Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte

The Pumpkin Spice Latte has returned to Starbucks. The seasonal drink only appears during the fall, and apparently there are people who wait on tenterhooks for it to arrive. Some of these people are celebrities who hang out on Twitter, and who tweet frantically back and forth to each other about whether the PSL has arrived, and if not, when will it, and why can't they get it early since they're all famous and everything? (This would be Mikey Way and Pete Wentz, if anyone cares.)

Unfortunately, I don't really get the Pumpkin Spice Latte Love. It's not a bad drink, with a nice balance of nutmeg and ginger, but it doesn't do much for me. It's too sweet, for starters, and for enders, it's too expensive, especially with the recent price hikes at Starbucks. If I'm going to toss out over four dollars for a Venti, I'll stick with my Venti Caramel Macchiato.

Neutrogena Wave

A new form of product in skin care, the Neutrogena Wave leaves your face feeling bright and clean and even a little tingly.

The Wave is a small, hand-held device that uses a disposable pad infused with a cleansing solution. When the pad is moistened, it builds up a slight foam. The vibration of the Wave then helps exfoliate and deep-cleanse your skin. It's easy to use in the shower, and you can actually see the results in the dead skin and oils left behind on the pad.

Better yet, the Wave is a reasonable price. Highly recommended.

Movie--The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I think I committed a fatal error in reading the original F. Scott Fitzgerald short story before I watched this movie. The movie, while sweeping and beautifully filmed and filled with excellent performances, bears almost no resemblance to the story, which caused me to make faces at it through most of the two-and-a-half hours of its running time.

In fact, the only element remaining of the original story is Benjamin Button's reverse aging. And even that conceit is modified. In the story, Benjamin acts like an old man when he appears to be an old man, and acts like a child when he appears to be a child. In the movie, he behaves more like a child during his older years, and like an old man suffering from dementia when he looks like a young child. More importantly, the reverse aging adds little to the story other than a gimmick and the chance for the movie makers to spend a great deal of money on make-up effects (and win Oscars for them, but that's another issue).

Overall, while I could see the movie had its merits, my enjoyment was greatly diminished by the complete departure from the source.

Haagen-Dazs Green Tea Ice Cream

Okay, so I'm on a bit of an ice cream kick, but I saw a couple of new ice cream flavors in the store the other day, so I grabbed them. One of them was Haagen-Dazs' new green tea ice cream.

The only place I've ever had green tea ice cream before was at my favorite sushi joint. This ice cream is actually a little better, I think. It's creamy and rich, with a strong green tea flavor. The green tea flavor comes from matcha green tea, which has a stronger flavor than most green tea, but also carries stronger antioxidant properties. How well those work when it's blended with cream and sugar to make this decadent ice cream is anybody's guess, but it's definitely tasty.

Single Serving Ice Cream

Haagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerry's, and a couple other premium brands, including premium store brands, have jumped onto the bandwagon of single serving premium ice cream. In a tiny little carton with its own attached spoon, this ice cream is just as high calorie and bad for you as the large-sized versions, but without the added risk of polishing off an entire pint at one sitting.

Only a few flavors are available in this packaging right now, and the tiny spoon, while cute, is largely useless. Those are really my only complaints. While this isn't exactly a dieting option, it's an aid to portion control on those days when you really need a nice dose of high-quality ice cream.

The Dark Tower: Treachery

This comic series is a spin-off of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, featuring characters from the books during a time period not covered by the epic novel sequence. The story fills in gaps in the life of Roland Deschain, bringing readers more of his backstory and history.

Treachery follows The Long Road Home, which spun out from Gunslinger Born. Gunslinger Born was basically a retelling of pieces of the novel Wizard and Glass, and so brought no new material to the Dark Tower world. The following sequences, though, carry that story forward into new territory.

The end of Treachery does cover pieces of Roland's story from the books, but also adds to the narrative. Although readers of the Dark Tower books will know how the ending plays out, there's enough original material here to provide a good addition to the books.

A must-have for devoted Stephen King fans.

Gold's Gym Cardio Workout

Gold's Gym Cardio Workout for the Wii is a reasonably good workout game, but has several drawbacks. Intended to interface with the Wii Balance Board, Gold's Gym offers exercises for the balance board, but they don't work well and end up being more frustrating than useful.

The most entertaining and usable features of Gold's Gym are, unsurprisingly, the cardio boxing sections. With premade or customized workouts, you can produce a satisfying workout that fits your schedule, giving you a quick aerobic interval before work or whenever you have fifteen or twenty minutes to exercise.

The game takes a while longer to unlock than I'd prefer--I had to spend a few days going through the tutorials before I could actually get a good workout--but once this hurdle has been passed, the workouts proceed at a nice pace.

Recommended for increasing aerobic and cardio activity, but avoid the balance board options.

EA Sports Active Personal Trainer

After getting the Wii Fit for Christmas, it took me about three months to unlock everything in the game and get to a point where it wasn't offering me an intense enough workout. The arrival of the EA Sports Active offers new alternatives.

EA Sports Active integrates with the Wii Fit Balance Board, but also uses the nunchuck controller and a leg strap to track movement, as well as an elastic resistance band to provide surprisingly intense strength training. You can use pre-made workouts, including a 30-day challenge sequence, or make your own workout sequences. With workouts lasting from 20 minutes to as long as an hour, at three different intensity levels, EA Sports Active provides a variety of workouts that you can easily fit into even a busy day.

With its wider range of exercises and more intense workouts, EA Sports Active offers a great next step after your needs surpass the exercise provided by the Wii Fit.

G1 Apps: Hangman

After having great luck finding a good Tic Tac Toe game, I was hoping to have equal success finding a Hangman app. No such luck. I tried two different apps and wasn't particularly pleased with either.

Hangman from Vavni is a remarkably pretty application, but it's difficult to use. The touch keyboard on the screen has letters that are so small it's practically impossible to press only one letter at a time. The game also works with the keyboard, but this takes something away from the enjoyment.

HangDroid's touch screen alphabet works slightly better, but is still difficult. The graphics aren't as pretty as Vavni's entry, and the Android figure who gets "hanged" doesn't seem to have enough body parts for an enjoyable game.

I continue my quest for the ultimate Hangman app.

Movie Review--Up

A much deeper and more mature movie than it appears from the previews, Up, Pixar's latest release, transcends the conception of "family movie." Much like Wall-E before, it, Up tackles complex and intense adult issues, packaging them in an emotionally authentic story that will have most viewers going for the tissues in the first ten minutes.

The movie has plenty of laughs, as well--enough to send you looking for the tissues for an entirely different reason. There's also adventure, and some scary sequences, so be sure to take the PG rating into consideration.

The 3D presentation adds much to this movie, but subtly. Overall, even though the visual presentation is immaculate, it's driven by a story that's more touching and genuine than any number of supposedly serious, "adult" films.

X-Files--The Comics

The X-Files has been absent from TV screens since 2002, but with the arrival of The X-Files, I Want to Believe in movie theaters last year, the series has been revived in comic book form.

The X-Files comic books are published by Wildstorm Comics, with the first issue having arrived in January of this year. So far, the series consists of stand-alone stories of two issues each, echoing the formula of the earlier days of the TV series. The artwork is quite good, offering familiar faces to fans. The stories aren’t bad, but could be better. The two-issue per story format limits the strength of the individual narratives, so the plots are weaker than they could be if given a 4- or 5-issue arc.

One confusing element to the comics is that they’re dated 2009 in the slug lines, and Mulder and Scully make use of modern technology that never appeared in the original series (flash drives, for example), and the Lone Gunmen make appearances in spite of their canonical deaths in Season Nine. One has to conclude that the timeline exists independently of both the series and the recent movie, as many important events from both are ignored.

While these comics could be stronger if given longer arcs, they’re still an entertaining return to the world of The X-Files.

Movie Review--Star Trek

Wow. That's all I really have to say. But for the sake of actually writing, you know, a review, I'll say a little more.

I'm a Star Trek fan from way back. If I say how far back it'll totally date me, but let's just say my memories go all the way back to original series. I was excited about the first movie, even more excited when Wrath of Khan came out, followed Next Generation religiously for several years, loved Deep Space Nine, and then lost interest in Voyager. I wanted Enterprise to re-spark my interest in this long-time fannish love, but it failed in spite of the presence of Scott Bakula. When I stopped paying enough attention to even notice when Captain Archer had his shirt off, I knew it was time to let it go.

And then came this weekend's reboot.

Having gotten mired in the increasingly convoluted world of Lost, I had understandable trepidations when JJ Abrams stepped up to take over the Star Trek franchise. When the previews starting coming out, I started nourishing a cautious optimism.

My optimism was rewarded when I saw the movie this weekend.

This re-visioning of Star Trek balances respect for the original series and its characters with a need to move forward into a tone that fits better with today's cinematic expectations. The movie tears along at a crisp clip, introducing characters in such a way that an old-time Trekker like me is quickly snared by nostalgia, while those new to the series, like my son, aren't lost. The characterizations of the original crew are just new enough to work in the new milieux, and just enough like their previous incarnations that you recognize them as soon as they arrive on-screen. The plot is a bit convoluted and would probably collapse under close scrutiny, but the combination of time travel and alien involvement is classic Trek (actually, more accurately, it's classic Next Generation). One sequence struck me as a bit over the top, falling a bit too far into slapstick, but overall this was a fine, fine ride. So fine, in fact, I'll probably be going to see it again.

Starbucks Via

A few months ago, Starbucks ventured into the world of instant coffee. This would seem to fly in the face of everything Starbucks stands for. After all, the quintessential coffeehouse experience involves slow, loving coffee production, ensuring just the right amount of foam on your latte, and a relaxed drinking experience. Instant coffee? That's for people who don't really appreciate the complexity of the coffee experience.

At least it might seem that way for those of us for whom instant coffee means Sanka or Nescafe. Let's face it--that stuff really isn't worth of the name "coffee."

Starbucks Via totally is.

Via is packaged in single-serving portions, 12 to a box. For $9.95 a box, this might seem steep, but that's less than a dollar per cup for coffee that's frankly pretty damn good. The coffee inside isn't the weird, styrofoam-like pellets of many instant coffees, but is "soluble, microground" coffee. It looks like actual coffee grounds, but much finer even than espresso. It dissolves easily in hot water, not leaving lumps like flavored instant coffees (think General Foods International Coffees). Just heat up your water, pour in your coffee and stir, and you've got a cup of java just about as good as the regular drip at Starbucks.

Best G1 Android Phone Games (So Far)

As with many of the new smart phones, several game apps are available for the Google G-1. Some of my favorites so far:

WordPops: Make words as letters "fall" up from the bottom of the screen. A cross between Tetris and Boggle. Comes in a free version (WordPops Lite), but worth the $.99 purchase price for the wider array of usable letters.

Tic Tac Toe: Some of the Tic Tac Toe versions were ponderous and difficult to use, but the free app I found on a quick search of the Android store is fun and fast-moving. It's a great game to play with the kids at restaurants when you're waiting for your food and you've run out of Tic Tac Toe grids on the kids' menu.

AlphaMixr: Also available in a free version, but again worth the $.99 purchase price. Form as many words as you can out of a set of supplied letters while racing the clock.

Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers

I saw these on sale when I was out shopping for some easy lunches and dinners and decided to give a couple a try. Cafe Steamers are packaged in a special steamer basket configuration, so you can have a dinner with veggies crisper than the usual frozen dinner fare, and cooked in a healthier way than some other dinners.

I tried the Sweet Sesame Chicken and the Five-Spice Beef & Vegetables and found both quite tasty and easy to prepare. My biggest beef (no pun intended) is the amount of packaging. Yes, frozen dinners aren't environmentally friendly at the best of times, but Cafe Steamers feature two separate plastic containers, one of which doesn't have a recycling symbol on it that I could find. This seems like a waste, especially when "green" packaging options are so prevalent these days.

G1 Apps--Calorie Counter

The free Calorie Counter app is a useful tool for anyone wanting to keep track of their calorie consumption. With lists of major items from fast food chains, as well as a barcode scanner, it supplies enough data to get most people through a typical day. You can also save favorites that you eat often, and at the end of the day it gives you a grand total of your calorie consumption.

The barcode scanner is a bit tricky to use, but once you get the hang of it, it gives you a full nutritional profile for the item in question that you can then plug right into your day's menu. Whether you're watching your weight or just trying to eat healthier, the Calorie Counter can be a big help.

G1 Apps--aBook Reader

The aBook reader for the Android phone provides a surprisingly easy-to-read format for reading. In spite of the small screen, the books are quite legible. Page-turning is accomplished with a simple finger-swipe (or thumb-swipe), accompanied by page-turney noises if you so desire (the sounds can be turned off if you want your reading experience to be quieter or sneakier).

The layout is pretty, too, with a parchment-like background for the text. The only real complaint about this reader is that there aren't many books available that I was able to find.

Read: Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Short Stories of Edgar Allen Poe

Crystal Light On the Go

If you have to drink a large quantity of water during the day, or are just trying to up your hydration, the taste of plain water can get pretty old pretty fast. For those times when you just can't stand another swig, Crystal Light On the Go flavor packets can help you get through your required daily allotment of water.

These single-serving packets come in a variety of flavors, from iced tea to fruit mixes. However, be sure to look for the additives. Following the trend of adding various vitamin supplements to everything, several varieties have additions for immunity, energy, and other goals. The energy drinks, though, are caffeinated, so if you have a sensitivity to caffeine, this won't be a good choice. They also contain aspartame, so be aware of that, as well.

G1 Apps--Tag To Do

When consolidating your electronic devices onto your phone, a To Do list is essential. The Android Marketplace offers several, of which Tag To Do has become my list-maker of choice.

Tag To Do allows you to make multiple to do lists based on varying categories--work, home, grocery list, etc. Within each individual list, you can assign priorities and/or due dates. When an item reaches its due date, the application sends a message that appears in the notification area of the phone to let you know the date has arrived and you haven't checked off the item as done.

This combination of flexibility and notification makes Tag To Do a useful tool for anyone trying to keep themselves organized. Best of all, it's free.

Watchmen--The Movie

After a great deal of hype and a legal battle that threatened to derail it entirely, the movie adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen finally hit theaters this weekend. Although if you weren't aware of the original comic, you wouldn't know it was Alan Moore's Watchmen, because Moore refused to take any money for the adaptation, nor did he allow his name to be attached to the film.

Considering the quality of the movie, it seems a bit odd that Moore would distance himself so intently from it, but I suppose that's his prerogative. The script proves very faithful--sometimes even too faithful--to the original material, even including frame-by-frame reproductions of parts of the comic.

The weaknesses regarding the story's women are still there, though the ending, which came off as a bit ridiculous in the graphic novel, has been tweaked to fit much more smoothly into the feel of the rest of the story.

The weakest part of the movie is, conversely, the strongest part of the comic. While Dr. Manhattan's ruminations on his "all times are the same" mental processes in the comic are masterfully rendered, in the movie they're somewhat confusing and slow down an otherwise fast-paced film.

Performance-wise, Watchmen is a bit weak. The strongest showing comes from Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as the amoral Comedian, who carries those parts of the film in which he appears. A close second is Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan.