Puttering in the Study

King Kong soundtrack - John Barry

My favorite music growing up was soundtracks, and John Barry's classic to the 1976 remake of King Kong was one of my favorites.  When the album finally became available on CD last year I snatched it up.  The recording is pretty thin, and the music itself is heavily dated in spots (and often reminds you of his other '70's soundtracks, most notably 1979's Moonraker) but it is good stuff in many, many places, with driving action scenes in a couple of places and a lush love theme.  Not a great soundtrack, but a nice one.

Tears for Fears - Everybody Loves a Happy Ending

After rediscovering how much I liked Raoul and the Kings of Spain last week I started on the long-delayed followup Everybody Loves a Happy Ending in the car on the way to a hearing in Tyler this week.  It's not a bad album, but I couldn't remember much about it.  It has some really nice things on it, but it was just a little too all over the place, and a little hard to nail down.  A little judicious editing might have focused it better.

Sting - Mercury Falling

As much as I like Sting, like a lot of other people I didn't much care for Mercury Falling (although in fairness, I did decide to ask Jamie to marry me based on one of the tracks, so it wasn't all bad).  I listened to it again this week in the study and the car when I had a few minutes, and my opinion hasn't much changed.

Raoul and the Kings of Spain - Tears for Fears

Had a little time to listen while working in the study today, and I had some songs from this album in the back of my head so I put it on and let the speakers play a little (read, I cranked it a bit). 
This is just one hell of an album.  I was planning on just listening to tracks 1 and 2, but they were so good I listened to the whole thing again.  I don't really have time to do a detailed review - sufficie it to say that this is about as good an album as I think I have ever heard.  It has some standout tracks, and bears a careful listening - as with most of my albums it's spent way more time fighting with road noise on a car stereo than it has on a good sound system.
Do yourself a favor - get this.

Grayson's Titanic redesign

This kid amazes me.  Shortly after watching about 20 minutes of a special on the sinking of the Titanic last fall, Grayson came to me with this drawing for a redesign of the Titanic that would eliminate its problem areas. 

From left to right, they include a searchlight on the bow to look out for icebergs (I had just seen a ship doing exactly that in the Suez canal at night two week earlier - a bow-mounted searchlight - I had never seen one before), more lifeboats (that's what the oval shapes on either side of the ship's name are), large pontoons on each side of the ship (that's the long tube-shaped thing at the bottom) and "stuff to look out for icebergs" (the radar masts on the superstructure).  He doesn't know what radar is or what they do - he just knows they're things that'd be useful.  He also included a larger rudder so it'd be able to turn faster.  (I am absolutely certain he didn't hear that a too-small rudder was one of the Titanic's major design flaws - it couldn't corner worth a damn, as the movie correctly put it).

The whole thing looks suspiciously like a modified Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, probably because that's the toy boat he has in his room.  But every one of the improvements he came up with.  I think it's looking more and more like he may be following in his cousin Zach's footsteps and going to engineering school.  Assuming he doesn't flunk out of second grade first.

The Ninth Gate - DVD

I got this out to watch again while on the exercise machine after rereading the Perez-Reverte novel it was based on.  The movie discards the Dumas "Three Musketeers" angle that the book is based on, and focuses instead on the supernatural elements.  It's a well-made movie, and Emmanuelle Seigner was terrific as the guardian angel - exactly the right degree of mystery, and truly frightening when she wants to be (she has the most malevolent eyebrows I have ever seen, which is admittedly a bizarre observation, but a true one).  But the ending makes no sense to me - I couldn't figure out what Depp's character was really trying to do or why.

Polar Lights Enterprise - part 3 - arboretum

Second step in the Enterprise construction is assembly of the arboretum in the secondary hull.  It's one diorama piece, seven trees, and a clear plastic ceiling with sky decals.  When complete it sits down low in the secondary hull, and the cargo bay sits partially over it.  Next step in the process is assembly of the warp engines, but since I don't have all the paints I need for that yet, I may skip ahead to step 8a and start assembling the secondary hull and warp engine pylons.

Grayson doing homework

We spend a LOT of time helping Grayson with his home work these days.  Lately this is his station - at the reader's companion in the study where it's quiet and I can keep an eye on him.  Here he is working on homework after his Cub Scout meeting Monday.

Open Season - DVD

The boys and I watched this upstairs in the movie room Friday night while jamie went to see Blue Man Group in Shreveport with friends.  I liked it okay, but the mule deer character visually just never quite worked for me, and the voice for the bear was kind of hit and miss - sometimes it fit and sometimes it didn't.  But Grayson in particular liked it.

Barnyard - DVD

This was one of the boys' Valentine's Day presents and we ordered pizza and watched it together downstairs the other night.  I missed a big chunk while on a phone call, but what I did see I thought was pretty good.