We went down on Sunday to see my mom for Mother's Day. We went to this restaurant which she likes - well, I do, too. They have fabulous, mostly Caribbean-style seafood but good steaks and appetizers as well. She and I had these luscious raspberry martinis, too - I think they were called French martinis, but I'm not sure that's a specific thing or just this restaurant's designation. Afterward, we hung out on her back porch (she and I drinking wine) which was lots of fun until my allergies overrode my meds.

The interesting thing about Mother's Day was that while we were gone, someone came and removed all the wooden boards that had been left leaning up against the Skanky Neighbor House. I think I'm going to start referring to it as the Curséd House, since there haven't been any actual Skanky Neighbors in residence in nearly three years. But anyway, the lumber disappeared. Technically, I don't know for a fact that they didn't move it inside one of the rooms, but given the history of that place, I am much more inclined to believe that someone bought supplies, delivered, unloaded and left them, then returned to move them elsewhere instead of actually utilizing any of them in a repair. Nothing that goes on over there makes any kind of logical sense to me...

Almost a week between postings - sigh. It's discouraging sometimes because I very much want to be a more conscientious blogger and this time, it wasn't for a lack of content. I have several cool things to relate. But time has a way of getting away from me, even more so than usual the last few days.

Going back to last Thursday: I took a day off from work, partly for mental health purposes and partly because we had something cool to do that evening which started at 7PM. I don't like being stuck in traffic any day, but a day when I had something fun to do would have been even worse, so I used a vacation day and played Final Fantasy XII most of the day. Then we went to Variety Playhouse for Alton Brown's book signing for "Feasting on Asphalt". WHOOO!

Each ticket included a signed copy of the book, a Q&A session and screening of the "River Run" season of the show. I have to give mad props to AB or whomever in his organization masterminded this because it was done really well. As each person entered, they were given a numbered ticket, half of which was dropped into a bucket for prize raffles. While we waited for the author, there was a slideshow of photos from the show along with music. I tried to take some photos but pictures of a picture on a flat-screen in a darkened theatre didn't turn out so well (go figure). Plus, every time there was something cool of which I wanted a photo, by the time my camera had turned on, considered its options and decided that it would, in fact, take a picture, the slide had switched to something else. But anyway, it was entertaining to watch.

Then Alton Brown came out and instead of reading from the book, he did an informal Q&A. I liked this for several reasons. One, I'm going to read the book anyway, don't really need someone reading it to me, and it was much more diverting to listen to his witty ripostes and off-the-cuff stories. He is very intelligent and funny, so I enjoyed his answers that much more.

Lady: [long, drawn-out tale of her oven being broken and having to use the toaster oven for three weeks, blah blah blah,] and I was just wondering, what's the most creative thing you've ever made in a toaster oven?
Alton: Toast. No, let me elaborate: cheese toast. Because really, doesn't the best toast come from a toaster? So, yeah, cheese toast.

Kid: Every time I make your angel food cake when I invert it over the bottle, it falls apart. How come?
Alton: Ummm - you're doing it wrong????

It was like that.

To continue with praise for the book-signing organizers, following the Q&A the second purpose of our numbered tickets was revealed when instead of everyone crowding into a huge long line and all standing there for hours waiting to get their books signed, they called numbers in groups of twenty. For those remaining seated, there were screenings of the show and lots of prize raffles (t-shirts, kitchen gadgets, hats, mugs, Alton Brown band-aids). Another thing they did was that as we'd entered and been given a book, each book had a Post-It note on the front. You wrote on the Post-It the name to whom you wanted Alton to sign the book, saving so much time spelling, spelling back, confirming, etc. It was so much better than just standing in a queue for ages!

This is the best part, though. See, my husband Alan knew AB way back in the day, before he had a show (much less two) on Food Network. They were more than acquaintances but less than BFFs, so I'd asked Alan if he planned to reintroduce himself. Whenever we talked about it, he demurred by saying, "Ah, he'd have no reason to remember me," or similar. Call me prejudiced, but I think my husband is quite memorable. I could tell he wasn't going to say anything, preferring to get his book signed and leave without calling attention to himself. Alan's wife, however, felt no such compunction.

Once we got to the front of the line, Alton was making small talk with each person as he signed their books. He thanked us for coming out as I handed him my book, then read the Post-It and as he started to write asked, "Are you Helly?"

"Yes, I am," I replied, "And I'm married to Alan, who knew you a very long time ago in [city] when he cheffed at [restaurant] where your then-girlfriend worked." Alton did a double-take, because like Alan said, you'd have to truly know him or be the most vigilant Alton Brown stalker ever to unearth not where he worked over a decade ago, but where his girlfriend worked. This is where I was very impressed with Alton Brown's character because instead of barely looking up from his writing and saying, "Oh yeah man, how's it going, good to see you again," he put down his pen and fixed Alan with this intense, steely stare.

He stared at Alan for several seconds and then you could literally see the recognition spreading over his face. "Yes! Yes! Wow, that's going back quite a ways!" Then they chit-chatted for a couple of minutes over mutual friends, working in the restaurant business in that area, stuff like that. I thought it was really cool that he remembered Alan, but even cooler was that he honestly did; he took a moment and thought about it instead of just giving us a 'yeah, sure, here's your book'. Good character impresses me even more than good macaroni and cheese, and damn! AB's recipe is some good macaroni and cheese!

P.S. Buy his book! It's well-written, has some great recipes and photos, is immensely entertaining and all proceeds go to save starving children and dogs in the AB household.

I'm not sure this even qualifies as a book review so much as a rant, but (as I shall point out later) I am fully prepared to accept most, or at least some, of the blame for the way I did NOT connect with this book, so - onward! Into the valley of death rode the somewhat less than Six Hundred!

I did not think it was even possible for me to be bored spitless by a book about football, but I was wrong. "Among the Thugs" proved exactly how wrong I could be. At first glance - which was when I saw the book, belonging to Alan, sitting unread-by-me on a bookshelf - I thought it would be even better than "Committed", by Mark St. Amant, because it involved real (as opposed to fantasy) football and, even better, English football. Admittedly, this was 100% my fault for not realizing that the book was not about football, but about football hooligan violence. My bad.

Still - somewhere on the intarweb I once read a synopsis of Edith Wharton's novel "Ethan Frome", which stated in its entirety, "There was a man named Ethan Frome. His life sucked." Well, there you have it - that's all there is, that's all that need - or can - be said. Yes, of course, one could elaborate, one could restate that situation in a variety of ways and flesh it out with any number of details, but even if one were to wax poetic for more than the 180 pages it takes Ms. Wharton, one would simply be paraphrasing, reiterating and restating the central and only point, which is: there was a man named Ethan Frome. His life sucked.

"Among the Thugs", however, is a far more complex endeavor than "Ethan Frome", requiring not two sentences, but entire TABLES to properly summarize. Here you go - begin each endeavor with "Much against my better judgment, I found myself at--" and then pick one item from each of the 3 columns.

Old Trafford	OMG lads were drinking!	a crowd gathered!
Millwall (Bermondsey)	OMG lads were drinking!	a crowd gathered!
Stamford Bridge	OMG lads were drinking!	a crowd gathered!
White Hart Lane	OMG lads were drinking!	a crowd gathered!
Upton Park (Boleyn Ground)	OMG lads were drinking!	a crowd gathered!
St. James’ Park	OMG lads were drinking!	a crowd gathered!

Now pick one from the next 3 columns! Mix 'n' match! Have a blast!

violence ensued	nothing happened	it seemed like there might be violence but then nothing happened
violence ensued	nothing happened	it seemed like there might be violence but then nothing happened
violence ensued	nothing happened	it seemed like there might be violence but then nothing happened
violence ensued	nothing happened	it seemed like there might be violence but then nothing happened
violence ensued	nothing happened	it seemed like there might be violence but then nothing happened
violence ensued	nothing happened	it seemed like there might be violence but then nothing happened

Now (you're almost there, without having spent money, ordered it or having read it! Go, you!) pick one from each of the last three columns:

the police showed up	then some more nothing happened	I felt sad.
the police showed up	then some more nothing happened	I was confused.
the police showed up	then some more nothing happened	I read “The Guardian”.
the police showed up	then some more nothing happened	I felt sad.
the police showed up	then some more nothing happened	I was confused.
the police showed up	then some more nothing happened	I understand the plight of wommyn – and I felt sad.

And there you are: the entirety of the narrative (minus pesky details) of "Among the Thugs"! I presume that in amongst all of this, matches were held; teams won, others lost, some tied; Tommy Docherty scored some goals and Ron Atkinson put a few in the "W" column for My Team - that is, at least presumably, for none of these things are actually addressed in the book.

But I'm prepared to take some of the blame - I did read the book jacket and think it was going to be about FOOTBALL, not violence and fuckwittage, so totally my bad, and perhaps I just don't 'get' the violence inherent in English football, being both American and a chick (not a lad) - though the author is American, he did live in England for a number of years, which I didn't. Still, as much as I honestly, truly, hate to give a book a bad review, when I happen to read a sentence like this: "I couldn't believe that I was subjecting myself to this thing again, that I had once found it interesting," and all I can think of is, "Holy Mother of God, dude! You too?!? 'Cause, I was reading this book and every time I pick it up I find myself thinking - " oh. Er. Yeah. Oops. (blush) Sorry.

I will close by saying that nothing in this book has made me doubt the truth of the Very Important Axiom that
"If ever they're playing in your town,
You must get to that football ground;
Take a lesson, come and see,
Football taught by Matt Busby!
Manchester, Manchester United;
A bunch of bouncing Busby Babes,
They deserve to be knighted!"

(Oh - if you wonder why a girl from Cowshit, Georgia loves Manchester United Football Club, it's because this fine-ass dude named Georgie Best played for them, and Mr. Best was oft-quoted as saying, "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered." Words to live by, my friends - words to live by.)

SKANKY NEIGHBOR UPDATE!

Woo-hoo! Nothing like a Skanky Neighbor Update to start the weekend off right. Friday night as I was eating dinner, I heard a lot of banging and thumping. Investigating the source of the racket, I discovered that a minivan and a large pickup truck were parked in the driveway of the Skanky Neighbor House. Supplies were being moved about; I couldn't see that well from inside my house because my trees and shrubbery are in bloom, and I wasn't going outside to spy while people were bustling about. Still, several items looked about the same size and shape as the boxes our hardwood flooring came in.

I thought for a moment that someone might actually be renovating the place and repairing the damage done by the Pigbys, but since this is the Skanky Neighbor House, it wouldn't be anything nearly as normal as that. After spending money to purchase building supplies and spending most of Friday night unloading/moving them around, the latest set of rednecks completely disappeared. It is now quarter to midnight, Saturday night and there has been zero activity next door and no sign of the people who brought the supplies. I took this photo Friday night when they went on (I guess) a dinner run, but I assure you it still looks exactly the same at this moment.
So, in keeping with the pattern of spending several hundred dollars to rent a dumpster into which they never put a single crumb of garbage, they have purchased wood and whatever other supplies were in all those boxes and instead of doing anything with them, instead left them lying outside, subject to the elements and theft. I'm not going to steal the lumber myself, because (a) I'm not a thief and (b) I don't need any lumber.

In other news, check out this spiffy gadget. I bought it for Alan as an anniversary present but I gave it to him already, firstly because there is no way I could keep a present for my husband secret for 18 days and also because if it wasn't the right one/his iPod didn't fit, I needed to know so I could return it while I still knew where the receipt was. This is an iHome date/time alarm clock/radio/iPod dock - it also charges your iPod while it's docked. On our trip to Vegas, Mandalay Bay had these in the rooms and Alan liked it a lot. We enjoyed listening to our music while we were getting ready, chilling, etc. and the sound is really impressive, especially considering how small the speakers are - it's quite a cool device. Alan had remarked several times how much he liked it and I was thinking about trying to get him one. Then when I was at Linens N' Things buying a new shower curtain liner, I rounded a corner to find a huge display of them on sale! It was Fate! Fate at $20 less than original price. The sound quality is fantastic. I'm glad I found one for The Husband.

Lest you think Alan has a hot pink iPod, this is mine docked in it at the moment, because Alan had class today and took his manly blue iPod with him. But I docked mine to charge it and for pictorial purposes.

Not much of interest has been going on here at The Hellhole. I bought a new shower curtain liner on my way home from work today - oh! the excitement! it is overwhelming! The old shower curtain liner had started to get mildew on it. (Hey, it's Georgia - it's humid enough to mildew stuff in January!) I know that technically, I could use some Clorox and scrub it off, or take it down and wash it in the washing machine, but that won't work because I'd still know it had had mildew on it. And that's an icky gross degree of disgustingness that I simply cannot bear, so tonight I bought a new one and threw the old one away.

I know, despite my clean-freak weirdness, this is bad and wrong; willfully disposing of plastic (vinyl?) is evil. Carbon footprints, environmental awareness, conservatorship of the Earth, yes yes yes, but it mildewed and was therefore fouled to all eternity. I am, however, prepared to make a deal with Mother Earth: if she will keep her molds and mildews and assorted odious spores away from me, I will keep my plastic/vinyl away from her. Otherwise, I shall make no promises. In fact, if I continue to be beset by nasty, repugnant fungi, I may even throw away a newspaper! Without reading it!

Alan (coming into den): What are you watching, honey? OH MY GOD - is that...is that a chick flick?

Me (enthusiastically): Yes!

Alan (placing back of hand upon my forehead): Are you feeling all right, sweetheart? This isn't like you. This isn't like you at all.

Me: Oh, but this is the best chick flick ever! It's frickin' hilarious! It's almost like a wonderful satire of chick flicks, like Mad magazine does chick flicks, except it isn't tongue-in-cheek! It's actually serious and, somehow, that makes it even more funny than if they'd meant it ironically!

Alan (suspiciously): Explain.

Me: See, that's the heroine and she's a Pioneer Woman. Well, every single Wild West Prairie Cliche you can think of has happened to that woman in, like, 90 minutes' time. Widowed young? Check. Alone and desperate on the prairie? Check. Orphaned, no family? Check. Stranded and forced to marry a young widower for convenience's sake? Check.

Alan: I'm beginning to see the humour. Tell me, did her young, gallant husband get killed trying to defuse a poker fight?

Me: Sadly, no. Thrown from a hoss.

Alan: Well, that's no good. What a wuss.

Me: But he was thrown from a hoss while galloping about trying to capture their other hoss. Before he'd even had time to build them a cabin - she's sleeping in the wagon. Oh, and plus she's pregnant with his child.

Alan (grumpily): That's pretty good I guess, but killed trying to make peace in a saloon poker fight would have been better.

Me: But wait there's more! You haven't even heard the good part yet! Gets lost in a blizzard? Check. Pregnant? Check. In labor during a storm? Check. Forced to deliver with no help other than the handsome widower husband? Check.

Alan (hopefully): Did she get kidnapped by Indians?

Me: Sadly, no. But this is the Hallmark channel, and Michael Landon Jr. directed it, and everyone has been praying a lot, for guidance and stuff, so I suspect that the image of the noble, pagan savage and/or the blatant sexuality of a loin-cloth-clad brave is too much for the fragile rubric of this tale. All we really need is for the barn to burn down.

Hallmark Channel, Clark Davis shouting: Marty! Marty! Barn's on fire! Barn's on fire!

Me: HA! Barn fire? Check! And see, all her worldly goods except for her party dress she made over into a fancy dress for the tomboy stepdaughter upon whom she's supposed to be a feminine influence, were in her wagon which was in his barn so now she's LOST EVERYTHING!

Alan: I am both amused and dismayed at your delight in this poor woman's plight.

Me: Oh, she'll be all right. It's the Hallmark Channel.

Alan: So the young handsome widower is going to fall in love with the beautiful widow who just happens to be his wife?

Me: You know it! Only, basing this prediction on everything that has gone before, it'll be cheesier than Welsh Rarebit with Roquefort crumbles and Parmesan topping!

Alan: That's pretty cheesy. My only comfort is the fact that you seem to find this intensely amusing, rather than utterly romantic.

Me: Romantic is a dozen roses, a bottle of wine and a new video game. This is utterly hilarious. If only they'd book tickets on the Titanic for their honeymoon - which of course they can't, because it was sailing from England to here, but I see no reason for realism to interfere at this point, do you?

Alan: Maybe the stepdaughter will grow up to have a husband killed trying to stop a saloon poker fight.

[You want to know the REAL punch line? That's what happens in the sequels. Seriously.]

Video-game related post (sorry, Nancy!)

This morning I've been ruminating upon the subject of walk-throughs/strategy guides for video games. For my readers who play video games (all both of you), I am curious as to your thoughts on the matter.

I don't like to read through a strategy guide before I play the game, or play the game with the guide open before me. That detracts from the enjoyment of the game for me; part of the fun is not knowing what enemy is around the next corner, or that a trap door is directly in my path. I like exploring and trying to defeat bosses on my own, like it would be if I were really the character in the game. It wouldn't be fun for me, for example, to read along and play the game like: go here, do this, press X three times, talk to Character ABC but ignore the others, now press Square, go here, then press Circle. That isn't fun to me, nor is knowing exactly what's going to happen before it happens, e.g., to be reading along and think, "Oh, I see that there is going to be a basilisk hiding in those rocks to the west; I must equip a tourmaline ring to negate poison." That kinda takes the challenge (and the fun) out of things.

But I'm not anti-strategy guide. Many gaming purists regard using walk-throughs/strategy guides as cheating, which I don't for a number of reasons. Way back in the day of FFVII, I had to resort to using a map because, although I was quite clear upon the point that I needed to go (for example) to Mount Corel or Mideel, I was spending so much time wandering around in search of those places that I was becoming insanely over-leveled, and it was getting to the point that enemies weren't challenging - so I printed off a map not to cheat so much as to preserve the fun factor. With Silent Hill 2 and 3, I played through each game once on my own, then used walk-throughs so I would know what to do differently in order to obtain the alternate endings.

Then, there are those times when I get totally stuck. I've tried every attack and magic that I have, and still can't damage a boss. I've tried every path that appears, but I've been in the same dungeon for hours. I need to consult a walk-through to learn that (a) I can't hurt him, I'm supposed to run away; (b) the character that can hurt him hasn't joined the party yet, keep playing elsewhere and come back later; (c) this one section of wall in a random place that looks just like every other inch of wall can be damaged by a grenade, so throw one; or (d) don't heal damage and once Random Character A's health gets dangerously low, a new NPC will swoop in to save the day and rescue everyone from the dungeon. Otherwise, I'd keep trying (and failing) until I eventually gave up in frustration - non-intuitive or arbitrary game decisions flummox me far more than a difficult boss or a challenging puzzle. (I might mention Metal Gear Solid and the controller port switch, but I'm not bitter. Really.)

There have been many times that I've needed a walk-through because (and I don't want this to sound like I'm blaming the game designers - I realize it's my problem, but I don't know another way to phrase this) what I need to do to advance the game is (a) completely opposite to how the narrative appears to be pointing me, or (b) something that would have never, ever, in a hundred million years have ever occurred to me to do/try/go, or (c) something so completely arbitrary that it is easily missed. I don't need twenty neon arrows pointing to a door that all say "Go This Way!", "Head Here Next!" but if every. single. person. I talk to in the village is lamenting the direwolf in the mountains that keeps killing their children - call me crazy, call me kooky - I'm going to assume my next step is to go into the mountains to fight and kill the direwolf, not board my airship, go back to an area I finished 6 areas ago and find out that new quests have opened up that I suddenly need to complete. That sort of thing irks me; I'm all for open gameplay and a variety of ways to go/quest/play, but there are a plethora of arbitrary plot points/actions/quests that I truly wonder how anyone ever discovered, if not for consulting a strategy guide.

Walk-throughs have been invaluable to me when it comes to puzzles. Of course, even though it happens to me all the time, I can't think of a real example so I'll use a fictitious one, but the thing is - and if I may digress a moment, I am very curious if this is a male/female thing; not being sexist, but science has proven that there are real differences in the way male brains and female brains operate, so I honestly wonder if it's because I'm a girl or because of the game - anyway...say there is a puzzle where the floor panels are different colours, and they need to be in X pattern to do this, and Y pattern to do that. I do not miss the fact that the mysterious painting in the ruined wing of the castle had a floor that looked this way, or that the drawing shown to me by the mysterious stranger had a design that looked like this, and it hasn't escaped my notice that the ruined tower in which I find myself looks like both those drawings and has a floor kinda, but not exactly as depicted. So I totally get that I'm supposed to change the floor panels in the tower to look this way to go to this new level and like this to go to that new level. The logic puzzle/brain-twister part of the equation has never been my problem - say that every time I step onto a floor panel it turns from Colour X to Colour Y, but also that step causes adjacent panels to turn to Colour Z. Well, it's never been that hard for me to figure out where to step/how to move/in what order to step on panels to turn the whole floor red, or the whole floor blue, or the whole floor white. What is difficult for me is figuring out how to get the panels to change in the first place! I will try stepping on them, hitting them with every different magick I have, I will wander everywhere, endlessly, and not find a lever, or a switch, or a wheel, or ANYTHING that will make the floor panels change. I know I'm supposed to change them, I know to what they're to be changed, I understand that I have to change them to get to a new area, I can figure out the (if you will) Rubic's Cube part of the puzzle, but I have no idea how to activate the changing. I can't tell you how often that problem (or the analogue of that problem) has happened to me. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do, I even understand the solution, but I can't get the floor panels to change colour, make the character pick up the books so as to rearrange the tomes in correct order, find anything that will dam/stem/redirect the flow of water so that flooded areas are dry...etc. to infinity.

With some of the more mind-numbingly huge games I play, when I've reached a save point/finished an area/finished a quest, I like to read the walk-through up to that point to make sure I haven't missed anything, or that if I have, I can go back and do it without wasting 15 hours of gameplay in order to backtrack. I value walk-throughs for that aspect of playing - I don't want to find out, mere minutes from the final boss, that I can only kill him with a sword I was supposed to find in Area #2, 35 hours of gameplay ago, that I somehow managed to miss (usually despite the fact that said sword is widely regarded as unmissable, and you're not supposed to be able to leave the area without finding it - I manage this sort of thing often).

But as the man says, "ay, there's the rub!" When double-checking my progress up to a certain point, I often discover that there are whole large swaths of the game that I have missed, that nothing in the narrative pointed me towards, and therefore that I would have completely missed if I hadn't happened to be consulting a walk-through. When that happens, I incline towards using a walk-through despite the detraction from the enjoyment of the game that I wrote about earlier - because I hate to play a game and find out that I missed big huge hunks of it! Still, I don't like the 'dumbing down' that reading ahead sorta forces upon me, so generally, I don't. But when I happen upon facts and sidequests and issues, in the aforementioned 'checking to see what I might have missed', it makes me wonder if I'm 'missing out' by not using/consulting or sticking to the walk-through more assiduously. ????

So - like I wrote, calling on all both of my gaming readers to weigh in on this: do you use walk-throughs? Why or why not? How and in what circumstances?