Toby-O’s Top 10 Christmas Films!

10. LOVE ACTUALLY

9. ELF

8. HOME ALONE

7. NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION

6. A CHRISTMAS STORY

5. NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

4. SCROOGED

3. BAD SANTA

2. DIE HARD

1. GREMLINS

Chateau Roquefort

My latest Board game is a very fun family game from Gigamic Games…

CHATEAU ROQUEFORT

The break-down:
“Each player controls colored mice and tries to collect pieces of cheese in Castle Appenzell. On their turn, players spend action points to put new mice into play, reveal corridors in the castle, move their mice around the castle, or push a tile into play, which changes the maze of cheese pieces underneath. If two of a single player’s mice reach a place with the same kind of cheese showing, the player obtains a piece of this cheese. The first player with 4 different pieces of cheese wins the game.”

The Board In Play:

Chateau Roquefort is a very fun, quick-playing family game that is sure to get lots of play from both adults and children during the Christmas season at my house.

Teaser Tuesdays (12/09/08)

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

Here It Is For This Week…

“Going to school with the living did not excuse Bod from his lessons with the dead. The nights were long, and sometimes Bod would apologize and crawl into bed exhausted before midnight. Mostly, he just kept going.”

From: The Graveyard Book
By: Neil Gaiman

DVD Picks ‘O The Week (12/09/08)

THE DARK KNIGHT

THE WIRE (complete series)

What I’m Reading Now 12/08/2008

Graveyard Book
By: Neil Gaiman

The Plot:
“Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.
He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.
There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.
But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod’s family. . . .”

DVD Picks ‘O The Week (12/02/2008)

STEP BROTHERS

-Crude, juvenile, and proud of it, Step Brothers stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as two 40-year-old men, both living at home and leading the lives of 13-year-old boys, who are thrown together when their single parents get married. Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly) start out hating each other as only teenage boys can–but things get even worse for their long-suffering parents when they become best friends. Step Brothers combines the adolescent humor of producer Judd Apatow (Superbad, Knocked Up) and the comic chemistry of Ferrell and Reilly (who previously costarred in Talladega Nights)–fans of either will find plenty to enjoy.

WANTED

-Our unlikely hero is mild-mannered Chicago accountant Wesley Gibson, whose father died when he was a tot. Wesley never learned to stand up for himself, and his girlfriend, boss, and best buddy all take advantage until the seductive Fox (Angelina Jolie) rescues him from a sharpshooter named Cross. After which, she whisks him away to a mansion on the edge of town to meet the other members of the Fraternity, where leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman) informs Wesley that Cross, a rogue agent, executed his father. Sloan believes Wesley has the goods to take him out, so he undergoes the Fraternity’s brutal training regimen. When he’s ready, Sloan sends him out to fulfill his duty, but matters become complicated when Wesley finds out someone isn’t telling the truth…
Fans of The Matrix and Mr. and Mrs. Smith will like this one.

WASABI!

My lovely wife pre-ordered me a copy of a new board game for Christmas!
Needless to say… When the package arrived it was TORN OPEN to reveal:

WASABI!

The Description (from Board Game Geek):

“Wasabi! is a light and fast game where you compete against other players to assemble your quota of unique sushi recipes in a rapidly dwindling space. Players draw a variety of delicious ingredients into their hand from the pantry and play them one at a time onto the board, building off of each other’s previously-placed ingredients in the attempt to complete recipes of varying difficulty.

Completing a recipe earns you your choice of special actions from the kitchen to perform later (Chop!, Stack!, Switch!, Spicy!, and the dreaded Wasabi!) that will help you in your efforts or disrupt your opponents’ carefully arranged creations-in-progress.

Completing a recipe with style will earn you bonus points, but you might not always have the time to set up such stylish maneuvers… balancing speed with technique will be crucial if you plan to win the game!

Victory comes as soon as the board fills up with ingredients. Points for completed recipes plus bonuses are tabulated, and the winner is the player with the most points. An extremely skilled player might score an instant victory by completing their quota of recipes before the board fills up.”

The Board In Play:

My Take:

My wife and I LOVE this game!
It is easy to learn, quick to play, and is highly addictive.
The only down-side to WASABI! is that it makes us want sushi all of the time and we are BROKE till Christmas (haha).