Sweet, sweet cuppin' cakes

One of my coworkers very recently got married, and so, in celebration, we're having a pot-luck at work.  It would have been this Wednesday, but the new bride, knowing that I'll be gone for a conference starting Wednesday and through the rest of the week, graciously decided to hold off until next week.  So that I could make something.  Specifically, a Boston cream pie.  Now, I've never made one of these before and I have some reservations given that I'm not sure what my coworkers will end up doing to it.  See, they're very very bad at cutting cakes.  I brought in a cheesecake a couple weeks ago and by the time I went on break to get a piece, it resembled some sort of Cubist artwork.  I am very worried about what's going to happen when they have to cut into something that has a gooey middle.  The breakroom might very well end up looking like some sort of custardy charnel house.  Realizing this, I decided to try my hand at Boston cream pie cupcakes instead.

I don't think I'll ever make it as a food photographer

I couldn't very well bring in something completely untested, so this weekend, I made some practice cupcakes.  The cupcakes are a French sponge cake with pastry cream injected into their centers, and topped with a chocolate glaze.  The results ended up being delicious!  But they also ended up taking me about four hours to make from start to finish due to having to wait for various parts to cool.  So sadly, the Boston cream pie cupcakes will not be putting in an appearance at work.  Everyone will just have to make due with a regular sized Boston cream pie and we'll have to clean custard off the walls and ceiling.  Sorry guys.

Ready Player One

The not-too-distant future is a pretty miserable place to live.  The world's oil has run out and the majority of the populace live in extreme poverty in stacked trailer parks.  The only thing that makes life bearable for most people is the massively multiplayer online virtual reality environment, the OASIS.  When the creator of the OASIS, James Halliday, dies, he decrees that his vast fortune will go to whomever figures out the clues he leaves, finds the three keys he's hidden somewhere in the hundreds of worlds that make up the OASIS, unlocks their corresponding gates, and finds his "Easter Egg".  The story focuses on Wade Watts (who goes by the name Parzival online), a teenaged "gunter" (egg hunter) and his efforts to find Halliday's egg before any other gunters or the evil mega-corporation, IOI, do.

Halliday was fixated on the movies, television shows, and music of the 1980s, as well as video games and science fiction in general, and the clues he leaves regarding the Easter Egg reflect these obsessions.  In order to have any chance at actually deciphering the clues, Wade (as well as the rest of the gunters) has made these his obsessions as well.  This results in a book that is absolutely full of geeky pop-culture references.  For instance, there is an argument at one point in the book between Wade and his friend Aech about the merits, or lack thereof, of the movie Ladyhawke, the movie Blade Runner is important to the plot, as is Rush's album 2112, and at one point Wade has (in the OASIS) a delorean with Ghostbusters decals on it and KITT as an on board computer as well as his own personal computer assistant, Max.  There's even a giant robot fight toward the end!

Basically, and looking at reviews on Amazon I'm not the only one to think this, it's as if Cline wrote this book especially for me.  I get most of the references, largely excepting some of the super-old-school video games.  It's not particularly complicated book; there were some plot developments I could see coming a mile away and the novel's main antagonist is pretty one dimensional,  but that's more than made up for by the fact that the plot maintains a steady forward momentum and the protagonist, Wade, is an interesting individual with his own strengths and flaws.

I had the luck of getting this novel from my library in audiobook format.  It's narrated by the always fantastic Wil Wheaton, who brings a lot of energy into his reading and makes the characters and story really come alive.  It was pretty obvious while listening to it that Wheaton was really enjoying himself.

Ready Player One is one of the most solidly entertaining books I've ever had the pleasure of reading (ok, listening to).  I highly recommend it to anyone who identifies at all as being a geek, especially if you grew up in the 80s, or even if you just like a good adventure story.  I'd normally say go check it out at your local library, but this one is definitely good enough to buy.