i'm not playing civ4

[rone]

And it's not because i'm afraid to see what happens after Elizabeth planted a stack of 7 Redcoat and at least 13 Cavalry units (i say "at least" because the stack ends in an ellipsis) just outside a city i took from her some turns ago (which, in a strange coincidence, is named "Teoihuacan"; i am playing the Aztecs, so how did she end up founding a city with an Aztec name? way i see it, she was asking me to capture it!); i presume that after she's done with that, she'll probably go on to fully remove the rest of my presence from the continent she inhabits.  I hope i can delay her, sue for peace, and get on with maybe shooting for Alpha Centauri before time ends.

Anyway, the real reason i'm not playing is that i want to get a hold of my free time so i can get back to writing (both e&tg and the proto-novel) and reading (since i came back from Las Vegas and finished Pratchett's Thud! and James Rollins's Sandstorm, i've started reading a few pages of the following books but then stopped: Sideways, The Name of the Rose, A Fire Upon the Deep, A Confederacy of Dunces [reread]).

In other news, Kim and i saw Murderball last night and it was quite good.  Tonight we met vito_excalibur and had dinner with her and palecur and amywithani at the local Colombian joint (they were out of Colombian beer! WTF!).

But no writing tonight.  Now, bed.

Comments

A Confederacy of Dunces

[asienieizi.livejournal.com]

I loved A Confederacy of Dunces. I'd heard prior to the hurricane that there was a movie of that being filmed but I haven't heard anything since then on a release date though. My BIL who gave me the book used to show his artwork at a young age around Jackson Square during that time frame. According to him, the delightful eccentricity of the local characters in that area written about in the book is a fairly accurate description.

Re: A Confederacy of Dunces

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think the ACoD movie project died well before the hurricane. I heard for a while that Jack Black was in the running to play Ignatius Reilly, but Will Ferrell eventually got the part (which I don't think would have been right, but never mind), then the whole thing fell through.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I thinking that Jon Lovitz would've been perfect as Ignatius. Or a younger (and alive) Oliver Reed, maybe.

Re: A Confederacy of Dunces

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

There have been many attempts to get things together to do a film of Confederacy of Dunces, but the most recent pre-production was abandoned some months pre-K.

I havn't reread it post-K, but as I remember it almost all the action takes place in the old Crescent, the part of the city that didn't go under water (though I'm not sure which side of St. Claude Santa Battaglia's house was, if it was specified).

BTW, Ignatius' neighborhood movie theater, the Prytania, is still in business. Technically I should say is in business again; it closed about 8 years ago, lamented as the last of the neighborhood single screen theaters in the city to go, but after being vacant for some time and threatened with demolition was bought by a local film buff and reopened. It was the first movie theater in the Metro area to reopen after the storm, and I believe was the only one for over a month! October and November lots of folks enjoying the luxury of going to the movies while they still didn't have power back in their homes yet. I most recently saw King Kong there.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I liked Thud! On the whole, not quite up to the level of Going Postal or Night Watch, but the scenes with Vimes trying to hold it together after the break-in are some of the best and most serious work Pratchett's done.

A Fire Upon the Deep is a great galactic-nerdpocalypse story, though the opening scenes are incomprehensible enough to be rough going. Near the end it has one of the most ingenious Outer Space Big Battels in science fiction.

And you don't need me to tell you what a good book A Confederacy of Dunces is.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I agree with your Thud! assessment.

AFUtD's prologue was uncomfortably dense. I hope it gets better once i get into it, but i finally decided on Sideways, since i already saw the movie and figured it'd be easier reading.

Sometimes i like reading the Percy Walker foreword to ACoD; in itself, it's a lovely story, and it really reflects my own experience with the book (except for the whole manuscript bit).

[nyar.livejournal.com]

I liked A Fire Upon the Deep enough to read the prequel, A Deepness in the Sky which I found to be both more interesting, but less good. This was a while ago, so my memory is somewhat hazy, and it is also before I kept notes on what I was reading :(.

I watched Murderball on New Year's Day. It was kind of a bit sappy for me at points, but overall it was an interesting movie. I am a robot.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

A KILLER ROBOT ON WHEELS!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

My world it shrinketh some more. Ain't that Vito just the rockingest?