Things to do when you’re sick

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So I got food poisoning Saturday from a package of indian food. It’s a shame – one of my favorite dishes (spicy spinache with cottage cheese) and now just thinking of it makes me gag. Anyway I couldn’t eat for almost 2 days and was so weak I couldn’t really do anything, so I lay around watching tv, alternating between half paying attention and dozing feverishly. It pretty much sucked. I did watch a lot of movies though, including:

I am Legend – it stunk. It’s a remake of an old Vincent Price movie and based on a classic short story about a sort of Zombie apocalypse brought on by medical research. This version strays pretty far from the source. The first 1/3 is kind of interesting as it follows Will Smith around a post apocalyptic NYC, but it falls apart and has a very stupid ending. Avoid is my advice.

Flesh and Blood – early Paul Verhoeven. 1501, Europe, and a band of mercenaries falls under the sway of a lunatic priest, engaging in a series of larcenous adventures. Kind of fun, lots of cheesecake action, and a somewhat realistic depiction of the grimy middle ages, but really B-movie material.

Larry Flynt: The Right to be Left Alone. Pretty good documentary. This is the second documentary I’ve seen on him and I really admire the guy. He’s stood up for our first amendment freedoms in a way no one else I can think of has.

Stalingrad: Classic war film that no one seems to know about. Originally a German production, it’s been dubbed for the US market. Brutal, brutal depiction of the siege of Stalingrad from the point of view of the frontline german infantry. This is the third time I’ve watched it. One of the most effective anti-war films I can think of.

Felon: Low budget drama exposing the gritty realities of prison culture. Better than I expected. The beginning and end are a bit too pat, but the middle exposition of prison life in a maximum security facility was terrifying. Great acting from Val Kilmer.

I also managed to make my way through a good portion of the last season of The Shield believe it or not – it’s been a movie marathon. I have to say I’m not liking The Shield much either – way too contrived at this point the only likeable characters at this point are Dutch and Claudette.

Back after a week away

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Susan and I spent most of last week in Washington, DC. For me this was mostly work – this year’s North American Drupalcon was in DC so I spent Wednesday-Friday in conference sessions from 9AM to 6:30 every night, then entertaining in the evenings. The conference was pretty good overall – I learned a lot and added a bunch of stuff to my todo list. Friday night I got together with a couple of old friends from college and had a blast catching up, hanging in a funky bar/restaurant that was Marvin Gaye themed and had a southern/belgian fusion menu (no typos there!). Saturday was my 42nd birthday and despite nursing a miserable cold Susan and I tromped all over the mall, visiting an exhibition of 15th century Dutch painting in the national gallery (cityscapes, really great stuff), an outdoor sculpture garden and skating rink, the National Botanical Garden, the Jefferson Memorial (which I had never been to), Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial Park, the Lincoln Memorial, and finally the Korean War Memorial. Sadly we ran out of gas at this point and never made it to the WWII Memorial which I had also hoped to see. We finished off with a poor choice for dinner by me. Susan doesn’t like chinese food so we never get to eat it, so for my birthday dinner I chose chinese. Sadly Washington DC has no good chinese food and the place we went to pretty much stunk. Despite this I had a great day. It was the first time I had been to DC since roughly ’93 and outside of the mall area it was all new to me. We walked pretty much everywhere and by and large I really liked the city.

I’ll also mention that we took Amtrak both ways. It was pricier than flying, we got stuck for 2 hours in a broken down train, and the bathrooms were disgusting, but I’d still choose to travel that way again in a heartbeat, it is so much more comfortable than flying.

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Friday fun requires you to buy a PS3

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If I told you my favorite game so far this year featured me as a flower petal swooping through fields of grass collecting more petals by colliding with other flowers, you’d think I was nuts, but it’s true: Flower is completely awesome. Few games manage to elicit any emotional response from me aside from anger (ie, ‘how the frack did that guy shoot me from way over there!!!!BS!!!*@#*!!!!’ in a FPS), but Flower is this wonderfully positive emotional experience. I don’t want to spoil anything so I can’t give too much in the way of details, but the gist of it is you save the world with the power of flowers. The graphics, musical score, audio, gameplay, and controls (featuring almost completely motion-based controls) are all perfect. There’s no downside here, it’s even cheap ($10)…but it does require you to have a $350+ PS3 to play on, and a decent surround sound system to enrich the experience.

As fruity as this game sounds, everyone I’ve shown it to so far has loved it. Here’s a gameplay video to give you a sense of it:

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