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Some time over the past couple of weeks we finished Blue Dragon, which is a JRPG on the Xbox 360. I got it as a Christmas present and it was a lot of fun. It’s a single-player game, so we took turns playing it. It has some gameplay features that are really cool. The graphics look really good on a standard def TV. I guess another play through is called for now that I have an HDTV to play on. Besides, I want to get some of those achievements we missed the first time around. The guide for this game is great. It’s one of the best that I’ve used recently. I just wish they had included maps of the Overworld areas.

One thing that will stand out is the boss fight song. They play the same song during every boss fight. And it’s kind of a short song, so they loop it over and over again. I did some digging around and I found out that the name of the song is “Eternity” and it is sung by Ian Gillan. Ian Gillan is the lead singer of Deep Purple. Remember that song “Smoke on the Water”? That’s Deep Purple. “Eternity” is more amusing than anything else, but it does start to get on your nerves after a while.

Last week I got my first HDTV.  I had been thinking about it every since I got an Xbox 360.  It wasn’t a big deal for me if movies and TV weren’t in HD, but I wanted to see what games looked like.  I got a 42-inch Vizio.  I had originally planned on getting the 32-inch Vizio, but I changed my mind.  This TV is replacing a 27-inch CRT, so it’s a major step up.  It’s almost too big for the space it’s in.  The TV is fine so far and it looks great when I’m playing video games.  However, my the DirecTV is standard def and sometimes it doesn’t look great.  A few DVDs I’ve tried don’t look so good either.  It looks like it may be time to upgrade more equipment.  I’m still very happy with the TV though.

Lately we’ve been watching season 1 of Dexter. Oh wow! What an incredible show this is! Dexter is about a forensics blood splatter analyst who lives a secret life as a serial killer. The twist is that he only kills bad people. I guess I really get into the dark shows these days. So far we’ve always been eating when watching it, which is weird considering some of the stuff seen onscreen. Dexter is such an interesting character. Almost everyone on that show is at least a little crazy. Looks like I might be ordering Showtime before the next season starts.

I haven’t had the best string of luck lately. I watched Surface, which is another canceled series. It was pretty good, but I can see why it was canceled. The storyline seemed to move fairly slowly in the beginning, but it got better at the end. So some weird things are happening in the oceans and a new species is discovered. You find out some interesting secrets as you go along. It wouldn’t mind knowing what was going to happen now or finding out all the secrets, but I’m not beaten up over it.

Over Christmas break I started watching season 1 of Sleeper Cell, which was a series that aired on Showtime. I finally got around to finishing it yesterday. It’s about a Muslim FBI agent whose task is to infiltrate a sleeper cell planning an attack in America. The box said that it’s better than 24, but I don’t think so. It’s ok, but some of the episodes did seem to drag on a little bit. I don’t if I’ll bother watching season 2. It won’t be anytime soon if I do.

Season 1 of Robot Chicken was hilarious. Each episode is about 10 minutes long and the sketches are mostly short. It’s the perfect kind of show for the ADD crowd. I plan to rent season 2 and then probably download season 3 from iTunes.

My first book of the New Year is Playing for Pizza, which is a short novel by John Grisham. This is his third short novel and the second one in a row that is football-related. I like these short novels because they are SHORT and they are a break from his legal thrillers. PfP is about a third-string NFL quarterback who blows a big playoff game and afterwards nobody in the NFL wants him. He ends up playing for the Parma Panthers in the Italian version of the NFL. Most of the Italian players don’t get salaries, but instead get pizza and beer after the games. I guess I’m just not as big of a football fan as I used to be, so I don’t think I enjoyed this as much as I would have 3 or 4 years ago. The football/team bonding scenes were okay…nothing mindblowing. The love story part of the book was a little boring and I glossed over some of it. Grisham spends a lot of time making me hungry talking about wine and food and it’s obvious that he has spent some time in Italy (he confirms it in the back of the book). Yes, there is a real Parma Panthers team. Did you know that Parmesan cheese gets its name from that place? Since I’m a Grisham fan, I’m glad that I read it, but it’s not my favorite Grisham book.

• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Watchmen, Alan Moore
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I have had a nice, relaxing Christmas Break. I spent more time in Jackson than I have in a long time. What did I get?

• Blue Dragon
• Blue Dragon strategy guide
• Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
• a bottle of cologne is coming (I think I asked for Prada for Men)

The Pearl Jam fan club Christmas single came in the mail today. We usually don’t get them until January or February, but the fan club people did say they were trying to get the singles out ealier this year. Once again, I won’t be able to listen to it right away because I don’t own a record player.

Tonight I’m finishing up my annual viewing of The Lord of the Rings with The Return of the King. I’m not in the mood to go out and party. This will be a lot of fun.

My last book of 2007 is Dreamcatcher by Stephen King. It’s not my favorite Stephen King book, but it’s not that bad. It’s about these 4 kids who save a kid with Down’s syndrome from bullies. They consider this act to be the best thing they ever did and they remain friends for years because of it. Years later when they are on their annual hunting trip, weird stuff happens. It involves aliens, telepathy, etc. It’s an interesting story. It took a little while to get into as usual and after I got into it there were times when I was bored. I think I’m a little tired of reading Stephen King books. Something about his style gets on my nerves after a while and I’ve read several of his books over the past couple of years.

Yes, there is a movie based on this book and I plan on watching it. The movie was mentioned on a podcast that I was watching a few days ago and it was described as the worst movie ever. It has some actors in it that I like. Hopefully it won’t be too bad.

I can’t wait to get to something really good. I’ve already started a reading list for 2008.

• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Watchmen, Alan Moore
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I watched the last 2 episodes of Journeyman over the weekend. They were both saved on my DVR. I really wished more people had watched it. It’s sad to see it go. Maybe it’ll come back in some form. Early in the season, I found my attention wandering during the episodes. Later on, the show got much better and I didn’t have trouble staying focused.

I saw the pilot of Life before the season started and didn’t like any of it except for the final scene. Since then I’ve read a few times that it had gotten better and I found out my brother-in-law liked the show. I’m about 4 episodes in and I think it’s pretty good. I’ll keep watching.

I’ve blew through what I had left of season 2 of The Unit these past few days. I don’t watch a lot of shows like this, but I think this one is a great show. I had trouble making myself stop watching. When I got to the season finale, I wished that I had downloaded the season 3 episodes from Amazon Unbox before I left.

With this writers’ strike going on, I’ll have time to get caught up on The Unit and Life. I think my next project will be a show that’s not on the air anymore, but who knows.

John and I played Super Mario Bros. 3 on the virtual console. This was the first Mario game that I actually beat. The cartoon based on this game was my favorite Mario game. Playing it reminded me just how good it was. Most levels went by pretty easily. Some levels were pretty hard. It seems like I remember reading somewhere that they used to make games harder to artificially inflate the length. Oh well. It was a lot of fun to play. We skipped come of the levels and it took us about 4 hours to beat it. Remember when you could beat games that quickly.