Top of the Heap: Schwinn 430

Top of the Heap is a little experiment. If I buy a thing and think other people should too, I'll put it here, and (full disclosure) stuff an Amazon Associates tag into the link so that I get a little referral money from Amazon if people actually buy it.

The item for the day is the Schwinn 430 elliptical machine. I got this a while ago, and I like it quite a bit. It's pretty quiet, seems sturdy enough for 240-pound me, and has a nice stride. It's a good value, having been $599 at Amazon for quite a while now, and the shipping is free (which sure beats dragging it home from the store).

War of the Worlds book covers, 1898 - present

A fellow going by the nom de net of "Dr. Zeus" has a nice collection of War of the Worlds book cover images. Nicely laid out; be sure to look at the collection sorted by design element.

House of Leaves

Began reading Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves yesterday. It's tough to describe, but at the moment it appears to be a book written as if it were a book about a book about a film that doesn't exist about a house that can't exist. Why didn't I hear about this novel back in 2000? More on the story as it develops.

Silent Hill quick take, with some spoilers

I liked the feel of the Silent Hill movie a lot. I enjoyed the little details replicated from the game: the horror-writer street names, Midwich Elementary School, etc. The monsters were spot-on, though perhaps a bit more CGI for the nurses might have been in order, to keep them from looking like the dancers that they clearly were. I even liked some of the differences between the game and the film: the way that the peeling paint of Gray Silent Hill flew off the walls to reveal the rusty chain-link fences of Dark Silent Hill, for example. Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean put in adequate performances, and Alice Krige was, well, Alice Krige.

I didn't care for a couple of strange bits, like the way that Silent Hill was clearly the largest city in West Virginia. With its extensive urban center, it looked like a city of half a million, at least. (The largest is the capital, Charleston, at about 50,000.) Also, it didn't seem as though anyone had an accent.

What I really disliked, though, was the pacing. While the slow discovery of Silent Hill's strangeness worked well at the beginning, some of the slower bits in the latter half of the film were simply boring. The film was just too long (I am actually considering trying my hand at editing out about 20-30 minutes once the DVD comes out).

I also was very impatient with the burst of exposition at the end of the film: the door opens, the screen turns to white, and we're suddenly getting the entire backstory all shoved down our throats all at once. I would have preferred, for example, to see something that made the janitor's bathroom-stall-barbed-wire fate a little more explicable in advance -- perhaps a cryptic note written in blood, or something about his killing that would have pointed to revenge as the reason. Even a remark from one of the people in the church might have helped. As it was, the janitor's body was just another haunted-house fright moment with no particular explanation -- which would have been fine, too -- until getting hit with the big message at the end.

I'd say that folks who like the game will like the movie. Folks who know nothing about the game might sorta like the movie. Extremely demanding viewers will probably hate it.

Secret Underground City For Sale

The UK government had a secret underground complex in Wiltshire called TURNSTILE or Hawthorn, which it declassified in 2004. In 2005, the UK government offered it for sale as surplus. Doesn't sound like there are any buyers yet, which speaks poorly of the Evil Genius population of our times. From a Times article, quoted in the Wikipedia article above:

"The Ministry of Defence is seeking new tenants for a secret underground city, built to shelter the Government in the event of nuclear war, which is now surplus to requirements. The site at Corsham, Wiltshire, is large enough to house 4,000 government personnel. Completed in 1961, it covers hundreds of acres and is connected by ten miles of tunnels. As well as two railway stations and a reservoir, the sunken suburb 120ft (37m) below ground even has a pub."

"Property developers looking for the ultimate place to get away from it all need not apply. The site has a notional value of £5m but there is a catch. It is available only as part of a private finance initiative that involves investing in the military base on the surface above. Already two uses are being considered: a massive data store for City firms or the biggest wine cellar in Europe. More outlandish ideas put forward include a nightclub for rave parties, a 1950s theme park or a reception centre for asylum seekers. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has ruled out any suggestion of using it to store nuclear waste or providing open public access because of the dangers that still lurk below."

The BBC has an online tour of the complex, including videos, pictures, and an interactive map.

Pretty Decent Hokum

A friend of mine emailed me Troy Patterson's review on Slate of the new Doctor Who, now showing on the SciFi Channel.

I actually started to watch the Doctor Who pilot a few months ago, courtesy some people in the UK with little regard for the finer points of legality, but I had to stop abruptly at the point where Rose started to wrestle with a disembodied plastic arm. It looked as though they alternated between shots of the actress vaguely faking "wrestling" with a plain old plastic arm, and shots where a guy portraying the plastic arm squatted out of frame and wiggled his white-painted fingers menacingly at the actress. The scene was so amazingly, embarassingly awful, I just couldn't watch it. Last night, I got around to watching a recording of the show's SciFi channel debut, and made myself endure that scene and watch the rest of the show.

Based only on the pilot, I'd have to say: the new Doctor Who isn't great SF. Folks looking for something of the caliber of the new Battlestar Galactica to replace that show during its hiatus will be very disappointed. Nevertheless, I'd agree with the Slate reviewer that "[Doctor Who is] pretty decent hokum—fast, corny, genial, honest in its schlock."

Doctor Who has always been, at its best, all of those things. (Remember, it was always a kids' show.) I'll keep watching it for now; I think there's room on TV for a little bit of honest schlock.

Night Watch, Valley of the Wolves, Tachiguishi Retsuden

There's a Russian horror movie coming out soon called Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor, or Ночной дозор, in Russian). It's "part 1 of an epic horror trilogy". The sequel, Day Watch, opened to colossal business in Russia this January. It looks like it's got some superficial similarities to the Underworld movies -- an ancient truce between supernatural beings turns into a modern-day war of the monsters -- but it looks quite ambitious. I must see this movie.

Variety's asian film blog, Kaiju Shakedown, has a piece about the subtitles in Night Watch, and the Night Watch trailer is at Apple's movie trailers site. It comes out in NYC this weekend; I haven't located any San Diego showtime info yet, but I did see a poster at the Mission Valley AMC.

A word about how I found Kaiju Shakedown: I was rambling around the web, and I inadvertently wandered into the shoutdown-show area of MSNBC's web site. There was a discussion of a new film, "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq", a Turkish action movie (based on a Turkish TV series) with US bad guys, two of which are played by Billy Zane and Gary Busey. Kaiju Shakedown's author, Grady Hendrix, appeared on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" to discuss the movie. Not too surprisingly, curteous debate was mostly absent. Hendrix talks a bit about the experience on his blog, likening it more to professional wrestling than to actual discussion.

I've always found it interesting how US filmmakers used Soviets as bad guys during the Cold War, not as propaganda per se, but rather because, well, the US audience viewed the USSR as the enemy, and so it was kinda what you would expect. Also, Soviets were viewed as ruthless and amoral in the pursuit of their objectives, and anybody so perceived makes a pretty good villain (or perhaps a nice tainted good guy, if you need one of those). These days, the US government is probably perceived as ruthless and amoral, so it doesn't surprise me that people making movies for a Muslim audience might use caricatures of Americans as their villains. The film is probably a big ol' stinker, but I'd be interested to see it.

I'd additionally recommend Kaiju Shakedown for interesting Asian film bits, such as an item on "Tachiguishi Retsuden" which led to a trailer, which looks just great. Weird, but great.

Nowata, Oklahoma: Savoy Hotel

Quirk remembers this hotel in northeastern Oklahoma as having been closed over 20 years ago. The front section been used most recently as a real estate office. There is evidence that someone may be living in the hotel; there are two mailboxes that refer to "Apartment 212" or something of the sort.

The sign on the side of the hotel advertises "Radium Water Baths" to potential guests. I wonder if the building is actually habitable...

Getting a handle on video card prices and features

Several people have asked me lately about video cards, and here are a couple of useful resources.

Newegg has a nice Excel Spreadsheet cataloguing modern videocards. It doesn't tell you the prices of these cards, but you can cross-reference the monthly Video Card Price Guide over at Sharky Extreme, and get most of the information you'll need to make an informed decision.

Tommy's on Clairemont Mesa now open!

Oh frabjous day.

The delightful greaseness that is a Tommyburger arrives in San Diego.

One double cheeseburger (with chili, natch), hold the tomatoes, pickles, and onions!

"Year of the HTPC" article

A summary of the various HTPC products at CES 2006.

Comic Book Annotation Sites

I've mentioned these to people, and I don't want to have to remember them again, so here they all are for future reference.

Watchmen annotations by Ralf Hildebrand.

Watchment annotations by Doug Atkinson, formatted in html, and a texty version.

Jeff Nevins' comic book annotations (includes his very excellent Kingdom Come annotations). Sometimes his Geocities sites aren't available, but the annotations are mirrored at...

Enjolrasworld.com, "The place for comic book annotations and bibliographies"