40 For 40 Year 1

1.  Publish My Novel

2. Get Another Tattoo (maybe work on a sleeve depending on the results of #6)

3.  Finish All 4,532 pages and 12 volumes of Winston Churchill's 'The Second World War.'

4.  Run a 5K  (to start with.  I'd also like to complete that 2,906 mile challenge I set myself and if I can run a 5K without dying, a 10K, Half Marathon and even a Marathon also seem like possibilities- but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.)

5. Visit All 50 States

6. Get ripped and get myself in shape.*

7. Pay off every single dime of my student loans.

8.  Write more novels, publish them.

9. I would like to ride a mechanical bull.

10. Go on a Caribbean Cruise with the Missus (through the Panama Canal and other destinations.)

11.  Call me crazy, but I think I'd like to drive to Alaska- maybe on a family vacation.  Just cuz. 

12.  People keep insisting to me that St. Louis and Kansas City are pretty cool once you get to know them.  Figure out if this is true or not.

13.  Have at least one culinary adventure a year.**

14. Vikings/Packers at Lambeau.  'Nuff said.

15.  Read one fiction book a year that's well outside my usual genre preferences.

16.  Work on my backlog of non-fiction and history books--  my Frasier biographies of Charles II and Cromwell, The Steel Bonnets and my Jenkins bios of Churchill and Gladstone are at the top of the list.

17. Read Wuthering Heights and understand/appreciate it.

18. Re-read and finish The Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire

19.  Read Pride and Prejudice and understand it.  (Or at least appreciate it.)

20.  Master my ukulele!  (Even take lessons from someone if I have too.)

21.  I would like to shoot a gun.  Because I've never done that before.

22. Be the best Father I can be.***

23.  Be able to buy a really rare bottle of whiskey for my 40th Birthday.

24.  I'd like to visit Kentucky and check out the Bourbon Trail.

25.  I'd like to visit NYC.

26.  Ride a day of RAGBRAI

27.  Ride the whole week of RAGBRAI

28. Learn how to make bread from scratch

29.  World Travel Wishlist:  Brazil, India, China, Europe

30.  Brush up my foreign language skills and achieve moderate fluency in Chinese and Hindi.

31.  Get something pierced again.  (I really, really missed my piercings.)

32.  Go skydiving

33.  Go to Trekfest  (no excuses next year!  Gotta get this done or turn in my Trekker Card)

34.  Take the family back to the United Kingdom for a vacation.

35.  Make Our House Perfect (or move to a bigger and better house)

36.  Be able to afford a subscription to The Economist

37. Road Trip it up to Winnipeg for a Jets Game

38.  I'd like to see an Iowa away game somewhere.  (Football and basketball.)

39.  Go To A Major League Soccer Game

40.  Go to a Cubs Game at Wrigley

Snuffing Out The Cigar

Kids,

It's moving day here at The Cigar.  After five years I've decided to move on to bigger, better and more professional looking things so we're migrating to Wordpress and, we're changing our name to boot, so follow me to our new home:  The Daily Quixotry

The name, I know, is a little unusual, but it fits me better I think.  I liked the alliteraration of Churchill's Cigar, but all in all, this blog has had very little to do with Churchill or Cigars.  I hate cigars.  I lack the patience required for cigars and unlike Churchill, I don't really enjoying chewing on the damn things either.

So, stop by tomorrow and check out the new digs!  It's been a real pleasure blogging here, but I'm ready to take things up a notch and I hope everyone whose dropped by from time to time will come check out my new digs as well.

thanks
Tom

'Veronica Mars' --A Review

A long time ago, we used to have a network named UPN- if you haven't heard of them lately at all, that's because they merged with the WB to become the CW.  And anyway, about a decade ago now, the UPN premiered this quirky television show centered around a teenaged private eye.  Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell's breakout role) could have been described as 'Nancy Drew' for the New Millennium, but she was way too cynical and way too jaded for that- sixteen going on fifty.   The show was intelligent, watchable and thanks to the easy, believable chemistry between Veronica and her Dad Keith (Enrico Colantoni) had one of the best father-daughter relationships ever portrayed on television.

And like all intelligent, watchable television shows, it lasted for three seasons and was then promptly cancelled.

But then a funny thing happened:  the show gained a vocal cult following and both Kristen Bell and the show's creator, Rob Thomas expressed interest in making a movie.  And then another funny thing happened: they decided to promote their potential movie via Kickstarter and ended up raising more than $2 million dollars in the space of about ten hours or so.  (They added a further $3 million over the course of the rest of their one month Kickstarter period.)  That convinced Warner Brothers that there was enough interest out there to warrant making a movie, so a little more than a year later, here we are with Veronica Mars:  The Movie.

Picking up ten years after the end of the television show, we find Veronica (Kristen Bell) on the verge of breaking free from her old life in Neptune once and for all.  She's got a successful boyfriend, Piz (Chris Lowell) (who works with Ira Glass at This American Life, I guess) and she's on the verge of landing a job at a prestigious New York law firm, headed up by Jamie Lee Curtis.  But just as everything seems to be coming up roses for Veronica, she gets a call from her old boyfriend, Logan Ecchols (Jason Dohring).

Logan has been implicated in the death of his pop star girlfriend, Bonnie Deville, who used to go by the name Carrie Bishop and attend high school with both Veronica and Logan.  Quickly enough, despite her determination to get out and stay out Veronica finds herself back in the private eye business and just in time for her ten year high school reunion with friends Wallace (Percy Daggs III) and Mac (Tina Majorino)- where she realizes that the more things change, the more they stay the same and that the key to finding out if Logan is innocent or not is to be found smack dab in the middle of her former high school classmates.

As she reconnects with old friends, including a reformed ex-biker, now straight up family man Eli Navarro (Francis Capra) the allure of her old life and her connection with her ex-boyfriend threatens to rekindle their old flame together, Veronica finds herself drawn back to Neptune as her quest to clear Logan's name threatens to reveal secrets that some people would prefer to stay buried.

Fans of the television show are going to absolutely love this movie.  It's nice to see Veronica, again of course, but going back to Neptune and reconnecting with all of her old high school buddies?  It's like the ten year high school reunion you actually want to go to!  Meeting these characters again is a lot of fun- Veronica's surprise at finding out former bad boy biker Weevil is now a settled, stable family man is genuine enough to make fans of the show stand up and cheer.  Every character, major or minor that fans of the show loved seems to make an appearance.

But, beyond that- the movie is peppered with celebrity cameos that actually work really well and don't seem all that jarring and out of place.   Justin Long, Harvey Levin and Ira Glass all show up- inevitably, because James Franco has to be in everything these days, he shows up as well.  And Mr. Kristen Bell himself, Dax Shepherd shows up for a brief, funny cameo that is over far too quickly.

Don't be afraid, though: if you have no idea what 'Veronica Mars' is going into this movie, you won't be left out in the cold.  There's a brief prologue at the start of the film that does an effective job of providing context as to who Veronica is and what her story is- and after that, you can just sit back, relax and let yourself enjoy an engaging, intelligent, thriller of a movie that will leave you wanting more- or, at the very least, leave you wanting to get your hands on the television show so you can find out what you've been missing all these years.

Overall, this movie is incredibly good.  It manages to balance itself between being a love letter to fans of the television show while introducing these characters to new and (hopefully) eager audiences, which is a feat in and of itself.  The actors haven't missed a beat and settle back into their roles with gusto and enthusiasm and the writing remains intelligent, the dialogue snappy and the plot moves right along.  It's good to have Veronica Mars back.  You can only hope enough people out there agree with that sentiment to warrant a sequel.   My Grade: A+

This Week In Vexillology #80

This Week In Vexillology, I'm actually in Arizona.

So, it seems only fitting that for a special 'vacation edition' of This Week In Vexillology, we take a look at the flag of the Grand Canyon State.  The thirteen red and gold stripes on the top half of the flag represent the thirteen original colonies as well as the colors of Spain that Coronado carried into the region in 1540 on his expedition to find the Golden Cities of Cibola.    The copper star represents the mining industry in the state, while the bottom half of the flag is blue, which represents liberty.

The arrangement of the stripes on the top half of the flag is also meant to represent the beautiful sunsets so common in the state.   Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the history behind the flag and how it was designed and the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA!) rated this flag as one of the ten best flags on the continent and it's easy to see why.  Arizona, much like it's neighbors New Mexico, Colorado and California, is a departure from the usual state flag of 'let's slap our state seal on a color' that seems so sadly predominant for many of the other states.  It's unique, well designed and a beautiful flag.

So while I'm going to get back to enjoying my vacation, you all should give it up for the flag of Arizona and remember, until next time, keep your flags flying, FREAK or otherwise.