Tell Good Stories…..

and spend $3.99 on Itunes to buy "Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog".  It was free last week at their website, but I bought it after the first "Act".

It’s silly, absurd, cheesy, and beautifully fantastic.  Neil Patrick Harris has a really great voice, and his ability to just look at the camera and express a myriad of emotions is nothing short of amazing.  I think they call it "ACTING"!

Nathan Fillion is perfectly over the top cheesy as our "hero" Captain Hammer.

This show has more heart, humor and talent in in than anything on TV right now.

It’s your senior correspondent.

(That’s me after Scott’s run…)

Because we’re cool parents, we surprised the kids with a trip to the Great Wolf lodge in Williamsburg, VA, land of a pancake house on every corner in honor of our great presidents Washington and Lincoln.

Let me preface by saying that I am a kid at heart.  I love Disney, and I love the things that my children have reintroduced me to.

The Great Wolf Lodge is amazing.  The hotel room we are in is as nice as we’ve stayed in as a family, and the water park is a blast - an exhausting, crowded blast.

All in all, I can recommend the experience, if you’re willing to part with some serious coin.

That said, there’s a lot to hate here.  The check-in process is a disaster, with rooms available “as they are ready”.  Sure, check in time is 4:00 p.m., but if your room is not ready, well, you’re welcome to hit the water park.  We’ll be glad to rent you a locker for $5.00 for the stuff you can’t put in your room you can’t have, because we’re not ready.

The dining here leaves much to be desired.  They have a somewhat captive audience, with hopping in the car straight from the water park to get some dinner inconvenient at best.  That leaves the buffet restaurant or the Pizza Hut take out.

In the evolutionary chain of restaurant servers and cooks, the starting point is here.  We were warned, but convenience dictated that dinner last night and breakfast this morning was done here at the hotel.  Bad food and worse service.

UPDATE! - I’ve had some time and distance to rethink things.  What bothered me so much about the Great Wolf Lodge was that it wasn’t Disney.  I love the ways that Disney tries to take money from me - there is a cleverness and an element of appreciation that I get from Disney that the Great Wolf Lodge lacks.  It seems that they have you captive, and therefore it doesn’t matter that the food is average at best, and the wait staff service is perhaps the worst I’ve ever seen.  In a buffet restaurant, your job is to get me a drink, make sure it stays close to full, and bring me the check when I’m done.  When you cannot do this, you don’t care. 

The Failure To Be Disney is magnified in the Country Bear Jamboree wannabe show in the lobby, where the tree, squirrel, and bear sing a song that is a very clear rip off of Circle of Life from the Lion King.  I wanted to wear cinderblocks into the wave pool.

The bottom line is this:

Room - A+
Waterpark - A+
Everything else - BLECH!

Go, take your wallet and outside food, and you’ll have a great time.

R.E.M.

REM’s new one. - MP3 Music Streams on IMEEM

I can’t remember when I was excited about an R.E.M. album.  The last few albums have left me cold, and based on the song above, you can understand the lyrics!

U23D

Last weekend the whole family went to the Imax at Playoris/Exspace/Marblemax facility to see the latest experience of U2’s excess.

I like U2.  I have most of their albums in my collection, leaning heavily to the older stuff.  I have very mild issues with Bono and his self proclaimed messianic complex, but certainly not enough to bother me. Unfortunately, after seeing U23D, he may be right in his proclamation of divinity.

My experience with live U2 sadly is limited to video, but that may be the best way to see them.  I cannot imagine that their power translates to the back row of your local stadium - I could be wrong.  Their set from the original Live Aid is hypnotizing, and the Red Rocks video may rank as one of the greatest concert videos that I have ever seen.  

In U23D, their performance is AMAZING, and the 3-D effect is there only to enhance the experience.  There is one moment, where the audience is sprayed with water, that I nearly reached to dry off.  This was not some cheesy Disney effect, it was just that immersive.  The only time there is anything digitally added to the film for 3-D effect is near the end of the movie, when the letters and words being shown on the giant screens behind the band leave the screens and blanket you in their message.  Totally unobtrusive in execution.

The Fat Boy Movie Review gives it 5 stars!

I’m a little late to the party, and I think having sons prevented me from seeing the light.

High School Musical 1 & 2

Disney’s latest attempt to drive pop culture worked it’s magic (in HD on Directv no less) on us this past weekend. My oldest had done a local kids theater production of HSM 1 back in the spring, but that was my only exposure to the first one, and perhaps not the best initial experience.

In the hype leading up to the premiere of HSM 2, the Disney Channel was running HSM pretty much non-stop.  One night after climbing into bed, it was on.  An hour later, it was decided to turn it off - work was just a few hours away.

I’m not entirely blind to the flaws - it’s fluff, and HSM 2 basically repeats the themes of 1.  Instead of a basketball production number, it’s baseball this time.  Troy and Gabriella hit a rough patch (is this really the end?), just to reunite to the surprise of no one except Troy. Sharpay approaches redemption!  Everyone sings a big number by the pool as the curtain call with microphones and everything!  Who’s gonna end up in the pool before it’s all over?????? The Suspense!

The songs are disgustingly catchy where they’re supposed to be and sappy and sentimental when the moment calls for it.

All in all, it’s mockable.  You will roll your eyes at least once.  It’s prepackaged manipulative junk.

And I Loved, Loved, Loved it.  When’s the DVD out?