had a great week in Montreal, Canada last week. First time there, lots to see and even more to *eat*. Some highlights:

1) Old Montreal – very cool, very euro, and the weather made seeing it all very easy (sunny and warm). Plus the huge Notre Dame cathedral in the middle was pretty impressive, too.

2) Mount Royal – huge wooded park in the northern part of the city, literally a ‘mountain’ rising up from surrounding neighborhoods. We walked all over that thing, amid some rain but still very pretty and you can see for miles once up there (even though not really a ‘mountain’ by Western standards :). the park was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, whose son John Charles was the lead designer of Seattle’s own Washington Park Arboretum – nice local connection…!

3) Eating:

Brasserie T (kerewin found out about this place because Anthony Bourdain had been there a few times before);

Schwartz’s Deli – amazing smoked meat sandwiches, we should have gone twice!

Bagels – I was the only one to get to eat these (kerewin can’t do gluten) but mmmm…….! Also it’s worth noting that Montreal-style bagels have a taste and technique all their own.

Les Enfants Terribles – amazing food and great service.

4) Just plain fun. Everywhere we went it was interesting to explore, my only slight regret is that Billy Connolly was coming to town Oct 23, so we missed him – that would have capped off a great second week!

Merci beaucoup, Montreal….au revoir. Here’s some pics….

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is apparently about to leave again soon on runway 911. New plane, too? Maniacs. Go big or go home, indeed…..!

IRON MAIDEN AND THE BOOK OF SOULS GO JUMBO ON MASSIVE 2016 WORLD TOUR

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for some reason their songs have been going through my head lately – interesting article. I was really into this band back in the day….this concert clip is kinda weird – they rarely played much live and despite their sound being heavy on keys, there aren’t any on stage? Must be playing to recordings – certainly have enough percussion guys though!

The Power Of Propaganda: A Secret Wish 25 Years On…

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So finally saw the new Avengers movie Sat evening. I liked it, despite my causing us to get there late and having to sit way up front (never optimal) – there were a number of funny parts and as always, the effects were well done. Definitely an entertaining movie overall.

But there were a number of things that definitely make this a lesser movie than the first one, much the same way the two Iron Man sequels are definitely lesser movies than the first one – to wit (Spoiler alert):

1) This movie follows on the timeline from Captain America: Winter Soldier, so SHIELD is dead yet Hydra still somehow exists (if memory serves, they still had Loki’s sceptre at the end of that movie) – and this gets to the first problem – how many big, secret conspiracy orgs STILL exist in the world, for pete’s sake? Especially those claiming to have existed since WWII (started by the Nazis – who else)? So that’s a bit farfetched to begin with.

2) Ultron is a good bad guy, even if a bit too sardonic (James Spader, eat your heart out) but he ‘springs into being’ a bit too quickly for the plot – one minute he’s parts on a series of tables, the next he is a fully-formed, morphable android with hundreds of copies? Where are the Koch Brothers who bankroll all this? Too fast.

3) Why is Thor the only ‘god’ seemingly interested in getting Loki’s gem back? Wouldn’t Loki himself have an interest in it? Wouldn’t Odin have a way to ensure Loki helps Thor and takes the gem back to Asgard where it belongs?

4) As pointed out by Kerewin – Scarlet Witch fulfills the role of ‘Storm’ in this movie – seeming a wimp, then at one point seems to be among the most powerful of all? You can’t have it both ways, guys.

5) The whole fight between Iron Man and Hulk was silly and a distraction. Why didn’t Hulk just run away? And it’s getting WAY too convenient for Tony Stark to just whip yet more Iron Man suits, ever more custom and more powerful, just out of nowhere whenever the plot demands it? Lame.

6) I liked the attempts to give these characters more than one dimension, but really the only three that have their heads on are Cap, Hawkeye and Black Widow, and the latter two are just badasses, not even enhanced. And of course the appearance of SLJ helps right the ship (mentally and then later, literally).

I think the main thing about these comic movies is whether or not they make you want to watch them multiple times. The first Iron Man – definitely yes, have seen it several times. The first Avengers – same. This one, like the recent CA movie and the Iron Man sequels – not so much.

Still worth a watch though….

Other voices:
Metacritic
Rotten Tomatoes

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Go inside this Seattle architect’s ultimate Lego paradise

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only about another month until the 2015 NW Pinball and Arcade show on the weekend of June 5-7! Apparently this bad boy will be making its debut there….very, very cool!

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Thanks to Ed Fries, I got to play a real Computer Space tonight! Ed bought a Time2000 backbox from me (backbox for a vintage Atari pinball that I had around, it had been intended for a wall decoration for a gameroom that is likely to never get built out in that way, so decided to sell the BB. Ed bought my Atari Space Riders pinball some time ago). So I took the BB out to his house tonight, and in the arcade he recently built near his house in a separate building – lo and behold, a 1971 Computer Space resides.

Here’s the story of his Computer Space. And here’s some history links on the game itself:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7381 – KLOV
http://www.pinrepair.com/arcade/cspace.htm – Pinrepair.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space – Wikipedia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhdu2Jh9cuc – The Dot Eaters (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esp24NI9ixs – Computer Space making a cameo in the early 70s dystopian Soylent Green

I got to play one of these a few years ago at California Extreme, along with another extremely early Atari game – Space Race – but i honestly don’t remember the gameplay. It was very cool to *attempt* to play this – the controls look at first glance similar to the much later Asteroids (button to thrust, button to fire, two buttons to rotate the ship left and right) but the layout is effectively a mirror image of Asteroids, so hard to figure it out without practice.

One of the things I really like about this game – besides its age and heritage from the dawn of videogames – is simply that it represents a dream. When you look at that wild fiberglass cabinet, you know someone was thinking of science fiction when they designed it. They were thinking of inspiration and imagination, dreams of spaceships and exploration that wasn’t far removed from the Apollo 11 landing only a few years before – dreams that we still have in other forms, but to me, not quite the same, perhaps even a bit more cynical these days.

But when Computer Space came out, it was still at the dawn of solid state hitting both US industry far more broadly as well as the nascent consumer market not long after. For two kids at the local Sunshine Pizza Exchange in Oregon (and the far bigger, always extremely fun arcade down at Seaside, OR) the question was always “Can I have a quarter?” and “can I have another?”….

Thanks, Ed.

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I had a buddy in high school that was really into them but I never got there. May have to check this out though….?

The Residents thrive on odd mix of fame and obscurity

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saw Big Hero 6 last night – great movie! While it’s a Disney movie and in some ways, in the tradition of Pixar (and since the Pixar guys are running the Disney animation studios these days, that’s not surprising) – it’s still unique in its own way(s), too.

Apparently this is a Marvel comic – I had never heard of it – but they changed the story more than a bit for the movie. While the plot sometimes clips along a bit too quickly for the story setup, it’s still well done and entertaining. And like with earlier Pixar movies like Up, they don’t hold back on the teary scenes either. Which I don’t mind, really (although Up was a bit extreme in that regard) – it means they aren’t just making a 90-minute toy commercial, after all. 🙂

There are echoes of many other movies in this one – I saw homage(s) to The Matrix, The Avengers, and Godzilla, but I’m sure there are others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m glad they didn’t go overboard with it, nor did they spend time with always-despised product placement in the movie, either (Michael Bay, I’m talking to YOU!)

Definitely worth watching.

Other voices:
Yahoo Movies
Rotten Tomatoes
Metacritic

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