More weird images.

These are always fantastic and I like posting them. So go and check them out here:
http://www.606studios.com/bendisboard/showthread.php?t=184368

I especially enjoy the Sonic the Hedgehog one.

The Fellowship of Radio City Music Hall

Last Friday I did something absolutely special. I went to see Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring at Radio City Music Hall.

I love these movies, and have never seen a movie at Radio City which for my money is one of the most beautiful places in New York City.

Seeing the movie would have been cool enough, but what made this even better was the presentation. The theatrical cut of the film was shown with subtitles because there was a full 200 person choir and 64 piece orchestra playing the score live.

The music in this film is great on its own but I have never heard it as clearly as it was played live. Also the mix of the movie is such that you sometimes hear more of the action, battle scenes and acting as opposed to the music, but in this presentation the music was featured.

Putting into words what I saw is difficult, but you can get a piece of how it was presented by clicking here

At times it was a little overwhelming to try and decide where to look. Do I watch the movie, or do I watch the conductor? The violinists or the drummers or conductor? Sometimes I forgot there was an orchestra as I got sucked into a movie I have seen about 30 times.

There were also solo vocalists like an Enya sounding woman to do her songs, and some kids from the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir to do those vocals.

One thing that was real cool was how on the Conductor's easel he had a flatscreen showing the movie but there was a white dot that was pulsing helping him keep the beat.

It is really difficult to put an experience like this into words, but it really was a special night and made me love the Lord of the Rings movies even more. I honestly could have gone for watching the entire trilogy even though I left Radio City well past 11:00.

Stephen King books

I was looking through a list of Stephen King books and realized I was only about 5 books away from reading all of them. With Under the Dome coming out next month (King's newest 1200 page opus) I decided I better finish reading all of his books soon.

As a result, I started Pet Semetary today. Sure, I have seen this movie about 10 times, which is why I never read the book (some others I have not read include Cujo and Christine for the same reason), but now I feel like I should complete this feat.

I do not have all these books and hope they find their way to me with minimal purchases on my end.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

My brother works for the publishing sector of Disney. They have a new series of books that geared towards young adults that he recommended to me. I read all five books in under a month with each book taking about 3 days while reading on the train. So although they are a very quick read, if you are a fan of Harry Potter types of books, I would definitely recommend these.

The story of the book is similar to Harry Potter, but instead of magic the underlying element that keeps the books moving is the premise that all of Greek Mythology is real. Zeus is the king of the gods, Hera is the queen etc, and they sometimes have children with mortal: These are Demigods also called Heroes in this book.

In the first book, the main character named Perseus (Percy) Jackson finds out he is a demigod and gets sent to a camp (kind of like Hogwarts) in Montauk that helps train Heroes. It turns out there is an old prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi (who resides in the attic of the building of this camp) about a certain Demigod changing the course of history on his 16th birthday.

I won't give anything else away, but if you enjoy quick, action packed stories, and if you enjoyed Greek Mythology whenever you learned it, I think these books are a lot of fun.

Like Harry Potter, they also get better as they go on, with the last book being quite good and well worth the time to read the other four previous ones.