(Debby)
Well, Amanda, you know I’m not much for drinking games. So I’m feeling conflicted, because I have been inspired by what may be a Great drinking game. (Or maybe not - I don't really have enough experience to know. But I think it could be Great...)

The key ingredients:
1) people who know and love The Big Lebowski
2) a copy of Tron. Yep, the Disney movie from our distant youth.

Jeff Bridges, the Dude, is the main protagonist in Tron. Every time he seems to be channeling the Dude (says something the Dude would say, sounds like the Dude, is extremely Dude-like in his gestures), take a drink. It’s not non-stop – but every now and then the Dude totally jumps out.

Voila!

(Debby)
(thanks for the post, amanda!)

not so awesome:

- Aliens (the movie) – Yeah, it’s okay, but I don’t feel like it added much to my life. I mean, Sigorney Weaver is awesome. But I actually got a bit bored, and I didn’t like seeing the aliens. Especially that Mother. ew.

- The Boys from Brazil (the book) – When I am knocked off-balance by life, I re-read books. Recently this happened, and I decided to try to break out of at least one mold. So here is a library book, new to me, although written by Ira Levin and I’d read The Stepford Wives so not a complete unknown, but still, a start. The book is about Nazis and genetics and it was a disappointment.

awesome:

- TREASURE ISLAND! (the book) - Man, I am so excited about Robert Louis Stevenson. People! It’s a cracking good adventure. I am thoroughly enjoying it. Great characters!
Side note: I guess all I ever read were watered down re-tellings of Treasure Island (and Kidnapped) they make into kid’s books. Someone needs to stop publishing those things.
Side side note: Do you think of Long John Silver as being swarthy or blonde? Dude, he is totally BLONDE. With an extremely honest and gregarious visage. A total charmer. He’s one-legged, but he doesn’t have a peg leg – he gets around with a crutch. So let’s wipe our idea of him right on out of our heads.

- Alien:Resurrection (the movie) – is AWESOME!! Way on back in the day I saw it and I just didn’t get it. But now I do! Directed by one of the French dudes of the pair who did City of Lost Children and Delicatessan and Amelie, and I just love their lighting and the actors they use and the way they film people and people in motion. Yeah! And guess who wrote it… Joss Wheddon! I did not know that. Total Joss Wheddon character archetypes, themes, even dialogue, and just the way he took on a tired series and built on the backstory to make a brilliant plot. Sigorney Weaver rocks it out, and Winona Ryder at least doesn’t totally drop the ball.

(Debby)

Three Day Road – Joseph Boyden

A really, really well done story. Right up there with Fugitive Pieces. I don’t know what it is about Canadian authors, but they write differently than anyone else. I suppose part of it is that they come from a different country. But UK writers are writing in English also, and yet somehow I don’t sense the same break between US American writing and theirs. Good Canadian writing – Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Anne Michaels, Rudy Wiebe and the other really good “culturally-Mennonite” writers…somehow it is different from other nationalities, and it is different in a similar way. It achieves a very specific resonance, or at least it does within me.

This is an excellent book of war – World War I, a Canadian Cree fighting for the Allies in Europe. I don’t tend to take well to war books – they tend to aim to show the ‘grittiness’ of war, but then veer off into sentiment and reassurances. This book is honest and respectful and a really well told story.

(Debby)
Oh, hey, did you hear a THUMP a few weeks ago? Yeah, that was me. Falling out of my chair. When Amanda pointed out that the Edward James Olmos of Battlestar Galactica was the same Edward James Olmos from Bladerunner. MAN! I totally should have figured that out on my own! There are only so many AWESOME and spectacularly ugly and yet attractive men acting out there.