The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • Battleship (Part 1): Not Stupid Enough

    My family recently rented the awful big-budget action movie Battleship, which of course was based on the board game. I learned a great deal from watching Battleship, mostly about things that I don't like. Today I'll talk about the first thing that bugged me: stupidity. Battleship was stupid — in a Facebook comment I said…

    jamescambias

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  • Getting Rid of Books

    This week my wife and I tackled the hardest task for any family of readers: getting rid of books. Our house has about 200 feet of shelves, some of them packed two layers deep with books. We also have stacks of books in the office and the bedroom waiting to be read. They pile up…

    jamescambias

  • Movie Review (sort of): Forbidden Planet

    Last Sunday the Crack Team went to see a showing of the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet at Popcorn Noir in Easthampton. I had never seen it on a big screen, and it's definitely better than watching it on television. I'm not actually going to write a review. It's a great movie, even after half…

    jamescambias

  • Spelling Bee After-Action Report

    My talented wife Diane and I were recruited by a friend to join her team in the Northampton Education Foundation's annual spelling bee. We agreed, so last night the three of us turned up in yellow sweaters to battle the other teams. Funds were raised, somehow. When we agreed to participate, both Diane and I…

    jamescambias

  • Why Comedians Aren’t Funny

    Lately I've been watching a lot of standup comedy bits on YouTube, and as a result my thoughts drifted to the question of why so few comedians are able to make the jump to film. I'm sure we all know about the Saturday Night Live curse — where movies starring SNL cast members not named…

    jamescambias

  • Ozblogging: Oz the Great and Powerful Review

    I saw Oz: The Great and Powerful earlier this week with my wife and my 10-year-old son. He liked it a lot, we . . . liked it less than he did. Oz: The Great and Powerful isn't a bad movie. It's a perfectly fun children's movie that adults can enjoy. But I'm afraid that…

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  • Where I Do It

    I do most of my writing in coffeeshops. Fortunately, I live in an area with a good assortment of places. In Greenfield I can go to Greenfield Coffee, which is a dedicated coffeehouse so I don't have to feel guilty about occupying a table during lunchtime. The chief drawback is that the town of Greenfield…

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  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 5

    Beyond the Tottenhot village the team enters some rocky mountains, and immediately start seeing warning signs: "LOOK OUT FOR YOOP" and "BEWARE THE CAPTIVE YOOP." Eventually they come to a huge cage carved into a cliff, in which is imprisoned the ferocious giant  Mr. Yoop. Yoop is fierce and hungry, and longs to eat up…

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  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 4

    Our heroes have a couple of random encounters on their way out of Munchkin country — a weird spacetime distortion, a giant porcupine, and an illusionary wall — but with the help of the Shaggy Man they get past all of them. As in Road to Oz, these sequences strongly suggest that Baum was thinking…

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  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 3

    We have a chapter of blatant filler in which the travelers seek advice from a Foolish Owl and a Wise Donkey. The Wise Donkey is apparently an immigrant from one of Baum's other books, and provides the opportunity for some wordplay while the Owl recites nonsense verse. I haven't seen anyone try to claim that…

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The Worldbuilding Index