The Razor's Edge

For those of you who haven't seen the trailer for Iron Man 2, run over to either here or here and take a look. Its like totally awesome!... The music from the middle part of that trailer (where Mickey Rourke is working on his Whiplash armor) is what I have posted above. The song is AC/DC's 'The Razor's Edge'. I can't say that I've listened to much AC/DC music before but this song definitely helped me crawl through the snow and slush to work on this lovely Sunday...

Widget Update

Just wanted to bring some attention to a slight update on the sidebar widgets: I have gotten rid of the Firefox 3.0 widget as it just didn't really seem relevant to me anymore. I'm still a fan of Firefox but the browser doesn't really need me advertising it and besides, its all the way up to version 3.5 at this point. (For the record, I have been testing out the beta version of Google Chrome for Mac but I'm not entirely happy w/ it. I'll wait until it comes out in a full Mac version before I cast a full judgment on it though...) I have replaced this widget w/ a new Twitter widget. I still have my Twitter feed in the sidebar but I wanted to have something a bit more obvious in terms of anyone who might want to subscribe to my Twitter feed available. (I also wanted to put in a new widget and this seemed like the perfect addition...) Finally I've moved the Delicious Bookmark link to the bottom of the widget list and tweaked it a little bit.

Happy Chanukah 2009

Today is the first night of Chanukah and I wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Hanukkah!

Here are my thoughts on the holiday from previous years: 2007 and 2008.

Reading World War Z

By the way, this happens to be my 300th post here at the Fortress of Solitude. I didn't think much about it when 100 and 200 posts passed by but 300 is a major number, especially for a blog that started out mostly to fulfill a class requirement.



I actually read World War Z when it first came out in Hardcover and then again when it was released in Paperback. I enjoyed it enough that I even got the audio book version to listen to on my way home from work. (FYI, the audio version is abridged; whats there is well done, by a very good voice cast but its still only most of the book and not all of the book.) Overall its an interesting take on a zombie story; its told a couple years after a worldwide zombie war has finished, w/ the author going around conducting various interviews about the before, during, and after of the conflict for a UN commission. The interviews in terms of tone and in terms of the feel the author is going for is basically a zombie rerun of World War Two.

I'm not a big fan of zombies but I do enjoy reading alternate history so the book really sucked me into it. The scenery and the characters are well done, giving a very realistic feel to the events. The characters sound like real people who are reacting to the whole world basically going to hell around them. If there is any one real major distraction to this book, its how heavily the author lets his personal politics get involved in the storyline. Its not just an apparent nostalgic fetish for the New Deal but bits here and there that pop up and shock the reader out of the feeling that the world the book constructs is realistic. Its how completely he allows his very clear left wing political tilt shine through in the book. For instance, the wartime administration of zombie occupied America is suggested to be Colin Powell and Howard Dean. Really? The country falls apart and the secret to its salvation is a bipartisan administration w/ those two in the top two spots? This book was originally written when those two men were still somewhat politically relevant but even at the hight of that time, this was still just absolutely silly. Another major plot in the book is that the threat of a zombie apocalypse suddenly brings a speedy end to the Arab Israeli conflict, complete w/ a reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians. Not only that but the terms he lays out to get that (Israel completely abandoning the entire city of Jerusalem AND inviting not just every Jew on Earth but also every Palestinian to resettle in the country as it placed itself under isolated quarantine) are so beyond the suspension of disbelief that you can see the politics well up in the author as he wrote it. Believe me, even w/ a zombie apocalypse no Jewish government in Israel is ever going to give up sovereignty over Jerusalem; hell, Israel is largely made up of two clusters of population, one around Tel Aviv and the other around Jerusalem. The situation as the book lays it out is something only someone ignorant of the situation on the ground would put together. (Same goes for his "Israeli Civil War", apparently between the secular and religious over the abandonment of Jerusalem; there'll sooner be Hasidim at the Wailing Wall having an all pork banquet before that ever happens...)

Its a shame too because he does put up some interesting developments as the book goes on; the lengths that the surviving governments go to stabilize their nations and hold on power, the adoption of the South African Redekker Plan (and the fate of the actual Redekker character which was an interesting twist, especially in the audio version), the developments in Russia and the Iran/Pakistan Nuclear War are all elements that draw a readers attention. But even then the author can't help but let politics spill in; the idea that an America that is half overrun w/ zombies is going to play nice w/ Cuba to the point that it can become an economic powerhouse rather than just take the place over outright is silly. In the end, I'd recommend taking this out from a library rather than buying it but that if you are looking for a zombie story to pass the day away w/, this will certainly meet your needs.

Backups and Considerations

Yesterday I decided to spend some time backing up the Fortress; I've known for the entire time I've had my blog up here, that essentially anyone who uses Blogger is at the tender mercy of Google, which can at any time block and delete any blog w/o any sort of reason or explanation. Now if the Fortress ever did disappear, I would basically just start something new for myself somewhere else; but I've invested some time and effort in creating all the posts that are available here and I don't want to see that work completely disappear because some corporate suit suddenly gets miffed at random. In fact, I would suggest that anyone who maintains a blog through a free service such as Google or Wordpress, should BACK IT UP. That way they don't have to live w/ the frustration and regret of not having done so. I have saved an xml copy of the Fortress as well as keeping a backup copy of the site on Wordpress so that I won't be banging my head against the way in case of the worst. (Of course in my case I'm being prepared or paranoid if you prefer since the Fortress generates little traffic and is basically off on the region of the map labelled "There Be Dragons Here"... Still better safe than sorry.)

The Gift of Learning... :-)

Since I work as an Academic Librarian, I've never had to visit a public school and do a book talk but I just found this little short to be hilarious... :-)

A Review of Pixar's UP

Normally I put in a spoiler warning but given that I just saw this on DVD, its been out for a long while, and the title to this post says "A Review of Pixar's UP", I'm gonna say that its pretty obvious there are going to be some spoilers ahead.


Anyway, Best Buy opened up a new branch in Union Square this weekend and while I was there checking it out, I saw that they had UP on sale. Since I hadn't seen it but heard great things about it and since Pixar has only really failed me utterly once (Ratatouille) in comparison to the total failure that the rest of modern day Hollywood is, I decided to pick up a copy. And I have to say right now that I was not disappointed. This is an awesome movie that I heartily recommend to everyone.

The story in short is about an old man named Carl Fredrickson. As a boy he was obsessed w/ adventures and particularly w/ one of the famous adventurer of his time, Charles Muntz. Walking home one day he meets a girl named Ellie who is equally focused on finding adventure and has the same hero as him. They become friends and later on, fall in love, get married and build a life together. Unfortunately for all their dreams of travel and adventure, real life always seemed to get in the way. In this way time passed and they never got around to having that grand adventure; and in time Ellie got sick and died, leaving Carl alone w/ only the house they lived to hold onto. As the movie starts, a developer has his eye on Carl's house and he refuses to sell; so the developer, after an incident between Carl and a Construction Workman, has him declared a menace who is in turn ordered by the court to move to a nursing home. Carl, on his last night at home, decides that he is going to take that adventure he and Ellie always meant to have, and float the house down to South America, to set it up where Ellie always dreamed it should be. So he attaches hundreds of balloons to the house and floats it away. And in the usual 'Odd Couple' tradition, he gets a stowaway in the form of a chubby boy scout named Russell who is desperate to help him out to win his merit badge for, well... basically helping out an elderly person.

The bulk of the story is the development of Carl and his contrast against all those who are surrounding him. He starts the movie off, broken, old, and driven out of all he has. The memory of failure haunts him, failure in that he thinks he held his wife back from having her adventure, that he didn't help her have it. As the movie goes on, he remains physically old, but his spirit begins to really get younger w/ every step. He discovers that Ellie had no regrets about her life and that she saw the life he had w/ her as an adventure; her last written thought wasn't about regret but thankfullness and a desire for him to continue on to his own adventures even if she couldn't be there with him. Russell, the chubby boy scout, is driven through the adventure he shares w/ Carl by his desire to win his absent father back into his life. But he helps to bring a child's innocence to the atmosphere and make Carl recognize that there is adventure in even an ordinary lived life. The movie draws the two of them together, making Russell into the grandson Carl never had and Carl into the grandfather/father figure that Russell lost.

In contrast to all this is the figure of Charles Muntz, the adventurer, who spent his life fruitlessly searching for a bird so that he could redeem his tarnished reputation. (He brought a skeleton back home but was accussed of fraud; he vowed not to return w/o a living specimen to show he was telling the truth.) He lives surrounded by his dogs but is essentially a madman, driven insane by his quest. He murdered and attempts to murder in the course of the film, all so he could capture a bird that nobody really cares about. Outside of Carl, after all, nobody even remembers him. He's an excellent counterpoint to Carl, a man who has lived his life completely devoted to adventure, to the point where he has nothing. The ultimate fate of Muntz was just given what was happening when he finally did meet it.

There were three particular parts that deeply moved me in this movie; the first was the opening flashback to Carl and Ellie's life together. They meet, marry, and love in the most touching way. Several moments definitely bring a tear to my eyes, including the moment its revealed that Ellie can't have children, and in particular when she collapses walking up a hill. That second moment, where its clear that she can't go on anymore, and Carl runs to her, his hat flying off his head is deeply moving. The section eventually ends w/ him at her funeral and then entering their house in darkness. And all this is only the first ten minutes of the movie. The second part that moved me was later on, when Carl has finally gotten the house to Paradise Falls. He sits inside and looks through Ellie's scrapbook w/ tears in his eyes. The animation in particular caries the emotion though, as the watery eyes are not particularly noticeable but slowly catch your attention. At that moment, its revealed that he only looked in the book up to the first couple of pages and never at the rest because he had assumed they were blank, since they were meant to catalog the adventures Ellie had planned on having. Here he finally does, and sees that she had filled it w/ pictures of them together throughout the years. At that moment, he realizes she looked upon their whole lives as a great adventure. Its then that you could see a cloud lift from his heart and his whole tone and demeanor change for the rest of the movie. He becomes alive again, animated in a way that he hadn't been since Ellie had died. The final part that really moved me was Dug the Dog. He appears in several parts and unlike normal dogs, he is able to talk thanks to a collar invented by Muntz. His dialog is hilarious as he's a particularly friendly dog and to be honest he sounds exactly like you'd think a friendly, loving dog would sound. There are several great parts w/ Dug but my particular part is after Carl begins to have his change of heart that I mentioned above. Carl sets out to save Russell from Muntz and as he gets his house airborn again, he hears a knock on the door. When he answers it, he sees Dug who has returned after Carl had earlier shouted at him and called him a bad dog. Dug looks up, so cute and vulnerable and loveable and tells Carl "I hid under porch because I love you! Can I stay?" The voicework is so well done and sounds so innocent and kind and gentle, that it can't help but touch your heart. If I ever get a dog, I would like to have one like Dug.

Overall I found this movie to be touching; its about the redemption of lost souls, about how even a life of ordinary pursuits and pleasures can be as important as a life spent wandering the world, about how important it is to remain connected to people you care about, how important fathers and sons (technically here grandfather figure and grandson figure but you get my drift) are to helping each other stand strong and straight... Definitely recommended.

The Problem W/ Time Machines

Given the title, I thought this was be a little more of an active video but honestly by the end I was pretty much cracking up... For the record, I'd probably be the friend witnessing all this go down... :-)

Anniversaries This Week

Well, as promised, here is a major update for the Fortress. Enjoy! :-)

This week has been a major one for anniversaries; more specifically we have the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the 91st anniversary of the end of World War One. (Its the 90th anniversary if you count the end of that war from when the US Senate declared it over which was sometime in 1919 rather than when fighting in Europe actually stopped on November 11th 1918.) I was going to post on each of these events separately during the week but I just couldn't find enough time to do so. What I'll do instead is have a short comment on each of these events here:

Kristallnacht - This event which in English translates to "Night of Broken Glass" was the 1938 state sponsored and sanctioned pogrom against the Jews of Germany. You can click here for the specific details but the important thing to keep in mind is that the reason to remember this event is that it was a major tipping point on the path to the Shoah. These days, outside of the Jewish community, the world tends to associate the date of Kristallnacht w/ an event that fell on its 51st anniversary - the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Armstice Day/Veterans Day - Armstice Day is just that - the day that fighting stopped on the Western Front of the First World War. This happened on November 11th 1918 at 11am. Its was celebrated as such in the United States until 1954 when the celebration was expanded to cover all veterans. That was when the day was renamed Veterans Day. I stopped by the Veterans Day parade in NYC after my shift ended today and I just want to give a shout out to all the veterans who have fought and died to protect this country and the great ideals and Constitution that give the it meaning.

1989 Berlin Wall - On the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1989, the Berlin Wall was breeched and people from East Berlin were finally able to freely cross into West Berlin. The event is more significant though, in that it marks the fall of the Communist Bloc and ultimately the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union which folded up shop a year later. I remember actually watching the Berlin Wall come down on TV but at the time I didn't think much about it. Looking back on it its simply amazing that the Soviet Bloc would collapse in such a largely bloodless manner. Most empires that close up shop like the Soviet Union did usually do so in a very bloody manner; in this case we, meaning most of the world, got off pretty lucky.

Sesame Street - Google has been celebrating this all week and I did enjoy Sesame Street a lot growing up. Plus the whole thing inspired me to look up some clips on Youtube which was a lot of fun. And of course how could I not go on record as saying that I most identified w/ Grover, looked up to Cookie Monster, thought that the Count had rhythm, and that Oscar is a part of my mafia. Seriously. :-p

An Overdo Update

An substantial update is planned for later today. (I haven't been meaning to neglect the Fortress but as everyone knows, life can sometimes get in the way... If you're interested in daily material, check out my Twitter account.)