PewPew 2.0 - Blogs about reviews

Really Big Shows.

The husband and I were busy having fun this week. We went to one shows each night on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and each was great.

Thursday night, we went to see Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, yes, we went to see a radio show. Wait Wait recorded a show up here in Seattle, and we watched them do it. It was hilarious. I don't know if it was Carlin's passing, or something special about Seattle, but the live show was pretty blue. (By blue, I mean blue smoke.) You can listen to the broadcasted version here.

Friday night, we went to see the astonishingly fabulous Circus Contraption: The SHOW to End All SHOWS. This local non-profit group preforms an old fashioned circus act - trapeze, stunt show, with shockingly modern trappings. If you'll be in Seattle within the next week, I demand that you go see this show. (OK - children and all but the most hip of retirees are pardoned.) This was a great show; a skillful performance that was tremendously involving. This show will stick with me for a long time. It was a real treat to see it.

Last night, we saw WALLE. Pixar's newest feature is a robot love story, and is also a great show, which I'm sure you'll get to see. Is it wrong if beautiful pictures of outer space my eyes water up a bit?

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It Stays In Vegas Unless You Tell or Take Pictures.

We're back from Las Vegas. The real Vegas experience is a series of fake experiences - and I think we covered that base. We went to ancient Rome and Egypt and modern Paris. We had lunch in a back alley New York deli, and dinner in the the twilight of Venice. We encountered angry Klingon and Borg, tangled with one-armed bandits, and escaped relatively unscathed. We saw hotel/casino/resorts that ran the gamut from old and busted to expensively classy and understated.

We saw Penn & Teller, and it was a fabulous show. It was both delightfully hilarious, and an incredible display of skilled artistry. If you have the opportunity, I encourage you to see Penn & Teller - even if it means skipping one of the dozen Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas.

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Halloween Wrap.

I'm pleased to report that the trick-or-treaters liked the PlayDoh that I was worried about giving out. Sadly, we got less than a dozen spooky visitors. So we're just going to have to find some way to use the remains of the three bags of candy that we bought.

I just finished reading Idlewild, by Nick Sagan. (Yes, Nick is Carl's son.) Idlewild was delightfully appropriate for the season, and the best substitute for not having a new Gaiman book to read. It was tightly crafted dark fantasy, and I enjoyed how Sagan communicated a deep and emotional world with economic word use. I look forward to reading more of his work.

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The Prestige.

The hubby and I watched our rented copy of the last year's The Prestige last night, and it was astonishingly good. Do yourself a favor and rent it up for the weekend. It will be a few hours well spent. I really enjoy a movie that allows me to think, and rewards me for doing so.

Christopher Nolan directs this film in contrast to Ridley Scott's handling of Gladiator; in which Scott beats the audience with the idea that gladiating is like T.V. and yet another opiate for the masses, without developing that idea to a higher stage.

Well, that's it. The Prestige = great.

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Lust for Knowledge.

I bought Danny Goodman's JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook about a year ago, and it was an excellent choice. O'Reilly's Cookbook series of books aims to provide useful, pre-written scripts (recipes) in the technology of the book. For a book written in 2003, I still found the recipes unbelievably useful, elegant and forward-thinking. It was a great purchase and provided the answers I needed on a number of occasions.

Last month, the Second Edition of the JS and DHTML Cookbook was released, and I am very jealous. There are over 20 new recipes; including AJAX and updates for the current generation of browsers. I wish I could drop my first edition into a puddle, and buy the second edition. The rest of you can avoid this remorse, by picking up a copy of the JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook, 2nd edition right now.

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