Braunbeck and I will be participating authors at the Ohioana Library Book Festival in Columbus, OH on May 10th (next Saturday). I hope some of the Ohio noders can make it. The festival starts at 10:30am and runs until 5pm. Mary Doria Russell, Harvey Pekar, Christopher Barzak, and Catherynne M. Valente will also be at the festival.
As an added bonus, the festival is free. For more info, visit: http://www.ohioanabookfestival.org/
On Friday night, partly in celebration of Things Yet To Be Announced, I and Braunbeck, Transitional Man, and several non-noder friends went out for Mexican food and a couple of pitchers of margaritas, then went to see Iron Man, and then went out for milkshakes.
Iron Man was a lot of fun. I've never really read the comic, but those in our group who had felt it was a good modernization/adaptation of the original storyline and that the character was in desperate need of resetting anyhow due to some unfortunate later comics.
Ultimately, you get all the cool battling robot effects I was hoping to see in Transformers, but instead of being surrounded by dumb the action sequences are surrounded by good acting, interesting characters and a decent story. There are a couple of questionable comic book logic plot points that they couldn't simply get rid of and that I think they tried to make as believable as possible.
For instance, I could fully buy the in-the-cave electromagnet implant for Stark, since the guy he was with was apparently an engineer and not a heart surgeon. And that he needed to create the mini-reactor to power his suit etc. But after he got back to the U.S.? Stark's surely got enough cash to hire a good doctor and get the shrapnel taken out. I'm willing to bet most major metro hospitals have someone on staff who could do that. And then ... oh, foo.
*drinks another margarita and enjoys the splosions*
It's a fast-moving, thoroughly entertaining movie. And you also get a little tidbit after the credits that's worth waiting for.