Written by Kyle Slagley
For many people across the country, this weekend will be the
first of many installments in this year’s grilling season. Guys everywhere are
stocking up on charcoal, checking igniters, and quite possibly practicing their
tong-twirling skills in the mirror as though they were the John Wayne of
cookouts - not that I’ve ever done that or anything.
As with any other style of cooking, grilling takes a certain
amount of skill, care, and finesse in order to master. Burgers don’t cook the
same way as a T-bone, and charcoal is different than propane. If you have a
vegetarian in the house like I do, squash doesn’t grill like an ear of corn,
and veggie burgers definitely do not cook like hamburgers. I definitely found
that out the hard—aka: charred beyond edible—way.
Lest you be one of those people who simply tosses the meat
on the grill, walks away for 30 minutes, and takes it off when it’s about the
texture of shoe leather, it will benefit you, your family, and your guests to
brush up a little bit this summer. Whether you fancy yourself a grillmaster or
a greenhorn, there are a few informative videos that may help out even the most
seasoned BBQer.
BBQ
Tech – One of the primary rules of cooking in general is to know your
equipment, be it a stove, oven, pot, or grill. In this video, the History
Channel takes you to the Weber factory to see how the grills are made. You’ll
also get some insight into the history of barbecuing.
Barbecue
– A Texas Love Story – Folks in Texas are very proud of their barbecuing
culture, to say the least. This video gives a humourous-but-accurate look at how
nearly every aspect of Texas life, in one way or another, ties back to barbecue.
Primal
Grill with Steven Raichlen – When it comes to techniques, sauces, rubs, and
recipes, there are about as many different opinions as there are people. Worry
not, though; Steven Raichlen is here to guide you through all of the details.
BBQ
Secrets – Master Guide to Extraordinary BBQ – I found this video to be a
little more helpful for a more experienced griller. There’s a lot of
information in here about all the different elements of grilling so it may seem
like overkill to any but those who fancy themselves grilling aficionados.
And just to get the season started off right, here’s some background
music for your weekend cookout.
Written by Jon Williams
The world of
classic rock lost a legend earlier this week with the death of keyboardist Ray
Manzarek. He was 74.
Manzarek met
Jim Morrison while a student at UCLA. Later, the two would found the legendary
rock group the Doors. While Morrison is the name most associated with the
Doors, Manzarek’s work gave the group its signature sound. The Doors were one
of the very rare rock groups to operate without a bass guitarist; Manzarek
handled those parts by playing a bass keyboard with his left hand in addition
to solos and melodies with his right.
After
forming in 1965, the Doors got their start as the house band at LA’s famous
Whisky a Go Go club, where they played with such musicians as Van Morrison.
Their self-titled
debut album was released in January of 1967, including such classic rock
staples as “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” and “Light My Fire,” which
was the song that made the Doors into bona fide stars.
Manzarek
also took over some vocal duties as the band attempted to carry on following
Jim Morrison’s death in 1971. During their six years together with Morrison as
the vocalist, the Doors released six albums and charted fifteen singles on the
Billboard Hot 100. Manzarek was played by Kyle MacLachlan in the 1991 film The
Doors starring Val Kilmer as Morrison.
Be sure to
SmartBrowse ‘The Doors’ on our website for a full list of their CDs, as well as
DVDs featuring performances and behind-the-scenes looks at their career.
Written by Kyle Slagley
Ask any student (or teacher for that matter) and you will be
told that summer is the best season of the year. We all know this. Sure, there
are things like warm weather, vacations, no school, pool parties, and mowing
the lawn every other day to look forward to, but when I was a kid, summer meant
one thing: camp.
Yes sir, who needs pool parties when you can go live in an
Army tent circa 1949, use bug spray as perfume, and swim in a lake that may or
may not be home to the Loch Ness Monster of North America? I know, I know…I was
always a little weird.
Fortunately, there are plenty of films to get your patrons
jazzed up about their ventures into the wilderness this summer!
Let’s start off with two classics: Camp Nowhere and Meatballs. In Camp Nowhere, the campers decide to swindle their parents with the
help of an unemployed teacher and create a “camp” that pretty much lets them
run amok all summer. In Meatballs, my
personal favourite, Bill Murray plays the camp counsellor who makes sure campers
and staffers alike are having a summer they won’t soon forget.
Perhaps even more classic than those two is The Parent Trap. Unfortunately, the
original 1961 version with Hayley Mills is no longer available, but we do carry
the 1998
version with Lindsay Lohan – which, despite all the negative press
surrounding Lindsay right now, is a pretty good remake. If you also happen to
have it on the shelves, the Olsen twins put out a revamped version of this film
in 1995 titled It Takes Two.
Two more camp films that have been around for quite a while
are Wet Hot American Summer and Heavyweights. Wet Hot American Summer takes place in the early ‘80s and focuses
more on the antics of the counsellors than the campers. With a killer comedy
cast of Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Ian Black, and Molly Shannon, the
slapstick helps make up for the lack of plot. Heavyweights was Judd Apatow’s big-screen debut for both
screenwriting and executive producing, and is generally an unsung gem. It
features a group of overweight kids sent off to a vacation-like “fat camp,”
only to find that Tony Perkis (Stiller) has taken over it and turned it into
weight-loss bootcamp.
For a comedy alternative, try Indian Summer, a sentimental film in
which a group of former campers reunite after twenty years when their beloved
camp is closing down, only to find that they pick up right where they left off.
And finally, I would be completely remiss if I didn’t
mention the ultimate summer camp horror film – Friday
the 13th. After being closed for years, Camp Crystal Lake is
being reopened under new management, but the infamous Jason Voorhees isn’t
having it. Even the most dedicated counsellors out there will second-guess
returning to camp this summer after seeing this slasher mainstay.
Written by Jon Williams
This week saw the release of the book The
Human Division by John Scalzi. While this is the first time the book
has been available in its complete form, it’s possible that Scalzi fans and
sci-fi readers may have already experienced the bulk of it. That’s because The Human Division is made up of
thirteen individual episodes which were each published individually in ebook
form, one per week, beginning in January. The book version collects these
installments into a complete tale, and also includes a couple of bonus stories.
Of course, the serial novel is far from a new concept. It
came to popularity in Victorian times, when a young writer named Charles
Dickens was hired to write a series of loosely related adventures to accompany
a number of comic illustrations. Those tales eventually became The
Pickwick Papers. Dickens continued to publish his works in serial
format, and in 1841, in one of the earliest instances of release date fever, a
riot nearly broke out in New York as eager readers waited impatiently at the
harbour for delivery of the final installment of The
Old Curiosity Shop.
Many works of classic literature were introduced into the
world in serial form, among them Madame
Bovary (1856), Anna
Karenina (1873-1877), and Portrait
of a Lady (1880-1881). One of the earliest American serials was Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, appearing each week for forty weeks in an abolitionist
newspaper in 1851-1852.
Serial literature went into a decline as the format shifted
into radio and, later, television broadcasts. It never fully died out, however,
and various writers have experimented with it over the years. Tom Wolfe, for
example, serialized The
Bonfire of the Vanities in Rolling
Stone in 1984 before compiling it into book form.
One of the most notable forays into serializing a novel came
in 1996 with Stephen King’s The Green
Mile, which came out as six monthly installments and led to the popular
film starring Tom Hanks. It’s interesting to note that the serial format
doesn’t always work out; King tried to distribute a story entitled The Plant
via his website in 2000. After payment for the installments proved to be
sporadic, the story petered out and has yet to be completed.
Now, though, with the rise of ebook technology and digital
subscription services, the serial form is coming into vogue once again.
Scalzi’s success with the experiment that became The Human Division shows that there’s room in the market for tales
told and consumed episodically as well as compiled later as one complete story.
CVS Midwest Tape is exhibiting at the Atlantic Provinces Library Association
Conference!
Visit Douglas Atkinson at our table as we continue the
celebration of the 25th anniversary of CVS (Canadian Video Services).
Be sure to bring your postcard to be entered for your chance to win a
Dreamscape Audiobook prize pack. And while you are visiting, don’t forget to
ask for a hoopla demo!
Exhibit hours:
May 14th
3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
May 15th
8:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
May 16th
8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
See you there!
Written by Jon Williams
Despite the fact that the solstice is still over a month
away, the summer movie season is in full swing with Iron Man 3 opening last weekend, The Great Gatsby this weekend, and Star Trek Into Darkness coming to theatres next week.
The Star Trek
phenomenon began in 1966 with the original
television series starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley,
Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan as the intrepid
crew of the Starship Enterprise. Set in the 2260s, the series dealt with the
crew’s adventures as they explore the galaxy in the name of the United
Federation of Planets.
Creator Gene Roddenberry’s original series ran for three
seasons, totaling 79 episodes (80 if you count the series pilot, which was
originally rejected by NBC and went unaired until 1988). That wasn’t enough to
satisfy fans, though, and it was followed up with an animated
series in 1973. This show featured the voices of the original cast in the
same roles, and ran for two seasons.
At that point, the small screen was no longer big enough for
the further voyages of the Enterprise. Star
Trek: The Motion Picture was the series’ first foray onto the silver
screen in 1979. It was followed by five sequels (released every 2-3 years and culminating
in 1991) that featured Captain Kirk and his original crew.
As it turned out, even this wasn’t enough for Star Trek fans. So, in 1987, the
franchise spun off with an entirely new television series. Star
Trek: The Next Generation starred Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes,
Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Denise Crosby, and
Wil Wheaton as the Enterprise’s new crew, set about a century after the
original.
The Next Generation
was well received by both critics and fans, and it received a longer run than
the original series, spanning seven seasons and 178 episodes. It also carried
on into a theatrical run, beginning with the film Generations,
which released soon after the series finale in 1994. William Shatner, James
Doohan, and Walter Koenig reprised their roles from the original crew as a
means of passing the torch to the new crew. Three other films were made
featuring the Next Generation crew.
Following The Next
Generation, three more television series were set in the Star Trek
universe. Beginning in 1993, Deep
Space Nine was set concurrently with The Next Generation, and took
place aboard a space station orbiting the planet Bajor. Voyager,
which premiered in 1995, deals with a different Federation starship returning
home to Earth from 75,000 light years away. Then, 2001 brought Enterprise,
a prequel series detailing humanity’s first voyages into interstellar space.
As popular as these series have been, nothing has captured Trek fans’ imaginations in quite the
same way as the original crew. That set the stage for 2009’s theatrical
reboot, featuring a time-travel plot that allowed the familiar characters
to be brought back with new actors portraying them. Star Trek Into Darkness
will pick up where that film left off, as the second adventure for the “new” crew
of the Enterprise.
With the new film coming into theatres, Trek fever is sure
to be at an all-time high. Make sure you have plenty of Star Trek series and movies on your shelves for patrons to enjoy.
SmartBrowse ‘Star Trek’ on our website for a complete selection of films and TV
seasons on DVD and Blu-ray.
Written by Jon Williams
On May 28,
Paul McCartney will re-release Wings
Over America, a 2-disc live set originally released in 1976.
McCartney’s post-Beatles band Wings recorded their concert from 23 June 1976
at the Forum in Los Angeles. The 28-track album contains many hits from Wings
and McCartney’s early solo career, as well as mixing in a few Beatles classics.
This will be
the latest release in McCartney’s Archive Collection, a project giving
McCartney’s albums a similar remastering treatment that the entire
Beatles catalog received in 2009. The first album in this collection was Band
on the Run, widely considered to be the best of Sir Paul’s post-Beatles
oeuvre, in 2010. This was followed in 2011 by McCartney
(his first solo album) and McCartney
II (his second “solo” album, released in 1980). Then in 2012, he
re-released his 1971 album Ram,
which was credited to himself and his wife Linda.
These re-releases
are being overseen by Paul McCartney himself, and often include bonus tracks
including B-sides, unreleased songs, and live versions. The schedule for upcoming releases runs
through 2016. The exact order seems to be in flux, but the next ones on the
list are rumoured to be Venus and Mars
and Wings at the Speed of Sound.
Of course,
these re-releases aren’t the only things McCartney fans have to look forward
to. He’s working on an album of new material with producer Mark Ronson to
follow up his 2012 Grammy-winning album Kisses
on the Bottom. He’s also embarking on a world tour beginning tomorrow
and running through August, with dates in South America, Europe, and both the
U.S. and Canada.
With the
Beatles’ debut album, Please
Please Me, being released in March of 1963, Sir Paul McCartney has been
a heavyweight in the music industry for more than fifty years. Make sure you
have a broad selection of his music on your shelves for patrons to enjoy.
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