The corn maze.. four went in expecting only a good morning's fun...

... and four came out, completely satisfied with the entire thing.

OK, not a good set up for a horror film, but an accurate description of our trip to Ardenwood's corn maze. Kirsten and I met up with kevin_standlee and his ever-stunning wife Lisa a little after 1000, and had a great time exploring the maze. Numerous RPG references were made, along with other SF and popular culture jokes.

After the maze, we decided to take a ride on the park's horse-drawn train. Hanging out with two train geeks for this portion was fun. Learned a lot from listening to their stories. Jigs the Horse did an admirable job of pulling all us kids around the park. Then we just wandered around. Met some animals (Kiri petted a pig, and I apologized to some chickens for having a relative for lunch) and just admired the place.

After a couple of hours, Kiri and I were both starting to wear down, so we said our goodbyes and headed towards home (with a detour to Home Depot so I could pick up some new gloves and check out socket sets.)

Now all I have on my schedule is some laundry, watching The Rookie, and maybe firming up a few details on the Blimps.

I need this film on DVD

( What B-Movie Badass Am I? )

Books and movies.

Despite my lack of posting on the topic, I am still reading and watching movies (Netflix rocks.) Here are some brief reviews.

I think I'm done with my Greg Bear phase. Read Eon and The Anvil of Stars and while both books were good, I finally put my finger on what it is about his writing the bothers me. I can't connect with his characters. I honestly don't care if they live or die, and without that connection the books become travelogues through some very interesting spaces.

Followed those two up with another book that turned out to be rather disappointing. Homeward Bound by Harry Turtledove. This is the last (hopefully) in the "Worldwar" series. The concept is fun: aliens invade in 1942. But they are only slightly ahead of us technologically, and based their invasion plans on scouting missions made during the Crusades. So they are badly shocked to find us flying around and shooting at each other, and then at them. The first four books were good, the second set (Colonization) added a few wrinkles before really just running out of steam. Homeward Bound is set mostly on Home, home world of The Race and covers the arrival of an American ship there. More fun cultural clashes, and some good politics but the big secret is so poorly disguised that the first time the fact that the Americans were hiding some breakthrough in physics I immediately guessed what was going to happen. This book just sputters to an end. The entire thing had the feel of something that Dr. Turtledove felt he had to write, to tie up some loose ends.

Another long running series has a new entry: At All Costs, the latest Honor Harrington epic from David Weber. I really think this is the last Honor Harrington book. They'll be more in the setting, but Honor really is suffering from Jack Ryan syndrome.. she's too powerful to be interesting. Good enough read, and I was interested in some of the plot twists.

Onto the movies.

Netflix has now graced me with three films that I've watched and returned. Two were old favorites, one was one I meant to see in theaters but missed.

Titanic. Laugh all you want; I love this movie. Not for the cheesy love story, but for the details of the ship and the era.

Rock'n'Roll High School. Ah, a great throwback to my teen years, and endless nights at the Friday Midnight Movie. Very little plot, low budget, but its got the Ramones!

Miracle. Hey, a sports movie I haven't seen. I'm not a big hockey fan, but clearly remember the showdown between the USA and the Soviet Union in Lake Placid. I can still remember lying on the living room floor hearing Al Michaels make his immortal call...

The movie does a great job of showing what it took to take a group of college kids who had never played together and forge them into a group that could defeat the best team in the world. Never maudlin, and with a great sense of humor, the film is an excellent look at quite possibly the biggest upset in sports history. And well shot. Even though everyone probably knows how the game ends, I was cheering for every goal, and on the edge of my seat as the camera focused on the puck skittering along the boards as Michaels calls Eleven seconds, you got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now. Morrow up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? Yes!

Nice touch in the closing credits. As each player is shown we find out what the player is doing now.

Just sign here... (Concordant setting)

Getting away from the blimps for a second, I was thinking about making indentured servitude part of the setting.

Historically, this was a common way for those too poor to pay the cost of passage to the New World to make the trip. A formal agreement for a period of time where the indentured person worked for the family that paid his/her way over. I could see this becoming big as we move into space.

It would of course be tightly regulated (and an entire arm of the legal profession would spring up around it) but it could make for some fun plot points.

Any opinions?