A Clash of Kings

I don't usually put a lot of stock in the blurbs on the back covers of books. I've seen too many along the lines of

Not at all...what could be considered...[the] worst book I've ever read[!]
-- Johnny Nobody, Des Moines Central High School Gazette

But there's a quote inside the front cover of A Clash of Kings that couldn't be truer:

The pages seem to pass in a blur as you read
-- Albuquerque Journal

This review is pretty much exactly what I experienced.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I'm reading A Song of Ice and Fire this Summer. I read the first book A Game of Thrones, and started on the second immediately afterward. Even at almost a thousand pages, I read A Clash of Kings in record time (for me anyway).

The book picks up where the prequel ended (duh), with the kingdom in a bitter civil war, faction fighting against faction and everyone looking to get something out of it. The once unified kingdom now consists of kingdoms led by a fifteen-year-old King in the North, a thirteen-year-old King on the Iron Throne, both of the previous king's brothers laying claim to the kingdom from the South and East, a fourteen-year-old self-proclaimed queen living in the lands to the far East, and a swarm of treacherous backstabbers taking whatever they can get from whichever side will give it to them. As you can see, the title's pretty descriptive. There are a lot of kings.

The most interesting part of the book, for me, was the way it handled the topic of religion. The first book glossed over the role of the gods in the lives of men, but this one took a deep look at how each of Westeros' religions played into their believers decisions. Throughout the book, a red comet hangs in the sky, visible from every direction, and each king or queen who sees it considers it a sign from their god(s) that they're the true leader, the one that will come out of this alive and on top. It serves to sort of unify all the sides, even as they're fighting against eachother.

As with its prequel, A Clash of Kings was at times almost painfully difficult to put down. Almost every chapter kept me begging for more, often leading me to read into the late hours of the night. There's plenty of action, even if most of it isn't outright battle, and there's no shortage of twists. It was so good I hiked to no less than two Barnes & Nobleses this evening in search of the third book, A Storm of Swords (though they weren't even two blocks apart)

Busy Little Bee

Since my last post was about how some blogs need to not update so often, I decided to let it slip a few days before posting again. That and I'm lazy. And it's been really busy lately. Busy doing what, you ask?

Tuesday night I went to go see Knocked Up. I'd heard a lot of good things about it, how it was the most hilarious movie of the Summer, and even better than The 40-Year-Old Virgin, so I figured why not find out for myself?

It was pretty hilarious, and indeed better than Virgin. Some of the scenes with Ben's roommates were fantastic, as were the ones with Alison's sister and brother-in-law (played by the great Paul Rudd). The scenes were so good in fact that I wish there were more of them, and less of the actual story.

As for the main plotline itself, it was a little wishy-washy. The two main characters go back and forth about whether or not a relationship is a good idea, sometimes happy, sometimes pretending to be happy, sometimes not happy at all. I realize that's probably more realistic than most movie relationships, but it was also a lot more confusing. You never knew how one person felt about the other at any given moment. But like I said, the movie was hilarious, and I'd definitely recommend it.

Last night I left work and went back down to the Knitting Factory to see the Noisettes, the Maccabees and Heypenny. Apparently, the illustrious brooklynvegan was there as well, though she wasn't as impressed with the Noisettes as I was, and was instead far more entertained with Maccabees than I was. So it goes. Personally, I thought the Noisettes were great. Very energetic, soulful, raucous. Heypenny was good too, but they didn't quite seem to fit in with the rest of the show.

And today was only really interesting at work. I was tempted to go see David Cross and others tonight in the Village, but I think I've done enough these past few days. Instead, I went back to the coffee shop this evening for a quiet night to myself, which was thoroughly enjoyed.

I'll probably end up doing something tomorrow night, though. So stay tuned.

Blog Posts vs. % Actually Read

DISCLAIMER: This post has nothing to do with New York, but it's something that bothers me, so in the spirit of the blogosphere, I'm venting. Feel free to stop reading at any time.

When will blogs realize that frequent posting does not lead to engaged readers?


_{Data is provided for the top 40 most frequently updated blogs over the last 30 days, according to Google Reader's trends feature. The chart was created using Google Docs and Spreadsheets.}

There are two things to notice:

1. I read less than half of the items from blogs that submit more than 10 items per day.


2. I read at least 40% of the items from blogs that submit fewer than five items per day.

I read 100+ blogs a day, as do a lot of people I know (sometimes many more). One thing I've noticed is that some blogs (and it always seems like it's the professional bloggers, especially Gawker blogs) decide they should post 30+ items a day. What could they possibly have to write so much about?

Maybe their scope is too all-encompassing, maybe they follow too many stories, maybe the writers just get bored, or maybe management is pressing them to write more so they earn their paychecks. But as a lowly reader of these blogs, let me assure you, there is such a thing as too many blog posts. In fact, there's nothing that gets me to unsubscribe faster than seeing a ton of posts from one source. Gizmodo and Engadget are notorious postcount++'ers, and when I unsubscribed from both about two months ago it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

I got so sick of Lifehacker's noise that I made my own trimmed version of the feed using Yahoo! Pipes that tries to filter out some of the noise.

The blogs that I tend to read most often (and by that I mean actually read) are the ones that post the most infrequently, and they're the ones I tend to enjoy reading more just because they tend to put more time and energy and research into each post. Schneier on Security and I, Cringely and The Daily WTF are some of my favorite blogs, and they post at most a few items each week. They don't badger me with posts every five minutes, and as a result when they have something to say it's usually something worth reading.

If you're a Reader user, go to your trends page and see if your reading habits are anything like mine. Post your findings in the comments.

Cooking Without a Net

One thing I've never been good at is cooking. Well, that's probably not true. One thing I've never considered myself good at is cooking. And cooking is kind of like tightrope walking in that you're only as good at it as you think you are. If you keep thinking you're going to fall, you will, and if you keep thinking you'll screw up and make a disgusting pile of crap instead of pancakes, you will. It's all about confidence.

I haven't done a lot of cooking (at least not by myself), and I haven't done any tightrope walking, but I figured I might as well try to get good at one of them, and I don't have any rope, so cooking it is. A nice bonus to this is that cooking is a lot cheaper than eating out every night, which is what I've been doing for the last three weeks.

As a nice ulterior motive, I want to be able to cook Lauren things from time to time so she'll be impressed with my mad skills and fall deeper and deeper in love with me and think I was the bee's knees and/or cat's pajamas. But for now let's assume all I want to do is cook a good meal and save some money.

Tonight's challenge: Cornbread. And not some instant pre-boxed Jiffy-brand cornbread, oh no, if I'm going to do it I'm going to do it without a net. This cornbread would be from scratch. The reasons for choosing cornbread are two-fold: a.) the recipe for cornbread was roughly "pour, mix, bake", and b.) cornbread is fucking delicious.

So off I was to the grocery store to buy the ingredients. Cornmeal, flour, eggs, shortening, sugar, salt, milk, and all the rest. My apartment came fully furnished, but it didn't have any cooking supplies further than cups and plates, so I also bought a baking pan and measuring cups, too.

Here's a shot of the gooey mixture just before going into the oven:

And here's a shot shortly after coming out:

Looks delicious, doesn't it? Well guess what, it was:



Now it wasn't perfect. The bottom was a little burnt, and the cornmeal was a little gritty, but it was nothing a little butter couldn't fix. And let me tell you, the smell was fantastic. Mmm mmm mmmm it smelled fantastic.

So there you have it. My first (and far from last) solo attempt at cooking, and a successful one at that.

Movie and a Show

The last couple of nights have been really fun and really tiring, but worth it in the end. Let me tell you about them:

Last night I went to the IFC Center to catch a showing of the film Day Night Day Night (trailer). I heard about it on Attack of the Show and a few other places around the internet, and it sounded interesting, so I decided to see what the fuss was about.

For those too lazy to watch the trailer, the movie's about an unnamed girl who volunteers to become a suicide bomber, on a mission to carry a backpack full of explosives into the heart of Times Square. Her ethnicity and the ethnicity of the people she's working with are completely ambiguous throughout the film, and it's never fully clear why they want to do it, or why she's volunteered. She occasionally whispers prayer-sounding things to an unnamed god and treasures a necklace in the shape of a key. The movie's not about any specific group wanting to blow up Times Square, it's about a girl who believes that her god wants her to become a martyr.

The movie was pretty slow, with very sparse dialog. There were long shots of the main character walking, staring, eating, and sometimes I felt like they might have been included just to make the film longer. Another annoying thing was the sound. I don't know if it was just loud in the theater or if the movie was shot this way, but every tiny sound was amplified to almost deafening levels. It was as if I had Wolverine's superhuman hearing ability for the duration of the film. The eating scenes were the worst, it was like I had my ear pressed up against her cheek as she chewed. It was...gross. And annoying. And really gross.

But overall the movie was okay. I give it a B-. It gave me something to do, it let me explore the city some more, and now I know where the IFC Center is so I can see more snobby indie films. Speaking of, there was a trailer for another movie that looked really fantastic, called Pierrepoint, the Last Hangman (trailer). I promise I want to see it for reasons other than that Peter Pettigrew is the star.

And that's a surprisingly good segue to tonight's events...

Tonight I went down to The Knitting Factory to see Harry and the Potters and Uncle Monsterface.

I'd never heard of Uncle Monsterface before, but let me tell you, they put on one hell of a show. A multimedia extravaganza, if you will, including projected movies, pre-recorded background instruments, inflatable ball/animals/guitars and a puppetshow. Yes, a puppetshow. It was quite hilarious and quite enjoyable. Listen to We Wear Capes or Derockracy and tell me that's not great. That will be the sound of you telling a lie.

After that, Harry and the Potters took the stage. For those of you too lazy to click through to their website before (shame on you, lazy jerks), Harry and the Potters is a wizard-themed indie rock band from Massachusetts. In fact, prior to researching to write this blog post, I didn't realize that the wizard-rock genre was so popular. I may have to explore this some more.

Anyway, they sing songs like "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock" and "Save Ginny Weasley" and songs covering a variety of other Potter-themed topics. In fact, they call their three-pack of full-length CDs "Rock and Roll Cliffs Notes" for the books. Still, it's the kind of music you probably won't understand unless you've read the books. Luckily I have, and so did everyone else there, and we had a great time.

So yeah, there's my last two days. Full, fun, and tiring. Just the way they should be.

Summer Reading

I've done a lot of reading the last couple weeks I've been here. A ton, in fact. Part of that's due to the 40-minute subway rides to and from work every day, and part of it's due to the reading material being really good. It's called A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, and I finished it today.



A Game of Thrones is the first in an ongoing series of books called A Song of Ice and Fire, which is set in the land of Westeros, about fifteen years after a bloody civil war that pitted the land's Seven Kingdoms against eachother. Even as the lands struggle for power or peace, new and terrifying menaces approach from the North and from the East.

The main characters are the members of House Stark, lords of the northern kingdom of Winterfell, a place as cold as the people that inhabit it. Lord Eddard Stark is their level-headed and stoic leader, but he is honorable to a fault. Their enemy is House Lannister, wealthy back stabbers who would trade anything for power.

Aside from the fighting in Westeros, there are two side plotlines. One follows Eddard's bastard son Jon Snow as he mans The Wall, a gigantic structure built to keep the Northern menace from invading. The other follows Daenerys Targaryen, the last descendant of Westeros' previous king Aerys and betrothed to Khal Drogo, leader of the barbaric Dothraki in the East.

I've never considered myself a huge fan of fantasy -- I've read Lord of the Rings, but little else -- but this book was fantastic. I finished it about half an hour ago and I'm leaving to go to Barnes & Noble to pick up it's sequel, A Clash of Kings, right now.

If you're not reading anything this Summer, you should be, and what you read should be this.

A Nice Little Weekend

This weekend, Lindsey's boyfriend Corey and his friend Scott came up to visit. They're on their way from Atlanta up to Maine, and since their trip took them through New York, and since I live in New York and have ample floor space for visitors, they crashed at my place for the weekend.

Because they were only here for a couple days, they naturally wanted to do touristy things, and since I haven't done any touristy things since I've been here, I tagged along. It made for a pretty awesome weekend, and I got to see a lot of New York that I hadn't seen yet. I also did a hell of a lot of walking.

Friday

The guys got in Friday evening, and were pretty tired from the trip, so we did a little bar-hopping. I've only been in town for a couple weeks, and all of that's been by myself, so I haven't had a lot of opportunity or desire to explore the bars in the area. And let me tell you, there are plenty of bars in the area. We only went to four of them, but all four were pretty nice.

Saturday

We woke up pretty early Saturday morning and set out for Central Park. We took kind of a winding path through the park, saw Belvedere Castle, the John Lennon memorial in Strawberry Fields, and finally came out at 5th St. near 70th. We walked for what seemed like forever down 5th, past Apple Mecca, into F.A.O. Schwartz (which was awesome) and finally down to Times Square.

Times Square was ridiculous. Seriously just as crazy as it looks on TV, billboards everywhere. We ate lunch at Bubba Gump's, then walked around some more, ending up at the subway station at Rockerfeller Plaza, which took us back to my place.

All told, more than five miles of walking in the 80+-degree heat. Needless to say, we were in need of a few beers and a good night's rest after that.

Sunday

We decided to look around the south of Manhattan on Sunday, and started off in Wall Street. Corey wanted to see the Stock Exchange and I wanted to see The Bull. From there, our trip took us in a really roundabout path through Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty, up through Chinatown, Soho and Little Italy.

Little Italy was by far my favorite. We got lunch at a place called Paesano, which was delicious, and we got some great cigars at a place next door. We just walked up and down Mulberry St. smoking our cigars like we owned the place. Scott bought a spinner belt buckle which oozed class. There was a street fair going on and we stood around and watched the people running the fair games harass people as they walked by. It was pretty fun.

We went back to my place and sat around for a while, then eventually we took another subway back down to Times Square where Scott's second cousin lived. This was another highlight. We spent most of the rest of the night at her apartment literally a block and a half away from Times Square. We ate crackers, watched TV, talked, had a little Scotch, went out on the observation deck and watched the cars go by. It was really awesome. That's definitely the kind of place I want to live if I ever get successful and live in New York.

Eventually we left, went back to my studio apartment and fell asleep to the sound of my window air conditioner and the cars on the street.

Monday

Corey and Scott left this morning at the ungodly hour of 8am. I saw them off then immediately fell back asleep for the next three hours. When I woke up, I showered, sat around, and took a trip to the coffee shop. I spent about two good hours just sipping pumpkin spice coffee (way out of season, by the way, but amazing nonetheless) and reading. Between the subway and the coffee shop I'm reading a lot lately. A habit I'll have to continue even when I'm not in the city.

I got back, did some laundry, and wrote about my weekend. That pretty much sums up my Monday. Boring compared to the rest of the weekend, but a welcome respite from all the walking -- more than ten miles, for those of you counting.

It was a great weekend, and it was awesome having Corey and Scott around to hang out with. I'll take this opportunity to mention that anyone reading this is invited and encouraged to stop by and share in the fun.

I didn't take any pictures all weekend because I'm a jerk like that, but if Corey or Scott post some I'll link/copy them. That's all for now, time for some late night pizza and then some much-needed sleep.