I’m a bit of a sleeper fan of Motion City Sound­track. I had their albums avail­able to me for over a year before I lis­tened to them. The only reason I really gave them a chance was because I was dri­ving through a snow storm and the radio couldn’t pick up any­thing. I was really shocked when I went through both albums that I had of theirs (Commit this to Memory and I Am the Movie) and was crav­ing more. Their bouncy, feel­good sound had me totally hooked. I lis­tened through them all again, and I real­ized that in con­trast to their sound, much of what was said bor­dered on major depressing.

I recently got around to read­ing The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night-​time. I remem­ber pick­ing up the book a long time ago and only putting it back because I didn’t have the money to pur­chase it right then and there.

The next time I find the book, it’s a best seller across the world, and Mark Haddon has already writ­ten another novel. I could have been there in the begin­ning! Ah well, I picked it up, and once I started read­ing, I found it hard to put down.

I very recently came across Ben’s Brother due to Den­tynes newest com­mer­cial. I like many, many others were drawn in by the addict­ing song selected. ‘Stuttering’ is the name of the track, and it’s per­formed by Ben’s Brother. I’m sure this track alone will launch them into new realms of star­dom. As I tend to give bands the ben­e­fit of the doubt, I decided to get my hands on their latest (and only) album “Beta Make Fairytales”. As it turns out, they are not a one-​hit-​wonder. They are, in fact, a rather tal­ented band that reminds me faintly of Cold­play, Maroon 5, and even Snow Patrol.

I was recently at the El Mocambo with Theresa to watch Ingrid Michael­son, and one of the open­ing acts was David Ford. As soon as this guy hit the stage, he won my heart with his shear moxy at having many instru­ments that could record and repeat audio. He played them all, which involved him dash­ing around the stage singing into a micro­phone, or mash­ing the piano, or play­ing the guitar, or the mara­cas, etc.. He easily won top marks for the tech­ni­cal por­tion of the night. He was actu­ally fan­tas­ti­cally funny, and very, very Eng­lish. Com­plete with the swanky accent and a wit so dry that you could start a fire with it, he won over the crowd with his banter and his craft.

Last night I had the for­tune to watch I Am Legend star­ing Will Smith. The premise of the movie is that Robert Neville (Will Smith) is the last man alive, after a deadly super-​virus lays waste to 90% of the worlds pop­u­la­tion. 1% of man kind had a nat­ural immu­nity to it, and 9%… well that’s some­thing else.

Finally! A new series that actu­ally has a little body to it. I was hon­estly start­ing to lose hope in the new adven­tures. The Last Dodo puts a little bit of that dark­ness, that deep reflec­tion of the Doc­tors that has been until now has been sorely lack­ing from the new books. Though there is only a small moment of it (part of which is quoted in this review) it demon­strates what I’ve been talk­ing about over he past couple books. I know that the authors were prob­a­bly told that they need to ease into it all, what with trying to nail such a wide demo­graphic and so many new read­ers, but have a little com­pas­sion for those who’ve stuck with the series all these years.

Ice Sta­tion Santa is the first install­ment for the second “season” of Tell­tales expan­sion of the Sam & Max uni­verse. I grew up with the orig­i­nal Sam & Max, and so when I heard tell of a new com­pany taking over the title - since LucasArts is run by morons and dis­con­tin­ued the title - I was a little wor­ried. Hell I remem­ber the short-​lived car­toon, which though enjoy­able had screwed with my young sen­si­bil­i­ties. The voices weren’t the same and it really bugged me.

No Really, I’m Fine is the third fourth (it pays to do research) offi­cial album (I don’t count EPs as albums) by The Spill Canvas, and I’ve noticed two things. They’ve become more main­stream sound­ing, and they’ve really tight­ened up their sound. I don’t want to make con­clu­sions that one of those points begets the other, it’s merely an observation.