better. Still, the pie could have been cooked a bit longer, with a better distribution of sauce and cheese. Most of the sauce was in fact on the first half of the pizza I ate, giving the sauce a ratio for a 3. But the last slice I ate cold this morning only had a 1 or a 2. For Style, Baldy's also gets a 4 out of 5. It's totally my kind of place, and a wonderful model for a local pizza joint. But they only offer one style of awesome pizza, they'd need to do something to stand out more to get a 5 here.

So Baldy's final score is 90%, one of the best around. If you live in the area, I highly recommend checking it out and inviting me. I'd love an excuse to try their toppings and sandwiches.

Virtual Light by William Gibson

Like many, I've been regaled with praises of Gibson's Neuromancer masterpiece, flagshipping the genre of cyberpunk, as influencial in the literary world as Bladerunner is to everything else. But I thought it'd be a good idea to save his biggest hit for later, and I don't regret my decision. Virtual Light is amazing, rapidly immersive and exciting, with mood shifts that champion the pulp-noir typists of yester year.

Taking place primarily in the San Francisco bay area in the the future year of 2005, Virtual Light tells the story of an ex-cop and ex-rent-a-cop named Berry Rydell. At no real fault to himself, he finds himself at the bottom, taking a freelance job with some associates of the security company he'd been fired from, to do their dirty work. This job coincides him with a once-homeless bike messenger, Chevette Washington, who lives in a makeshift hut, piled at the top of the golden gate bridge.

In fact, the bridge has turned into an autonomous zone for the lower class. And when the lower class collides with the powers in place, crimes and frames for crimes are inevitable. This is how Chevette finds herself with a pair of Virtual Light glasses, containing a coorporation's top secret plans to rebuild San Francisco with endlessly working nanobots, as they were doing in Tokyo.

I love the setting of a dystopian future because everything is familiar but different, parodied with a shifting nature. Every scene is dangerous a dangerous feast for the imagination. Every character with the privilege for double agency takes what they can get. If you are not big shot, then the best you can hope for is a job in the business of reality tv.

While I wouldn't say the story here is perfect, I had a wonderful time with it and rapidly consumed the rest of this Bridge trilogy. So be ready for reports on Gibson's Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties.

Tokarev (feat. Nicolas Cage)

This film has a lot in common with Stolen, which came out two years earlier. Cage plays an ex-criminal who goes straight and becomes a successful business man. His boss lets him go clean, because his wife's dying and somebody needs to be around to take care of the daughter. Said daughter becomes a teen and gets kidnapped/murdered.

So Cage and his old buddies go and take out anyone who might have made enemies with them in the past, including every sect of organized crime. And the cops, one played by Danny Glover, want Cage's character to go free. They sympathize, despite all of the recent, extra killing. And there's a lot of violence. While I said I can't sympathize with a protagonist who thinks with his trigger finger, I can buy it with this one. Tokarev is a story of revenge and consequences, and everyone pays.

Despite it's obviously contrived premise, I still think this movie is a cut above Cage's other actiony films of the 2010s. The action is just better. The character arch is effective, and everything is bleak and (fairly) immersive. To top it off, Tokarev gives us a true Nicolas Cage freak-out. I admit some of the acting is weak, and some of the scenes look like they're from a bad tv show, but that's never been enough to ruin the experience.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Red Rock West
4. Adaptation
5. Pig
6. Birdy
7. Wild at Heart
8. Joe
9. National Treasure
10. Guarding Tess
11. Snake Eyes
12. Dog Eat Dog
13. Color Out of Space
14. Mom and Dad
15. World Trade Center
16. Peggy Sue Got Married
17. Zandalee
18. Prisoners of the Ghostland
19. City of Angels
20. Willy's Wonderland
21. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
22. Bangkok Dangerous
23. Drive Angry
24. Army of One
25. Lord of War
26. Gone in 60 Seconds
27. Matchstick Men
28. Vampire's Kiss
29. Con Air
30. Face/Off
31. Trapped in Paradise
32. The Boy in Blue
33. Honeymoon in Vegas
34. Deadfall
35. Amos and Andrew
36. Moonstruck

37. Tokarev

38. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
39. Knowing
40. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
41. Bringing Out the Dead
42. The Family Man
43. Stolen
44. It Could Happen to You
45. 8mm
46. The Frozen Ground
47. Left Behind
48. Pay the Ghost
49. Primal
50. Grand Isle
51. Looking Glass
52. Arsenal
53. Between Worlds
54. Ghost Rider
55. Trespass
56. The Humanity Bureau
57. Next
58. The Weather Man
59. 211
60. Fire Birds
61. The Croods