September 22nd, 2008:

    There's no way I can remember all the stuff that has happened or all the books I've wanted to recommend since the last entry.  I'm just going to pretend that I've been keeping this blog more or less up to date, and mainly cover the last few weeks.

• Two months ago, I was elected President of the Board of Directors of the Seattle Go Center.  One of the responsibilities of that position will entail me going to Japan for a few days, probably at the end of October.  I'm looking forward to that.
• Shira and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary on August 20th.
• Young adult books I recently read and enjoyed:
  • Looking for Alaska, by John Green.  A bittersweet coming of age story, set in a co-ed boarding school.  Very well written.
  • Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.  What a soothing, fun way to spend an evening.  Short enough that you can read it in one sitting.  It tells the story of a first date, with alternating chapters told from each person's point of view.  Rachel wrote the female perspective, David the male.  Gentle and funny, and maybe even insightful.  A movie adaption is coming out soon, and from the trailer, it looks like the only relationship it has to the book is the title.
• Sci-fi/Fantasy read and recommended:
  • Succubus Blues and Succubus on Top, by Richelle Mead.  A guilty pleasure at its finest.  Quite sexually explicit (particularly the second), but the main characters are all genuinely interesting.  The two main love interests are both particularly appealing.  The plots are serviceable and move along at a good clip.  I would be tempted to describe them as sort of a Twilight for adults.
• Anime viewed:
  • Marmalade Boy.  A clever set up, but has twice as many episodes as it needed.  After a while, the machinations employed to separate the main couple just become ridiculous and repetitive. 
  • Boys Over Flowers.  Spends the entire series wallowing in melodrama and angst, which hey, that can be cathartic.  It kept me watching.  But then the last episode ruins everything by having a silly, contrived, completely over the top ending, totally out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the series.  I want my 17 hours back.
  • The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.  This was showing at a local independent theater.  I liked it a lot, Shira didn't.  A humorous, sometimes touching story of a girl experiencing romantic feelings for the first time.
  • 5 Centimeters Per Second.  Wow.  Just... wow.  A truly beautiful movie, which has moved me both times I've seen it.  Only an hour long, so if your video store has it, check it out.  PLEASE watch the original Japanese voice actors with subtitles.  The voice acting in the original is superb, and conveys emotion and nuance so much better than the English dub.

July 8th, 2008:

• My in-laws came for a visit several weeks ago.  It was great having them in town, but I confess I feel a bit like a loser when my father in law whips out the tools and starts fixing everything in sight.  Minor annoyances like broken or squeaky doors magically heal themselves, and major projects like new shelving in the garage or laundry room get accomplished over night.  I may need to arrange for them to catch a bad computer virus that needs cleaning up over Thanksgiving vacation, just so I can feel like I'm contributing. 
• I attended Origins, and had a lot of fun.  I stayed with my friend Bill, and spent a lot of time with Chad, Darwin, and Niko from Your Move Games.  This is the worst Origins yet in terms of new, exciting games, though; I made only one purchase, Warriors of God, which seems to be quite good, though I'm not sure when I'll find the time to play.
• While I was at Origins, I got to visit some family as well.  I spent a day with my dad, and we did a driving tour of various houses, apartments, and schools from my childhood.  Even though I was expecting it, I was still just stunned at how much smaller everything was than I remembered it!  Also, I got to spend some time with my Aunt Janet, and my cousins Beth and Katie.  My cousins seem to remember me "tickling them until they pee", which frankly I have no recollection of.
• This coming weekend Shira and I will be making our annual pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Then the weekend after that, I'll be going to San Francisco to play games with my friend David and some of our other mutual friends.  Then, the weekend after that is the Olympic Music Festival.  Finally, a few weeks later, I'll be attending Gencon, where my game is being launched.  Quite a busy summer!

June 6th, 2008:

• Finished watching the first season of xxxHolic, and am caught up through the current episode in season 2.  The series really grew on me.  The main character is maturing, and I really like the supporting cast.  New episodes are fan-subbed about a week after they're aired in Japan.  I watch on Veoh.
• Watched the first 6 episodes of Magic User's Club.  Not my cup of tea-- too silly.
• My anime viewing period lasted much shorter than I would have anticipated, due to a new computer game.  I bought Age of Conan, and that's sucking up my free time at the moment.

May 27, 2008:

• The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) started last weekend, and Shira and I are going to try to catch a few movies this year.  Also, I've been watching quite a bit of anime lately.  So, between the two, I'll probably update this site a bit more often over the next month or so, with reviews/recommendations/reactions to what I'm watching.
• Movies recently seen:
  • Prince Caspian:  Too long, very boring.  I read all of the Chronicles of Narnia books multiple times as a child, and I liked the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe pretty well, but this movie was pretty bad.
  • The Fall:  The first SIFF film we went to this year, and a good start to the festival.  This is the new movie by Tarsem, the acclaimed music video director whose first movie (The Cell) was such a bust that it's taken him 8 years to make another one.  This movie comes frustratingly close to being Great (the premise is wonderful and the two main actors are brilliant), but doesn't quite rise to that level, mainly due to the over-the-top-silly nature of the story within a story being portrayed.  But it's worth your time and money to see when it opens for general distribution.
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Everything you feared about a new George Lucas movie.  Just bad.  Of course, you're going to see it anyway, but don't say I didn't warn you.
• Anime recently seen:
  • Haibane Renmei: 13 episodes, 25 minutes each.  Little action, almost no humor and almost no romance, and a slowly unfolding story.  Recipe for boredom?  No, I had to stay up until 3am and run late for work to watch the last few episodes.  This is a work of art.  It's a story about friendship, fear, loss, courage, and discovering who you are, with a unique setting.  Highly recommended.
  • EF: A Tale of Memories: 12 episodes, 25 minutes each.  If I hadn't watched Haibane Renmei with a couple of days of this, I would have said this was the best coming of age anime I had ever seen.  It's astonishingly good.  As with many such entries in this field, it explores themes of alienation, and recalls the pains and joys of adolescence.  Two interlocking stories are told, with roughly half of most episodes spent on each, and both of them are very good.  There are several gut-wrenching scenes that I know I will watch over again in the future, even if I don't find the time to watch the whole thing.  The directing is incredible, and each episode there are scenes that are presented in non-traditional ways that take my breath away.
  • Witch Hunter Robin: 26 episodes, 25 minutes each.  A more traditional action/adventure/supernatural anime, and the best of that genre I've seen since Cowboy Bebop, my long-time favorite in this style.  I just finished watching, so I'll need to give it a couple of months before I have enough perspective to say whether it surpasses Cowboy Bebop or not, but either way this is very good, very fun entertainment.  If you like film-noir detective stories (which this isn't, but it's evocative of that style), or urban fantasy (which this kind of, sort of is), give this one a shot. 
  • xxxHolic: 26 episodes per season, 25 minutes each, currently in season 2.  I'm not liking this one as much as most other folks seem to.  I adjusted to the oddly proportioned bodies pretty quickly, and I like all of the supporting characters, but the main character is so annoying that it is just continually getting in the way.  Given how immature he seems, and how silly he is when he gets angry, it's hard to see what the other characters see in him.  The supernatural mysteries that occur in each episode are not strong enough on their own to keep you watching if you're not identifying with the main character, I think.  But I'll probably give it a few more episodes (I'm currently about half way through the first season).
  • Air: 13 episodes, 25 minutes each.  I've watched the first three episodes, and I'm not sure this one is going to be my cup of tea.  There's an entire anime/manga subculture in Japan that revolves around the concept of moe, and in particular around the non-sexual idea of being sort of an older brother figure to cute schoolgirls, and this title is generally regarded as the best of that type.  This anime is so highly regarded by so many different people that I'm trying my level best to "get it", but so far, it's not clicking.  It's only 13 episodes, so I might just keep watching to see if it ever clicks.

April 14th, 2008:

• I'm furious.  Shira and I settled in to watch the BBC's latest version of A Room with a View last night.  The script was written by Andrew Davies, who wrote the script for the nearly-flawless BBC production of Pride and Prejudice.  Mr. Davies has apparently let his recent success go to his head, because he took the monstrous liberty of completely changing the ending of the story.   The mind reels at the hubris required to make a major change to this E. M. Forster classic.  What's worse, the change (which would have been unacceptable however it was executed) was handled quite poorly; it was never foreshadowed, and it was completely out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie.  I stared in dumb disbelief at the screen.  Badly done, Mr. Davies; very badly done indeed.
• I finished the "Chronicles of Chaos" trilogy.  Pretty good for the first 2.5 books, but as so often happens in this genre, the ending was a muddle.  I wouldn't want anyone to rush out and buy them on my recommendation.
• I'll be in Las Vegas for 3 days next week, at the GAMA trade show.  I'll be helping my friends from Your Move Games run their booth, trying to convince distributors to carry their games, which (not incidentally) will include my own game that they'll be publishing later this year.

March 27th, 2008:

• Shira and I celebrated her birthday at Campagne, along with one of her best friends, Roz.  Then we saw Don Friesen at the Comedy Underground.  It was a great show, he's very polished and quite funny.
• I geeked out recently and watched all 32 episodes of Death Note in less than a week.  I don't like most anime, but the stuff I do like, I just become obsessed with.  The best anime is an order of magnitude more interesting and entertaining than any American television show I can think of.  Death Note is incredibly well done, and deeply disturbing.  It's a supernatural cat and mouse detective story, with an important twist: the main character is the serial killer, instead of the detective.  You don't root for the killer, yet at the same time, you can't stop yourself from somehow taking an interest in his affairs, since you're following him around everywhere, meeting his family, and so on.  Really top notch.
• I'm currently reading the first book in John C. Wright's "Chronicles of Chaos" series.  I'm really enjoying it so far, it reminds me as much of Roger Zelazny as anything has in a long time-- which is obviously a Good Thing.

March 11th, 2008:

• Today is my 40th Birthday.  I wish I had something profound or amusing to say, but I don't.  Birthdays have never seemed very significant to me, and this one doesn't, either.  It has been fun getting the "old man" e-mails and text messages and e-cards, though.

February 25th, 2008:

• Almost all of my free time has been consumed by the game I'm working on for Your Move Games.  My playtest group is meeting every Sunday night, and after every session I go home and have a bunch of notes about interactions or features that I hadn't though of.  Then I make a new revision and send it to Rob in Boston, and he uses that version for his Wednesday night playtest group there.  Then I get his feedback, and make a new revision in time for my Sunday night.  We're making progress, but it's of the "two steps forward, one step back" variety: some of the changes I make turn out to have their own set of problems.  We're aiming to release the game at Gencon this year, which is in August; in order to do that, we'd need to have it sent to the printer by June 1st, so the clock is definitely ticking.
• Since Chad has publicly mentioned it on several online forums, I'll go ahead and reveal that the game I'm designing is a campaign system for Battleground: Fantasy Warfare.  It allows 2 or more players to link together individual battles fought using that game system into a weeks or months long story.  Players build their Kingdoms, recruit larger and better armies, and fight out a series of scenarios that require a diverse set of strategies.
• Shira is going through a Crohn's flare-up the last month or so.  She's trying some new medication that we hope will help out with the inflammation and make life a little less painful.  As always, she's maintaining good spirits. 

January 9th, 2008:

• We had a great Christmas.  Shira cooked another amazing meal, and we spent the day with good friends.
• I have a group of people helping me playtest the game I'm designing/developing for Your Move Games.  We met for the first time this past Sunday, and will be meeting every Sunday night for at least the next couple of months.  Many thanks to George, Jack, and Justin.
• On Jarrett's recommendation, we went to see Juno.  Shira and I both adored the movie, and recommend it without reservation.
• For the 2nd consecutive year, Ohio State got blown out in the National Championship game.  I'm not as sad this year as I was last year, as this was supposed to be a rebuilding year anyway and I didn't have any real expectations coming into the season.  But waiting 5 weeks between the end of the season and the actual championship game is just stupid, and they need to fix that, either by moving to a playoff or moving the championship game back to January 1st.