The Very Best of Charles De Lint

This book was loaned to me by the man who bought me Some Guys’ Pizza and fathered my ally, Lord Reptile. The pages are big and have a lot of words on them. There are a lot of pages too. But when a doctor who is not your doctor or your professor makes it a point to lend you one of his books, you have to read it and return it within a reasonable amount of time; as if I were exempt from the book borrowing code of never returning anything to anyone until you’ve paid your fines. After a month of wonder, I tuckered down on The Very Best of Charles De Lint.

Short stories often give you a fair amount to remember and chew on once you put down the volume. So I tried to read just one of De Lint’s stories every night and I felt a lot of things. I felt the hot power of my imagination and an itch to dream. I felt a renewed weight in the value of things I do that have no value to anyone else.

From every angle, De Lint illuminates the magic in the mundane. Everyone is a character in a bigger story. Often those who neglect their status in our world, make up for it in worlds we can’t see. Heroes don’t have to kill orcs and challenge evil sorcerers. De Lint’s heroes are artists, musicians, and magical creatures of consensual reality. His mythical fiction/urban fantasy takes us away from the violent and into the pre-existing magic we often forget about.

Gone in 60 Seconds (feat. Nicolas Cage)

Gone in 60 Seconds starts with the longest opening credit sequence of all time, just to give us just a little taste of the swell cinematography to come. Kid A is really freaked out by what a badass Kid B is. Kid B is scared of nothing and steals cars and gets into terrible trouble. Kid B is scared of Kid C who is exponentially more bad ass. Brace yourself, Kid D is worse and Kid E is even worse than Kid D. This film is about Kid Z, played by Nicolas Cage. His name is Randall and he's a retired car thief, running a go kart track. His little brother (Kid B) is played by the same guy who was Phoebe's brother on Friends, only he has a dirt stache and chin pubes. This was the look to have if you were going to be a badass in the year 2000. After all, I rocked the same look.

This movie is badass. Like the Matrix for people who love cars. This is the first domino is the endless stream of Fast and Furious films and ports of Grand Theft Auto 5. For a car movie, I don't think the car chases were that good, often just cutting from something exploding to Randall looking intense behind a steering wheel. Was the acting bad? Yes. Is the script cheesy? Yes. Is the premise far fetched? Yes. It doesn't matter. The makers of this film otherwise achieved what they wanted, amidst the forever changing the world as we know it.

Let's rank these Nicolas Cage Films.

1. Raising Arizona
2. City of Angels
3. Gone in Sixty Seconds
4. Matchstick Men
5. The Family Man
6. The Croods

Arni's Restaurant of Lafayette, IN

Arni’s Pizza is really cool, and I guess it’s a chain. Being a small chain is a bit of a plus for my purposes, since I’m ideally most interested in pizzas that won’t require me to drive to Lafeyette every single time. As a restaurant, Arni’s is really cool. It’s got a model train room, a sports room, antique toys, books, and all kinds of other stuff, likely all tying into the personal interests of Arnold Cohen (founder of Arni’s). Their pizza is a lot like Pizza King. The crust is super thin and their sauce is thick, tangy, and zingy. It was cool to watch their assembly line. One dough stretching master passed their perfectly stretched dough to the sauce spreading master, to the cheesing, topping, cooking, and boxing/slicing master. As usual with my cheese pizza, I got a side of sauce which might have actually been straight tomato paste. Aside from watching the people make my to go order, I also had the privilege of witnessing them realize they forgot to make my pizza. Too bad I tipped before receiving my food, though I don’t really think tipping should correlate with quality of service, really. I think most everyone working in service has a right to make a little bit more than they do. Let’s talk ratios. Arni’s Pizza is rated 1cr/2ce/2ch Let’s talk scores. I’ll rate their crust 3/5. It’s a lot like the dough I make at home and roll out super thin. Arni’s crust is chewy and foldable, not crispy like a cracker. The bottom is lightly coated with corn meal(and seemingly salt and pepper), not quite charred. For a chewy thin crust, I think it could be a bit more yeasty and lively. They used one of those dough rollers to keep the crust from bubbling, which was probably a waste of time. It wasn’t dry, but there was still no “goo”, which the lack thereof may be due to the thickness of Arni’s sauce.

I’ll rate their sauce 4/5. It’s good and really my kind of thing. It might not be your kind of thing. Maybe it should be.

Overall quality gets a 4/5, which I feel is being a bit tough. However, Non-Bloomington Rules apply. If the crust was better, maybe they’d get a 5/5 for overall. If I wasn’t being a little generous with my sauce score, maybe overall quality would get 5/5. The cheese didn’t have much stretch, but that’s fine. I just think the whole thing could have had more pizzazz. Speaking of pizzazz, Arni’s gets a 4/5 for style. I love when a restaurant is decorated without being hip or gimmicky. However, I also like when an inner city hole in the wall can confidently let their food speak for itself. I love Arni’s pizza… I don’t know if it was too much like Pizza King or if that style of pizza is just not remarkable enough to give Arni’s a 5/5 for style. So all right Arni’s Restaurant. Your pizza gets a 75%! I’ll be back.

A good looking Honda Civic

 

When we moved into our current house, I thought perhaps the neighborhood was too boujee for me because our neighbors owned (not one, but) two fresh Honda Civics. I thought they would likely cry about how loud I rock and how often I clean the cat box. For no great reason, I've always associated fresh Hondas with class climbers. I was walking around somewhere and found this old Civic, looking awesome. One time I saw a Civic on the high way and I could have sworn it was from 1990. Like a tall drink of water, yet aging like a sharp cheddar.  

A Food Worth Eating

As of now, I’m enjoying a free (courtesy of Mitch “The Boss” Duncan) sample of the Ritz Four Cheese and Herb Cheese Crispers. To Mitch, I once declared that I was going to stop rolling the dice on food. More often than not, the meals before me were disappointing in especial proportion to how much they cost. Aside from Cheez-its, guaranteed to be good, other food was just too much of a gamble. Existence is punishing enough without the false hope of anything (other than Cheez-its) being good.

The thing about Cheez-its is that you end up eating them too fast. Mushy masses of chewed Cheez-it end up accumulating in every crevice of your mouth. It’s hard to eat them slowly because they are so good. With Ritz Cheese Crispers, you don’t have that problem.

I like that they are more cheesy and less salty than most crackers, chips, or cracker chips. The floral hints of oregano are heavenly. So far I like Ritz Four Cheese and Herb Cheese Crispers a good deal more than any flavor of Cheez-its. Let’s see how I feel after consuming a box at full speed.

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

 

As it stands, most of my book reports are not being posted in the order that the books were read.  For a time, I thought about not writing about ebooks since I can't take a picture of them but that notion seemed ridiculous.  I need to chronicle this stuff and practice writing.  

The Colour of Magic is the 2nd Discworld book I've read.  It wasn't quite as heart-warming as Lords and Ladies but it was definitely great.  The first book in a series is almost always the most read, just like a band's first album becomes the album that the rest of their work is measured against.  Let's face it, this is only the case for bands who make a popular, breakout album.  I would hate to think of a world that never published The Colour of Magic.  Would Pratchett have gone back to the drawing board and created a different, more serious fantasy world?  I'm not surprised the author actually suggests for readers to start at his third book, Sourcery.  

Technically, The Colour of Magic is only the first in the Rincewind series, which is one of five or six Discworld story lines.  So I'm not entirely sure which to read next.  I'm leaning toward starting and finishing his Witches novels.  

But that's not what you were hoping to learn here.  The colour of magic is Octarine.  The magic number is eight.  

Cafe Pizzeria of Bloomington, IN

Do you remember the rating system for Pizzas?
Cr = Crust
Ch = Cheese
Ce = Sauce
All of these range in mass from 1 to 5
Cafe Pizzeria is a 2cr/1.5ce/3ch. They are one of those local joints that has been around for a long time. They’ve had a lot of managers, but the recipe has stayed the same. Their owner probably never stops by, so sometimes their product isn’t up to my standards. As of now, their pizza is really good.

The crust is thin and folded up a bit on the sides of the pan. In your hand, it folds nicely, tastes good, and has a nice puffiness to it. It’s not dry but not as greasy as a Pizza Hut’s pan pizza. It is a midwestern style crust. I’ll rate the crust 3.5/5. Their sauce gets a 2/5. One the side, it tastes more like something I would scoop with a tortilla chip. However, I think the thinness of it contributes well to the covetous “goo factor” of the crust. I might have liked it if there were more of it on the pizza. I really enjoyed tasting both the sauce cooked into the crust under the cheese, as well as the taste of the sauce cooked onto the crust toward the edge.

For overall quality, I’d give them a 4/5. The cheese didn’t stretch a lot, but that’s fine. A lot of small time pizza joints have a problem of not cooking their pizza long enough. That wasn’t the case here. Doesn’t it look delicious? I do believe there was a hint of yellow cheese on it, which I appreciate. It’s probably even better eaten cold, but I couldn’t bring myself to save any leftovers.

For style they get a 3/5. We didn’t dine in, responding to the rise in covid cases, but I’ve been in there. It’s fairly cozy but unremarkable. The pizza itself is good, but not outstanding.

This gives Cafe Pizzeria a 63%.

Heavy Object Vol. 1 by Kamachi Kazuma

 

For those of you who don't know, a light novel is a style of episodic book released in volumes and typically targeted to young adults in japan.  They are the new form of serialized pulp fiction.  These days, a lot of light novels have been made into mangas, animes, and video games.  Some well known examples are Brave Story, Slayers, and Sword Art Online.  

I downloaded Heavy Object from a translation website, along with a few other light novels.  Heavy Object is the only one I've managed to finish and it was somewhat difficult.  I must have chosen the wrong books.  

Heavy Object is more or less about two teenage boys who are in the military and blow up advanced weapons called Objects.  Objects are the most dangerous, well protected things on earth, designed by the smartest people who have ever existed.  Still, our little boys repeatedly outsmart the objects and saving the day.  Objects are piloted by elites, chosen at birth because of their genetic superiority and subjected to a life without freedom.  They life a life of strict training and cyborg-style body enhancements.  

So the elite on our side is a fifteen year old girl.  That's her picture on the cover.  The army general and leader to our young heroes is a woman who has huge tits and dresses like a geisha.  Our boys almost see her naked a few times.  There is some type of romantic interest between our hero Heivia and our elite, who is often called princess.  She isn't explicitly sexualized.  Instead our hero accidentally harms her body, which may arouse the kinks in some readers.  

When I was in 7th-10th grade and enchanted by anything Japanese, considering my limited access, I probably would have been really into light novels.  As an adult, reading Heavy Object is like reading a (severely drawn out) tv show about boys blowing up robots and fantasizing about underage cyborg girls with thigh gaps.  

I'm trying to read another light novel called Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia, but it's so boring.  I may never finish and report on it.