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Archive for May, 2011
Review: The City of Falling Angels
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The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
My wife LOVES Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. When we met, I had neither read the book or watched the movie. Since she brought it up enough while we were dating, I decided to give John Berendt a shot.
Loved the book (MitGoGaE) and didn’t like the movie (which was disappointing because I love Clint Eastwood and John Cusack.)
The love of that book led me to read this one.
Unfortunately.
The problem with writing novels based on actual events that you are around for is that you run the risk that nothing interesting can happen. In The City of Falling Angels, events happen. The characters (the people) are all described in depth and the location is also painted in detail.
Note that lack of the “interesting” in my descriptions, though.
Interview with a Vampire made me want to visit New Orleans. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil made me want to visit Savannah. The City of Falling Angels didn’t make me want to visit Venice… it made me want to read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil again.
Flickr Friday: One of the main reasons I live in Florida…
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I’ll never see this in the morning outside of my house. Ever.
I occasionally update new photos (and old ones that I scan) on my Flickr account. Each Friday I post one on my blog from my collection that I think is icy cool.
Review: The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport
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The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport by Carl Hiaasen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Maybe I’m missing the fun because I’m not a fan of golf – but this reads like a cleverly witty but mostly mundane blog. Being a fan of Hiaasen’s fictional Florida, I decided to read this to see if his point of view of the “activity” (thank you George Carlin) of golf was truly worth my time to pursue.
Sure, there are some great stories in here (some involving using annoying animals as golf balls – take that PETA!) but as an entire work this book is wholly unremarkable. I still don’t get the appeal of golf (a sin where I live in South Florida) and I just don’t get this book.
I’ll stick with Skink and the fictional Hiaasen works going forward.
Flickr Friday: The Wizard of Oz – on crack – in the eighties.
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I took this photo at the Indian River County Fair. It was on the side of a ride there. It is… different.
I occasionally update new photos (and old ones that I scan) on my Flickr account. Each Friday I post one on my blog from my collection that I think defies gravity.
Review: Double Whammy
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My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Angry Eighties Carl Hiaasen is the best!
I moved to Florida in the late eighties, so reading these books is like a trip down memory lane. The thing is, I was too young to note all that was happening around me that Hiaasen references – so the book also serves as a fictionally based history lesson.
Also, I don’t fish – but anyone in Florida knows that you don’t speak ill of the sport. Not just an industry, fishing is the De facto past time for a large number of my neighbors who live on or near the beach. It’s serious business… and Hiaasen’s parody of it in Double Whammy hits the culture dead on.
Bad evangelists, corrupt condominium plans, sugar barons and (of course!) Skink. This book is a great time killer for fans for Florida and Carl Hiassen’s writing.
So @BotCon aka “#BotFAIL” showed up on my radar again today. How long have they been doing cons?
12 years ago
by Tom
in Conventions
Everyone makes mistakes.
Wasabi Anime (Green Mustard Entertainment) has been designing and hosting conventions and events since 2001. In that time we’ve had our fair share of “oops” moments. You’d think, though, that the “professionals” would be a little more polished than us at this point. You see, when you run a fan convention, there are three things you should always spell correctly:
- Your convention’s name.
- Your convention’s website (URL).
- Your convention’s guests’ names.
SO – Botcon showed up today on my Twitter to try and counter mine and Joey Snackpants “Beast Wars Sucks” mantra. (You can see it on my Twitter feed today starting at this tweet.) You know me – I LOVE arguing folks into a “fanboy rage” on the Internet… especially when it’s coming from an “official” business Social Media source.
So the BotCon Twitter led me over to the BotCon website where I saw this:
(click the image for a larger version.)
That’s right folks… They spelled Gregg’s name wrong on the website. They got his name right in the rest of the bio (which, I assume, is from text submitted by his representation that they copy/pasted) but not at the top. It seems this error has gone unchecked for almost two weeks.
Gregg’s a great guy deserving of a little more respect that this IMO.
Oh well… BotCon continues to perform to the level we have come to expect after visiting last year. So it goes.
UPDATE:
So the official BotCon Twitter replied to this blog post’s title appearing in my Twitter feed by saying I “don’t show up on their radar.” I’ll let the failure of logic in that statement speak for itself.
That said… as of this writing, they’ve had time to post snarky replies on Twitter – but not time to fix the name spelling issue. Hasbro must be DAMN PROUD of the professional social media and web campaign that the folks at BotCon put on in their name. WINNING!
Flickr Friday: A truly geeky trunk.
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A few months back, Joey Snackpants and I undertook a college tour across Atlanta to promote InvaderCON. We bought stuff along the way and my trunk began to look like a geek convention fan explosion.
I occasionally update new photos (and old ones that I scan) on my Flickr account. Each Friday I post one on my blog from my collection that I think is so embarrassing that it must be shared.
