Friday Night Law: Best Audiobooks, My Geek Office

My Favorite Audiobooks

If you’ve ever listened to the Bingecast you’d know I’m a big fan of audiobooks. The reasons are simple – three kids aged 8,6, and 4. I don’t even have time to watch a single episode of television at home let alone settle in with a Kindle. Everything I need to fulfill my media needs takes place while working on the auto line I call work. Reading an actual book on my job is possible, but only in 20 second intervals every minute. Audiobooks allow me to fire through whatever it is I want to all night long. Now, I understand better than most that there are positives and negatives to listening to novels in comparison to reading. You’re basically leaving the interpretation entirely to the narrator and more often than I’d like to admit, this leads to me probably not enjoying a book as much as I might have left to my own brain. However, every once in a while you come across a narrator that completely nails every aspect of the story. Every nuance of the characters is delivered. Every beat is hit. Every line of dialogue seems fascinating.

Roy Dotrice is the epitome of narrators. His reading of the A Song of Ice and Fire audiobooks is about as completely engaging as possible. His efforts have placed him in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of characters voiced in an audiobook. Each one is unique. He is simply incredible. Here’s 188 minutes worth to prove it.

Dotrice aside, there are a few other narrators that have gave memorable performances over the years for me.

Michael Kramer reading Savages: There’s a specific tone to Don Winslow’s novel that even Oliver Stone failed to comprehend in the 2012 movie. Kramer comes across as a no-nonsense, old-school badass and that bleeds into each and every character.

Scott Shepherd reading The Visible Man: I truly believe this book is less interesting to me if  I read it myself. The whole novel (by Chuck Klosterman) is basically one  man telling the stories of his life inside an invisible cloak and Shepherd wraps you around his finger as you wait on every word.

Raul Esparza reading Under The Dome: All Stephen King audiobooks are a treat as the author, himself, tends to chime in at the end of the story to let you hear some behind the scenes info regarding choices he made with the story, factual errors, and why he decided to tell the tale. Esparza makes for double the enjoyment as he seriously knows how to make you hate certain characters. Once again, I doubt I would have loved this book as much as I did without him.

My Awesome Geek Office

Last week I posted some photos on Facebook of my renovated Office and the feedback inspired me to do a follow up. Because I’ve only recently joined FB the reaction to the pics from some of my friends was interesting. People I’ve know for years had no idea I was such a geek. I saw things like “The 40 year old Virgin” pop up in the comments over and over. People at work looked at me differently. Yes, I’m a 40-year-old man that reads comics, hangs packaged toys on my wall, and has an entire glass case dedicated to Pixar collectibles. I don’t give a fuck. Here’s some updated shots of the room as it is now, almost finished.

I grabbed this set over at Etsy a few months ago. I’m a big fan of minimalist posters and love the fact that CARS was left out while BRAVE made the cut.

The top pic is another Etsy purchase from my Wife. The entire picture is made of dialogue from the film, JAWS. The  bottom shot is a picture I took of Thomas Jane my first year at Comic con while we were both shit-faced outside some hotel. The final year I went I was offered the chance to interview him for JoBlo.com and finally got it autographed.

My main comic shelf is almost entirely purchased for me by my brother. There few things I have on my shelves that I love as much as those Batman and Joker statues.

My “top shelf” toys are near and dear to my heart and far away from my children. The Sloth, Han, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, and Michael Myers are all limited editions. The Ultraman is probably the cheapest thing up there but might also pass as my favorite.

The Pixar case is the thing that drives my kids nuts the most. I’m literally the dad from THE LEGO MOVIE when it comes to these things.

The mid-level of my movie collection holds some coveted movie toys as well as some more of those Etsy dialogue prints. The Deathstar, Darth, and Boba Fett are all made of dialogue from the original trilogy.

There’s the whole DVD shelf (I can’t even remember the last time I actually bought a movie), the 3D Posters, and the stupendous Spider-Man figure it took me over an hour to hang from the ceiling. Fun game – find Moreno in this picture.

That’s all for now. Go drink your ass off and blow shit up. Happy 4th, yo.