As you may have noticed, this blog is no longer hosted on my 360 page, but is now living over on my main website (though, I’m using Blogger to provide the back end). I’ve migrated all my posts from 360 (though, I missed some of the embedded images), so everything should be here and working. Please let me know if it’s not.

Also, as the really observant of you may have noticed, this page has a very different look and feel than the main Chucklehound site. I’m in the middle of applying this skin to the site on the whole, as well as a pretty significant code-rewrite to make the site less dependent on the slightly odd language of TCL. I still love TCL, but it’s a pain finding hosting providers that support it, so I’ll be migrating everything over to PHP. As a result, the links up at the top don’t all work quite right, so might want to avoid using them for until I give the all clear. Mostly (and I’m assuming here only friends and family make their way here), I just wanted to get some feedback on what you think of the new layout. Complaints? Adjustments? Anything?

When this came out, I recall a lot of people bitter about how long it took to get the main characters to Skull Island. The general consensus seemed to be the movie picked up significantly once Kong showed up.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I really liked the first hour of the movie and then totally lost interest once it became CGI monsters smashing each other. The first bit was all lively and full of the sort of visually interesting, slightly frenetic, humourous stuff that made Dead Alive so great. And then the monsters showed up, and it switched over to that “epic” (i.e., dull) tone he used for Lord of the Rings. I probably should have stopped watching after the first hour.

For anyone who has made it over here from the old blog, you may notice a sizeable gap following Christmas. I have no good excuses, but here are some of the more exciting events of 2007 to date:

Saw some bands! Some good, some bad, some mostly forgettable. Best performance, by far, was the Charalambides, whom I’d been listening to for many many years. Back when I did a radio show from 1 to 3 in the morning, I could usually keep up a high energy show for about an hour, them drop into slower, longer songs – usually featuring a high percentage of songs by the Charalambides and their side projects and label mates. I wasn’t sure how they’d be live, but they were incredibly impressive. And by far the loudest guitar/vocals duo I’ve ever seen.

Also saw Portastatic again, this time opening for Camera Obscura. Extremely mellow compared to the last Portastatic show I saw, but still very good. Mac seems to be singing more than yelping, which makes him sound a little Springsteen-y (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). He also played songs yelled out by the crowd, which always pleases me. And, while it wasn’t the most energetic set, it was several times more lively and engaging than Camera Obscura.

Oscar Party! Back when we lived in LA, our friend Matthew put on some excellent Oscar Parties, at least one of which was at our house. Now that we actually have some friends up here, we decided to host one of our own, which was quite a lot of fun. Lots of food, all of which was consumed while the Oscars were half-watched (mostly just to keep track of the betting pool which I won by a hefty margin). Good time was had by all.

Movies I can’t remember if I mentioned this earlier, but I’ve been keeping track of my movie viewing habits (and reading habits) on my myspace page (for lack of a better place to do it). Hopefully, I can get in the habit of actually reviewing films formally on my site, or at least casually dissecting them here again.

Dog Surgery and House Arrest Sadly, Kitchen had to go in for surgery again. The night after the Oscar party, we noticed she was walking strangely and seemed to be having trouble bearing weight on her back legs. We drove to the hospital, where they determined she had some neurologic damage and kept her overnight. The next day an MRI revealed two more herniated discs in her back – one that had occurred a few weeks ago and second that had occurred that night. Surgery was scheduled for the next day. All very scary, but a little easier now that we know the doctor and staff at the hospital and know that Kitchen likes all of them. Brought her home and once again set up the living room as a dog confinement area with a walled-in futon mattress in the middle of the room so Kitchen is comfortable and one of us can hang out with her all day.

We’re about 2 1/2 weeks into our 4-6 week confinement now. And, while it’s not much fun to be stuck on the floor 24 hours a day, at least I’m catching up on my movie watching (43 movies watched so far this year!)