Category: Nerdiness

A very exciting session of D&D tonight! After finally resurrecting an NPC (non-player character) whose stinky corpse they’d been carrying around for four days, the group fought in a battle with a lich who killed two player characters (Michelle’s anthropomorphic bear barbarian and Geisel’s four-armed batrachian monk)! Marlo thought that it might be a TPK (total party kill) but they managed to defeat the bad guy. They resurrected Michelle’s character and went into the next room, which is the climax for this chapter (7) and now one of the other NPC “allies” is turning on them. What will happen next Thursday? Who will sacrifice an ally, take the Crown of Secrets and rule this layer of the abyss? Tune in to this station.

Last night I watched the 50’s version of War of the Worlds. It too has it’s down points – it has very “50’s” moments with the alien hand touching the woman’s shoulder and the woman turning around and screaming – but it is still a far better movie than the Cruisemobile in every respect except CGI.

Also, I picked up the 1960 Edward Gorey illustrated version of the H.G. Wells classic at work for less than $14, and I am happy about it! You can check out what I’m talking about at http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=4556 – there’s pictures and everything. I am going to read it.

I just saw War of the Worlds and I’ll say this: It makes a great trailer.

If you go see it, do it for the right reasons: giant space machines blowing shit up and disintegrating people. Have no illusions about the characters or even the story. I’ve seen the original movie, and read parts of the book. I still want to see the book adapted right: in the century it was set. Not the 50’s, not the 21st century. Now that would be cool. This one is lazy story-telling.

Jack and the Three Blind Archers
Jack and the Scotsman Part 2
Jack and the Ultra Robots
Samurai Versus Ninja
Robo-Samurai vs Mondo Bot

Special mentions:
Jack and the Scotsman
Jack vs Mad Jack
Jack and the Monks and the Ancient Master (especially for Marlo)
Jack and the Zombies (especially for Stewie)
Jack and the Three Gems
The Princess and the Bounty Hunters

Friday I went to the Drexoll Canada Day Game-a-thon and played Carcassonne and LOSER! and Clans with Sheri, Stephane, David Bradley and Ursula. I almost won Carcassonne even though I wasn’t trying. LOSER! was pretty fun and I’d play it again, along with Clans. They were both relatively short games. I’ve been thinking about dragging Conquest Beyond out again, but only thinking.

Other than that, yesterday was spent drawing, watching Samurai Jack & Loonie Tunes & Dr Who (“old school”) and playing Knights of the Old Republic. The part on board the sith ship the Invigilator with Admiral Snackbar was my favourite part of the game so far.

Today I had an excellent bike ride home and I stopped by about 5 garage sales. I picked up a walkman for three bucks (it’s exactly like Marlo’s) so now I can give Stewie back the one he lent me before I break it. Huzzah! Next on my list – ear bud headphones.

Last night I played games at Sheri & Stephane’s with them and with Ursula, Dimitri, and Rebecca. We played Apples to Apples and that wasn’t bad. Then we played Settlers of Catan and I wasn’t really that into it, but it was still fun to hang out and yell things. I brought a fresh pineapple and it was so good I bought two more today.

Tomorrow, by the way, Drexoll is having a free game-a-thon from 11am-11pm and I’m going to be there around 4:30-6:30 if anyone wants to game!

On Sunday I’m going to see War of the Worlds (for free – I don’t want to support Tom Cruise’s bad habits) so I’ll let you know how I like it, or don’t, as the case may be.

Last night was a blast. Thanks to Joe, I had the opportunity to see a preview screening of Serenity, the Firefly movie. If you don’t know what Firefly is, it’s a space western tv series by the creator of Buffy, Joss Whedon. Only it’s about ten times better than Buffy. I was a little excited to see the movie, but having seen it, I am now really excited to see it again (in late September). I expected it to be good. It was great. I was amazed at how bold it was, I enjoyed the economy of the storytelling (one scene was about 3 seconds long and consisted of one line: “Define ‘disappeared,'” and there was nothing missing from the series. One of the stars of the show, Jewel Tait(?) who plays “Kaylee” the mechanic, was on hand to answer aggravating nerd questions (I was reminded of Homer saying “you nerds! He’s trying to save you money on long distance!”), and she said if enough people go and see it there could be a sequel. It is definitely worth a second or third screening for me, so I heartily recommend that you go see it when it comes out. And it would help if you saw the series. I might just go out and buy the DVD set so that all my friends can borrow it and watch, and to support Firefly in general. Awesome. Thanks again, Joe.

Batman Begins was about as good as I expected it to be, which was so-so. I saw trailers that just included the Bruce Wayne stuff and I thought “ooh this will be good” then I saw a trailer that just included the Batman stuff and I thought “uh oh, I spoke too soon.” That was exactly my reaction for the actual film. All the stuff with Bruce Wayne was very well done. The stuff with Batman just harkened back to the quadrology of the old Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher/whatever adaptations: guy in armored suit clunks around and the batmobile is ridiculous. Also, again I will say to Hollywood: if you’re going to have fight scenes, do me the courtesy of letting me see what’s going on. These tight shots full of fast editing do absolutely nothing for me. Finally – the romantic interest needed to be completely edited out of the film as it served no purpose whatsoever.

I think they can do a batman film, and you may hate me for saying this if you’re a Batman fan, without having a rogues gallery villain. No Joker, no Scarecrow, no Mr Freeze, no Clayface. Batman is a human with no extraordinary powers – sure his gadgets are pretty sleek, but they don’t really define him, not for me. Put him up against a crime boss. At first, during Batman Begets, you think this is what’s happening, but then the over-the-top traditional Batman bad guy stuff takes over and the entire first half of the film – all that verisimilitude they so carefully crafted – seems to slip away.

One more thing I’d like to criticize about the film – the Batman I know would not have risked all those lives (especially cops) to save one girl. That batmobile chase scene was gratuitous and over-the-top and just plain lowest common denominator.

So there’s some of the negative. But the acting was good and Gary Oldman and Liam Neeson and Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were great, and despite my musings the traditional batman bad guys worked well, all things considered.

I didn’t do any artwork this weekend. I planned it. I had finished my last piece for my last job on Thursday, and although I have assignments, the deadlines are a comfortable pace away. So I spent a lot of time with friends. On Friday Marlo’s folks took us out to Cipriano’s (Yvonne I saw you walk by but you didn’t see me even though you looked in), then I slept over at Marlo’s and we watched Firefly episodes and played Knights of the Old Republic. On Saturday we went to a BBQ to see our gamer friends Martin and Adelaide off out of the province. Back to Quebec with them. There I saw Michael Beck and Bev and Shawn Wowk and his little spawn Madoka, and Jon Dawes and Adrian etc etc. Then, back to my place where Stewie was having a zombie fest with Darcey and Taylor. After a change of clothes and a shower we went back to Marlo’s to watch Superman cartoons and Justice League and Firefly. The next morning, more Knights of the Old Republic and a long walk, and then to Sheri’s surprise birthday party at Incendio’s Pizza in gastown. The food was great and we saw Stephane & Sheri who we learned are now engaged (to be married, before you ask). We talked about old cartoons with the people across the table from us whose names I forget. I think my brand new Rocket Robin Hood shirt was partially the catalyst, along with Batman Begins.