This month, Josh and I completed our first videogame together. Boys will be boys — Josh enjoys anything related to Star Wars and superheroes. We’ve watched a number of DC and Marvel cartoons, such as Batman: The Animated Series, the occasional Superman cartoon, Justice League, Young Justice, old school 1982 Spiderman and His Amazing Friends, and the newest Avengers cartoon series on Disney.

Recently, we’ve been borrowing Ultimate Alliance 2, which is your typical button-mashing videogame, but it features the pantheon of superheroes and supervillains from the Marvel Universe. I thought it was an okay game, but Josh enjoys the game. He likes to switch to different characters, and trying them out. I wouldn’t say it was a tough game to beat, or one with a thought-provoking storyline. There is a story, but it’s an excuse for the players to mash buttons against waves of indiscriminate foes. Soldiers, robots, and boss battles against other heroes and villains. The character models look good too.

What I found to be the best feature was the co-op play. Up to four local players can play together, so we played through most of the levels. Uncle Robby came to assist midway when we reached a difficult boss, but for the most part, casual difficulty was the level best suited for the casual gamer and his five year old son. We haven’t unlocked all the characters, so we’ll probably replay it again. Josh wants to be the Hulk.

I watched Monsters vs Aliens on HBO over the weekend. It’s a Dreamworks Animation flick, so it’s the same studio that produced Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon, Bee Movie, etc. I’m not a huge Dreamworks animated film fan, but this wasn’t a bad film. I liked the 50′s monster movie feel to it, and I liked the cast — Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Hugh Laurie, Rainn Wilson, and more. This is supposedly the first animated film created start to finish in 3D, and I know this was a big film to promote 3D television in 2010. You can see the elements that would have been 3D, but those obviously don’t come out now. The animation was nice. The story was fairly generic, and you could see the plot points a mile away. Still, it’s worth a rental for the animation and the cast.

Monsters vs Aliens (2009)

The gas fireplace

When we bought the house five years ago, it came with a large standalone gas fireplace. I always assumed that the previous homeowners bought the fireplace to enhance the value of the house. I grew up with a real fireplace and chimney, but this was different. We’ve used the gas fireplace a few times in the past few years, but it often filled the house with a smell, and it didn’t great a cozy atmosphere. As a result, we left it to take up room in our living room. It primarily held our picture frames and a large painting. At Christmas time, we hung our Christmas stockings from it.

We tried to sell it, but nobody wanted such a large gas fireplace. We wanted to throw it out ourselves, but we couldn’t budge it. We thought that either it was really heavy or it was bolted to the floor. When we had the house painted last year, the painters couldn’t move it, so they painted around it. What to do? Well, two weeks ago, I had a handyman come in to price out how much to demolish it and cart it away. They quoted me $200. While I considered this, the handyman said I needed to call the gas company to shut off the gas valve.

I had the gas company send a guy to come out on a Saturday to shut the gas off. As I chatted with him and told him of our intentions…. lo and behold, he wanted the fireplace. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it, but he’d bring his pickup truck the next day and take it. Wow, and for free — I just had to help him move it. Turns out, the fireplace wasn’t bolted down. It was simply very heavy. On Sunday the next day, it took some time, but he and I slid, carried, and lifted that fireplace onto his truck.

The fireplace is gone

My wife and kids were out, so there was little interruption. After he departed with the fireplace, I quickly grabbed the extra paint and painted the wall. I then vacuumed the carpet, and cleaned up the debris. That’s it, fireplace gone, mission accomplished.

Late this week, I spent three hours rearranging the living room. I moved the tv stand and speakers, couches and tables, and shifted the entire layout of the room. I think what took the longest was pulling up the carpet, and rewiring the surround speakers.

With the layout of the living room rearranged, the room itself feels so much…. “roomier.” More floor space, more room to walk around, and more room for my future “Dad’s chair.” There’s still more to do with the room. I have to:

1.  find and put up some shelves (for the picture frames.)
2. hang up the wall painting.
3. find a media cabinet or shelving for our DVDs and music.
4. find new coffee and end tables.
5. get my “Dad’s chair.”

It doesn’t feel like a never-ending list of things to do. It feels like we’re finally getting there.

In 2009, Warner Bros. released their fourth direct-to-video animated film in their DC Universe animated original movies, featuring Wonder Woman. Titled simply Wonder Woman, it’s your basic origin story featuring Keri Russell as Wonder Woman (Diana), Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor, and Alfred Molina as the big bad in this film — Ares, the god of war. Here’s a summary that I’m openly stealing from IMDB:

In antiquity, the Amazons defeat the war god, Ares, and Zeus charges them to hold him prisoner as eternally young warriors on the hidden island of Themyscira. Centuries later, US Air Force pilot Steve Trevor is lured to crash land on the island and the distraction of that trespass allows Ares to escape. In response, Princess Diana wins the responsibility to both take Trevor home and recapture the fugitive god. Steve Trevor offers to help and together this disparate pair must not only overcome Ares’ efforts to achieve a bloody revenge, but also reconcile their own conflicting world views in an adventure that would be the first for the greatest of the female superheroes.

It’s rated PG-13 due to animated violence and some suggestive material, so I obviously didn’t let the kids watch. It’s a decent film, but there was a bit too much of the Amazons talking about how much men suck. I thought that got a little old, but still a good film.  The film does include Wonder Woman’s fabled “invisible jet”, with no real explanation of why she gets a invisible jet. Why is it invisible, does it need jet fuel, why does it have electronics, or why it has invisible missles?

Wonder Woman (2009)

Another snow storm. We’re running out of room to put the show. Look at the mountain piled up behind our cars.

3rd snow storm this season

I consider the original 1981 Clash of the Titans is a classic. A pure Ray Harryhausen special effects classic. As a kid, what more could you ask for than a movie about fantastical mythological beasts, Greek gods, and a good story. As an adult looking back, the cast was a nice who’s who — Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress (best Aphrodite ever — va va va voom), and Burgess freakin’ Meredith. The story tells a classic tale of a man (demigod really) in love with a woman, and he goes to the Underworld and back to save her.

Which leads me to why I didn’t like the 2010 remake as much. Again, I don’t mind remakes, as it’s okay to experiment and take a different perspective on a story. Life is short, and you never know if the end-product is going to be better or worse. In the remake starring Sam Worthington, the background love story was replaced with a revenge story between Perseus and the Gods. This sort of reminded me of the God of War storyline from the PS3 videogame franchise. In this film, everyone seemed to have a problem with their pantheon of gods, and Perseus specifically wanted revenge on Hades, and Zeus to a lesser degree. I couldn’t get into it. I like a good revenge story, but I didn’t buy this one.

Of course, who cares what I think. Hollywood is working on a 2012 sequel — Wrath of the Titans.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

I pre-ordered LittleBigPlanet 2 a few months ago, and it finally came in earlier this month. I haven’t had time to play much more than the opening introductory levels, but so far, it’s a nice lookin’ game.

LittleBigPlanet 2

First photo of the cast in costume for the X-Men: First Class film in production right now. I’m not sure if I’m underwhelmed or just “whelmed” with this first cast photo.

First photo for X-Men: First Class

From left to right: Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Rose Byrne (Moira MacTaggert), January Jones (Emma Frost), Jason Flemyng (Azazel), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Lucas Till (Havok), Zoe Kravitz (Angel), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), and James McAvoy (Professor Charles Xavier.)

Over the weekend, we finished watching the first season of Fringe, that X-Files-type show created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci. We started watching a few months ago, and I don’t know why I didn’t start watching this series when it first came out in 2008. Of course, it’s been a busy two years since Lily was born, so I can probably forgive myself. Through the magic of rentals and Netflix, we’ve caught up on the first season. We’re watching each episode on Blu-ray, and the show looks gorgeous. Now I get why Blu-ray is better than even upscaled DVD.

Have you watched Fringe? As per IMDB,

A television drama centered around a female FBI agent who is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.

I never watched The X-Files back when it aired in the 90′s, though my sister was more of a fan of the spinoff Millenium. Fringe is a lot like X-Files, as I like the stories, the characters, and the overall arching conspiracy storyline. There are three main characters:

• Anna Torv (who was the voice for the main character in the PS3 exclusive game Heavenly Sword)
• Joshua Jackson (of Dawson Creek fame, though I never watched.)
• Peter Noble (of Peter Jackson’s LoTR fame.)

All three actors are great. I plan to catch up on the 2nd season in the next few weeks, and eventually the 3rd season as well. I know the show has been moved to the Friday night death slot, but I hope it survives. It’s a good show, which means it will get cancelled, but as they old adage goes, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

Fringe cast photo

Homemade pizza

I made my first homemade pizza, using simple ingredients from the supermarket. Not as difficult as I thought, and rather tasty.