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A week ago I finally ate dinner at Mountain Brauhaus located past New Paltz on the road to Minnewaska.  I’ve wanted to eat there for over a year, having passed it every time I go hiking.  For whatever reason I didn’t make it there until last friday.  Worth mentioning, I actually did attempt to eat there twice previously but the waits times were longer than I had time for.  Mountain Brauhaus is a popular place.

I arrived in around 6:30Pm on a friday with three companions we were promptly seated by a young waitress dressed in a peasant’s dress reminiscent of Maria from The Sound of Music.  For a nominal $2 we each ordered the local apple cider, which was exceptional and later water.

As an appetizer, we ordered the German pretzel, which came out to be a sort of roll-like thing or a garlic knot without the garlic.  It came with a mustard, a bit sweet perhaps, and was devoured quickly.  I’m glad we ordered it though since the rest of dinner proceeded somewhat slowly.

Like many of the restaurants in New Paltz, the food was by and large exceptional.  We each got an entry salad, nothing special but fresh, and a sweet, dark bread was kept in supply.  Also like many places in New Paltz, the overall service was courteous but slow.   Our meal took about an hour and a half, which would be about thirty minutes slower than I normally would like.  They were busy, so I wouldn’t count it terribly against them, but I suspect anyone hoping for a quick snack and go will be disappointed, at least for a friday night dinner.

For an entrée I ordered the sausage medley.   The dinner comes with saurkraut, three different types of sausage, and German potato salad, which seems to be normal potato salad but with a similar sour taste as sauerkraut.  The sauages were a few inches long, rather large.  I was actually somewhat disappointed by the size initially, but by the end of the meal I was absolutely stuffed.  The sausages are filling and tasting, ranging from a sort of sour meat, to a kielbasa taste, to a sort of buttery smooth meat.

My companions ordered the  Schnitzel A la Holstein, a fried veal cutlet with an egg on top, also the Spaetzle Primavera, a dense noodle and vegetable medley, and the Zwiebel Rostbraten, a steak with mushroom sauce.  I cannot confirm personally, but they were all delicious by repute and filling.

The overall atmosphere was serious but energetic.  The restaurant is a tad dark, sort of a large family dining room with small tables.  It is a restaurant for long conversations and good company.  I was pleased to find the ‘german’ novelty was kept happily to the waitress’ dresses and not made a gimmick.

I’ll never have enough time to make Mountain Brauhaus one of my usual restaurants, but for special occasions or a sausage craving its well worth the visit.  I enjoyed the food immensely and while the prices are not terribly cheap (except $20+ a person on average) they were not terribly overpriced as well.  I felt full at the end of the day and my companions carried boxes of leftovers home.   In total I enjoyed the experience and would recommend a night at Mountain Brauhaus without reservation.

Batman: The Animated Series, some of the best television ever made.  The stories, the artwork, the music.  I’m convinced it was perfect in nearly every way.  For years I pined away for the soundtrack to be released.  Sometime last year it finally was, although it sadly lacked a few choice themes like The Legend of Gray Ghost (Cameo by Adam West) and Catwoman’s theme.  I managed to pick up a copy off of Amazon not to long ago (the original release is sound out, but it can be found.)

For those lacking an immediate copy, allow me to point you here.  This is Shirley Walking explaning the Batman theme.  Pretty incredible, eh?

Music of the Bat 101

Mothership Zeta is the fifth and final official DLC expansion for Fallout 3.  Fallout: New Vegas is currently being produced by Obsidion, so there is more fallout on the way, but this must just be Fallout 3′s last hurrah, officially speaking.

Sadly, this expansion was a disappointing follow up to the exceptional Point Lookout.  Instead of having half a dozen significant quests, a healthy world to explore, and a dozen separate freeform quests to enjoy, Mothership Zeta traps you on a single alien space craft and hopes you’ll be happy with some new weapons.

That isn’t so say the new spaceship area isn’t cool.  It is.  Graphically, it’s a treat to walk down the polished chrome interior and blast small green-headed aliens away using blaster rifles.  As gameplay though?  It’s just not there.  Fallout 3 is and always has been a role playing game, not a first person shooter.  As entertaining as combat is in Fallout 3 it’s just can’t pretend to be Halo, it can’t even manage to be Mass Effect.  It’s Fallout and they really should have gone back to the core of Fallout for this expansion.

Positives: new guns, interesting interior, a pretty fun boss fight.

Negatives: too small, too linear, not enough ‘lore’, too much repetitive combat, bland characters.

Having finished all the expansions and all of the main game quests, there’s just not that much to bring me back to Fallout universe.  There are a few small things I might try and a couple of areas I never explored, but this is the end…or is it?  Fallout: New Vegas isn’t a sequel and it’s still a few years off, but it’s probably time to start looking at unofficial mods.  The Fallout team did a good job giving the community a ton of weapons and textures to modify, Mothership Zeta included.  I have no doubt the fans will create some very fun and in depth expansion.  By now someone has probably gone off and tried to remake Fallout 1 & 2 (which I’m playing in my spare time by the way.)

For anyone on the fence, Mothership Zeta isn’t quite as bad as Operation Anchorage and it is the last official DLC, at least so far.  It’s expensive for such a small return ($10), but for a Fallout fan…there’s always ways to get more caps, eh?

Favorite Living Author George RR Martin has been announcing the new casting in the HBO series A Game of Thrones.  This week has had some great casting.  Instead of trying to hijack his words, let me just point you to the relevant posts on his blog:

Ian Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont

Tamzin Merchant as  Daenerys Targaryen (Great Great Casting!)

Richard Maddenas Robb Stark

Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner as Ayra and Sansa Stark

Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister

This new folks join Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, Jennifer Ehle as Catelyn Stark, and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister.

Good Stuff!

For months, Batman: Arkham Asylum loomed on my gaming radar always falling short of my interest.  As much as I love Batman, superhero video games are by and large awful, especially those that come during the movie season.  I fully expected Arkham Asylum to be some lame merchandising attempt not worth the time or effort.

In retrospect I should have been paying more attention. Instead of trying to create a Christopher Bale clone they made their own batman, with their own joker, their own harley, their own Arkham Asylum, and their own game.   I should have known Rocksteady got Paul Dini on board to write the story, (He’s the brain behind many of the best Batman: The Animated Series episodes.) or when Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy (voices of The Joker and Batman respectively from the animated series) signed on as well.  I should have known when they showed off their own version of Arkham or their own design of the bat mobile, or when they demoed a game that wowed everyone.

Instead of I was off doing my own things, assuming it was another piece of crap super hero game.  Only a few days ago when the reviews started to come in did I take notice.  ’Best Superhero game ever’, ‘A Batman game done right’, ‘A game of the year’.  My curiosity was peaked.  After watching Mark Hamill’s inimical Joker laugh in the trailer I had to pick the game up.

No complaints.  Not one.  They did a damn good job and managed to make something that deserves its part of the Batman Universe.  It has a story and it’s a good one.  The voice acting is predictably top-notch.  The visuals are stunning and creative.  They took bits and pieces of the comics, the tv shows, the movies and combined them into something that works very well.  Most of all they respected the universe while expanding it in their own way.  They didn’t try to retcon character histories or remake Arkham Asylum into something new.  They didn’t dabble with the Batman origin story in some unnecessary way or try to pull the Joker away from what he is.  They worked with the established story and setting and let it fill out the world they created on their own.  Everything from Iceberg Lounge posters on the wall to the chattering joker teeth toys, they spent an incredible amount of time making things ‘right.”

And best of all, they made a fun game too.  They made use batman’s detective work with the puzzles and pacing.  They made the enemies intelligent enough to require strategy.  They worked with batman’s tools to make them useful, but not overpowering (or underwhelming).   Exploring Arkham is a joy, the plot queues keep the player on track, and the combat/puzzles keep the player engaged. They really did everything right.

No one should be on the fence with this one.  It’s out for the Xbox360, Playstation 3, and the computer so there’s not much of an excuse for missing it unless you’ve got a Wii and nothing else.  (There’s always Wii bowling, right?)

I was so positive that Arkham Asylum would be trash.  I’m happy to say that’s it is not in the slightest.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is T.W Lawrence’s (Lawrence of Arabia) notes and autobiographical memoir of his time served as a liason officer during the Arab Revolt.  Way way back in the day I reviewed a book called Eastern Approaches, the story of Fitzroy MacLean, one of the first SAS officers and an english member of diplomatic core that explored Soviet Central Asia.  I mention both of these books because they’re similar: heroic individuals who explored the harshest parts of the world during war time and then wrote about their story with singular humility and deference.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is not a general history of world war 2 or even specifically the Arab Revolt that ended Turkish dominance in the middle east.  There are enough blanks in the narrative to greatly encourage further study.  Presumably Lawrence was writing for his contemporaries who already knew the political details of the causes and aftermath, but after almost a hundred years there’s a lot lacking.

What it lacks from the air, it makes up for on the ground.  Lawrence nearly maps the entire desert for the benefit of his readers, remarking on the snakes, the various wells visited, the character of the various people and towns.  He follows the revolt from the Arab position and in that capacity is near flawless.

As a story, the best part is Lawrence’s own transition.  He begins as a rather reluctant staff officer who nevertheless is eager to help the Arab cause.  As the revolt progresses he becomes increasingly disillusioned by his own place in what is likely a fraud.  England’s support for the Arab revolt is hardly an act of generosity with Turkey a German ally.  As the tolls of war grow Lawrence finds himself the near leader of a revolt he’s lost his own position in.

It’s a rather terrible story, but it’s phenomenal reading.  The writing is rather archaic and Lawrence does spend a great deal on details, the texture of the land for example, that most readers would probably rather do without, but as a complete work it’s a rousing adventure story of the finest calibre.

A note worth mentioning, there are a handful of different versions of the tale.  Lawrence himself repeatedly revised his work, mostly to edit down it’s original length.  I read a version stored for free here.  (The book is out of copyright.)

Final note:  I’m still editing.  It’s going tolerably well, if only very slowly.  I’m hopeful that I get it all together this year.

I read Laser Space Communications as part of my Lonetracker research.  It’s pretty technical overall, at least for me, but it was an interesting read.  It seems to be fairly expensive to get a hold of so if someone is looking around for it I can lend it out.  *I wish I was better at physics.

A month ago I read: The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer’s Guide to Interstellar Travel as research for when I edit my story.  It’s a little bit dated (published 1989), but sadly it’s not as outdated as it should be.  Cool book, well worth skimming over and it keeps the math light for the non-physics majors.

I watched Brazil this weekend.  I’m not going to review it, but wow, it’s a weird one.  It was directed by Terry Gillian (of Monty Python fame) so I guess I shouldn’t been surprised, but it’s a strange strange movie, sort of a cross between 1984 and Alice in Wonderland (And it has Robert de Nero as a commando plumber?).  One of these days I need to pick up The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. (also Terry Gillian).

After finishing Count Zero last week I jumped into Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson’s third and final novel in that Sprawl trilogy, a science fiction series set in a hypertechnological, paranoid,  corporate dominated, cyber-dystopia that began with Neuromancer.

Mona Lisa Overdrive ended the trilogy and brought to a close, or mostly a close, the story that began with Case and Mollys adventure in Neuromancer.  Molly makes a return and she’s part of this third novel.  I’m reviewing, of course, a novel that’s nearly two decades old.  I’ve quite a bit of catching up to do, but all in all the Sprawl trilogy is the in total probably the best series I’ve ever read.  While none of books match the sheer joy of Neuromancer or capture the near mystical sense of expectation I had reading it, they each shed light on simply a fascinating world that seems, despite all the futuristic technology, to be just around the corner.

Seeing as I wrote out my general criticisms just two days ago with Count Zero I’ll let this stand as is.  Read Neuromancer, at the very least!