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Archive for July, 2005

Movie Review: Fantastic Four (2005)

Fantastic Four (2005)

Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans and Julian McMahon.

Directed by Tim Story.

I’ve been trying on and off to borrow a bootleg copy of the 1994 Roger Corman version of Fantastic Four.1 This version was never officially released, and Marvel’s Avi Arad claims to have acquired the original print of the film just so he could burn it. This, of course, makes me want to see it all the more. for well over five years now. I’ve never heard a single positive thing about the Corman version, but I figure if I can sit through The Star Wars Holiday Special, I can sit through just about anything.

If you heard any of the early buzz on the new version, you might have expected it to be every bit as horrible as the one made eleven years ago. When the first trailer was released a few months ago, some fans reacted as though Marvel had committed some form of sacrilege.

(Some spoilers ahead…)
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Directed by Oley Sassone and produced by B-movie king Roger Corman, the 1994 version features Joseph Culp (son of I Spy star, Robert Culp) as Doctor Doom and stars Alex Hyde-White as Mister Fantastic, Rebecca Staab as the Invisible Woman, Michael Bailey Smith as The Thing and Jay Underwood as The Human Torch. Alex Hyde-White, interestingly enough, began his career playing a young boy in the two made-for-TV Captain America movies. Rebecca Staab has been in a number of soap operas, including The Guiding Light. Michael Bailey Smith has done a lot of B-movies and television appearances, and is playing the Michael Berryman role in the upcoming remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (The video cover for the original version features a bald, wide-eyed Michael Berryman. To me, it is one of the most instantly recognizable movie posters of all time.). Jay Underwood played the lead in Disney’s Not Quite Human movies, based on a series of books by the same name. [back]

Posted July 29, 2005

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Food of the gods.

“Breakfast for me,” said Shadow. “What’s good?”

“Everything’s good,” said Mabel. “I make it. But this is the farthest south and east of the yoopie you can get pasties, and they are particularly good. Warm and filling too. My specialty.”

Shadow had no idea what a pasty was, but he said that would be fine, and in a few moments Mabel returned with a plate with what looked like a folded-over pie on it. The lower half was wrapped in a paper napkin. Shadow picked it up with the napkin and bit into it: it was warm and filled with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. “First pasty I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s real good.”

“They’re a yoopie thing,” she told him. “Mostly you need to be at least up Ironwood way to get one. The Cornish men who came over to work the iron mines brought them over.”

“Yoopie?”

“Upper Peninsula. U.P. Yoopie. It’s the little chunk of Michigan to the northeast.”

The chief of police came back. He picked up the hot chocolate and slurped it. “Mabel,” he said, “are you forcing this nice young man to eat one of your pasties?”

“It’s good,” said Shadow. It was too, a savory delight wrapped in hot pastry.

—Neil Gaiman, American Gods

I’ve got to give Mabel credit for not putting rutabaga in her pasty. Nothing ruins a good pasty like rutabaga1.

The Cornish may have brought the pasty to the U.P. (maybe they really do pronounce it “yoopie” in ~~Minnesota~~ Wisconsin2, but that seems a little lazy for the Yooper in me), but it was the Finns who kept it there. Today, the pasty is closely associated with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as lobster is with Maine, cheese with Wisconsin or cheesecake with New York. On arriving in the U.P. by way of the Mackinaw Bridge, the billboards advertising are omnipresent in St. Ignace and points west.

When Laura and I visit my parents in the U.P., pasty is almost invariably the first meal we have at their house (though I haven’t eaten pasty for breakfast in many moons). There are probably a dozen or so places to buy pasties in South Range, Houghton and Hancock, and only one place to buy a Big Mac. That’s the way it should be.

The citizens of Cornwall (and maybe a few Yoopers) might be dismayed to learn that the second sure-fire way to ruin a pasty is to serve it with gravy. Pasty should only ever be served with two condiments: butter and ketchup. [back]
For some reason I had it in my head that Shadow was in Lakeside, Minnesota. It’s actually Lakeside, Wisconsin. [back]

Posted July 27, 2005

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The more you know…

… the more you should probably keep your damn mouth shut.

NOTE: While this doesn’t technically contain spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, if you haven’t read the book (but plan to), you might want to skip this entry for the time being.
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Posted July 25, 2005

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Camping in the Rain

The weekend was certainly interesting. Friday evening, we met the Wiitalas (Matt, Shiela and Drew) and Winklers (Steven, Velta, Mara and Peter) at the Maumee Bay State Park. Laura and I arrived just as the Winklers were finishing dinner (steak and baked potatoes) preparations. We had two campsites, one for the two tents (ours and the Wiitalas’) and the other for the dining fly and the Winklers’ pop-up camper. Almost every other site in the immediate vicinity was occupied by kiters, who had descended upon the park for their annual (?) gathering. There were windsocks, windmills, banners and (of course) kites everywhere.

Unfortunately for everyone, it rained most of the day on Saturday. We had just gotten the dining fly erected a little before 8:00 Saturday morning when the first rain came in, and the weather just went downhill from there. We spent much of the day clustered under the dining fly, the screened walls of which didn’t offer the best protection from the rain unless you were standing in the very center of the fly (which was occupied by a picnic table). The next dining fly we get will be a bit bigger, I think, and have retractable tarpaulin walls.

Breakfast Saturday morning was bacon and eggs, cooked in the rain. We spent the remainder of the morning running in and out of the dining fly, as it would rain one minute and be bright and sunny the next. I managed to get a good bit of American Gods read before the sun gave up entirely. As afternoon approached, we determined that a trip to the nearby Wal-Mart was in order. The rain was coupled with stifling heat Friday evening and much of Saturday, so the dry, cool shelter offered by Wal-Mart was very attractive. When we returned to the campground, Laura declared that it was lunchtime (so much of camping seems to revolve around the meals).

At one point after lunch on Saturday it was pouring so hard that everyone abandoned the dining fly and sequestered themselves away in tents, campers and vehicles. Laura and I sat in the MVoD listening to the first disc of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which we’d picked up from Wal-Mart (along with ice, chips, charcoal and other supplies). After about an hour, we returned to the dining area and began preparations for dinner. In spite of the rain, it was decided that we’d cook dinner in the fire ring.

Laura was determined to have s’mores for dessert, so Matt and I held our umbrellas over the fire and roasted marshmallows in the pouring rain, both getting thoroughly drenched in the process. The sight of two grown men huddled over a smoking fire roasting marshamallows in a downpour was undoubtedly very amusing. Unfortunately, our digital camera was sitting back home on an end table, so the moment wasn’t captured for prosperity.

The rain had moved east by Sunday morning, so Laura didn’t get any extra water in her pancake batter. After breakfast, we packed up our gear and headed home. We were all on the road by 10:30, and Laura and I arrived home a bit before 1:00.

I spent much of the day ripping the 17 Harry Potter CDs to Apple’s proprietary AAC format, renaming all of the tracks to a common format (“Chapter 01, The Other Minister-A”, “Chapter 01, The Other Minister-B” and so on) and then changing the file extensions (from .m4a to .m4b) so they’d all be bookmarkable in iTunes and on my iPod. While I ran between Laura’s computer and mine (her DVD-ROM drive is better for ripping the discs, while the music collection resides on my computer), Laura listened to the CDs in the living room. I had all of the discs ripped and organized by late evening. Laura finished listening to the book at about 6:00pm yesterday, while I finished at about 3:15am today.

Posted July 19, 2005

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