Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

Dialogues from the deep
The patrons at our theatre sometimes expect us to read their minds, and they’ll often proceed to get annoyed at us when we make it clear to them that we can’t. (I suspect this is true for anybody working in the service industry.)

“I want ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

My Fair Lady stuck in my head
World of Warcraft is my first MMO. Before I got broadband and took the plunge, I was worried about being totally consumed into it and lose my life with no recourse. There are stories of marriages destroyed and jobs lost to WoW. Though it ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

Yanni is not the same as Raffi?
After a slim two weeks of rehearsal of tantrums and tribulations, we performed Anton Chekhov’s The Bear in front of a small, appreciative festival crowd. It went well, considering all we had to work with, and it being my first ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

MC Hammer must have OCD
Moviegoers are notorious for their indecisiveness. You don’t know how many times a day we get guys who show up at the theatre, stand in line for five minutes, get to the cash, and still not know what they want.

I encountered a group of kids the ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

cellular, bananular
I beat Half-Life 2 for the first time the other day on my Xbox 360. The story seems intentionally obfuscatory and dodgy and not very satisfying. The gameplay is fine, but it’s so rigidly scripted that there’s no lateral movement allowed - it’s a ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

Saugeen make me hungry
Another ridiculously popular movie! Howard watches it. Guess what? He wasn’t really impressed by it. He tried.

300 suffers from the same problem that many CG-constructed action flicks do: it looks stylish but there’s really little emotional ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

like a Storybook Princess
Evidently, 300 is not a film of men. When a piece of entertainment can stir up the type of zeal that prompts fisticuffs and firstborn auctions, you can safely assume that forces beyond the natural are involved. A ticket to 300 grants you not ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

Of lambs and llamas
The original idea was to get the Internet working for our house guests, maybe in time for the Christmas season. Maybe. If I prayed hard enough or spent enough time on the phone with tech support. Well, it just seems like some kind of ludicrous ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

Delicious escargot heartburn
The most common response I get when I tell people I’m part of my school’s cheerleading team is surprise. Most people I talk to are pretty tactful about it, so they might nod and smile, or pretend to momentarily lose their hearing.

“What? ( Read more... )

Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.

we need more morgues colonel
It is not in my usual collection of stratagems to respond directly to reader comment, but here is an ache that demands a happy dissolution.

I apologize. Perhaps I have not been sufficiently clear in my previous battle report. There is no “ ( Read more... )