As a critic, I’m supposed to offer my unbiased opinion on a piece of media that I’ve been given. I’m supposed to set aside my own personal preferences and examine art – whether it be a cheesy 1980s TV series or an Oscar-winning modern classic – without letting my feelings interfere with my final verdict.

Well, I’m afraid I just can’t do that in this case.

Because, you see, I’ve been a fan of Luke Chueh’s artwork since my then-girlfriend-now-wife turned me on to it in 2005. She had seen his paintings online and instantly fell in love with them. I had a similar experience when she showed me his website, and I saw for the first time his unique style, motifs, and message.

Chueh’s art is almost always described using the same adjectives and phrases – “cute, but dark”, “adorable, but sad”, “funny, but deep” – and even though these have become cliché at this point, that doesn’t mean they aren’t true. Much of Chueh’s work features animals that look like costumed out-of-work actors on their way to a kid’s backyard birthday party, ready to snap a photo with a group of seven year-olds because it’s the only gig they can get.
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When I came up with the idea for a series called Late to the Party I never would have guessed my first article would be about books. I assumed it would be about some TV series I just started watching, or even a video game that I missed out on as a kid.

I’m not the most prolific reader; I usually go through phases where I rapidly consume five or six books and then don’t read anything for a few months. Luckily my love of gadgets trumped my inconsistent reading habit when I picked up one of the new Kindle Touches a month or so ago. Since then I’ve been reading a lot more, but for a while before I got my Kindle I knew what I had to start with: The Hunger Games.
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I think by now it should be obvious to you that we here at Top Hat Sasquatch are huge LEGO fans. Even before the days of licensed sets, LEGO appealed to geeks and non-geeks alike, enabling creative play with endless possibilities. It’s no surprise that the LEGO brand has amassed such a huge cult following that continues to grow every year.

If you read this site and are a big fan of LEGO, you’re probably familiar with John Baichtal and Joe Meno’s work. John writes for the always-awesome blog GeekDad and Joe is the founder of BrickJournal. The Cult of LEGO is the product of their hard work and fanboy dedication to the little plastic bricks from Denmark.
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Geek confession: I haven’t read the Harry Potter books. I’m about halfway through the first. I wasn’t into Harry Potter until recently, and I don’t read as much as I should. Don’t worry, the HP books are coming out as ebooks for the first time this month right? Oh, wait.

JK Rowling’s weird new digital piggy bank called Pottermore was supposed to offer the ebooks this month, but on the official Pottermore Insider blog, they said:

Finally, the Pottermore Shop, which will sell the Harry Potter eBooks and digital audio books, will now open in the first half of 2012, in order to allow us to focus on our first priority: opening Pottermore to as many people as possible and making the experience as good as it can be.

First half of 2012? That’s like a million years away! Won’t we all be too busy playing our Wii U’s, driving jetpacks, and wearing V-Striped Jumpsuits by then? Who knows. But seriously, how hard is it to release some text files on the Kindle store so I can replace my illegal versions buy them and make JK Rowling more money?

I can understand a movie or a video game getting delayed, but something that should have happened years ago is hard to excuse, especially when you know it would take them about five minutes to export their text files in the proper formats.

I guess I’ll wait a while longer to read the Harry Potter books, because well, I’m lazy.

Our good friends over at DK Publishing just sent word of their new “Attack of the Authors” East Coast Tour to support the new book Star Wars: Battles for the Galaxy that comes out on April 18th.

You can find a pretty good preview of the book at the DK UK site, but we’ll have an early review sometime soon. Like most cool events, their tour isn’t coming close to me, but hopefully some of you are in their path and can report back with some photos. I should let them know that their logo for the event clearly includes Indiana, but I’ll let them off the hook.

Here are the details straight from DK:
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