Dweomera Lagomorpha

300.

2012-02-06T13:25:00.003-05:00

Yep, This is my 300th update.

It's also going to be a chance for me to vent about a recent story I was told. You will understand the serendipity of this in a second.

Recently, an online professor, posted a "Discussion" topic on his forum. In it he argued, with apparent sincerity, that the film '300', based on the Frank Miller comic book, was an accurate portrayal of ancient Sparta, bottomless pits and all. Which one can suppose also means that the Persians really did have horrible goat headed, flute playing, monsters and that Xerxes really was a 9 foot tall transvestite.

I was astounded by this assertion, that some one who has multiple PhD's would make such a statement. Clearly he realizes that '300' is an effort of creative storytelling on the part of Dilios (David Wenham) to exult his fellow Spartans and assorted Greek allies to greater feats of glory on the eve of the battle of Platea? It should be clear to anyone with a half functional brain that what the character Dilios is engaging in is a fish-tale. He is exaggerating the size, composition and martial prowess of not only the Spartans who took place at the battle of Thermopylae, but also of their Persian foes.

I will freely admit that I don't actually know much about the ancient Greek city states, but I'm relatively sure that if this film had been 100% factual, not quite as many people would have been so dead set on destroying it's reputation. Perhaps he is correct and there are a few historically correct details, but I certainly would never extrapolate that out to say the entire movie is a valid representation. '300', along with films such as Braveheart and Gladiator, are designed with entertainment first and foremost. They are the modern day equivalent of Shakespeare's Histories. They take historical details, and then form them around the key plot that already exists. They aren't meant to be taken as serious scholarship, and, while it has merit to be used in a composition or literature class, certainly shouldn't be used in a History class.

Sequestration of Harshitude.

2012-01-30T08:40:00.003-05:00

The title really makes no sense.. but Harshitude.. a Dude'ism if ever there was one.. is about the best word I could really think of.

I just got done reading a rather critical look at the works of Steven Spielberg. It had a portion that really resonated with me, specifically about how I feel towards the "Grimdark" sub genre of Fantasy.

"In each of his issue films, Spielberg presents a bleak world, then finds a ray of hope within it. Often, that contrast between light and despair is rendered visually, and not always comfortably so. In Ryan, the gray, grainy, skittery feel of the invasion of Normandy clashes with the gauzy shots of the aged Matt Damon at the grave sites. In Amistad, the awful portrayal of the Atlantic Passage jars against the scenes in which John Quincy Adams, like a character in a play, stands off from the people he’s speaking with to declaim his lines into the distance. Spielberg is sacrificing aesthetics in his intense desire to sequester the harsh material cinematically. He never commits to a worldview that doesn’t ultimately have a sunny patina."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_completist/2012/01/steven_spielberg_s_complete_movies_i_ve_seen_every_one_and_i_almost_wish_i_hadn_t.html

That is a very good explanation of what my problems with Grimdark really are. I don't mind the graphic depictions of war or battle, what I draw issue with is their general lack of hope. Lots of defenders of the sub genre like to point out that Lord of the Rings, ends on a pretty down note. They are some what right, yes, Frodo never really recovers, The world will never be quite so magical as it was before, but the world has hope returned to it. Most of Robert E. Howard's works, again sometimes pointed to by the grimdarkers, isn't so much against civilization but for the triumph of human spirit and will power. Hopeful themes both.

Granted not all of Spielberg's movies make sense. He twists reality to fit his worldview. He forces his films, if not have a happy ending, at least only have a bittersweet ending. He doesn't do down endings. Even the bulk of the films he produces follow this model. Think about how culturally important the movies he has directed or produced are, not only to the culture of the United States, but likely to the world in general. Arguably he is less culturally important than George Lucas, another man who shares the some what gauzy rose tinted world view. The two men are after all frequent collaborators/partners in crime. When I think about just how many films I've seen that Speilberg or Lucas made.. It begins to make sense to me why I have such a similar world view.

Even in Lucas's darkest turn, The Empire Strikes Back, which I've never hidden the fact it is my least favorite of all 6 films in the Star Wars series.. precisely because it's such a departure from the rest of the work Lucas puts out. I can't view it as anything but a middle chapter, it exists to shift the characters from the end of A New Hope, to the beginning of Return of the Jedi. Just as the down ending of Revenge of the Sith functions to transition the hopefulness at the end of Attack of the Clones into the hopefulness of A New Hope.

I grew up watching Star Wars, Willow, The Goonies, Back to the Future, Hook, Jurassic Park, and Batteries not included over and over again. It's really no surprise I can't deal with bad endings. I grew up being exposed to media that presented the bad guys winning as anathema to itself. The Bad Guys ALWAYS lose. Thats the way it should be. Hope remains, and with it reaffirmation that the world isn't really as crappy as it seems to be.

Maybe that's not accurate. In fact I know it's a lie. But it's a lie I willingly accept in order to not sink into depression. That's perhaps the whole point, and says more about me than it does about the people who write down books.

What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?

2012-01-22T09:31:00.003-05:00

More apt words I cannot think of. Today would mark the 106th Birthday of Robert E. Howard. It's difficult to know what he would think of the world today. In many ways he was abjectly progressive. His views on Women especially set him apart from the rest of his generation. In other ways he was reactionary, especially if he was writing a letter to a Non Texan or a Non Southerner. But one thing he wasn't, and that was normal. There is no mistaking that Bob was a Texan through and through. So he wasn't exactly a square peg in a round hole, but he had a few rough edges that kept him from fitting comfortably. This discomfort was probably a great factor in his imaginative output. The output which inspired so many people, lead to the creation of so many things, movies, music, games, endless streams of novels written in imitation of the master.

Though it may cause discomfort, Fitting in, isn't supposed to be mandatory. It confers certain social advancements. It most certainly isn't supposed to be dangerous. If you've read my ramblings for any length of time then you know I'm an advocate for the outsider. The kid who got picked on for playing D&D. The boy with long hair. The girl who likes metal and has a Mohawk. The guy in Texas who writes fantasy stories instead of getting a real job. All these things come with their downsides, lack of job opportunities, social ostracism, or even outright pariah status in school. This has its own downsides. It leads to depression, anxiety, people becoming stranger because they retreat into themselves to escape a world they don't fit into. Sometimes, like Robert E. Howard, they feel they have no alternative but to depart this world for another.

But that is a personal choice, those of us who survive are merely left to wonder why. Our status as bystanders disqualifies us from ever fully understanding the inner workings of another person. We should be understanding of others differences. Differences and hobbies and interests aren't supposed to be damning enough to take your entire childhood away. Being a Nerd or a Goth or an Emo or a Geek isn't supposed to be Dangerous. But in Arkansas that's exactly what it was.

I'm sure you all are aware of the nausea inducing West Memphis 3 case. Where a podunk town railroaded three boys into prison for the murder of 3 children, using as evidence heavy metal albums, black clothes and Stephen King novels to support an outlandish hypothesis involving ritual sacrifice and Satan worship. They were recently released, with the understanding that they admit they did it. It allowed some people in Arkansas with severe indigestion to sleep more soundly, but it didn't clear the boys names, it didn't give them their adolescence back. Unfortunately this rescue from the cusp of death wasn't at the hands of Roland Deschain, Jireal, Conan and Aragorn riding to the judges house and forcing him to recant his misguided decision, to crawl on bended knee to beg forgiveness for his sins, to ride an ass backwards in front of the gates of Jerusalem so that all might know his foolishness. The only reason it happened it all is because a filmmaker from New Zealand with deep pockets took it upon himself to do something to right this wrong.

Just because they are out of jail doesn't mean it's over. They still have a great big GUILTY next to their names. The flaws unearthed by this injustice are still built into the system. It could happen again. Remember that. If you don't fit in, This could happen again. No I think it will happen again, probably has happened again already and we just don't know about it because it didn't get media attention. Didn't get musicians and actors and filmmakers attentions.

It is my hope that Peter Jackson's recently produced West of Memphis documentary has just premiered at Sundance. If nothing else, if it can be prevented from happening again, then something good will have come out of this.

It is important for us to accept others as they are. I want to wrap up by talking about Bob Howard. A Man who I feel like I almost know but don't quite. He didn't quite fit in. I'm not going to postulate on why he killed himself. That's not fair to him. He knows why he did it. I wonder if he had found more acceptance in life if he would have felt it his only option. I wonder if these three boys had lived somewhere, where being different wasn't a sin, if there would have been another option.

Undertake the Odyssey.

2012-01-21T10:52:00.004-05:00

As anyone who has been involved with Fantasy, Role Playing, and general geekiness will be able to tell you.. there is a long history of incestuousness between Hard Rock/Heavy Metal bands and the various realms of secondary creation. Led Zeppelin arguably was one of the earliest, with repeated references to Tolkien's work begging to appear on their 2nd album. But it wasn't until the space/prog rock period that the idea of a Concept album became possible.

Band's such as RUSH and King Crimson produced multi-part epic songs detailing entire story-lines based on secondary worlds. It's my suspicion that a RUSH song may have been the inspiration for The Sword of Shannara. Hawkwind collaborated repeatedly with Michael Moorcock. This sort of thing never really has gone away, it mutated maybe, but even bands like Metallica and Megadeth have songs which directly reference the words of H.P. Lovecraft. It has metastasized into bands such as Blind Guardian who create entire albums based around fantasy concepts.

Many of these albums though came from groups who never tried to hide these aspects, they were there from the very beginning. Worn proudly on their sleeves, be they J.C. Penny front pocket shirts or Denim jackets with the sleeves torn off. But occasionally you get a group which you think would do this sort of thing regularly, and instead what you get is stadium jock rock ala Ac/Dc. A Good example of this is KISS. Despite the make up and glam rock aspect of the band, their music for the most part deals more with partying and sex than it does with elves and adventures.

The exception being their 1981 album "Music from (The Elder)". The band does it's best to ignore the album. Which is a shame. It's a great experiment by a band which doesn't really challenge itself that much. But as with any unexpected experimentation this did not go over really well with the band's fans. Perhaps even less well than their brief experiment with ditching the Glam Rock makeup and costumes. People like KISS, but they like KISS to be KISS.

But "Music from (The Elder)" is a great fantasy album. It features lyrics written by Lou Reed, advanced vocalizations by Ace Freely, Faux Gregorian chants, extensive use of synthesizers and a continue story from beginning to end. It details the story of the selection and education of a young boy by a group of mystical elders so that he can confront the villainous Mr. Blackwell. It cries out for a sequel. Where does the boy go afterwords?

It's apparently the subject of a new crowd-sourced independent film which is in the early stages of being made. Described as 'The Road meets Excalibur'. I wish them luck on it. Films such as 'The Hunt for Gollum' illustrate that you don't need huge budgets to get high quality Fantasy films made.

... Do what you want cause a Pirate is Free.

2012-01-18T10:28:00.002-05:00

Alright. I'm pretty mad now. In case you aren't aware a whole host of websites are protesting SOPA by taking themselves offline and replacing themselves with black censor bars. It's not going to do a bit of good because none of the big ones are doing it. Google isn't. Yahoo isn't. AOL and Microsoft sure aren't. The thinking goes that if they make the internet annoying enough people will write to their congressmen and senators and blah blah blah democratic processes blah blah blah while they continue to delude themselves that those letters don't go directly into the Round File so the politician they wrote to can get back to suckling at the uhh.. appendage.. of the Mugwump of big business.

Writing letters won't change anything. If these websites really want to change something they need to play the game properly. Steven Colbert is doing it right now and mocking it all the way to the bank. Set up a PAC, SuperPAC, 401c etc. Spam the crap out people with Direct Mailings accusing the politicians who support it with negative attack adds. Accuse them of supporting clubbing baby seals or something. Hell, accuse them all of speaking French, or looking French for that matter.. it seems to be all it takes to tank some one's political career these days.

If they think this stunt is going to make me waste my time writing to some spineless, greedy, bought and paid for corporate shill of a politician they are having a laugh. All it's doing is making me and doubtlessly plenty more people mad at the websites for not being accessible.

So yeah, The Oatmeal, Jimmy Wales, even Fantasyliterature.com all you are doing is engaging in annoying self aggrandizement and it's not going to change anything because you're just not important enough.

Lighter, Easier to Lift, New and Improved Wallet technology for the masses!

2012-01-06T10:44:00.003-05:00

Errr.. what I mean to say is I'm now flat dead broke. I just dropped 600$ on textbooks for school.

It's exciting getting ready to go back even if it is atrociously expensive. The books cost nearly as much as the classes themselves do.

I've also finished Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erickson. Despite some peoples attempt to lump him into the Grimdark category I don't think he really fits. Comparing the book to Glen Cook and Roger Zelazny is probably the most apt. When the Bridgburners are there it almost feels as if you are reading lost annals of the Black Company.

Sure the book is darker than David Eddings or Terry Brooks.. I'd liken to to maybe Norman Mailer dark but not Cormac Mcarthy Dark.. I've not had any sort of visceral revulsion to the book like I did to Joe Abercrombie. So far it seems to be shaping up to be a fairly promising series, I'm looking forward to tackling the second volume "Deadhouse Gates" as soon as I've finished Phillip Jose Farmer's "The Makers of Universes".

Grimdark's (maybe?) death rattle?

2012-01-02T13:00:00.004-05:00

Over the last several weeks, I've noticed that Joe Abercrombie's newest book The Heroes has taken a bit of a drubbing. There was also something of a conflagration over on the Westeros forums about just what exactly constituted going to far. This constitutes something of an about face from the previous two years. Abercrombie, Bakker, Morgan and Mievelle seemed to get a pass consistently. Are the mighty morphin' Moorcock rangers about to meet their match? As the economies of the world begin to splutter back to life and things maybe start to get better in this new year filled with possibility.. will people continue to seek out the cynical, grim darkness of a future which knows only turmoil or will they instead begin to gravitate towards new authors who specifically state they reject that view such as Michael J. Sullivan? Is it time perhaps for a new David Eddings or Terry Brooks to find their place in the crowded world of literature?

The one author who seemed to have never been allowed to get away with the grimdark concept, Terry Goodkind, released a new Richard and Kahlan novel last year. His series moved into the Grimdark genre some where around the 4th or 5th volume. Though on one hand, His work might even be worse than some of the others mentioned above. They have morally shady people doing morally shady things. Goodkind had people who were for all intents and purposes morally upstanding people doing abominable things to their political enemies for no other reason than not being interested in changing philosophies. Goodkind's books basically called for a great Objectivist crusade against the forces of the Left, with no quarter offered or given. From what I can see from the local Barnes & Noble it did about as well as his last couple. The dedicated bought it, everyone else ignored it and will pick it up cheap on the discount table in a few months. It didn't move the same way Dance with Dragons or Wise Man's Fear moved. It's a shame because I think he's the sort of author who never catches on that if he were to focus on his, to me anyway, amazingly unique magic system, rather than on the political foibles of his characters.. He could be a much greater author.

None of these authors were really doing anything differently than Scot Siecin has been doing for years. Gussying up an only Okay story with buckets of blood and gore and sex. I'm curious to see if the Avatar Trilogy he wrote for Forgotten Realms will follow the same pattern of his later books, or if he degraded over time. I'm looking forward to that series with some trepidation. It covers the monumentally important "Time of Troubles" in the realms, but is also written by an author who I don't much care for.

Speaking of Forgotten Realms, I suppose I really have to thank Mark Barrowcliffe for igniting a love of those books. Since my review of his book "The Elfish Gene" and him so thoughtfully stepping by to ask me to give it another look, I've read more of them in a single year than I had in my entire Life. I suppose it was initially out of spite, but now I just find myself enjoying reading stories about totally disparate groups of people in a familiar landscape. The books vary in quality dramatically, Kate Novak and Ed Greenwood's I don't care for that much. They are over written, meandering, and feel to much like some one wrote them from notes from a game they were running. Doug Niles and R.A. Salvatore however write books that were great fun.

Back to the Grim Dark Future, Games Workshop has themselves slipped farther into position as undisputed evil overlord of the miniatures market. They've decided to cease production on all of their Metal miniatures, opting instead to replace them with new Resin ones. Which are ludicrously more expensive, and are also as always, being released on a staggered market. It made my plans of trying to build a night goblin army untenable. I went and looked at 40k instead, and low and behold even the squeaky clean Tau are now beginning to look a bit tarnished. I suppose though with the emergence of all the new Necron forces anyone could be forgiven for getting a bit more hardcore. The upswing of this new villainy on the other hand is that it is finally encouraging some of the smaller up and coming miniatures companies to produce compatible kits, some of which are extremely nice.

I suppose we will see how 2012 goes in the days, weeks and months ahead. It will either be better, the same, or worse than last year. Or maybe a combination of the three. But I definitely think that there is a bit more optimism on offer than the last 3 had on tap.

150/150 + extras

2011-12-26T11:09:00.004-05:00

While I still have two books in progress, I've managed to meet my goal of reading 150 books in 2011.

Here is a link to the first 114 I read, I posted this back in September.

115. Hamlet's Mill by Georgio De Santillana
116. Seige of Darkness by R.A. Salvatore (Drizzt #9)
117. The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto
118. Passage to Dawn by R.A. Salvatore (Drizzt #10)
119. Himmler's Crusade by Christopher Hale
120. Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster (Spellsinger #1)
121. A Portrait of the Artist as a young man by James Joyce
122. The Last Lion: Visions of Glory by William Manchester
123. The Hour of the Gate by Alan Dean Foster (Spellsinger #2)
124. The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche
125. Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Gustav Flaubert
126. The Day of the Dissonance by Alan Dean Foster (Spellsinger #3)
127. Memoirs of a Medieval Woman by Louise Collis
128. The Moment of the Magician by Alan Dean Foster (Spellsinger #4)
129. The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey
130. The Paths of Perambulator by Alan Dean Foster (Spellsinger #5)
131. The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight
132. The Time of Transferance by Alan Dean Foster (Spellsinger #6)
133. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
134. Spellfire by Ed Greenwood (Shrandril #1)
135. A History of Christianity by Paul Johnson
136. Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings (Belgariad #1)
137. Introduction to African Religions by John S. Mbiti
138. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner (Alderly #1)
139. Azure bonds by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb (Finders Stone #1)
140. Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings (Belgariad #2)
141. The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis
142. Wellington, Years of the Sword by E. Longford
143. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
144. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
145. The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham
146. Magician's Gambit by David Eddings (Belgariad #3)
147. The Wyvern's Spur by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb (Finders Stone #2)
148. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
149. Jesus's Son by Denis Johnson
150. The last Lion: Churchill, Alone by William Manchester
151. Castle of Wizardry by David Eddings (Belgariad #4)
152. Enchanter's End Game by David Eddings (Belgariad #5) In progress
153. The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner (Alderly #2) In progress
154. Song of the Saurials by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb (Finders Stone #3) In progress

Dealing with the low rolls.

2011-12-24T21:40:00.002-05:00

In my pathfinder group, the DM and one of the players are uncle and nephew. They make up a lot of the soul of the group. They also go with me to LARP. I've known the older of the pair since High school. He's been through all the iterations of D&D with me. 3.0, 3.5. 4.0, Pathfinder. He's been with me in Warhammer since 5th edition and Warhammer 40k since 3rd edition. We've played Munchkin and Kobold's ate my baby. His nephew has been something of a fixture with us since he hit twelve. We knew how bad it sucked to be a nerd in a hick town, so we always took extra effort to include him. I've helped them both every chance I got.

Well today I was left with no way to help them. The cosmic DM rolled low. Their Brother/Father respectively died today during routine surgery. A Dislodged blood clot. 1. No chance of a saving throw.

Maybe it seems callous to parse this all in gamer terminology. But these two, a young man and a boy on the cusp of becoming a man have been such a big part of my life, and have been there during every experimental game and late night Anime session I've pretty much ever embarked upon.

I hate feeling sorry for myself. But I hate the feeling of powerlessness that comes with that dreaded phone call. I hate not being able to make them better. I hate seeing my friends upset. They are supposed to be jovial and full of quirk and witty nerd banter. Not crying in the hallway of the hospital. Not trying to figure out how to move on when a single father of 3 teenagers has just died. unprepared. unexpected. leaving his 19 year old son to take care of his 17 and 14 year old sisters, a house, a car, property taxes, all while he is still in high school. What kind of sick cosmic joke is it that this happened on Christmas Eve? You listen as they cry and moan and sob, you hug them and try to reassure them. You sputter, you inanely ask if there is anything you can do, and you probably, ridiculously say you're sorry. as if you did it and could take it back with a word.

Unexpected, but highly anticipated.

2011-12-20T22:40:00.001-05:00

I've got myself a Plan!

2011-12-17T13:03:00.004-05:00

Normally I would write myself a complete syllabus for the year in what I hoped to accomplish. It generally would have about 100 books on it, and would include things like "Write a review of X Number of words" or something like that. I had to do it the last two years to try and keep up with some semblance of a reading pace for Hyborean Apocrypha. That's unfortunately been set aside due to having real syllabii to adhere to via school.

I still intend to plan out a few key series to go after in 2012, Michael J. Sullivan's Rirya books and Stephen Erickson's Malazan books are probably my top goal to read through in the new year. I'm also hoping to fill in a few more gaps in my classic Fantasy and Science-Fantasy reading in the form of Andre Norton's Witchworld and Phillip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers. Eventually my goal is to read everything on the D&D Appendix N list.

Anderson, Poul: THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN
SWORD
Bellairs, John: THE FACE IN THE FROST
Brackett, Leigh
Brown, Frederic
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: "Pellucidar" series; Mars series; Venus series
Carter, Lin: "World's End" series
de Camp, L. Sprague: LEST DARKNESS FALL; THE FALLIBLE FIEND; et al
de Camp & Pratt: "Harold Shea" series; THE CARNELIAN CUBE
Derleth, August
Dunsany, Lord
Farmer, P. J.: "The World of the Tiers" series; et al
Fox, Gardner: "Kothar" series; "Kyrik" series; et al
Howard, R. E.: "Conan" series
Lanier, Sterling: HIERO'S JOURNEY
Leiber, Fritz: "Fafhrd & Gray Mouser" series; et al
Lovecraft, H. P.
Merritt, A.: CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al
Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; "Hawkmoon" series (esp. the
first three books)
Norton, Andre
Offutt, Andrew J.: editor of SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III
Pratt, Fletcher: BLUE STAR; et al
Saberhagen, Fred: CHANGELING EARTH; et al
St. Clair, Margaret: THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS
Tolkien, J. R. R.: THE HOBBIT; "Ring trilogy"
Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al
Weinbaum, Stanley
Wellman, Manley Wade
Williamson, Jack
Zelazny, Roger: JACK OF SHADOWS; "Amber" series; et al

The ones in Bold I've read, and the ones not in bold I haven't. So I'm going to see how many more of them I can read through.

Other than that, with another English Class and a History class this semester.. who knows what I'll be reading for them?

GIJOE Retallition Trailer.

2011-12-16T13:15:00.002-05:00

I HATED the abomination that was GIJOE: Rise of Cobra. Every aspect of it was wrong. The casting was wrong. The Look was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. I'm not talking about making them an international team, I never had a problem with that. What I had a problem with was the way they ignored nearly 30 years of backstory. They made it into a dodgy sci-fi B movie and let Steven Sommers include all the dopey elements that make all of his other movies so obnoxious. They even let him include Brendan Fraser. No chance at all was given to Joseph Gordon Levitt to show us just how awesome he is as an actor in his portrayal of Cobra Commander. Heck, we didn't even get to see much of Cobra Commander. It was like watching a Live Action DIC episode.

In the new Trailer, which I will link to at the bottom, they waste little time in establishing that this isn't going to be the second movie warmed over. They liquidate the team with extreme prejudice. Leaving only three members of the original cast remaining to taint the new movie. Cobra Commander has his blue jumpsuit and metal face mask which makes him so Iconic. Roadblock actually uses the Ma Deuce for which he is famous. Essentially.. this is what GIJOE should have looked like the first time. Gone are the super suits and the Eiffel Tower being eaten by nanomites. Gone is the ridiculous glass bubble head that Cobra Commander wore.

I love the visual of the Cobra Banners being unfurled on the front of the White House. The Idea of Cobra being a organization set on world domination was something postulated by the Cartoon. In the comics, it was the United States which Cobra had its primary issue with. The United States slighted the man who would go on to become Cobra Commander. A Used Car Salesmen who identified with Jon Galt a bit too much, but decided instead of pouring his efforts into inventing miraculous new products he would gain his empire through theft, graft, con jobs and murder. Despite what Joseph Gordon Levitt says, and the cast sheet says. Cobra Commander is clearly in this trailer. Who is playing him and what role he will be playing no one knows yet. But It's unlikely that the confirmed villains of the picture, Fire Fly, Zartan and Storm Shadow, Three men who have a long and extremely checkered past.. would be interested in taking over the United States without the instigation of Cobra Commander.

I have hope for this movie, not as much as I would have had if they had completely re-booted the franchise.. But It looks better than the two Transformers Sequels anyway.

The Skrillex Condundrum and Other Stories.

2011-12-15T02:29:00.004-05:00

A new fad is sweeping America. It is called Skrillex. The stage name of a slight music producer who formerly fronted an Emo band. He has finally succeeded in a massive way of introducing Garage and Dub step to the American consumer. He is an enormous hit. Even selling out shows in my tiny college town. I can't even imagine how he has accomplished this.

I first became aware of Garage and Dub-step when I was in the UK over 6 years ago. It was nothing special at the time, simply a style of music which a certain portion of the population listened to. It was dance music. it was music you blasted out of your 10,000$ system from the back of a 8000$ Peugeot while it was idling in a parking deck.

Needless to say I was not able to get tickets to see the Skrillex Cell when they perform in Athens at the newly rebuilt Georgia Theater. It's something I truly regret missing out on. I'm not sure why I like his sound quite so much as I do, but it motivates me when plenty of other noise doesn't do anything but put me to sleep.

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum are a trio of outfits that I've been listening to a lot this year is John T. Pearson. He fills his folksy-country songs with pain I couldn't imagine even if I were into cutting. His music reaches into your very soul and tugs at strings and ligaments you were not aware you possessed. Following in the footsteps of Bon Iver he brings even more feeling and emotion to his even lengthier songs. No stadium filling noise here, but simple and heartfelt lyrics which cut like paper and sting like lemon every time.

Between Bon Iver and Josh T. Pearson I have nearly had to go back to taking my anti-psychotics. All the delusions I built to protect myself from the world are stripped back by their bluesy riffs and soulful vocals. Following current trends in my life, I can't help but find the lyrics of these neo-folk acts important. Thankfully Florence & The machine are there to give me a bit of upbeat when I get depressed. Her driving vocals and outrageous costumes (including a reference to Clan of the Cave Bear) help inoculate me to the pain of the other groups.

Whether you enjoy or hate these bands is some what immaterial to me. I'm a firm believer in the idea that whatever you are feeling at the time you first hear a song is as important as the ideas behind the song itself. After all, who really cares what the creator thinks.. You are the important and active participant in the process. The creator of the song has long since finished their portion of the social contract in the process of recording the music. You however, the listener, are the active party.

Skrillex.

Josh T. Pearson.

Bon Iver.

Florence & The Machine.

Context people, Context.

2011-12-14T04:54:00.003-05:00

I'm a major history buff. That means I know how to put things, such as facts, in their proper historical context and not get all bent out of shape about them. It doesn't make them right or wrong. It just helps you understand were to place them. So why do so many people find themselves incapable of placing historical writers in the context of the world they lived in?

Enter This guy. Another in a long list of bloggers who read a pulp story from the 1920's and apply a 2011 mindset to it.

Pro Tip. It doesn't work. You cannot separate the work from the time period it was created in or the audience it was created for! The thing you have to consider about Lovecraft, is was he exceptional for his time? Location? Class? Keep in mind that Lovecraft wrote Herbert West a scant 7 years after D.W. Griffith's A Birth of Nation came out. Look at Woodrow Wilson (yes, the President of the United States... was a horrible racist too!) and his writings of the time. He excused the KKK as a "Natural outgrowth of reconstruction". The 1910's, 20's and 30's were a time of profound racial oppression across the United States. Wilson, like Lovecraft had little compassion for immigrants of any race, even the Irish, who at the time weren't really white men either, they got upgraded later only because they were lighter skinned than the Italians!

There were books circulating at the time such as Madison Grant's "The Passing of the Great Race", Henry Ford's "The International Jew" and Houston Stewart Chamberlain's "Foundations of the 19th Century". These were books which inspired the atrocities which eventually came to Germany. Reading them today gives you a frightening glimpse into the popular zeitgeist that existed at the time. It makes you realize that Nazi Germany isn't that surprising, but what is surprising is that it only happened there and didn't spread to the rest of the western nations.

Before you begin chundering in impotent rage at some writer who lived nearly a hundred years ago, wrote for the people of his time, and was living in a time of extreme change the likes of which we wouldn't even be able to recognize. When Lovecraft was a boy, people still drove horse and buggy to town! Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to have a motor car, and that was when Lovecraft was 20 years old. You have to look at his entire life to understand where these feelings came from. He barely scraped by, his malnutrition may in fact have lead to his death. He viewed immigrants, much as many modern Americans today do, as some how taking the lively hoods of good, honest, hardworking Americans. The world which Lovecraft lived in, was in the early stages of transforming into the world we know today, but he himself grew up in, and of which he held the values from, is one which would be considered entirely alien today.

British literature is full of novels which show this transition. The transformation from the Victorian period, where people still fit into a rigid social order, to the modern day where to be a member of the upper class is to be ridiculed. In the last 50 years alone, such dramatic social change has influenced the western world that it is unrecognizable to what it once was. We have finally begun implementing the ideals which we built our nations on in the first place.

If you can't appreciate Lovecraft's work in the proper context, thats fine. To each their own. But don't act as if he was some how extraordinary in his views from that of the common man at the time.

Carl Macek's Robotech Universe.

2011-12-13T12:33:00.003-05:00

I'm a Robotech Fan. I enjoy saying that. Part of my enjoyment of saying it is because it makes a lot of Anime fans exceedingly angry.

I like it for a variety of reasons. Nostalgia. The generational saga. The dense and convoluted storyline that arose from the combination of three pre-existing sagas along with new material.

Don't mistake me, I enjoyed all 3 of the original Japanese shows.. but I wasn't converted to the accepted dogma. I didn't abandon my Robotech fandom to rush into the arms of Macross. They mock, but it only makes me love it more.

Last year, the man responsible for "creating" Robotech from those three shows, Carl Macek, died. He was a talented man who gets berated greatly by the Anime fan community in general. They don't stop to think that he didn't originally want to put those three shows together, he wanted to show Macross on its own. But he was hampered by the syndication rules at the time. He took a bad situation, and found a solution to get that great material out to the people. Now you can just buy DVD's from Japan or even get them subtitled in the US, but at the time Anime was a nascent barely clinging together clump of cells.

Because of Carl, Robotech expanded beyond the confines of the TV series. It was adapted into a series of Novels, the novels expanded even further on the background of the show and were themselves integral to the creation of the Robotech RPG which went into stunning detail in filling in the gaps left by the construction method of the TV series. Many comic book series, two feature films, and an assortment of other bits and pieces followed.

Thats essentially not the story as presented in the new Documentary Carl Macek's Robotech Universe. Though it is present in its barest forms, most of the documentary is taken up, not buy the writers or technical people discussing how Carl made Robotech, but is instead mainly fixated on the voice actors lavishing praise on their recently dead friend. I understand that since Robotech was many of the VA's first job, they would wish to postulate on the man himself rather than his production. It just wasn't a very good documentary about Robotech, even though it was a decent enough one about Carl's Role in Robotech's creation. It re-iterated some of the mythology that Harmony Gold now makes use of. They've taken the tact of simply ignoring the critics entirely and creating a some what delusional world in which Robotech was the Saviour of Anime in North America. I love it to death but I think that Voltron, Macron 1, G-force, Star Blazers, and many many other shows were just as important to the burgeoning Anime fandom. I think that the role that Harmony Gold wants to place Robotech into, likely belongs in reality to Dragon Ball Z. DBZ was on multiple channels, multiple times a day, lasted forever, and it was sometime while the characters were still on Namek that the Anime bomb went off and it was EVERYWHERE.

When I was in Elementary school, Anime consisted of shows like Robotech and Voltron and Star Blazers, no one really watched it. When I got to Middle School, DBZ was on and a vast cross section of people with highly divergent interested were watching it. When I got to Highschool, Anime was literally everywhere. It was omnipresent. There were anime exclusive stores in the suburbs around Atlanta. Book stores were stocking Manga. Best buy had two whole aisles for Anime VHS tapes at outrageous prices.

I'm not trying to say that Robotech and Carl Macek played no part in this, it was back on TV at the time on Cartoon Network.. but I just feel its disengenueous to simply decide it was the most important catalyst.

Another problem I had with the documentary was Tommy Yune's casual dismissal of Transformers and Transformers fans. I'm not sure if Mr. Yune has noticed.. but while Tobey Mcquires live action Robotech film is floundering.. Michael Bay has produced a Trilogy of (admittedly bad films) which have cumulatively grossed billions of dollars. Robotech's 25th anniversary is largely remembered because of the hardcore fans of the series going back to the 80's, its high DVD sales are the result of perpetually releasing newer and newer DVD sets. Just since DVD got big around 2001, there have been no fewer than 5 different releases of the show on that format. Every one of them offers drips and drabs of new material. the first ones were just the broadcast masters, but were loaded with extras. Then they released just the broadcast show in bare bones release. Then they remastered the show using new tapes from Japan, cleaning it up and re touching the sounds. Those releases got re-released later with all of the special features from the original release. Now A&E has re-re-re-released a new set, that has all of the remastered shows, all of the special features from all of the sets along with this new documentary and a variety of other bits and pieces. They even finally acknowledge Robotech the movie, but don't go so far as to actually include it. Pity. I suppose they are holding it back, along with the new Yellow Dancer centric mini-film Robotech Love Live Alive (made from a Japanese music video and which will apparently bridge the gap between Southern Cross and New Generation) for another future release.

All of this isn't to dismiss the documentary. It was a good enough documentary, it simply wasn't what their hype made it out to be. It should have gone into more detail about the show itself, about the comics, about the controversy, about the very rational for creating it in the first place. Instead we just got a bunch of weepy voice actors talking about their friend.

The Final Countdown.

2011-12-11T00:20:00.004-05:00

Well.. not really all that dramatic but it is getting close to the end of the year and I just got my grades for my Finals from school.

A+, A, A, and C+.

I'm really pleased with the C+ as it is Math, and being as Its been 8 years since I've used any of that stuff to say I was rusty would be an understatement. I went into the class fully expecting to bomb it, and while I didn't make a great grade.. I'm happy it wasn't any lower.

I'm hoping with my schedule for next year being more streamlined, I'll have more time to get back to work on the Hyborean Apocrypha project.

In other news, due either to Holiday hiring or an upswing in the local economy 5 members of my D&D group have managed to get jobs so that's some what putting a crimp on their availability. Will the group survive? will have to roll a Fortitude save to find out I suppose.

I'm going to be posting up my end of the year Tally for books I've read in 2011 in about 2 weeks time, I mentioned earlier in the week on Brian Murphey's blog The Silver Key that I wasn't sure I was going to meet my goal of 150 books, but due to hastily reading a few slim volumes (I.E. Cheating) I think I'm going to bag it this year. I'm going to set myself a smaller reading goal next year also to cope with the class work, since next year I'll be taking classes all year rather than just in the fall. But when you have a To be Read pile of nearly a thousand books, that despite how many you read never seems to go down, it doesn't take long to feel snowed under if I'm not constantly pushing myself.

I am planning on starting Stephen Erickson's massive Malazan series in January, and filling in a few more gaps in my classic Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery catalog with Andre Norton's Witch World and Phillip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers. I'm going to try and finish up the last 6 of the Shannara novels I've got to read too. We will see.

My Theory on B.O.T (a.k.a. the single worst episode of transformers ever)

2011-11-21T12:11:00.004-05:00

The episode is notoriously bad. It is so bad it dethrones season 3's Carnage in C-Minor for the title of worst episode ever. It's really, really, mind numbingly bad. All is not lost however.

Over the last several years, inspired by such diverse products as Apocalypse Now! Redux! and Star Trek: Remastered, I have been working on a new episode list for the 1980's Transformers cartoon that will not only make the series some what more serialized and coherent but also hopefully eliminate some of the obnoxious flaws.. hopefully without having to physically alter any of the episodes. Impossible? Maybe.

For the most part it is simply using the already present chronology of season 1 and then building on it so as to create a logical introduction to new characters. As the episodes stand now, new people show up in Season 2 with no real reason for them being there, only to promptly vanish for the next episode which inexplicably only features characters from season 1. In other words, its hardly rocket science.

But then you come to the obvious point of this, what do with the worst episode ever? Well it falls production wise as the last episode of Season 2. Meaning it is the last episode before Transformers: The Movie. This is, to me, unacceptable, and since it's a free country I'm going to do something about it. I started to look around for ideas of what could be done with it. It's so bad, and contains so many animation errors that the idea of re-editing it some how using bits of other episodes (beyond the obvious that this would be breaking my own rules) was a bit too technical for me to undertake.

I hit on a solution one evening while researching the Chronology of Super Dimensional Fortress: Macross. SDF: Macross was a huge hit in Japan. They made a movie, SDF: Macross Do you remember love?, it was a huge hit also. But it fundamentally changed extremely important aspects of the TV Show, and more or less made the relatively human looking Zentradi into very much more monstrous beings. The reason for that is, Chronologically speaking, SDF: Macross DYRL?, is itself a movie within the SDF: Macross Universe. Released in theatres some time around the Macross Plus era, while there are Descendants of Zentradi living on earth! It was followed by a sequel, Macross II the Movie. Genius. How to include something that completely screws up the canon, while not completely screwing up the canon.

It dawned on me then, B.O.T. could be a Transformers Movie, inside the Transformers universe. It explains why most of the characters are from season 1 (the ones who would have been seen on the real news more frequently) it also explains why the kids act so preposterously precocious.. and all the flaws in the episode can then be chalked up to "Well, Hollywood got it wrong, as usual". There is even evidence from the episode "Hoist Goes Hollywood" that there are directors in that universe who want to cast transformers as actors, why not characters?

However, I figure the Sunbow Universe's equivalent of Michael Bay still directed it, which would also go a long way to explain why the episode is so bad.

Geography, Learn it, Use it, Understand it.

2011-11-11T19:51:00.003-05:00

Having just got done reading Dodai Stewart's otherwise well thought out article on Jezabel about why modern reinterpretations of fairy tales have such an aversion to casting non white cast members.. This quote really annoyed me, I mean beyond the obvious notion of why would a dark skinned lady be called "Snow White"...

"Last year around this time, an actress went to a casting call and was told she was too brown to be a Hobbit. It's infuriating to think that a world that includes orcs, elves and dragons cannot include brown-skinned people."

First of all, just to get this out there. Middle-earth has "Brown-skinned people". However, here is the rub. Racial groups do not just randomly spring up in various proportions on the globe without human agency being involved. Even if you have only seen the Peter Jackson films, you know Middle Earth has a variety of skin tones amongst its human population. The problem is that they are geographically isolated from 'The west' by Mordor and a couple of big darn deserts. You don't just get Hobbits with a bunch of different 'races'.. because Hobbits are a 'Race' unto themselves. Its highly unlikely there are a bunch of white people roaming around in Rhun or Far Harad either, and if they are they are almost certainly evil men who sided with Mordor and have simply been living their ever since the fall of Numenor.

If you look at Howard's Hyboria, there is far greater transit between the various ethnic groups present. You might find a Kushite in Shem, and you might find a Cimmerian in Shem, But you wouldn't find a Black Cimmerian anymore than you would find a White Kushite. Unless there is some human agency at work to shift people from one place to another, or an enterprising person decides to up and move themselves, manages to fit in and become part of a pre-existing community.. I suppose it could happen.. its just not very likely.

When this is done, like it was in Willow, Though this isn't to say that some where there isn't an entire group of black Nelwyns or a close relative of them. Or the BBC's recent Robin Hood series, it tends to look extremely forced and done simply to avoid the PC police's notice. They make fun of it on South Park by actually naming the one black kid at the school 'Token'. Let us be honest with ourselves here. If it weren't for the transatlantic slave trade it's very likely the very idea of having a massive multi-cultural milieu would be considered the norm. Japan, China, and the various eastern countries where there was no African slave trade are for the most part homogenous, or at least homogenous to western eyes. And were it not for human agency (empire, immigration, commonwealth) England,would just as Homogenous as Japan is. So why would you expect their to be a variety of colours of hobbits when their is no evidence of their ever being hobbits in a climate where having dark skin would make evolutionary sense?

Is it seriously coming down to this, that despite all we know of evolution and anthropology we are simply supposed to believe that dark skinned people would just naturally appear in Norway? Why would evolution do that? What possible reason would it have?

Yes, its annoying and frustrating and I'm sure infuriating that Hollywood doesn't produce more fantasy fair with non white casts. Even when they adapt a property such as Earthsea or the last Airbender they tend to white-wash the cast, this is unacceptable and I think morally repugnant. I'd just about kill to see Imaro on the big screen. But the answer for this injustice is not forcing middle earth to have a random "brown" hobbit. Fantasy as a genre is more than capable of having heroes, heroines, villains, villagers, or city dwellers of any culture or colour imaginable. But if the Geography as laid out in the story precludes it, then accept it and move on.

Sounds to take you back.

2011-11-10T12:13:00.004-05:00

There are two ways for Movies to go. They either have a Score or a Soundtrack, or sometimes both. Usually the scores are forgettable and the soundtracks filled with either 40 year old Thin Lizzy and AC/DC songs or new songs from bands no one will remember in 10 years let alone 40.

Occasionally however a movie will make tremendous use of a song. Every time you hear it from then on you will remember it. My own example of this is the way that Nine Inch Nail's The Mark has been made, was used in Man on Fire. Every time the percussion starts in the song I can picture Denzel Washington going and picking out all the supplies he needs to wage a one man war on the Mexican cartel that has kidnapped the little girl he was supposed to protect.

It is an ominous and haunting song on its own. But when you add in the pathos of the scene where a still bleeding John Creasy is preparing to get revenge, it becomes almost depraved through its anguish. The music accentuates it to a near feverish pitch.

Of course, this is just my opinion, so your mileage will vary.

Monkeying around.

2011-11-01T13:51:00.002-04:00

Phillipa Boyens (one of the writers of the Peter Jackson Tolkien Adaptions) made the comment that a Tolkien Purist is some one who is a self proclaimed guardian of the material.. I would argue that a Purist is a person who simply doesn't like her monkeying with the material... for her own shallow social engineering/politically correct reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that certain changes must be made to adapt any novel to film or television. For the most part the changes to the Rings films were mild. This isn't some rant about Tom Bombadil being left out. The films also could have been much worse, after all the Hollywood financiers wanted them to kill one of the Hobbits! Make no mistake, bullets were dodged. But it was clearly the screenwriters choice to so drastically alter the entirety of Faramir's character. It was their choice to alter Theoden's character. It's there choice to add characters when they don't really need to be added. All of these things can and should be laid at their feet.

5 weeks down, 2 years and 12 weeks to go.

2011-09-24T12:09:00.002-04:00

I've just completed my 5th week back at school. So far it's not been nearly as daunting as I expected, though I'm struggling to get through my Math Class.

I'm hoping to come up with something more entertaining to post soon, but for the moment I'm just still concentrating on studying and making sure all my homework is done right.

Books read in the first nine months of 2011.

2011-09-05T21:46:00.003-04:00

1. The Sword and the Satchel - Elizabeth Boyer
2. The Sea of Trolls - Nancy Farmer
3. Treasures of Led Zeppelin - Chris Welch
4. How to Train your Dragon - Cressida Cowell
5. The Warded Man - Peter V. Brett
6. The Desert Spear - Peter V. Brett
7. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone - J.K. Rowling
8. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
9. Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
10. The Land of the Silver Apples - Nancy Farmer
11. Rifleman Dodd - C.S. Forrester
12. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban - J.K. Rowling
13. The Crisis of Islam - Bernard Lewis
14. King's Dragon - Kate Elliot
15. Post Captain - Patrick O'brian
16. The Elves and the Otterskin - Elizabeth Boyer
17. The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
18. Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks - Ethan Gilsdorf
19. The Elfish Gene - Mark Barrowcliffe
20. Conan the Fearless - Steve Perry
21. H.M.S. Surprise - Patrick O'brian
22. The Wiseman's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
23. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
24. The Ironlords - Andrew J. Offutt
25. Shadows out of Hell - Andrew J. Offutt
26. Lady of the Snowmist - Andrew J. Offutt
27. Historiagraphy - Ernst Breisach
28. The Thrall and the Dragon's Heart - Elizabeth Boyer
29. The Islands of the Blessed - Nancy Farmer
30. The Dying Earth - Jack Vance
31. Harry Potter and the Order of of the phoenix - J.K. Rowling
32. The Mauritius Command - Patrick O'brian
33. Harry potter and the Half Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
34. Conan the Warlord - Leonard Carpenter
35. Prince of Dogs - Kate Elliot
36. The Eyes of the Overworld - Jack Vance
37. Wizard and the Warlord - Elizabeth Boyer
38. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
39. The Jewel in the Skull - Michael Moorcock
40. Cugel's Saga - Jack Vance
41. Shadowmarch - Tad Williams
42. Rhialto the Marvelous - Jack Vance
43. Kyrik: Warlock Warrior - Gardner Fox
44. Kyrik: Fights the Demon World - Gardner Fox
45. Guys write for Guys Read - Ed. Jon Sciezka
46. The Burning Stone - Kate Elliot
47. Kyrik and the Wizard's Sword - Gardner Fox
48. Kyrik and the lost queen - Gardner Fox
49. Baudolino - Umberto Eco
50. The Mad God's Amulet - Michael Moorcock
51. The Sword of the Dawn - Michael Moorcock
52. Conan the Victorious - Robert Jordan
53. Cry Havoc! - Beverley Nichols
54. The Runestaff - Michael Moorock
55. I hope they serve beer in hell - Tucker Max
56. Kick Me - Paul Feig
57. The Talisman - Stephen King
58. Desolation Island - Patrick O'brian
59. The Reader - Bernard Schlink
60. Shadowplay - Tad Williams
61. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
62. The War Against Boys - Christina Hoff Sommers
63. The Hero and the Crown - Robin Mckinly
64. The Fortunes of War - Patrick O'brian
65. The Tower, the zoo and the tortoise - Julia Stuart
66. Subterranean - James Rollins
67. The Surgeon's Mate - Patrick O'brian
68. Excavation - James Rollins
69. Transformers: Vault - Pablo Hidalgo
70. The Ionian Mission - Patrick O'brian
71. Conan the Unconquered - Robert Jordan
72. Treason's Harbour - Patrick O'brian
73. Conan the Barbarian - Michael Stackpole
74. Shadowrise - Tad Williams
75. The Blue Sword - Robin Mckinley
76. Conan the Hero - Leonard Carpenter
77. The Far Side of the world - Patrick O'brian
78. The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasalinna
79. Lies my Teacher Told me - James W. Loewen
80. The World Swappers - John Brunner
81. The Last Magicians - John Jakes
82. Albion's Seed - David Hackett Fischer
83. The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove - Chris Moore
84. Crazy - Benjamin Lebert
85. Fingerprints of the Gods - Graham Hancock
86. Sandstorm - James Rollins
87. Nine Princes of Amber - Roger Zelazny
88. The Guns of Avalon - Roger Zelazny
89. The Sign of the Unicorn - Roger Zelazny
90. The Hand of Oberon - Roger Zelazny
91. The Courts of Chaos - Roger Zelazny
91. Shadowheart - Tad Williams
92. Darkwalker on moonshae - Douglas Niles
93. Black Wizards - Douglas Niles
94. Darkwell - Douglas Niles
95. The Lost Kingdom of Burgundy - Christopher Cope
96. Conan the Valiant - Roland J. Green
97. India: What can it Teach us? - F. Max Muller
98. The Battle that Stopped Rome - Peter S. Wells
99. The Prophet of Lamath - Robert Don Hughs
100. Barbarians to Angels - Peter S. Wells
101. Trumps of Doom - Roger Zelazny
102. Blood of Amber - Roger Zelazny
103. Sign of Chaos - Roger Zelazny
104. Knight of Shadows - Roger Zelazny
105. Prince of Chaos - Roger Zelazny
106. Conan the Valorous - John Maddox Roberts
107. Fighting for Christendom - Christopher Tyerman
108. The Legacy - R.A. Salvatore
109. Starless Night - R.A. Salvatore
110. Secrets of the Hittites - C.W. Ceram
111. The Conqueror's Shadow - Ari Marmell
112. The Lord of the Isles - David Drake
113. The Barbarians Speak - Peter S. Wells
114. Clash of Civilizations - Samuel P. Huntington

Not the kind of Sexism you think of when you Think Conan.

2011-08-22T22:54:00.005-04:00

Despite what some would have you think, Most Conan fans aren't sexist against women. They tend to be, from my interactions very welcoming to almost any thing that has a slash between it's legs. On the other hand, there is a decided anti-male sexism which the Conan fandom is absolutely rife. It's one of the reasons I started a blog rather than post at Conan.com. I'm putting this here specifically so as to not incur the wrath of the moderators at that forum. Most of the people there are perfectly friendly, but occasionally this sort of thing pops up.

There are many reasons that I think we all enjoy our favorite Cimmerian and they are as follows:
A.) He's a man's man. In today's American society it almost seems cool to be metrosexual, go to the tanning bed, and shave your chest. Don't even get me started on the emasculation of the American male in today's society. Gone are John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold ENTER Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and the era of the pretty boy.

I don't know about you, but I don't read Conan stories specifically because he's a big strapping guy with loads of hair on his chest. I also don't make it a habit to insult others just because their body types don't fit my ideal. What this poster is attempting to say is exactly what Chuck Palanhiuk said 100 times better in Fight Club. Brad Pitt was awesome in that by the way, So was Edward Norton come to think of it. Neither of them would fit this posters narrow definition of masculinity, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to run into Tyler Durden (Or Mickey the Pikey for that matter) in a dark ally. If you know anything about Palahniuk, you also know that being a small man dosen't make you weak or emasculated, and simply being a big strong man dosen't protect you. That criteria lead partially to the death of his father.

I'm sure a lot of women find Conan to be attractive, but just as many swoon over Daniel Radcliffe, Orlando Bloom, Robert Pattison, and your much derided Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It's a big world and theres room enough for all manner of body types. You and others like you seem mainly bitter at getting old. Your favorite actors aren't particularly important anymore, or are now directors rather than stars. It dosen't change a thing about them.

It's also unfair to compare people to John Wayne. No one else can be like John Wayne. The fact he was allegedly based on a hodgepodge of character traits culled from the stories of an aged Wyatt Earp (which is unfathomably cool if true) not withstanding, John Wayne was a character that Marrion Morrison made up. That dosen't change the fact he was a cool character, but don't mistake that for acting ability. He had one character and all other characters were written to be played by him. He was already divorced from the real man by 1. When some one attempts to act like him, they come across as a caricature. The same is the case with Stallone, Swarzegnegger, and even tom cruise and Brad Pitt. Just look at Saturday Night Live's Celebrity Jeopardy if you don't believe me. These celebrities you mention are every bit as fictitious as Conan himself.

I have a Y chromosome. I had to sign the Selective Service card. I am a Man. But since I only weigh 140 and am only 5'8". Which by your seemingly arbitrary list body and attitude types of what constitutes a "Man" I wouldn't count. Not every male on the planet fits these criteria of manliness that seem mandated by so many.

Many of those doing the mandating, if the photos from Howard Days are anything to go by, shouldn't be casting aspersions either. Spears and Grass Houses and all that. I'm not trying to be insulting, many people have valid reasons, no, uncontrollable reasons, for being like they are. Malnutrition, over nutrition, poor nutrition, genetics, childhood illness, the list goes on and on. As the recent film Captain America pointed out, it dosen't matter whats on the outside, but whats on the inside that counts.

One last fun fact, the "Average height" around the globe is between 5'2" and 5'5". Which last time I checked, Audie Murphy (who also had a "pretty boy" face), was right on the line for. I'd like to see you argue that he wasn't a Real Man(tm) because of it.

In honor of the S.H.I.E.L.D. W.A.L.L.

2011-08-17T03:18:00.005-04:00

Much like the tone of the video, my own feelings towards this film are pessimistic but with slight tinges of hope streaking the gloom.

Bout' that time.

2011-08-16T04:59:00.003-04:00

So in just 6 days, School starts.

For the last 10 years, when school started didn't matter to me that much. It meant it was safe to go to six-flags or go to a matinee movie again.. but that was about it.

Not so any longer.

On August 22nd, I go back to school. Hopefully in 4 years I'll graduate with some sort of degree, and hopefully without a huge amount of debt. In theory I'd like to plan to continue as a post graduate after the 4 years are up.. but right now I just want to make it through the next 4 months.

If I don't post a whole lot, thats why. I likely will slow down considerably here and at Hyborean Apocrypha.

For now.

Courage.

The Live Action Transformers fans are completely insane.

2011-08-11T16:49:00.001-04:00

You may or may not know, that recently the Actor and son of Anthony Quinn, Francisco Quinn died. You probably remember him like most, for his role of Rhah in Oliver Stone's Platoon. He also, apparently provided the voice for some character named Dino in Transformers Dark of the Moon.

On TFW2005, One of the biggest Transformers forums on the internet, which undoubtedly makes a boatload of money from their endless click-throughs connecting to news about the live action movies. It has become entirely verboten to do anything that might alienate or offend the live action movie fans. Apparently just mentioning any of Mr. Quinn's other roles, is enough to confuse and infuriate the fans of the live action transformers films. Thats understandable, most of them are idiots to begin with. or Saddled with the nearly fatal handicap of being teenagers.

The worst affront though, is daring to call these ingrates on their insensitivity. The thread discussing his death, quickly turned into the same thread that all the movie threads do. Some one didn't "Respect" his role in the Transformers Movie.. so therefore it's time to riot and Smash crap and go cry to to the parents. The mods of course, not wanting them to get pissed and not come back.. quickly started editing the offending posts.

I remember when TFW2005 was the best transformers forum on the internet. It was a reprieve from the constant threat of being banned on Bottalk, one of the original transformers forums. On TFW, you could speak your mind, and be relatively certain that so long as you weren't trolling you could share your opinion freely. Now, if you don't two the party line, the mods edit your post. They don't tell you why they did it, or even explain what rule you broke. They simply edit your post, or issue a temp ban.

The Irony is, I've seen the Live action Movie fans, threaten physical violence against non fans and those posts get left alone. If you are a financial contributor to the forum, again, your posts will be left alone. There is a clear and marked bias. In other words, TFW has turned into Bottalk.

King Conan wouldn't put up with this shit.

2011-08-09T22:39:00.002-04:00

Apologies in advance. I'm going to get up on my soap box, I feel I'm entitled. I say this because the city which gave the world Speakers Corner, is currently under attack. It's under attack by hooligans and swine. Dead set on looting and pillaging, and if they can't tote it off, burning it to the ground. The politicians are doing nothing. David Cameron stayed in Italy for a few days while it was happening. His spineless Deputy Nick Clegg APOLOGIZED TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RIOTING and is trying to hang it all on the Metropolitan police force.

London is, in my opinion, the finest city on the planet, barring only Oxford. It's a vast repository of learning and seat of many fine Museums and universities. It's the seat of a nation which has given the world so much. Longitude and Latitude, Time Zones, the Cornish Pasty. It gave us scholars who cracked hieroglyphics and held out on its own against the Nazis when no one else would. It offends me that this is happening. They are burning hundred year old buildings on a lark. Trashing businesses that have operated for decades.

It pisses me right the hell off.

Most importantly, It scares the hell out of me. My grandmother was born in North London, and she is near to tears over this. You cannot imagine how frustrating it is to have ones family under threat and be stuck 3000 miles away and not be able to even be with them. To have to read the distressed E-Mails, and hope they aren't the ones getting there houses burnt down. To see buildings which she remembers from when she was a child on the news. I still have family who live in north London. In fact I have a lot of family who live in north London. The Bulk of my family in fact.

Family who have to go to bed at night with the glow of fires in their windows. They are in a country who has decided they aren't allowed to own fire arms to protect themselves from these worthless curs. When it comes to family, It's time to fight all comers. Screw the water cannons and bean bags. It's time to bring in the Army and the Challenger Tanks.

"I'll Teach Them a Fearful Bloody Lesson in Slaughter!".

If any of my regular readers are offended by this, if my apology isn't sufficient, then I'll cheerfully bid you adieu.

The Impossibility of the Hunt.

2011-08-05T00:24:00.000-04:00

Over the last several days, reading more and more positive statements. Not only from reviewers whom I feel have good taste but also from the authors themselves. I have decided to try and read the massive Malazan book of the fallen series.

The problem arises when I go to actually try and purchase the books. You see, I own Gardens of the Moon in hardcover. It's my preferred format. I dislike mass market paperbacks, and Trade Paperbacks slightly less so. This shouldn't be that difficult of a task. Expensive maybe, but not difficult. That would be an incorrect and presumptuous line of thought however.

Apparently, much like a full sized Houghton-Mifflin copy of The Book of Lost Tales Part 1, Deadhouse gates dosen't exist in anything other than Book Club size. I know thats not true. It is difficult to believe though. I've ordered it three times. All three times it has been the book club format. All three times the sellers have claimed ignorance, or simply ignored my complaints about them not making it clear that I wasn't getting an actual hardcover.

Don't misunderstand, I have nothing against Book Club formatted books. I especially like the Omnibus format re-prints of various series. As nice as Tor's recent reprints of the Black Company books are, I'd happily trade them in a heartbeat for the 80's Book Club editions they are reprinted from. Simply put, I like hardcovers and dust jackets, and sometimes the only way to get a book in hardcover with a dust jacket is to buy it from the book club. Though I'm no great fan of his, the First Law series is a perfect example. If you buy it from Amazon, or any other book retailer, you will get the Trade Paperback set and no choice. However if you order from the Sci-fi Book Club, you get it in hardcover, with dust jackets.

So my inability to get the sellers to comprehend there is a difference between Book Club Editions and Hardcovers is hampering that quest. I moved on to Trade Paperback, I dislike it, but not as much as Mass market Paperback. It has the added bonus of Tor printing the books from both Erikson and Esslemont with very similar design cues on the spine. To sort of make them look like Iron Bound books.

The Problem is, while every single other book in the series is in print and available in Trade paperback format.. for some reason Volume #3, Memories of Ice isn't. The only way to get it in Trade paperback is to buy it used. Thats not that big of a deal, however if I'm going to buy it used, I should just buy it in hardcover used. Of course that runs the risk of getting the package in the mail and having it be the Book Club Edition.

I could of course simply buy the 114$ set of all 10 Malazan books from the book club. It's quite a good deal really. The problem with this idea is, though you can get two of the most recent of Ian Camereon Esslemont's books in this format.. and in a completely ironic twist from a few paragraphs ago.. the earlier ones such as Night of Knives are difficult and expensive to acquire in the Book Club Format. The thing is though, I could read the first 1-2 of them and decide I hate it. So that sort of is a big mark against spending the rather serious amount of money sight unseen.

This may see pedantic or quibbling over unimportant things, after all isn't it whats inside the book that matters the most? Are these real leather? Well they're real Dickens. Thats all true. But I enjoy the aesthetic qualities of a shelf with matching, equally sized books on it. If you have them jumping from one size to another, it reminds me of nothing less than a mouth full of broken teeth. As if some one walked up and punched my shelves.

The only way it seems for me to get the entire series, from both authors, in a single unifed format is to break down and buy the Mass Market editions. Which while yes they take up considerably less room.. just aren't as nice to look at. I've had to do that with quite a few series, but not out of choice. Simply because they aren't available in any other formats.

This is going to require some serious consideration, as once I've embarked on purchasing them in one format I have to stick with it.

Clarkesworld, Epic Fantasy part 2

2011-08-02T19:57:00.004-04:00

Just saw they had posted up part two, and thought I would share a few of my favorite quotes.

These especially get the heart of my problems with George R.R. Martin. Once again, Ed Greenwood really has a lot in common with my feelings. He seems to have an interesting perspective since he more or less wrote novels in order to get paid. It's also interesting to see how a lot of the authors who have answers to these questions I don't particularly care for, also tend to be authors I don't particularly care for.

This probably says more about me than it does about any of these individual quotes. but I've never been secretive about my opinions when dealing with any of these subjects.

After reading these two battery interviews, it really makes me want to give the Erikson/Esslemont duo a try. I may not wind up liking their books, but both of them seem to have their heads bolted on right. But again, the one person who really seems to have the closest opinions to me is probably Ed Greenwood. he's an author i've never read, though I've read maybe 12 forgotten realms books by other authors. I'll have to see if I have any of his and give them a try sometime.

Steven Erikson:
Every death needs to mean something—it's the one conceit authors possess: the one real fantasy in this whole mess. So it needs to be handled respectfully. When it isn't: well, we all succumb to cowardice every now and then; and if not cowardice, then laziness. If those excuses don't fit well, there's always senseless stupidity, which afflicts authors on occasion as much as it does anyone.

The risk with killing off main characters is, if you do it too often and too capriciously, you risk your audience deciding it's not worth emotionally engaging with any of your characters, and then you're screwed.

Peter Orullian: We've all likely read a novel where the death of a character felt like the writer was proving to us that he's got the chutzpah to do it, but the death didn't make sense in the story. I'm not talking about senseless death. It's rather like the rash of fantasy writers who admire George Martin for being able and willing to kill his characters, and so decide they're going to do the same. And that not killing a character becomes a fantasy cliché.

Truth is, trope-avoidance is the new trope. Very transparent.

Patrick Rothfuss: [Kill a character?] On page 603 of your third book.

I kid, I kid....

Never, really. A lot of people think that you need to kill someone to raise the stakes in a book, or build dramatic tension, or prove to your reader that the world is truly dangerous and that seriously bad things can happen.

Ed Greenwood: Writers should resist the temptation to kill characters on a whim or as the easiest way to write themselves out of a situation, but should always bear in mind that to some extent, writing is a service industry: your readers' needs should be paramount. Arthur Conan Doyle discovered the cost of eliminating Sherlock Holmes the hard way, and had to bring him back. I am not saying every beloved character should lead a charmed life, improbably surviving every sticky situation (because the character is thereby lessened in the reader's eyes, and the dramatic tension of peril in your storytelling lost, as the reader becomes aware that any peril isn't real).

Steven Erikson: If there's going to be tears, better have a few laughs along the way. Besides, it's almost impossible to sustain the heavy stuff without ending up wanting to top yourself, or sinking into mawkish melodrama. A novel's like a drug; sometimes for everyone's sake you got to cut it with something innocuous.

Terry Brooks: Violence is a key element in epic fantasy. Wars and battles are almost always involved. Conflict is the bedrock of sagas and of the changes brought about by life. I do have some self-imposed rules. I am not a fan of graphic violence, so I steer clear of elaborating on blood and gore and body parts and the like. I'm not saying it doesn't work; it just doesn't work for me. My emphasis is on issues. How do hard choices impact us? What is the nature of our responsibility to others? How do we balance right and wrong when it isn't always clear which is which? Violence is a part of resolving those dilemmas, but I don't want it to be the focal point.

Ian C. Esslemont: Violence in fantasy, epic or not, gets more attention than it deserves. If it is justified by the needs of the story then it has earned its presence. If not, then it is just shallow gore or juvenile pandering. It must serve the thematics, not just splash prettily.

George Lucas's Red Tails.

2011-07-29T15:08:00.005-04:00

Found this trailer at Yahoo.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie. I hope it heralds the return of George Lucas to the quality and love he injected into the first Star Wars.

Terrance Howard looks like hes going to be bringing his A-Game to this. It's also nice to see Cuba Gooding Junior back.

Middle Earth and Mangroves.

2011-07-28T11:32:00.002-04:00

I don't really care much for the Guardian Newspaper of Great Britain. I want to make that explicitly clear. I dislike them because of their usual insistence on being snobs (much like any newspaper) when it comes to books and films. So I was rather surprised when I found this rather glowing recommendation for The Lord of the Rings.

Generally when one reads a Guardian review of a Fantasy novel.. or especially of one written by such an unrepentant "Luddite" "Monarchist" "Religiously slanted" not to mention "Racist" author as Tolkien.. it's generally to point out how He (It's always a he) fails to live up to their glorious multicultural ideals, and thus why no one should bother reading them.. After all, they tend to inform you, there is a book about a quadruple amputee transvestite jihadist that you should read instead.

Occasionally however they do produce, or rather publish a writer who isn't quite so pretentious. This is one of them. It's a short tale, but it's interesting to see Tolkiens words framed around the herbology of Lagos. The mangrove swamps and lillies and bullfrogs.

It further illustrates just how massive a treasure trove Africa is as a setting for Fantasy. Not the old "white man interacting with savages" style.. but the type of Fantasy that Charles Saunders writes. Maybe one of these days we will get a fantasy author who takes full advantage of the abundance of magical resources at their disposal, and who is also lucky enough to get popular for doing it.

Dropping a series.

2011-07-25T00:41:00.009-04:00

I'm sure we have all done it. You get to the point where you just cannot take the author's work anymore. Or, you simply cannot take the author any more. You have two choices basically when this happens, you can skim, flip forward, hope things get better, get back on track, get back to what you originally saw in the work to begin with.

Or you can simply drop the series. Abandoned halfway or sometimes even less. It's a very extreme measure, but I've found recently I've been doing it more and more.

Last year, I only abandoned one book without finishing it. Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself. I managed to soldier through Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth, but not without skimming huge chunks of the last four books. By the time I got to book 8 of that, I was forcing myself to read 50 pages a day of them. I had it marked on the calender when I'd finally finish that last page of Confessor. But I only abandoned one book.

This year I've already abandoned one book, without finishing it, David Foster Wallace's The Infinite Jest. Like Gravities Rainbow, better men than me have abandoned that. Worse, I've abandoned two series. Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin series, and Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars series. Both for the same reason. To much talk Wheeljack, Not enough action.

After the rollicking start that O'Brian's series had, and its eventual and meteoric pickup of steam leading up to the war of 1812 I read each volume faster than the last. Once the war was joined however, the author slammed on the brakes. They became distended plays dealing chiefly with manners. It suddenly took an entire book to say what he previously said in a chapter. He also began to subtly change the characters alignment. Maturin went from being Chaotic good, to lawful Evil. Aubrey went from Knight in shining armour to indifferent and apathetic. They quit being characters I liked. But they are living still, and its possible that some where buried in the depths of books 11-20 that their previous selves are waiting to be re-discovered by me. That may or may not happen. I rarely give a series a second chance.

Kate Elliot's series on the other hand, I never liked. I read it hoping for another series similar to Tad Williams. Her name is frequently mentioned as being "The Other author inspired by Tad Williams" The chief one being George R.R. Martin. The problem is, nothing ever happens in Kate Elliot's books. Originally intended to be a trilogy, the Crown of Stars grew to encompass 7 volumes. It's a shame too. It probably would have been a fantastic trilogy. Instead she bogs it down with countless diversions into the social standings of various underclasses in her pseudo invented world. I say Pseudo, because all she really seems to have done is replaced any instance of a Male name in history with a Feminine name. Constantine becomes Constance, Alexander becomes Alexandria, on and on, ad nauseum. I know too much about history, and that slap dash approach just kept forcing me out of the novels. The turgid prose, and constant discussions on arranged marriage and political machinations did it better though. In the first 700 page book, they treat two major battles with less than a chapter a piece. The main characters daily chores to her master, take up nearly 10 times as much page space. In other words, the books are boring.

In the past, the one series that I've abandoned that seems to irk the most Fantasy fans, is George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. I likely could have abandoned dozen's of other series, even the Ur-Fantasy The Lord of the Rings, and escaped without so much as the batting of an eyelash. Not Martin however. I've apparently become a heretic because of my refusal to acknowledge his supposed greatness. I tried though. I read the first one, shortly following the release of the fourth volume. Numerous people convinced me I needed to read this series desperately. I hesitated, I avoid long series that aren't finished. Thats the result of the interminable waiting for the later Wheel of Time volumes. I foolishly bought all four hardcovers for nearly full cover price, sight un seen. I nearly quit reading the first book, following Bran getting pushed out the window.

You see, had the series been a typical Fantasy series. Bran would have been the main character. The entire series would have followed him. He would have been the Frodo or Rand Al' Thor or Richard Rahl or Paul Atredies of the song of ice and fire. Martin chose not to do that. It made me angry. But with a lot of encouragement I stuck to it. By the time I finished the volume, I realized I should have gone with my gut and quit it hundreds of pages earlier. I vowed not to read any more of the series until I knew the ending. Any author who kills his main character (Surely, if not Bran then Ned must be?!) cannot be trusted.

Thats what I typically want from an author. I don't want challenge. I want sameness. I want to be able to read each and every volume knowing the main character will survive largely unscathed. Life is uncertain, and certainty is a fantasy only enjoyed by the wealthy. I can catch glimpses of it in novels, or so I had become accustomed to through a long diet of what would typically be termed "Mediocre" fantasy.

This decision tends to be met with dismissal, pleading, anger, or confusion. They just cannot understand why I wouldn't want to read such fantastic books. Maybe they are. I'll likely never find out. Since its highly unlikely that Martin will be able to end his series on a note with which I don't object.

A Specific and recent example follows:

Anonymous said...

Rex, I believe I speak for the many fans of the book, when I say that you made a really, truly, tragic, and stupid decision. I really urge you to pick the book back up- the whole series is excellent.

To which I responded:

I already feel as if I wasted my time on the first book. What's tragic would be wasting more time getting invested in more characters that I already know Martin kills off. What was stupid, was buying into the hype and wasting 120$ buying all four hardcovers, new, because people just kept on about them.

Another Quote I just came across, From Black Gate

Martin invites us again and again to withhold trust from the things we’re told, but again and again reveals to us how much we’ve accepted without realising it. It’s a nice trick; and it surprises me that he’s consistently able to pull it off without alienating his readership. I think the secret is that he plays fair with the readers. He puts his clues out there in the descriptions he gives; he shows us, by revealing a few minor mysteries, how his riddles are constructed. And if, given that, you’re still surprised by what happens — it’s hardly his fault, is it? Words are wind.

It's most assuredly his fault. He's the author. Any problems the reader has with his work, ultimately are the fault of him who built it. Just as surely as a defective car tire is the fault of the manufacturer. I don't enjoy being toyed with. I was alienated.

Don't lose heart however, Martin is in good company. I made up my mind to jettison the Dune series when Paul walked into the desert. Beyond finishing the second half of the book, being made up of Children of Dune, I have yet to venture back to Arakkis. Martin already has my money, so what does it matter if I don't venture back to Westeros?

for all 6 of you who still mail letters.

2011-07-23T22:00:00.003-04:00

The USPS is going to be issuing this Edgar Rice Burroughs stamp next year, featuring Tarzan.

It's a pretty attractive stamp, but I'd have liked them to have done a number of different characters. With John Carter soon to be released it might have increased sales.

Though Ultimately what I would love to have is a set of "American Pulp Icons".. I'd love to get a stamp of ol' Two Gun with a pouncing Conan super imposed in front of him.

The great Cimmerian Egg Race.

2011-07-21T01:45:00.004-04:00

At first I was like:

But then I was like:

Borders, All remaining stores to close.

2011-07-18T21:49:00.004-04:00

According to Yahoo Finance, All remaining Borders stores to begin closing, some as soon as Friday.

I have to say that this saddens me. I do try and buy books from both Brick & Mortar stores, as well as Local Stores. I don't read E-Books, I rarely check books out of the library. The only reason I turn to Amazon is purchase stuff that is out of print, or CD's/Movie's since nearly every dedicated store to them is gone, many before Amazon ever got as ubiquitous as it has become.

I enjoy book stores. I like the dingy second hand ones equally to the well let mega store. I don't enjoy book stores that don't seem to ever update their stock. Something I feel Borders, more than Barnes & Noble is guilty of. Borders tried repeatedly to diversify their stores. Adding in Toy Sections and Stationary. Gift Wrap Stations. All this did was subtract space from what they are. A Book shop. It's the same thing Books-A-Million did in the late 90's.

I remember when my local Borders first opened. It's not really "local" to me in the proper sense of the word.. in the Geographic sense of scale it is. I can get to two borders stores in less than 45 minutes travel, 4 in less than an hour. I can't walk to them, but I'm luckier than many. It was the place to hang out for us nerds and geeks in school. Walden Books in the mall was too tiny. Books-A-Million didn't have a cafe. There was no Barnes&Nobel. It was at least a bi-weekly ritual.

I appreciate the willingness of the big box bookstores to allow people do loiter. Sometimes for the entire business day, without ever requiring you to buy anything. Sure, Libraries will do this.. but you can't have a conversation in a library. Its against the rules. I can't tell you how many times I've conversed with people in book stores. The English Second Language Teacher on vacation from Taiwan, looking for a good long read for the plane ride back. Helping out the countless numbers of people who have mechanically been steered towards Robert Jordan or Terry Goodkind by the hapless store employees.

Speaking of, Borders has nearly 11,000 employees. They will soon be added to the nations seemingly intractable unemployment problem. So really its them I feel the worst for. As some one who will soon be out of a job, I sympathize entirely. 6-7 years ago when I worked full time I spent hundreds of dollars a year on new books. As my finances have deteriorated I've bought more and more books second hand. It's like ripples on a pond. I wasn't the pebble, but I got caught up in its wake and thus played my unwilling part in adding to the violence of the distortion.

Caress of Steel.

2011-07-18T18:34:00.004-04:00

I know this song came out a bit before the novel.. but every time I listen to them I wonder if Terry brooks had this album. Though it's probably also a bias on my part.. After all I some what consider RUSH's (a band I like btw)early albums to be pastiches of Led Zeppelin. So it makes them thematically similar to Brooks being a Tolkien Pastiche.

None of this is to say that some how the Band is at fault for the Sword of Shannara existing.. but I can't help but connect the three men of Willowdale to Shea, Flick, Menion Leah and Shady Vale.

Crazy.

2011-07-17T12:59:00.006-04:00

"Just once, I'd like to have encountered real literature."
"Is it literature?"
"I Think So."
"So whats literature?"
"Literature is where you read a book and feel you could put a little mark under every line because it's true."
"Because it's true? I don't get it."
"When every sentence is simply right. When it reveals something about the world. And Life. When every phrase gives you the feeling that you would have behaved or thought exactly the same way the character in the book does. That's when its Literature."

Crazy - Benjamin Lebert

Personally I find that to be a pretty good description. It casts no aspersions to genre or type or setting. It simply makes a statement. It's a statement I can agree with. It goes a long way to explaining why, for the most part, I don't read a lot of books that would be considered "Literary". If I can't identify with the protagonists.. The book doesn't touch me. It's the same reason I have difficulties with books that feature Anti-Heros or even Villains as their protagonists. If you make the character too murky, too ill feeling.. I can't identify with them. I can't feel for them or care what happens to them. I lose interest.

I've read through a lot of abysmally bad books because I like the characters. I've given up on a lot of really good books because I don't like the characters. Benjamin Lebert's 'Crazy' was both a good book and had good characters. It was a short novel, barely 200 pages, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. This section though was what really stuck out in my mind. Two teenage boys sitting on a train discussing Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. I knew it was exactly how I would have behaved, exactly how I would have thought. Enough so that, while I didn't deface my book by underlining the words.. I copied them here to share.

Harry Potter, Movie Watch 2011. part 2

2011-07-15T22:37:00.004-04:00

well that was.. Something.

Early on Thursday morning I woke up. Something about #5 just kept bugging me. Gnawing at my subconscious as I slept. I walked over to the book case and extricated the offending volume. I checked the page count. just shy of 900 pages. A truly huge tome. By far the biggest in the series. Eclipsing the first, by over 600 pages. With this knowledge I knew I was right in my ill feelings. I picked up the DVD cases and had it full confirmed. Harry potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has a run time of 142 minutes. For a 300 page book. Harry potter and the Order of the Phoenix has a run time of 139 minutes.. for a 900 page book. This is ridiculous in the extreme, Deathly Hallows is 200 pages shorter than Order of the Phoenix yet it got a 5 hour long film in two parts. To make matters worse, They kept nearly all the annoying and bothersome bits of #5. They left out stuff that would haunt #'s 6 and 7 and require backtracking, or simply hoping no one asked about those Yucatan sized plot holes left by their excision. One can only hope that there will be an eventual extended cut which will include a number of these very important elements.

Starting about 11am I watched Harry potter and the Halfblood Prince. What an improvement this was. It was just as complex as the the book, finally began tying up loose ends and making reference to objects found back as far as Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Most importantly, it moved the story forward. It was an all around good film, except it has no ability to stand alone, something that the preceding 5 did have in some regard. It's too complicated to really summarize, or would spoil to much of the payoff for you watching the previous 13 hours of movies.

Skipping ahead to about 6pm. I left the house to get supper, then headed over to the theatre. I had tickets to see both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows back to back starting at 9pm. 6 hours of potter mania where waiting for me a scant 16 miles down the road. I was not unimpressed.

Many people turned out in costume. Something I've not seen since The Return of the King came out. The demographics of the theatre were the most surprising. 6 out of 10 potterheads present were female. Had I known that, I probably wouldn't have put off reading/watching them so long. C'est la vie.

Movie #7.1 and .2 deftly continued the trend started with #6. Really the three movies could constitute a narrative build similar to a micro trilogy to cap off a series of standalone films. They did suffer slightly from the material left out of #5. Even to me, only an extremely casual reader of the series was able to point out a number of instances. Most of them revolved around the other orphaned boy residing at Hogwarts, Nevil Longbottom. The other thing the films did was try and soften the edges of Albus Dumbledore. To make him less of a Machiavellian schemer than he was in the last books.

The theatre cried over an animated elf, Cheered when Tim Burton's main squeeze bit the dust courtesy of Mrs. Weasley and booed audibly whenever Ralph Fiennes was on screen. The special effects were good enough to have me empathize with a particularly wretched dragon forced to work security in the depths of the goblin bank Gringotts. My dislike of David Thewlis, which stemmed from his character in Dragonheart, has been forgotten. But I'll say that even at a 5 hour run time, many many characters simply got fly-bys or were in group shots. I really can't say anymore than that without potentially spoiling the end. However I will say, I did find myself desperately wishing for Conan to run in from off screen and kill Nagini the giant snake.. after it having escaped death for the 4th or 5th time.

It was a good night. Consider me a Convert. But I'm glad I'm a convert on my own terms. Rather than having jumped on the bandwagon earlier, I chose to ignore it and let it pass me by. Only going to its last performance, slipping out before the final curtain call.

*Edit*

I forgot to add something else. It struck me as humorous that Ralph Feinnes plays Voldemort, while his brother Joseph portrays Merlin in the Starz show Camelot.

First John Carter trailer.

2011-07-14T12:09:00.002-04:00

I'm excited for this.

Harry Potter, Movie Watch 2011. part 1

2011-07-13T11:29:00.004-04:00

In the last few days I've watched films 1-5 for the first time. Just as I earlier this year read the book series for the first time.

When I read the books back in the spring, I mostly enjoyed the earlier books in the series. I found them to be relatively light pseudo fantasy fare in the vein of Roald Dhal's whole body of work. They really do remind me of James and the Giant Peach and Big Friendly Giant and all those sorts of things.. Having Flying Cars reminded me a lot of Ian Flemming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. They are frightening, slightly demented.. but none of the villains approach the level of evil that the Child Snatcher or The Witches possess.

But starting with Book #4, this began to change. Almost from the very beginning when the death eaters attack the Quidditch World Cup. This is telling the reader/viewer that, the world is changing. Grab a helmet.

My feelings are that for the most part, I enjoy the films more than the books. Up to a point. That point is book/film #5. The Order of the Phoenix was by no means my least favorite of the series. That would be giving it too much credit. No I abjectly Hate, Order of the Phoenix. The book/films entire purpose is about the attempts of some individuals to reset the status quo. to put the genie that is Voldemort back into his bottle.

It forces characters to conform into molds they wouldn't conform too in any real life setting I've ever encountered. The character who really shines in the film is probably Alan Rickman's Snape. Who for the first time is really given a big part and we get a glimpse into his childhood and why he hates James Potter so much. On the other hand, the wonderful Gary Oldman is yet again wasted entirely in the 5th film. Having shown up in #3, and disappeared entirely during #4... it was nice having him back. But they just didn't do enough with the Black Residence or Kreacher or Sirius.. or frankly any of the Order of the Phoenix members. Choosing to almost entirely focus on the school.

It comes across in both places as excruciatingly stupid. It makes the characters themselves buffoons for drinking that koolaid. It denies us any knockdown dragout wizard magic fights for nearly 500 pages, or just about 2.5 hours. Along with that it at best plays down, and at worst outright ignores the momentous impact of what happened at the end of the last book/film. There is a distinct lack of feeling that, Though the world is different now. It's best if you keep calm and carry on. It's a seachange in the cultural undercurrent.

It didn't help that I really hate seeing Seigfried Farnon (Robert Hardy, who is an Expert at the Longbow in real life, having written two books about Agincourt and the Long Bow.. which makes him pretty bad ass in my book)as the worthless Cornelius Fudge either, or that I hate Helena Bonham Carter in just about anything she is in. It makes it difficult for me to even pay attention.

Tonight I'm going to watch #6, and tomorrow I'll be watching #7 & 8 in theatres.

Sounds of Melnibone.

2011-07-07T23:28:00.005-04:00

Blue Oyster Cult - Black Blade

Hawkwind - Elric: The Enchanter

Jethro Tull - Broadsword

In which I attempt to explain String Theory to the drunks at Waffle House.

2011-07-06T00:16:00.003-04:00

Having been some what miffed earlier in the day by the shockingly poor judgement of 12 of my countrymen.. I decided that I'd take a nap. That left me waking up rather late in the evening, and since I didn't feel like cooking I decided to go out to eat. Problem is, in this part of the world.. when one wants to eat after about 9pm, there is only one place to go. Waffle House.

I'm not proud of my choice of dining establishment. They generally serve overly greasy food that is best consumed after you have had one two many. At least that seems to be the popular conception. This one happens to be near a major truck stop as well, so you get a lot of drunk truck drivers coming in after sitting in their sleepers polishing off a 6-pack. Sometimes this results in fights in the parking lot.. and police involvement.. it can be highly entertaining. Most of the time though it just results in a lot of really odd conversation.

I've never had the kind of Bill Hicks experience when at a Waffle House.. but I've had plenty of run-ins with drunks. Tonight was one of those nights. As I'm, sitting there it begins to rain. Well I've finished my food and really am desperate to get out of the restaurant before any of the drunks start talking to me. But it's coming down pretty hard. The waitress comes over, and asks if there is anything she can get me.. I said no, only if you can stop the rain. She followed up with a questioning look and said something like "I'll think really hard on it".

What followed was one drunk shouting "Yeah just need to get the right vibes goin!" another shouted out "Like String Theory!" This lead to a screeching halt.. I swear some one dropped a plate and a record skipped. "Whats that?" the first drunk said.. "I don't know, I just heard it on TV" said the second.. then they both turned to me.. I have no idea why, perhaps, tying back in with the bill hicks reference, because I was reading a book.. and asked me did I know what string theory was.

Well my grasp of quantum physics and deep math is how shall I say.. scanty at best.. but I dug down into the darkest reaches of my brain trying to remember everything I'd ever heard in any Micho Kaku documentaries I'd seen.. I proceeded to ramble on about quantum entanglements and wormholes and quarks and neutrinos and all sorts of groovy stuff. I did it in a good Arlo Guthrie voice too. Eventually, whether they had heard enough or simply felt they now understood what string theory was.. they both sort of wandered outside to smoke a cigarette.

Thing is, I have no idea what I was talking about.. but they have no idea I had no idea what I was talking about. It's mutually assured ignorance when it comes to this sort of thing.

All I can take away from it is.. thank goodness I'm not drunk at the waffle house, asking stupid questions to complete strangers. I'm also forever indebted to those two drunks for giving me something to write about that I at least, find highly amusing.

Who needs Nihilistic Fantasy

2011-07-05T14:42:00.004-04:00

When you have the Florida Judicial system backed up by the idiotic jurors of America.

Throwing in the towel.

2011-07-03T21:58:00.003-04:00

With today's completion of "The Far Side of the World" I've decided to cease reading the Aubrey & Maturin books by Patrick O'Brian. It's not that they are badly written, or that the characters annoy me. It's simply that, apart from their sporadic humour.. the books are extremely boring.

I've seen them described as Emily Dickinson with Boats.. I can't really comment on that as I've never read( and am extremely unlikely to read) Emily Dickinson. But they do seem to spend an awful lot of time on inane trivialities. Sometimes that works out well, it provides opportunity for cunning word play that often feeds into the humourus bent the novels have. When that hits, you get grand episodes such as a drunken three-toed sloth, or the Captain's hat being eaten by a pack of Wombats.. or who can forget the disgruntled honeybees which were smuggled on board. But as the series went on, these episodes became less and less common. Mainly being replaced by more and more nattering.

I enjoyed the first 8 books quite a lot. 9 and 10 however where different animals. The author himself admits that he's begun to have to play loose with time in order to keep writing adventures for his characters. Maybe thats why I didn't like it? I don't think its that its set during the war of 1812, and thus the Americans tend to be the foils for the heroic royal navy. Several earlier ones had Americans involved and they didn't turn me off the way that 9 and 10 did. Something about the tone of the books just changed with the move to the double digits.

I'll admit also that O'Brian's characters live and let live attitude to all manner of immorality has grown especially irksome. I'd rather they cast judgements I don't agree with, than simply abstain. It's a very modern way of looking at the world these characters in habit. It's one thing for certain things that I find objectionable to be considered no big deal in the 1700's.. but the characters simply refrain from coming out against anything. Well, except the French and Women on ships anyway...

The chances of me picking up #11 are not that great, but who's to say it won't happen. For the moment though I'm left with 10 unread books that I've got very little interest in reading. But at the same time, because I've not read them, and they are expensive.. I don't really want to trade them in.

I'm still left scratching my head as to why Penguin thought they needed to liken Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series to O'Brien. The two authors really couldn't be more dissimilar. The frivolities engaged in by Aubrey and Maturin and especially by those higher ranked than they are astounding. Things that quite simply only the villains of the Sharpe's books engage in. This is not to say that Aubrey is not an upstanding guy.. but I'd not turn my back on Maturin for a million Dollars. He's a stone cold killer who has immensely conflicting and complicated loyalties.

The closest equivalent to him in Cornwell's work would be Major Ducot.. the French intelligence officer. I'd very much like to see the two of these characters meet on a small stone table on a hillside. Two wine cups, and a bottle sitting on the table. Iocain powder in one, neither or perhaps both cups. Of course to really make the movie work.. you'd need Ingmar Bergman to direct it. It would probably sweep the Oscars. Oh, and both parts would be played by the same actor.. since the two characters seem to be the spitting image of each other.

Clarkesworld: Epically discussing, Epic Fantasy.

2011-07-02T22:37:00.009-04:00

Found this really interesting article thanks to Sci-Fi Signal.

One of the writers from Clarkesworld has collected and collated interviews from some of the Fantasy Genres biggest, as well as from many mid-list and up and coming authors. It's only part one, but seems to be making fairly good progress in an attempt to adequately define the sub genre, epic fantasy, at least in broad terms. How exactly it differentiates from Sword and Sorcery, seems to be boil down to Scope. It also helps me to understand why some of the Conan Pastiches just don't feel like Conan stories (Despite them frequently being barely literate constructions).. is that they are infusing Epic Fantasy sensibilities into the Sword and Sorcery Hyborian world.

The Interviews also are nice in a way because several of these authors, far more effectively encapsulate a very close proximity of my feelings. They also do it in a much more concise and well worded way.

My esteem for Peter O'Rullian continues to increase with every interview I've read.. though I've yet to actually read his book.

Peter O'Rullian:For me, some things must exist for a fantasy novel to feel epic. And at least some of them would apply to epic storytelling in any genre. I think first of the stakes in the novel, which ties closely to the scale of the story. If my stakes are missing my morning cartoons because I've got to weed the garden, it ain't epic. Failure of my character to answer the story question has to have consequences that impact others besides the character himself. Could be, too, that my character fails. But there has to be risk on a broad scale. Yes, it's compelling to read about the risk of a single life, but for me that's a different genre of fantasy.

Peter O'Rullian: And related to the notion of stakes/scale, there needs to be an adversary. It needn't be the devil. But it's got to be more than a robber. I'm glad to have the motivations of this antagonist explained; I'm even glad to be made to sympathize (after a fashion) with the "bad guy." But at some point in epic storytelling there needs to be real conflict (which then plays against this idea of high stakes), and if there's no clear hero, however flawed, then I'm not invested in the outcome. Maudlin as it may sound, I want triumph of some resonant kind. I want to be thrilled. If I don't care who wins, what's the point?

Bolded to emphasize the part I'm specifically agreeing with. I hate to beat a dead horse, but he just summed up exactly what my problem is with a lot of modern fantasy novels I've tried to read over the last 3 years or so. Ranging from Abercrombie to Martin, even old standbys such as Moorcock. I frequently find their "heros" to be just as odious as their "Villains" if you can even define their characters in those terms. The base, 6th grade writing class "Antagonist" and "Protagonist" monikers seem to fit more simply because they don't carry any emotional baggage with them like the terms Hero and Villain do.

This article ties into another book I'm reading right now, "Lies my Teacher Told me", which features the basic thesis that American History textbooks remove the foibles and flaws of important historical personae in order to purify them into Heroes. This is done in order to give people ideals to live up too, But all it does is remake real people into unattainable paragons. They never fail, therefore we cannot help but fail in our quest to be more like them. I think thats a perfectly valid flaw in a lot of Epic Fantasies, But doesn't excuse the sudden and violent pendulum swing in the other direction. In reality, we should simply be going for more balanced characters, even though by pure emotional need some should balance slight more towards one or the other pole. They need not be violently magnetized to one or the other unless the story needs them to be. Nor do they have to fall for every weakness they possess. Galadrial didn't take the ring, even when it was offered to her. It helped her character in the context of the Lord of the Rings, but does it atone for her actions during the first age?

Boromir succumbed to the temptation of the ring, but after its influence was gone gave his life to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. Just because you have flaws dosen't mean you are irredeemable. It's the resistance to redemption, or rather resistance to realizing you have flaws, that is the root of the trouble.

As a specific example from the first chapter of "lies", it discusses Woodrow Wilsons heinous personal beliefs. Beliefs he never recanted. But that dosen't change the fact that he also passed a lot of important legislature which helped the United States become the great power it is today. But if he were a Fantasy character, I feel Martin would be better suited to write him than Brooks.

Further great quotations come from the likes of Ed Greenwood, summed up here.

Ed Greenwood: At the core of all good fiction, Epic Fantasy and otherwise, are the moral choices made by characters—characters the writer makes the reader care about. For good or bad, smart or foolish, these choices (Uriens in the movie Excalibur: "I saw what I saw. The boy drew the sword.") define the characters. They stand up for what they believe is right, or sacrifice themselves knowingly, or do "what needs to be done," and inspire readers. Scenes of heroic choices lift the hearts of readers, make them feel that there is good in the world, let them revel in moments of magnificence ("The boy stood up to the dragon! I saw it! I was there!"), and feel better for having done so.

No one wants to read a story of unrelieved gloom, wherein sordid characters the reader loathes or despises do nasty things to each other, there is no order nor moments of kindness or good triumphing in any way, and good doesn't win in the end. The happy, just ending is a cliché because it works, because readers want it and wait for it and feel somehow cheated if they don't get it (and very cheated if there's no glimmer of good or "rightness" at story-end, at all).

Elizabeth Bear: Beowulf and the dragon destroy each other: fantasy tells us he was right to have fought. I need stories that tell me it is right to keep fighting, when despair and capitulation are so easy.

I think current publishing trends some what disagree with Mr. Greenwood on what exactly readers want. It's clear from the sales push behind certain authors that the idea of unrelieved gloom and sordid characters doing nasty things to each other is popular. The question is why has it become so, now? As I said, its a truly fascinating article and I am very much looking forward to reading the next parts of it.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

2011-06-29T22:30:00.004-04:00

Alrighty, so this is hopefully to be the last outing with helmer Michael Bay. You can sorta tell in the film. He wanted to go out with a bang. And he wanted to show up Christopher Nolan by trashing Chicago even worse than Nolan did in the Dark Knight. But really, Dark of the Moon shouldn't even be discussed in the same sentence as the Dark Knight.

It's not nearly as bad as Revenge of the Fallen. Not by half. On the other hand, its not half as good as 2007's Transformers. For one very important reason.

In 2007, when Transformers launched, and we were introduced to Optimus Prime and Bumblebee just a bit over the 1/3rd mark. You knew at least who they were. Their bodies were not the same, but their attitudes were. Bumblebee was the intensely brave, intensely loyal friend he was in both the Comic and the Cartoon, even though he didn't have his distinctive voice. Something I felt was a shame, as it would have been nice to hear Dan Gilvezan back just as much as it was to have Peter Cullen back as Prime.

Prime himself was, immediately recognizable as the same character who was quick to laugh and slow to anger. He would have done everything possible to protect his soldiers, everything that is except letting harm fall on the Humans. This is a character who chose death because he had accidentally killed computer game characters! Who let Megatron take a hostage and mortally wound him because he wanted to give the Decepticon Tyrant another chance.

Now, he just takes Faces, He's going to kill them all too. He butchers Decepticons like Hanibal lector butchers prison guards. Never once does prime mourn the lives hes taking. Apparently, Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.. unless they have red eyes.. then its butt kicking time.

Ok sure, in his defense, in the Films the Decepticons are almost unanimously shown as little more than mechanical beasts. Starscream and Megatron are basically the only ones who have any personality at all. This is something that actually improved in Revenge of the Fallen, and continued into Dark of the Moon. While the characters themselves were more correct in the first film, some of them have gotten far more dialog in the sequels.

Speaking of Megatron.. I feel his inclusion in this movie was more or less pointless. He didn't do anything except allegedly shoot Elephants in a scene that got cut out, and then get killed brutally by Optimus in the climax of the film. I feel it would have been far better to have scrapped him entirely, and given his dialog and screen time to Shockwave. An endlessly intriguing character who, they got my hopes up by Casting David Warner to voice in the Video Game.. I'd have bought 10 tickets if I got a conversation between Shockwave/Warner and Sentinel Prime/Nimoy.. it would have been like Star Trek VI all over again. Awesome. In other words.

Nimoy was the real standout of the film. His character was complex, but ultimately should have simply been Galvatron. I couldn't help but think of Galvatron every time Sentinal Prime spoke. That's how deeply Nimoy's portrayal of the upgraded Megatron was on me as a child. Even when I listen to Spock I think of Galvatron.

The Set pieces ranged from fantastic to bugf*ck insane. When I said they trashed Chicago I was not even remotely joking. Though they never really gave a reason why the Decepticons planned to take over Chicago.. It just happened.

The really unique thing though is that this is the first time that the plot was more or less copied from the Cartoon. Or rather, several episodes. It shared elements of The Ultimate Doom and of Megatron's Master Plan. But ultimately the Cartoons were far more fulfilling because both times they showcased complexity of many of the characters.

Oh well, I'd still rank this as the 2nd best in the series..

Mighty Morphin' Mondays.

2011-06-27T12:15:00.004-04:00

Episode 4 "A Pressing engagement"

Jason (The Red Ranger) is having some personal quandaries due to his inability to best Bulk's Bench-pressing records. This creates a lot of self doubt, which Rita takes advantage of in order to try and split the team up. She sends the monstrous King Sphinx (different from Goldar) to attack Angel Grove while Jason is soul searching. The monsters manage to separate Jason from the rest of the team and proceed to wail on him. The rest of the team regroups and comes to the rescue before Jasons killed by Goldar and King Sphinx. They form Megazord and dispatch the beast, but again Goldar escapes.

Episode 5 "A Different Drum"

Rita comes up with a plan to use Music to defeat the power rangers, so she summons the Gnarly Gnome, a garden gnome who plays a magic accordion and sends him to earth. His powers hypnotize people leading them off, thankfully it dosen't affect Mellisa, the deaf girl who is in Kimberly's dance class. She follows the hypnotized girls then runs to find Kimberly who summons the power rangers. They defeat the Gnarly Gnome and save the hypnotized girls.

Episode 6 "Food Fight"

Inspired by a food fight at the juicebar, Rita summons Pudgy Pig. A monster which eats everything including the rangers weapons. Trini realizes that the monster cannot stand spicy foods so the rangers set out to feed him vast quantities of horseradish until he vomits their weapons back up. The form the Mega-Blaster and destroy the monster before he can consume the world's food supply.

As the episodes progress from Episode 1, they have already sort of hit their stride. We've had three Trini centric episodes, two Kimberly Centric episode and a Jason Centric Episode. So far that leaves Zack and Billy out, but I'm sure they will get their own episodes soon enough.

Director writes sappy goodbye, Fandom fawns some more.

2011-06-26T15:30:00.005-04:00

There is no room for partiality on this blog post. If you don't want to read my hyperbolic rant, or if you absolutely love the live action Transformers films, I suggest you bugger off and quit reading right now. I realize that what I'm doing here is going to seem petty, or even insecure. That may be, but It's also a visceral gut reaction to something I've been angry about for the last 5 years and I desperately need to get it off my chest.

Micheal Bay is apparently heartbroken that he won't be doing any more Transformer films.

All the news groups that are running this story are crediting him with "Bringing back" the transformers or "Saving the brand". He did no such thing. Kenner's Beast Wars brought back the Transformers, Mainframe's Beast Wars brought back the Transformers. Brought them back strong enough so that they have never gone away again.

Though, an individual from Europe or Japan could argue that they never actually went away at all, but simply waned in popularity. But of course, none of the fans of the movies would know this, since most of them are only fans of the Transformers BECAUSE OF THE MOVIES. They have no vested interest in the history or characters, they only like it because its popular. It's exactly the same thing that happened in 2000 when the first Autobot and Decepticon logo T-shirts started being sold at mall stores. Everyone suddenly thought they were a Transformers fan because they owned the shirt. This is the same thing but Magnified 100,000x. Now they are fans simply because they plonked down 10$ to see a movie.

This of course has lead to further fractures between the Transformers fandom. Those who love his movies and don't want him to leave.. and those of us who are Right, and can't wait for him to get his mitts off the franchise.

Transformers under Michael Bay has been turned into Twilight and Pokemon. It's Popular because it's popular because it's popular. It's circular logic and eventually will spiral into a singularity and fall out of favor. When asked to explain why they like it, "Because its awesome!" is the most likely response. They don't know why they like it. They are just following the crowd. This is, the same way of looking at Conan that I frequent come across. They don't know anything about the character, the writer, the stories. All they know is "What is best in life?" and Camel Punching. I imagine the Marvel and DC fans feel exactly the same way, and as much as I love the bulk of these comic book movies, I'd never dare to assume I know as much about the characters as they do.

Since I'm not allowed to comment as I want on the Transformer forum this came from.. lest I risk offending these delicate flowers who love Micheal bay so much.. I'm going to do it here.

ok you people are pathetic, this man brought transformers to a point of unbelieveable[sic] popularity, who's movies have made hasbro TONS of money to make the toys you want and all you guys can do is go "GOOD NEWS!" and "GLAD TO SEE HIM LEAVE!"

you guys make me sick

Micheal Bay, thank you for all the time and hard work you put into making transformers stronger than ever before, we can never express enough thanks for what you have done for this franchise. You will forever be welcomed by this fan

I hope you choke on it.

Though the cynical part of me says there is no way in hell he will leave a franchise thats pulled in this much money, I figure I can conjecture the reason. That is that his contract for 3 movies is up, and he, like any reasonable entrepreneur who's got serious marketable clout, will want so much money for another contract that neither Paramount nor Hasbro will be willing to pony up to meet his demands. Maybe I'm completely off base, but I figure the only part of him thats going to be heartbroken about his leaving will be his bank account.

Michael Bay's letter, based on previous statements is not. However, I say that with the caveat that I have not yet seen the newest film. I could be wrong, no I hope I'm wrong. That after three films, one of them middling and the other a midterm abortion plastered on the inside of a wet/dry vac, that he's finally figured out the scope and depth of the mythology he has to work with. And will use that to give the world a quality film.

None of the previous iterations or reboots or micro-franchises produced have sought to replace the original in the popular imagination the same way that these films has. Nor have their fans been so obnoxiously divisive. The fans produced by such fare as Robots In Disguise, Armada, Energon, or Cybertron did not seek to supplant the originals by categorically stating that just because it was old it was no good. They sought out information, they joined in the larger discussion and for the most part despite largely being younger, integrated into the existing fandom. They recognized self evident truths about the franchise and moved on with talking about what they liked and disliked about the various incarnations.

The bulk of the fans brought in by the first Michael Bay movie have done none of that. There responses to the fans of the originals are nearly always vitriolic and hateful. Nearly always ill-informed, and nearly always reeking of the kind of dogmatic certainty only known to suicide bombers.

I'd be perfectly content for the franchise to dwindle to nothing at this point. All the stories that count were published in the 80's, All the characters who matter were produced in the 80's. None of the stuff for the last 20 years even impacts my enjoyment of the Transformers, and as such I'd shed no tears for the brand to die of heat death following the big crunch of popularity once it falls out of favor. Exactly the same way it did in 1991.

I survived it once. I was heartbroken. At age five I wrote letters to Hasbro asking why, My favorite toy line was no longer on store shelves, and they politely responded by sending me a very kind gift of some promotional artwork and thanking me for my letter. That is dedication. That is taking care of your fans. That is sincerity.

Conan the Barbarian, a review.

2011-06-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

If you are interested, I've reviewed the novelization of the new Conan film over on Hyborean Apocrypha. And also written another post summarizing its apparent placement chronologically and how it relates to Robert E. Howard's original stories.

You can read the 6 parts at the following links. But be warned, massive spoilers are contained within.

Part One.
Part Two.
Part Three.
Part Four.
Part Five.
Part Six.

So does that answer the question?

2011-06-24T15:22:00.003-04:00

Of how Elijah wood and Ian Holm and possibly other of the Lord of the Rings actors feature in the The Hobbit.

According to a new interview with Elijah Wood, it seems as if they will be working on a sort of framing device. Using the concept of "There and Back again", the book that Bilbo is writing at the beginning of the The Fellowship of the Ring, and that Frodo/Sam Finish at the end of the Return of the King. I had wondered how exactly they had planned to include these actors, and I can't help but think that it may not be such a bad plan.

It also could explain some of the other oddities we've come to know about the movie(s). Effectively showing it two different ways, one how Bilbo has written it, and then 'The True story'. This isn't much of a divergence, since Bilbo omitting information was used in the stories themselves.

It also mentions again a new character named Taurial, who seems to be some sort of elven maiden in Mirkwood. I've started to see this name brought up a lot lately, when previously we repeatedly saw the name Itaril and "Female Elf Warrior" next too it.. Is it possible that Taurial the elven maiden has replaced Itaril the Female Elf warrior? or are we simply going to get stuck with both of them?

I think that beyond additions such as Itaril/Taurial, the filmmakers are going out of their way to play up as many links between the two film series. Thats probably an extremely good idea in order to minimize the audience alienation felt when they go in expecting to see characters that are impossible to include in the Hobbit story itself. But as a framing sequence it will work out much better.

Of course, this could be incorrect and Elijah Wood is simply not being let in on exactly what Jackson/Fralippa are doing. I suppose we will find out December of next year though.

Conan the Barbarian.

2011-06-23T21:24:00.002-04:00

Just got in from the book store and picked up a copy of the novelization for the new Conan The Barbarian film as adapted by Micheal Stackpole. I'll be reviewing it shortly on my other blog within the next few days before jumping into another of the Tor's.

So for now I'm just going to stick to describing the book itself. Its cover is the same as the 3D poster, Conan standing atop a mound of skulls head bowed and sword drawn. It uses the logo with the sword through it from the 1982 movie which is a bit disappointing. I'd have preferred they come up with their own font. It has the dedication "to the memory of Robert E. Howard" before the acknowledgements and then continues on into the story.

About 200 pages in we get a few snaps from the film itself. Young Conan being shown a sword by Corin. Young Conan crouching in the show, decked out in furs. A shot of some Co-ed Hyrkanian Archers attacking Conan's village. Khalar's Orcs.. I mean Henchmen Remo and Akhoun in Corin's forge. Conan enslaved. A seer telling his visions. Followed by a whole bunch of shots of Khalar Zym and his Daughter. Beyond Momoa none of the other characters really screams Hyborian age to me. But I may be surprised.

The book ends with an advertizment for the film, and for the Dark Horse comics. No mention is made of the 3 volume Del Rey set, or the upcoming "The Stories that inspired the film".

Now that I've worked my way around to that, I can tell you that I thought thats what I was buying, truth be told. I didn't pay that much attention to it at the store. That volume, featuring actual Robert E. Howard stories, isn't out until July 26th. But rest assured as soon as I lay my hands on a copy of it I'll have it here and will post the contents. Until then we will just have to content ourselves with this newest in the never ending list of Hyborean Apocrypha.

Television Tuesday - Hercules and the Lost Kingdom

2011-06-21T10:53:00.002-04:00

This is the second of the tele-films that preceded the syndicated show. With the bulk of the recurring characters established in the previous film this one moves directly into the story.

It begins with a group of men walking beside a river, they stop for a drink and one of their number is pulled under by a Sylph. The remaining men escape. Meanwhile a young girl is gathering water when she finds evidence of a Giant. She runs back to town with the Giant hot on her heals. In town the giant rips the roof off a tavern. A Tavern that Hercules happens to be residing in. The giant is defeated just in time for the men from earlier to approach Hercules and tell him their story. They are escapees from the Lost city of Troy, and need Hercules's help.

Zeus (again played by Anthony Quinn) appears and beseeches Hercules not to try to find this lost city. He wants him to try and get back in Hera's good graces. Troy happens to be a City which displeased Hera and so she has put a curse upon it. The remaining movie is about this quest, and about Hercules's complicated relation with his step mother Hera. It also introduces a new character who will become a regular. Deianeira, played by Renee O'Conner (who along with the first movie's Lucy Lawless, would go on to star in the Spin Off series, Xena) By the end of the movie she will become the Queen of the restored city of Troy. We see Hercules approached at the end by another man who needs his help, and the two walk off to begin the next adventure.

Over all the movie was not as good as the previous one. It dosen't feature Iaolus so thats a mark against it. It's missing much of the humourous banter. Over all it would have probably been just fine as a 40 minute episode, but was a bit too weak to make a good movie.

Mighty Morphin' Mondays.

2011-06-20T10:21:00.003-04:00

Alright, so my excitement for this outweighed my trepidation and I went and watched a few episodes of Power Rangers. It was not as bad as I feared, I actually found a good many things about it that I liked even now. It's amazing mostly since I didn't remember any of the positive messages of practice, teamwork, anti-bullying, health, nutrition.. none of it.. all I remembered was the Zords.

So Clearly even with all their efforts to produce a kids show with redeeming social qualities they didn't do it well enough to really make any of that stick out. But I give them credit for being far more subtle about it than another multi-coloured team of teenagers who combined their powers to fight evil. I'm looking at you Captain Planet.

This was another in a long line of Shuki Levy and Haim Saban productions. They have a history of sourcing material from Japan and reworking it to make it into relatively new product. It's another in a long line of such shows, But is relatively rare in that it dosen't just use the whole Japanese program, but has lots of new footage as well. It's some what of follow up to their Macron 1 program, also for Fox. Which was two totally unrelated Japanese anime edited together in the same vein as Voltron and Robotech. Like Robotech and Voltron, the stories are nearly totally re-worked and new music is added that makes the disparate pieces into a coherent whole. It's typically very memorable music, lots of people who haven't seen Robotech in 20 years will immediately recognize it as Robotech simply after hearing the background music, For me, it was exactly the same with Power Rangers.. It was extremely catchy.

I'm going to review several episodes each week, they are only 20 minutes long each, and there are at my count nearly 750 episodes. So expect about 3 per week for the next few years. Unless I forget, in which case.. I trust you to entertain yourselves.

Power Rangers ran on a 6 day schedule on local fox channel here. So every other weekend, when I went to visit my dad, I missed an episode. It didn't hurt power rangers, but really damaged my enjoyment of other shows from the era that were more serialized. Like X-men. So the first episode Day of the Dumpster, is oddly one I've never seen before.

It attempts in 20 minutes to set up the basic idea of the series. It introduces the main antagonist, Rita Repulsa. She's been trapped in a "Space Dumpster" on "The Moon" for 10,000 years. I've never seen the Super Sentai series that the Rita Repulsa segments are sourced from, but it clearly didn't take place on earth. The Planet that the "Dumpster" is on, clearly has two other bodies in his sky. But that quickly is glossed over and ignored. Rita it seemed tried to take over the universe in the past, and was trapped in the Dumpster as punishment. She responded by trapping Zordon in a time warp, which is the reason he is a floating face.

We are shown the kids, and their nemeses Bulk and Skull. at a health center (Something that even back in 1993 I considered some what ludicrous.. You see, to me, Health Center meant the place you went to see a doctor if you couldn't afford to go to a real doctor. I was positive no kids would want to hang out at a health center.)when an Earthquake hits. They are then summoned to Zordon's command center by Alpha the robot. Here they are given their morphers and power coins, and their communicators to allow them to talk to each other in case of an emergency, it is a kids show designed to sell toys after all. Before long they are putting their merchandize to work fighting one of Rita's minions. The sphinx like Goldar. When just the regular action figures fail to be enough, they call in the big guns, the Dino-Zords and Goldar retreats.

The second episode, High Five, Is the first of them with the random monsters, created by Finster, another of Rita's minions. It features the character of Trini attempting to overcome her fear of heights, and successfully doing so in order to save the team, and form the Megazord.

The third Episode, Team Work, features the girls attempting to get some environmental petition signed and the rest of the team going their own ways, The episode shows what comes of lack of team work, where Rita successfully divides the team to prevent them from the usage of the Zords. The team manages to regroup and summon the Zords but they aren't effective against the new monster. Zordon introduces the Power Weapons which gives the team enough of an edge with their respective mechanical help to defeat the monster. The episode of course ends with them learning how to work together as a team and defeating another of Finster's Monsters.

I've just regressed to being an 8 year old.

2011-06-18T07:26:00.005-04:00

Was trolling Netflix, found they've added all 18 seasons of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers... and both movies.

I'm almost... almost.. tempted to watch them.. but I am nearly 100% certain that my memories of how much fun the show was will be destroyed by how bad the show is to a 26 year old. This experiment has been played out already with Macgyver. It's not nearly as awesome as I remember it, on the other hand I also am finding other things to enjoy in it.. such as Terry "Dalek" Nation being the writer on the second episode...

They've also added the first season of Masters of the Universe. That was a show I never really got into, but I know a lot of people loved it. Now if they would just add Thundercats!

Sean Bean. Gets Stabbed, Finishes his beer.

2011-06-15T09:15:00.001-04:00

According to the Daily Mail (not always to be trusted) Sean Bean was having a few drinks at a bar in Camden and got into an altercation in which he was attacked with a piece of glass. Declining a trip to the A&E, he went back in and ordered another drink.

Lets see some of those wussy Hollywood types do that.

All the little Viruses I have defeated.

2011-06-14T00:39:00.005-04:00

As I mentioned previously I'm in the process of applying for college. I'm a vary non traditional student in that I've waited 8 years to go. This is because I had a job when I graduated Highschool, one that turned into a full time job before the store closed. Then within 6 months had another part time job in which I was making as much as I had in the full time job previously. I saw no reason to bother with school. The second job was "a pretty sweet deal", and since its been around for ages, was unlikely to go away. It was Union and all that jazz, so it was pretty well set. That changed. My position has been made redundant and I'm going to be out on my ass. Now it seems like a bad idea to have skipped school 8 years ago.. but how was I to know.

So, I've gone and filled in all the paperwork, paid the fees for processing. All was going swimmingly until they said "we need your immunization paperwork". "Isn't it on my school transcripts? " "No" they said. "Ok I'll go get copies", and so off I set to drive madly around town looking for copies of my vaccination records. The first stop I went to was the county school board. Surely, since I had to have them to get into school, They would have them on file. No such luck. So it's off to the county board of health. Same answer. Then I looked in the phone book and found out the pediatrician who had administered them was still practicing. I went to her office. Only to find out that in 2003, she had had an office fire and lost all her records.

Shit.

So now I'm faced with the chilling possibility that I may have to have some 30 shots in a matter of days in order to finish my application process. These are shots that, even at the low rate of 13.57$ each from the county health center.. add up really quickly and I can ill afford. To top that off, I hate shots. The Health center explained to me that I could get a blood test, and they could do a check on what I'm toting around with me. My defeated enemies, the viruses Measles, Mumps, Ruebella, Varicilla, Tetanus, Diptheria, Hepatitus A and B, and a few of their other buddies.. will apparently show up on a blood test.

The idea of that is even more terrifying than the injections. Since it includes ... blood.

You see. Like the character of Doc Martin, played by martin clunes I'm Haemophobic.

So I'm stuck now between two sharp pointy objects, one wanting to inject me, and one wanting to take out of me.

It reminds me of the old British navy joke, about how to chose which biscuit to eat. You tap the biscuits upon the table, and then compare the relative sizes of the weevils which tumble from their homes.. and then choose the lesser of the two weevils.

60+ Hours for American Gods?!

2011-06-13T10:54:00.000-04:00

According to This Link Tom Hanks will be producing 6 seasons each consisting of 10-12 hour long episodes for HBO. Now, I read American Gods. I didn't think that much of it. I certainly don't think that it needs 5-6 times the amount of time to tell that The Lord of the Rings did. 4 times the length of all 8 of the Harry Potter films combined. Even the Dark Tower wasn't going to get anything like that.

I can see having 60-70 hours for Game of Thrones. The shows that I've seen have moved at such a breakneck speed that I feel they must be condensing it down to even get in as much as they are. But that series is already, by page count, 5 times the length of Lord of the Rings, 8 times the length of American Gods. I could even see them adapting The Wheel of Time into 70+ episodes.

But not American Gods.

Beyond the absurd length, it is also going to have a possible budget of nearly 3.5 million per episode. Meaning it will some how cost the same to produce as Game of Thrones?!. It's set in dumpy towns in the US, the characters all wear normal clothes. Theres no massive sets to build, and apart from a few effects heavy sequences I just can't see where that money will be going to.. unless they plan to cast big name actors in the parts..

I don't get it. Why not invest all that time and money and effort and adapt something really good, that would actually benifit from a huge sprawling series.. like Sandman.

Roller Derby.

2011-06-12T08:30:00.005-04:00

Last night I attended my first ever Roller Derby event. The town of Athens Georgia now sports two teams, so last night was a Double Header. The Athens' Bad News B's vs. the Rome Roller Girls (In obverse to history, Athens triumphed and Rome limped home.) And then the Classic City All Stars vs the Atlanta Sake Tuyas (One of four Atlanta teams).

It was an all around exciting experience. Not really like the film Whip It apart from it featuring hot girls on skates. There was nothing I could tell that resembled anything like the malicious intent of popular imaginings.

The Athens v. Rome bout was a bit lopsided for the first half, with Athens cleaning up really fast and having a seriously daunting lead. But Rome came through in the second and managed to nearly even the score. I'd say they deserve being watched out for. But the Atlanta bout was Ugly. I'm talking waking up with a hangover next to Rosie O'donnel ugly. It was 43 to 206 for the final score.

If your not familiar with the sport, basically you have Blockers, Jammers and Everyone else. Blockers start out in front, the rest of the squads behind them, and lastly the Jammers. The Jammers goal is to zip around the mass of players and especially the blockers.. and then stay out in front of the group. Thats how they score points, for every opposing team member they pass. And so of course everyone is out to smear the Jammer. It's a bit of an unholy offspring of Nascar and the NFL, but with way fewer beer bellies. It's exciting is what it is.

Though most sports take themselves seriously. Lots of money riding on them. This is a sport with a serious sense of humour. It's evident in the ladies track names. Usually puns, and usually hilarious. Just a smattering "Tina Tourniquet", "Rudy Huxtabrawl", "Peewee Slayhouse","Princess Lay-you-out". It's evident in that the announcer in Athens looks like he just stepped out of an 70's porno.

It's a sport for people who don't particularly enjoy sports. But don't mistake, the athleticism of these ladies is nothing short of amazing. They took hits that would have sent NFL players limping to the sidelines and would have earned half a dozen Redcards in the MLS. Most moderate sized towns in the US have a team, sometimes two. If you live near one and have never been.. I really can't recommend it highly enough.

The big DC reset.

2011-06-09T22:07:00.003-04:00

As the internet continues to implode over the news that DC comics will be resetting their entire universe, Again. I pretty much am left alone to roll my eyes.

You see, I've tried to get into comics a number of times. I've tried both Marvel and DC. But usually these experiments get ended pretty quickly. When you are dealing with books that have been running for 400 or so issues, occasionally you reach a point where its simply ridiculous to try and catch up. Not to mention how difficult it is because of the constant starting and stopping of books in the 90's. a steady stream of #1's and "Maxi series" polluted the market and none but the hardest of the hardcore is even passing familiar with what happened in most of them. That was one of my big problems with comics.

My other big problem with them was cost.

I remember at one time comics costing 1.25$. That was a pretty big amount for a kid in the 90's. I got 5$ a week allowance. So I could conceivably get 3 comics a week. That's great. Except when the comic companies are constantly running massive crossover events. I tried to get into Batman at one point. I quickly found I couldn't even follow the storyline without purchasing close way more comics a month than my meagre resources would allow. Those are currently in a trashbag in the attic, and have been there since about 1995.

So on principle I have no problems at all with them starting over from a point 0. this will certainly help alleviate the continuity problems. But it dosen't help with the other problems. Namely, the crossover cash grabs and the cost of each individual book.

Today the cost of a comic from Marvel, DC, Image or Dark Horse is pretty standard at about 2.99$. IDW charges more, depending on the popularity of the property they are whoring out, but we will ignore them for now. So thats 2.99$, not a whole lot really, except when you consider thats 3$ for either 1/6th or 1/12th of a storyline, maybe even a smaller sliver if its part of a big cross over event that spans dozens of books over multiple months. The last time DC tried this, with Infinite Crisis, you had to buy something like 10-15 comics a month to really have any idea what was going on. I Imagine Marvel's big "Civil War" series was roughly similar in size.

It's really no wonder the movies featuring these characters are doing so well. People are hungry for this stuff, but a 10$ movie ticket is easier to stomach than 600$ worth of comics in a year's span. Thats not counting all the Trades and Back Issues a serious comic collector has to buy in order to really really know whats going on.

Marvel at least to their credit has attempted to address this problem of the back issue morass. They did a special DVD a few years ago with every issue of Spiderman ever in PDF format for a very reasonable price (National Geographic has a similar set available, 120 years for 50$, it's a product all periodicals should seriously consider) They didn't do as well with it as they hopped I guess since we never got any more. But they still crank out the Essentials books. 20-30 issues in black and white for very very reasonable prices. They also usually reprint the same stuff in hardcover and full colour for the serious collector.

DC tried to get in on this, but failed. They chose to only use the 60's and 70's issues of their comics in their Showcase books. For some characters thats fine, for some like Batman and Superman, thats jumping ahead by nearly 30 years. Who wants to start in the second act of a play?

Strangely while the big comics companies seem to be suffering, Translations of Japanese and Korean comics, known as "Manga" seem to still be doing serious sales. So much so that a number of companies like IDW sometimes print their books in both normal Trade sizes and Manga sizes. But the one big thing that allows the Manga companies to sell these 150-300 page volumes for 11.99 or so is the fact they are in black and white. The same thing that allows the Essentials and Showcase volumes to be so cheap.

So my suggestion to "Fix" the comic industry, not that anyone cares, is 1)Keep the crossovers contained to a single mini-series or better yet just do it across all your books and limit yourself to a single month to tell the story. 2) ditch the colour. 3) stop having your people write 150 page trade paperbacks then splitting them up into 6 issues. Just print the Trade in black and white and be done with it. Self contained is how all your books used to be, and I imagine if you charted the decline in comics.. it began when you stopped telling self contained stories. In other words, sometimes you need a Conan rather than a Wheel of Time.

Music Monday

2011-06-06T17:32:00.003-04:00

Both of these tracks are used in the Film "Limitless". They lent the film a deep bluesy feel and helped balance out the more electronic sounding music that also was used in the film.

Howlin' For You - The Black Keys

Walking - Ash Grunwald

Limitless.

2011-06-05T10:24:00.002-04:00

Went to the Dollar theatre last night and saw Limitless. It stars Bradley Cooper, who I'm informed started out on Sex and the City. We won't hold that against him. He also played Jack Bourdain in the hilarious and as usual short lived "Kitchen Confidential" on Fox. I knew he could do comedy. I'd never really guessed him for much of an action guy.

This movie isn't really an action movie though. Its got plenty. It's got plenty of just about whatever you could want. It's even got Bradley cooper calling Robert DeNiro his bitch. Something I didn't think you could do and continue to eat solid food.

Basic premise of the film is that Bradley's character, a struggling writer who is impossibly disorganized hooks up with his ex-wifes brother the drug dealer. The dealer sees he's struggling, throws a new product his way. NZT. You know how normally you only use 20% of your brain at any one time? This lets you use it all, all the time, full throttle. This turns your moped into a ferrari. It's also addictive. And the DT's from it make you worse than you were before you started taking it.

He proceeds to turn a 1000$ into $8000 through stocks. But this isn't enough capital. He gets in with a loan shark. He gets 100grand. Turns it into 2.3 million in 10 days. All the while noticing he's being followed by a disturbing man trying to kill him. You see his meteoric rise to the top, and he never really comes down from it, apart from the lowest point when he's totally out of drugs and has to drink another NZT users blood to prevent the crash from leaving him at the mercy of the loan shark's goons.

If you haven't seen this, if you are the least bit disorganized, scatterbrained, what ever. I totally recommend you see it.

I feel like I'm drowning.

2011-06-03T23:28:00.000-04:00

In paperwork that is.

I'm trying to figure out how to pay for school. This isn't a quest for sympathy, as I'm sure everyone feels this way when they go through this.

I'm a non-traditional student, and I want to attend a school thats not in my state. So of course that makes me scum of the lowest kind. I also don't want to study nursing, science or mathematics.. so that makes it worse.

I could of course go to an In state school, but that would some what defeat the point, and I feel I'd be better served sawing my own leg off. Not that they are bad schools mind you. They just happen to be in Georgia. No matter how good their academic programs are, this makes them unacceptable. I could study one of those subjects, but again I know what would happen. I'd fail the classes and be in debt for the rest of my life.

If I'm to be in debt, I at least want to be in debt for something I enjoy learning about, and might conceivably enjoy having as a career. Though since my ideal career is " trust fund baby ".. and fate has already seen fit not to grant me that.. I will have to settle for a different option.

I find it amusing how, I get my FAFSA documents back, before I get my FAFSA PIN approved.. so I can't actually open the Documents to see what I'm qualified for as far as Federal assistance. I suppose thats government for you.

So, anyone else got any funding horror stories they want to share?

Book Trading.

2011-06-02T10:19:00.000-04:00

I went yesterday down to my local Trade-A-Book store with two bag fulls of stuff. I mainly buy it at goodwill and Book sales.. even if I have no desire to read it.. and then take it and trade it in..

At a recent library sale, I'd attend on the last day, which is usually when they do the Fill a Bag for 5$ I'd lucked up and found a near complete run of Glen Cook's Black Company novels. I've already got them, so they went straight in the pile to trade. I very rarely keep books I've read that are "Non Genre". Stuff like "The Reader". It was a decent enough book, but I have no desire to read it again. Lots of Literary works are that way. I don't have much desire to do "Deep Reads" of them. I view them as stories and nothing more.. I don't go kicking over rocks I find just to see whats under them.

So usually these are sacrificed on the alter of barter, in exchange for expensive or rare paperbacks that most people wouldn't consider worth the paper they are printed on. It's how I got all my Kothar and Kyrik books..

I walked out with nearly 150$ in credit, one of Gardner Fox's Llarn books, a few nice Ballantine, Zebra and Berkley Fantasy's and some more books about the middle ages to fill in my library a bit more. Now I just have to make up my mind if I want to go back and blow my credit on the 3 volumes they've got from White Wolf's Eternal Champion series of Mike Moorcock Reprints.

No more "Nihilistic" fantasy.

2011-06-01T14:38:00.000-04:00

Over the last several months there have been several minor blowups in the field of Fantasy. The biggest was probably Leo Grin's Big Hollywood article. It attracted a ton of attention, and because of Grin's political views that quickly became negative attention. By choosing to post that article where he did, he effectively has given those who are in favor of what he is against, the nuclear option. They can now shut down anyone who they feel even remotely agrees with Grin simply, and with that weapon. They've even sought to turn the two writers Grin specifically elevated against the article by pointing out how "Nihilistic" Tolkien and Howard are.

Though not quite as frustratingly overused as the phrases "Ad Hominem", "Godwin'd", etc. It fulfills the same goal of shutting down your opponents by making them look stupid or backwards or gasp, conservative. They are the Internets equivalent of killing their microphone or having security come and remove them from the premises.

Even just using the phrase "Nihilistic Fantasy" is enough to set people off now. It was never a very good description anyway. So far though no one's come up with anything better. I'm not up on epistemology and sociology and all that, so I won't even begin to try and do it. But I can notice certain similarities between the works that are the cause of the issues at hand. They can be called "Grim n' Gritty", "Nihilistic" among other things. They are diverse and various in their forms and from many many writers. The one thing they all seem to have in common is a deep rooted Post Modernist attitude. They are either intently relativistic (who is the reader/writer to decide what is right and wrong for these characters in these situations?) or Deconstructionist. Coyly playing with the traditional tropes of the genre. It's like putting the Gherkin Building up in London. Its an ingenious design for a building. but it can't measure up to the beauty of the buildings from the past. As a result, what should be viewed as a grand architectural achievement is viewed as an Eyesore.

That brings us to what those who support them seem to be forgetting another tenant of Post Modernism. Aesthetic relativism. Just as a lot of people today view Reubans Women as fat. Many today find the older styles of Fantasy stodgy. They enjoy the new books, they find in them parables for the modern "shades of grey world" they feel we all live in. And in their attempts to promote these books they enjoy them are ignoring my take, which is that I find them ugly and without value, I find their lack of a moral poles to be counter to basically everything I believe in. I find the very concept of "Shades of Grey" to be preposterous because they act as if it exists in a vacuum with no black and white poles to anchor it.

I think the idea of calling it Postmodernist Fantasy is probably the best way to view it. As a whole the Fantasy Genre does tend to look backwards and outwards rather than forwards and inwards, That's perhaps a flaw, perhaps not. Sometimes its good to look back at the big picture to see where you came from, it helps inform you as to where you should go next. Looking inwards and forwards just leads to you making up your mind what YOU want now. Its a self centered (not always a bad thing) way to look at the world. Instead of viewing yourself as one floating in the metaphoric sea of humanity, you are the lone island with the torrents raging around you. And in my experience, that is simply not accurate, and my experiences colour my view of these relativist fantasies and preclude the possibility of me enjoying them.

I'm gonna say something thats going to piss people off.

2011-05-30T12:42:00.003-04:00

If you bought one simply because you burn through books at a rate faster than you can trade them in, or want to tote around 3000 books on your kindle when you travel, or some other perfectly rational reason. Carry on, this fight dosen't concern you.

If you have bought into the whole e-reader thing because its "Good for the environment" Stop acting like such a smug bastard. Telling me I'm a Luddite cause I've not got some gimmick, is not going to convince me to buy one. It will actually convince me that, much like Hybrid car owners, all the people who own said products are assholes (Despite that not being true). Paper is a renewable resource, it can be and frequently is produced of materials other than trees. You're not the Lorax, so leave me the hell alone.

If you've bought one just to have the latest toy, maybe, make your e-penis bigger. Maybe you go around making statements online to the tune that you can't wait till books go away.. You were probably making the same statements 5 years ago about MP3's and how you just couldn't wait till CD's went away. You probably said the same thing about VHS, DVD, BETA, Laser disc, LP's. You hate old technology because well... it's old. The problem is, the corporations love digital media. Its so easy to control. They can take it off your I-tunes account, they can take it off your kindle, You have no recourse. No physical copy to fall back on. You are playing into the corporations hands. You are dancing to their tune, and soon they will undress and bugger you.

Furthermore you are facilitating the shutdown of one of the most liberating phases of human culture. The advent of the public library was one of the great achievements of the last 200 years. The very thought that anyone, no matter their socio-economic background could go and read a book, or gasp, research something. Cheap Mass Produced printed books didn't do away with hand printed, hand bound, works of art. It did allow the common person the chance to better themselves through education, get lost in a story, or simply read up on how to plant a garden.

The publishers however, would love to do away with libraries. They've in all likely hood always hated them. The gall of those libraries, buying books and loaning them out.. FOR FREE! its practically socialism. Damaging to the bottom line, showing nothing but hatred to the free market. How Dare they.

How Dare you.

Period.

Consumed So far , 2011 edition

2011-05-26T11:27:00.001-04:00

Should I Sell...

2011-05-25T09:59:00.000-04:00

My George R.R. Martin books?

Preceding the announcement of the Television show, and not wanting to repeat the whole Wheel of Time never ending story fiasco.. I have thus far not read any of the Song of Fire and Ice. I did this because I don't like to wait on new chapters of a story to come out. I'd have been terrible with the old Saturday serials. I have infinite patience to wait a series out to completion, provided I've not already started it.

However, due to the Television show. My attempts at avoiding spoilers are completely shot now. It is effectively impossible to avoid them. And what I've seen/read/heard does not enthuse me in the slightest. What interest and enthusiasm I had towards the prospect of reading the series has evaporated entirely. All I'm left with now is a stack of Hardcovers that are likely to never get read.

Hardcovers that are selling for 14-25$ on Amazon right now. Not as much as I paid for them, but would recoup at least the first 2 if I sold all 4 of them.

This is an odd choice since if he pulls the series up by its bootstraps and gets out of the nihilist slump its already in before the first one is out.. thats great. But I still don't think I'd actually bother reading them at this point. It's like he's based an entire series around the concept espoused by Dark Helmet "Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb!". Others of course have taken that and run with it and gotten away from even the pretense of having moral characters in their books.

I'm not saying that Martin himself feels this way, Lord of the Rings and Conan have their moments of doubt, but after them they gain something. The Ring is destroyed, Conan liberates an oppressed people from their mad king. After all the pain and suffering and doubt, a melancholy but positive outcome is achieved. One in which magic is eroded from the world, and Conan has to hold onto his new kingship with his fingernails against all comers.. but positive. Martin's world so far just dosen't seem like that sort of place. It feels to much like a world in which any positive outcome would be completely incongruous.

So it's a toss up. Do I keep the books in the hope of finding out that the ending redeems all the pain and suffering, and then read them knowing the ending before I go in. Or do I sell them, cash in on the Martin mania sweeping the internet right now and wash my hands of the whole thing? It seems like a series as well touted as this is one that I should like. I just am having a difficult time getting any enthusiasm back. It was easier before I knew anything about them other than that they were "Fantasy" which to me means something very specific. Something that I feel these books fail to be.

Television Tuesday - Hercules and the Amazon Women.

2011-05-24T00:32:00.000-04:00

I've decided since I can, and haven't watched all the episodes, that I'll be reviewing the whole series starting with the movies.

Back before the TV series started, they made several Tele-films with the same cast that would eventually go on to star in the series. They are notable for starring Anthony Quinn as Zeus, but otherwise mostly forgettable. They are also notable for being the source of much of the footage used in the opening sequence of the TV series.

Right from the start you can tell its got a low budget, not as low a budget as Conan the Adventurer, but not as good as the later seasons of Hercules and Xena.

We are sort of thrown right into the middle of things, A fellow is getting married and Hercules is to be his best man. This fellow is Iolaus, a long time companion of the half god. He's also portrayed by a much better actor than Kevin Sorbo. He's marrying a woman for some reason he can't quite pin down, and paid a lot for her dowry to boot. She can't cook, dosen't clean, but she is pretty to look at. Sometimes looks is enough.

They go to visit Herc's mother, Alcmene. On their way there they come across a little girl crying. She half tells them a sob story about her dad getting eaten by a monster. Just as they are fixing to fall for her ruse she turns into a Hydra. After battling this beast, clearly put their by Hera, who is out to complicate Herc's life, the two continue on their way to Alcmene's house. While they are there, Zeus pays a visit and tries to help Hercules understand some things.

They head back to town, where Hercules has supper at Ioalus's house. As was told, the wife to be dosen't exactly know how to cook, so its an interesting meal. Before they can tie the knot however, a representative from a village comprised entirely of men comes to seek Hercules's aid. It seems their women have grown tired of them being lay-a-bouts and have run off to found their own village and alligned themselves with Hera.

All manner of adventures ensue, Lots of poorly rendered (by 2011 standards anyway) CGI monsters are slain, and in the end the wedding is still no closer. Seriously, it ends before the wedding. But the show is as I remembered it packed with humour. It's campy but seems to be totally aware of its camp and revels in it. Even though he didn't actually have anything to do with this first movie, It's extremely Sam Raimi..

In which I'm lectured on not "getting it".

2011-05-23T09:50:00.004-04:00

So my attempt at getting a laugh yesterday didn't work so well. I guess I need to re-think my sense of humour a bit as I found it to be quite good.. so did my friends.. I dunno.. maybe we are just too jaded and cynical, or it was too local. But for whatever reason it landed with the squelching sound of a 3 day old fish.

Lets talk about something slightly more serious then.

The concept of "Getting it". I don't mean Sex, though that could be worked in I'm sure. I'm talking about something that everyone else likes but leaves you cold. A movie, a book, a musical act, a painting, a food. Whatever it is, there will assuredly be someone who dosen't like it for some reason. I tend to be that someone.

I've no appreciation for presentation on a plate so long as the food is good.
I've no appreciation for abstract or geometric art, unless the painting is of something. Lines on a white Canvas #9 is not art, it's an unfinished project.

Those are pretty easy to avoid. My financial situation dosen't allow for eating at a bunch of fancy restaurants, and there is no way I'd drive into Atlanta to look at an art installation or a dead horse in jars or whatever other Hot exhibit they have going. Arthouse movies are easy to avoid too, they don't tend to make it into theaters or my Netflix queue.

The big problems tend to pop up with Music and Literature.

I Like Classical alright, so long as its the right kind of classical. Jazz I have no use for. So that pretty much is strike one against me as far as the "educated" sort think of it. But despite my unabashed love of acts like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf.. I'm apparently a racist because I don't much care for Lil' Wayne or Jay-Z... This is something I don't really get. I like Rock&Roll from its delta seeking roots to its metal branches, I think I know a fair bit about it. But simply being well informed isn't good enough if its the wrong sort of thing to be well informed about.

Literature is the big one though. Never have I seen so many examples of the Emperor's news clothes in action as I have with books. All it takes is some pretentious reviewer for the New York Times or The London Review of books to rave about something and suddenly if you don't like it then YOU are the one with the problem. Being content to live and let live is not an option. You have to like it or you are stupid. It's never the authors fault for making an impenetrable and un-accessible book. It's always your fault for not showing it the proper appreciation. It's certainly never that they are simply convincing themselves it's great because some one they respect tells them it is great. Never. Thats preposterous. It goes against all the indoctrination they had when they were in school.

But, like Ol' David Lo-Pan says.. 'You weren't put here to "Get It".'

I'll try and having something more genre relevant for you all soon.

I hope they Serve Beer in Hell.

2011-05-23T07:29:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure whether I should be appalled or if flabbergasted is enough.

I don't even begin to know how to describe this "Book".

I feel like I need an Adult.

So, I walk into Barnes & Noble...

2011-05-22T11:52:00.005-04:00

I'm sure you have had this experience if you have one of these stores around. Where you walk into the store and the first thing your hit with is some one trying to get you to buy one of their Nook E-Readers. I'm not sure if these poor saps get paid on commission or not.. but it would certainly explain why they dog you for 5-10 minutes to try and sell you a kitschy novelty.

I realize that Amazon is selling more Kindle Books than Paperbacks now. But They are skewing that market because they sell old, public domain books, for the kindle for Free, or .99cents all the time. So yeah with that kind of thing going for them its no wonder they are outselling. Why would you buy that 6.99$ copy of Last of the Mohicans for your school book report when you can get it for .99cents? Why indeed.. You can get it for free if you go to Project Gutenberg.. Which is all the people on Amazon are doing.

I had it hammered into me time and again when I was little, trying to convince my mom that Zelda on the gameboy was like a book because it required reading. If it takes batteries, it's not really reading. I've never shaken that way of thinking. Books can be made from Paper, Cotton, Hemp, thin bits of wood or even stamped metal. But the minute it has a circuit attached to it, and takes batteries.. I just can't think of it as a book any longer.

I've found it's always the S.U.V. driving set that winds up buying them. They are the sort who usually only read the Oprah's Book of the Month Club sort of books. They stare wistfully at the Romance novels in the Grocery store aisle.. Because they just "Never have time to read". Those are the sorts I've seen buying the E-Reader. I think what I'm trying to say is, it's always people who are spending some one elses money. The other big purchaser would be College kids, or worse, Townies who are pretending to be college kids to pick up tail. But then I live in a College Town. So seeing College kids do anything never really registers anymore.

If I was going to open a coffee shop in town, I'd call it Study Hall, and only have hard wooden chairs and tables. The Menu would be a Card Catalog. If you can't find what you want, you can't have it. A minimum purchase of 1 drink per hour would be required in order to stay. I've been told to quit loitering so many times I can't remember them all.. its only fair.

*Because there seems to be some misunderstanding, I felt I needed to amend this to explain I'm not having a go at people who own e-readers. Just the people I've observed buying the NOOK in my local Barnes & Noble.

What If? Robert E. Howard.

2011-05-19T19:22:00.005-04:00

I've got to ask your pardon ahead of time. I wrote this a while back and have been unsure if I should post it or not. But I feel that it's just too interested of a concept not too. So pardon me if I've gotten any facts wrong, I don't pretend to be a scholar in this matters, just a fan. Much like the old Marvel comics, we are going to imagine a world, one of many possible. One purely speculative and hypothetical, in which Robert E. Howard didn't commit suicide at age 30. I'm not particularly interested in the whys or wherefores of that. He did and the world's a poorer place for it. But what if he didn't?

What if, He went out to that car after having talked to the nurse. Sat down on the front seat. Pulled out that pistol, held it in his hands, checked to make sure it was loaded, put it to his head and then stopped. Took it down, looked at it, put it back in the sack or box he had it in and went back inside. Turned his grief into prose. Hammered out a succession of stories at his typewriter. hitting the keys with such fury it made his fingers hurt. The Funeral of his mother came and went. He began writing his western stories and soon got famous for them. He was struck again at the death of H.P. Lovecraft. Howard's Eulogy for Lovecraft was published in Weird Tales Magazine. Years went by and the storm clouds over Europe got darker, The ripples of discord got more violent in the pacific.

Howard never got back together with Novalyne. But they corresponded frequently. But after Pearl Harbour. Howard thought about following Edgar Rice Burroughs into the correspondent corps.. but his feelings that at 30 he was past his prime kept gnawing at him. He was beginning the downhill slope. He had hit his midlife crisis early but had chosen not to end it. Instead he just chose to enlist. He was 35 at the time, in good shape but to old to be drafted. One day he drove down to Brownwood and signed. Brownwood was home of the 141st Infantry. A unit steeped in Texas history. Being older than most of the men, he became an NCO. He definitely went with them to Europe. And there got cut off with them in the Voseges Mountains. This is where they earned their name as the Alamo Regiment.

Eventually the 141st Texas was relieved through the heroic efforts of the 442nd all Nisei regimental Combat Team. The Most decorated unit in US Military history. Being a man who recognized bravery no matter the origins. The Screams of 'BANZAI!' coming from the nisei men as they rushed the encircling Germans would have no doubt stayed with him. After the war was over, he set to work on an epic poem that would commemorate the battle in the Voseges. Eventually publishing it to great acclaim, both for himself and for all the men involved.

His westerns got more and more popular. In 1950 a small outfit called Gnome got in touch with him to see about re-printing his Conan yarns. He cleaned them up and mailed out new typescripts. These became immensely popular. Soon paperback editions of the gnomes were to be found in fox holes all over the Korean peninsula. He resisted the calls to write new Conan yarns, mainly coming from L. Sprague DeCamp. Though the two were never great friends, they had some vociferous conversations about why Conan was so popular.

He bought a copy of Lord of the Rings in 1955, and read it straight through. He was quoted later as saying "I loved the hell out of it", he also dismissed calls that Tolkien had lifted the story from his own "Hour of the Dragon". After these allegations, Howard and Tolkien began an infrequent exchange of letters. Maybe finding in the oxford don a surrogate for Lovecraft. They discussed GK Chesterton and James Fenimoor Cooper among other things.

In 1956 Howard received a manuscript from a fan in Sweden. He didn't think much of it, but wrote the fan a letter thanking him for taking the time to send it to him. The idea that people were so hungry for new Conan yarns they would write them themselves was an interesting one. So he thought, maybe other's can see the missing parts of Conan's life. He came up with the idea of getting others to write books and him editing them to make sure they stayed in the spirit of his own writing.

an initial offering of new novels and his own initial 21 completed yarns were all published in a uniform series of paperbacks by Lancer in the early 60's. Featuring works by the like of C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, and a relative newcomer Lin Carter, who he would eventually go on to co-edit a long lived Fantasy Anthology series with. Following this success, Howard took his place as the second father of Fantasy literature.

Robert E. Howard Died in 1964, age 58. He'd been out on one of his routine hikes in the Texas hill country when he'd gotten bit by a rattler. He shot the rattler and treated the bite, but even for a man of his size and physical condition it took him too swiftly for him to get help. He was Eulogized by Lin Carter, with J.R.R Tolkien provideding an epitaph from his still unfinished Silmarillion. "If all were now retold a man’s life would not suffice for the hearing."

Thats how I see it playing out on some alternate reality world. It would have been awesome.

Lord of the Rings Online, Thoughts of a level 40 Elven Hunter

2011-05-17T13:59:00.003-04:00

Like many Fantasy fans I used to play World of Warcraft. I didn't really get into it right away. It was a gift from a friend one year for Christmas. I played it off and on and enjoyed what I played, but at the time my computer wasn't really up to snuff and so I frequently got knocked off the game. As a result my friend got way beyond me level wise and I never really caught up. That seriously impacted my enjoyment of the game. True to real life, I had no better luck making new friends online than off. So I spent a lot of time playing by myself. When I got to top level, and because I didn't play a "Useful" spec I spent a lot of time bumming around capital cities trying to get into groups. After a while, I simply got tired of paying for this privilege, and quit. I dutifully came back each time an expansion was released, I'd play through the new content and then as usual, the same actions would repeat and I'd get left standing around in Ogrimar or Ironforge twiddling my virtual thumbs.

I realize that the following statement may sound odd for an mmo player to make, but I don't really like the "Multiplayer" aspect of the games. I'd be just as happy going back to the Neverwinter/Elder Scrolls model for Fantasy RPG's... I play too erratically to be relied upon, or to really find a group to play with.

World of Warcraft isn't really built to accommodate players that don't fall into either the dedicated camp or the casual camp. It's high end content is heinously difficult sometimes, frequently requiring guilds to maintain high numbers of alternate players, mid raid swap outs, and tremendous amounts of time and energy to complete. On the other end, some of their base level stuff is extremely simple, especially now after their various updates. It's fully possible to play through the entirety of levels 1-60 in a week's time without spending more than a few hours a day playing. It wasn't always that simple, but it was always accommodating to people who would maybe play an hour a day a few times a week. The Zones were small, the quests generally pretty easy. But for the middle ground it lacked some what, especially if you were mainly playing for the storyline.

In order to truly grasp the big picture, you had to play nearly every race/class combination for both factions. It had no "Story specific" quest lines. The closest you really got to that was the Missing Diplomat quest chain. This is where I feel Lord of the Rings Online really wins out.

It features some really difficult quests, and some enormously huge zones. I've been in the Lake Evendim zone for 8 levels now. The only wow zone that even approaches that is Stranglethorn Vale. It's not perfect though, some of the zones and quests have not been retooled for an individual player to complete yet. I've still got a couple of level 33 "Story Quests" kicking around because they are heinously difficult. But that was true of the level 30 and up zones on wow as well. It's the games way of telling you it's time to make friends.

Where as you can get to just about any place on wow in a few minutes, it can turn into a 45 minute long slog to get from Evendim to Rivendell, this is of course partly because there are certain transit stations you have to pay for separately every time you use in Lord of the Rings online. Which exemplifies exactly what makes it so different from wow. Your level of commitment to the game is proportional to how much you are willing to pay to play it.

For 0$ you can play a virtually limitless number of level 1-21 characters. You can experience the Shire, and Bree, just shy of making it to Weathertop. The important aspect is, almost from your first quest you are interacting with characters who are important. You are told that you as an individual player is valuable to the coming war effort. You are tasked with distracting black riders, trailing the fellowship, finding potent artifacts to be turned over to the big fish like Gandalf and Aragorn and Elrond. All of that for free. If you want to keep playing, you pay a fee and unlock a new zone and keep playing. The Lone Lands, The North Downs, The Tollshaws. Get bored? Don't buy any more. I've probably spent about 60$ already on the game, and haven't quite unlocked everything I would have had I bought the game when it first came out.

That Lifetime membership they sold for 200$, is still a fantastic deal, considering I've probably got another 100$ at least to spend before I've unlocked everything up to Mirkwood.. and a new Rohan/Isengard expansion is slated to come out later this year, I'd like to see it, but I've been playing this character for about 6 months now and still have another 20 levels before I will even make it to the first expansion. I'm sure I'll keep playing, but I've begun to feel what differentiated LOTRO from WOW is beginning to break down. It's beginning to feel that the things that made it different are dragging it over towards sameness. Difficulty meeting groups. WOW has addressed this marvelously with the cross server looking for group mechanic. You simply get in queue and the game will automatically assign you to a group.

So if anyone reading this has a character on Dwarrowdelf Server.. let me know if you want to group up.

Tardis:Time And Relative Divisionally Interconnected Storytelling

2011-05-13T14:10:00.007-04:00

Well since Blogger freaked out yesterday and Deleted this post. I thought I've give it another shot.

Of course what I wanted to talk about was Crossovers. One of the benifits of having a multiversal construct is that it allows for virtually limitless combinations for crossovers. Who can forget when the Punisher trucked it down to Riverdale to Chaperone the prom?

These constructs weren't supposed to exist. They are more typically the product of necessity than desire. They basically came about due to a combination of lack of knowledge, growth or simply because of casual disregard of what came before. Occasionally you do get an author or group of authors who collaborate closely and hammer out the multiversal model from the get go. Micheal Moorcock is one such. It's obvious that Stephen King at least toyed with the idea many times. References to things that would later become important in his Dark Tower series begin showing up very early in his catalog of books, well before he actually explained (or invented) reasons why they were important.

Occasionally you get vast multiveres crossing over with other multiverses. Every time you get a DC vs. Marvel comic. Or a Marvel Vs. Capcom video game.. But they can get bigger through a bit of constructing on our own.

From Dweomera Lagomorpha

Lets start with the Transformers for instance. They have crossed over with GIJOE numerous times. To get more confusing. Multiple Transformers universes have crossed over with multiple GIJOE universes, multiple times. The Original Transformers comic book, takes place in at least some form of the typical Marvel Universe. One in which Spiderman, SHIELD, The 80's Godzilla comic and the Savage land existed. Even if nothing else from the Marvel universe does. The Marvel GIJOE comic is slightly more confused. Since it exists in the Transformers universe, but also seems to inhabit it's own universe which it shares with the transformers, but not with the rest of the Marvel universe. In the US thats about as complicated as it got. In the UK however, Transformers existed in the normal Marvel Universe, along side a GIJOE analog known as Action Force.

Transformers UK brings us to the next link in our chain. Death's head.

From Dweomera Lagomorpha

This was a character that was not truly intended as a Transformers character, but one which has become more or less linked with them for good or ill. After showing up in his own one-shot called "High Noon Tex" he spent the next several months engaging in all manner of back and forths with our favorite Robots in diguise. Eventually he single handedly prevented the return of Unicron, and was unceremoniously flung through a time portal. It was while hurtling through Time that he collided with a certain blue telephone box.

From Dweomera Lagomorpha

After this rather amusing adventure the Doctor transported him into the far future of one of the many marvel Universes. He languished there until encountering the Fantastic four and hitching a ride back to the "Modern" day.. At least until he trifled with the 7th Doctor again and wound up in the year 2020. We already are all well aware that the various Doctors can interact, and thanks to the 2007 series are also aware that there are multiple universes in that canon as well.

The Transformers, Albeit a different universe of Transformers from the two previously discussed have Crossed over with the Avengers, Who of course crossed over with the X-Men, Who have Crossed over with both Star Trek The Original Series and Star Trek the Next Generation.

From Dweomera Lagomorpha

This loops back around with a comic currently in publication from IDW. It's titled Infestation. And it features a rather preposterous crossover. Not only does it have GIJOE, Transformers and Star Trek. It also features the Ghost Busters. Who if we follow the Cartoon, exist in a world in which all the stuff that H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith (And Robert E. Howard, who's work is already integrated into the Marvel Universe, and crosses over with Micheal Moorcocks Multiverse) were stories about real events.

I Guess what I'm trying to say is with all this rambling. That in theory, we could get a comic book in which Uatu the Watcher summons the Doctor and the Autobots and Captain Kirk, so that they can team up to fight off a demonically possessed Shoggoth made from the remnants of Unicron.

This will teach me to backup all my posts in another place.

Geek / Work conflict.

2011-05-08T16:06:00.002-04:00

I'm not talking about conflicts at work arising from you being a geek, or nerd, or other pejorative.. I'm talking about how to balance gaming and having a nerd social life and working?

I may be approaching this the wrong way, I don't have a "Normal Job" I don't work m-f, 9-5. I wish I did. but as far as I'm concerned those jobs are about as real as Bigfoot. They either require a skillset I lack or am unwilling to outlay the money to learn.. or are simply too far away to make them worth going too. So I work a retail job, and with most retail jobs that means working Saturdays, and usually Sundays too.

My current conundrum is, the LARP group I'm a member of has a national organization. I'm relatively close to 3 of them, Atlanta,GA; Grenville, SC; and Chattanooga, TN. All of those tend to have events within about 2 hours from me.. which is about the limit that I'm willing to travel to go to .. pretty much anything. But each and every event costs 50$ to attend. If it's at a park thats close enough for me to leave and go to work and come back.. thats ok I miss a few hours but feel I get what I paid for.. If its more than an hour away, I can go on Saturday and stay that night and come home Sunday.. but then I'm missing out even more hours. When am I missing too much to consider it financially reasonable?

This has been a constant problem for me ever since I first started gaming. Back when I still had a local gaming store, They had Warhammer 40k play days on Saturdays, they were always over before I got off work. Yet if something was of an evening during the week, I would 9 out of 10 times have to work too. It made going to events or games of any sort, with any sort of regularity, extremely difficult. Not to mention frustrating. My experience with dungeons and dragons was possibly even worse. How many campaigns fell apart really before they even got going simply because when you are trying to get 4-5 people who all work retail jobs to have the same day off.. Herding cats dosen't even begin to describe it.

In the last two months since I've gotten back into LARPing I've found it very difficult indeed. I've had to leave both events on Friday night and return after work on Saturday, and then leaving early on Sunday to go to work. That was achievable only because of how close the event was to me. But for the rest of the year, the events are all at least twice as far, and some as much as 250 miles away. It's simply impossible to go to them without having the weekends free to do so.

When I mention these problems to others its generally the same old suggestion "Get a different job" or "Make time".. I can understand saying "Make time" when a person complains theres not enough time to read a book.. but they can watch 4 hours of TV.. But how do you make time for something like this? Books are, as a whole, relatively cheap. But I've yet to find a RPG or LARP or Card Game or Miniature game that dosen't require at least initial outlays of substantial sums of money. But I tend to get cold feet when it comes to spending, since I never know when I'll get to play.

If your in this situation of obligation competing with desire how do you balance the two things?

The Austraian Oak? More like the Austrian Joke.

2011-05-05T13:33:00.003-04:00

This isn't really anything all that important, but I've got to get it off my chest. For all my sure to come complaints about the new Conan movie, of which the trailer has just been released finally. I can't help but feeling that my main complaint are with those who are angry at the film for no reason other than not having Arnold Swarzegnegger in it. This of course is only exacerbated by fact hes no longer governor of California and is planning to resume acting.

Time and Time again I've found people both in real life and on the internet who are simply livid they would dare "Change" Conan so drastically. Beyond my anecdotes of people claiming that the character was created for Arnold to play. I've seen all manner of preposterous claims. One fellow on AICN was even trying to use Howard's own description as evidence that Arnold was perfect for the part. Apparently all other illustrations be they from the comics or novel covers.. totally got it wrong. I've not seen any one claiming that Howard picked Arnold to play the part yet.. but I'm sure theres some deluded fool out there that believes it. This seems to be the part that is so frustrating about it. No matter how many people you point it out too that Arnold isn't really that great of a Conan, they refuse to hear it. It's like dealing with Cult Members. (Which is Ironic, since the film also deals with Cult members)

But the part I don't understand the most, are the constant references to Arnold's "Charisma" on screen. This is something I really have trouble with.. since he spoke so few lines how would you know if he was Charismatic or not?

20 years ago I could have seen them making another Conan movie with Arnold in it, I'd probably even own it and watch it occasionally. But they didn't. Now it's a bit too late. The supports of Arnold however never cease to tire of pointing out that "They could still do the Iron Crown, Conan could go on one last adventure as an old king!" Just what we want, an adaption of Conan of the Isles. Arnold is flabby, out of shape, and has more or less just spent 8 years sitting on his ass behind a desk. He's not the Austrian Oak anymore. Theres lots of other films he could do, reprise characters that were actually developed for him.

Beyond Conan of course the other franchise everyone and their uncle wants him back on is The Terminator. I personally feel they only way this would work is with the CGI Arnold that was in Terminator Salvation. I felt he was already far too old to play the part convincingly in Terminator 3, and that came out nearly 10 years ago.

Personally, I'd like to see him do another True Lies, or even Kindergarten Cop. Most of my favorite Arnold films are the ones with a comedic edge to them. The man has pretty good timing especially when you make him the straight man to the insanity surrounding him. But I wouldn't turn up my nose at a reprisal of Dutch in another Predator movie.

Whiter and Nerdier than White and Nerdy.

2011-05-05T01:24:00.003-04:00

Roll a D6

overheard recently, Conan Movie discussion.

2011-05-02T16:11:00.004-04:00

I was at a gathering of some friends and overheard a conversation debating the merits (or in their opinion) lack of merits of the new Conan Film. This is all well and good.. I can fully understand not being that enthusiastic for a movie that has very little in common with Conan other than the name. So I walked over and joined in. Thats when I put my foot in the bear trap by apparently not being up on the reason why the new Conan movie was not going to be any good.

Person 1: So what do you think of the new Conan movie?
Me: I think it's not really got a lot in common with Conan and I'll probably skip it.
Person 2: Yeah it's gonna suck.
Person 1: I can't believe it's not got ahhnold in it, why even bother making it!
Me: Oh geeze...
Person 2: What?
Me: You do realize that Arnold had nothing to do with Conan, and in fact him being in it would make it even worse than it is now.
Person 2: No way, he was awesome!
Person 1: Yeah, Ahhnold IS Conan
Me: No he isn't. Robert E. Howard's Conan is Conan.
Person 1 & 2: Who?
Me: uhh.. The Guy who created Conan, wrote a bunch of short stories and novels back in the 30's.
Person 1: no.
Person 2: whoever told you that is an Idiot, Ahhnold created Conan.
Me: *Stunned silence*

How can I be expected to work with these sorts of persons? I mean I knew I was surrounded by Idiots... but seriously.. I had no idea that Robert E. Howard was a figment of my imagination.

I don't normally talk current events...

2011-05-02T00:00:00.004-04:00

But just saw on the news that Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan.

It was a job high in costs, and low in profits. It was one we kept at doggedly, sometimes mis-stepping but never faltering. Congratulations to the US Military on their stunning achievement. No doubt their will be some time before this fully sinks in. Many were beginning to feel we would never acheive this goal, and that he would forever haunt the nightmares of those in power.

And while the US TV news erupts in cheers they are frequently forgetting that we are not alone in Afghanistan. Though he was killed by U.S. Forces, we couldn't have gotten him without the help of our friends and allies around the world. From our steadfast ally the United Kingdom, our friend of nearly 250 years France, all the way down the alphabet to tiny Tonga and The Ukraine, Their steadfast loyalty requires our gratitude and respect.

I want to say thank you to all the countries who, when my country was attacked, took up their swords and fought side by side with the Armed Forces of The United States over the last 10 years in Afghanistan.

Stuff and bother.

2011-04-25T03:17:00.004-04:00

As I've mentioned previously I'm contemplating a relocation of sorts. One of the things that has to be done is a good pruning of my stuff. When you live in one place for 26 years you accumulate a LOT of stuff.

So over the last few days I've been wandering about the house and cramming stuff in bags to take to Goodwill. Clothes that don't fit any more, DVD's I don't watch any more.. loads of books. Maybe some one else can get some use out of it. I'm just going to through my remaining stacks of VHS tapes away. It's mostly just stuff I've recorded off TV over the years.. which is something I feel is lacking in current technology. They didn't kill it off.. but they certainly made it more difficult than putting in a tape and pressing 'record'.

I've gotten about 4 bags of stuff ready to go so far, and probably will have another 4 before much longer. I've begun making a pile of stuff I plan to sell on E-bay as well. Who knows what I will get for it but.. something is better than nothing. I used to collect Transformers. More out of compulsion than anything. So I have a rather large number of them that are from series that I just have no emotional attachment too. They are all going to be going. I've decided that I really don't care much for GIJOE's either.. the toys I mean.. The Comics I'm keeping.. or maybe will replace with the new Trades from IDW and sell off my old newsprint copies like I've been doing with my smattering of Conan comics. Quite frankly though I've lost a lot of interest in both franchises thanks to their current and constantly changing iterations, over the last 5 years my interests have really changed a lot.

I'm trying to get my total number of possessions down to about 4 large tubs. Make it easier to pack up. How well that will work I don't know. All I know is I want to get rid of some stuff.. so I don't get stuck here.

How to know if an Anime fan will be annoying or not.

2011-04-23T16:00:00.003-04:00

This may be a bit of casting stones.. or spears.. or whatever.. but I've come to the realization that it's simply something that bugs the heck out of me. I don't really intend for this to be taken entirely seriously. It is meant to be humourous..

On the internet, and in real life, if you choose to hang out in places where they tend to congregate.. you will no doubt come across Anime Fans. most of them are very average people who just happen to like Japanese cartoons. Ok, No harm there. It's the ones who self Identify as "Otaku" sometimes also "Wapanese" or more derogatorily as "Weeaboo" Which is a ludicrous slurry of racial epithets. These names are not really fair, because I've met plenty of non Caucasian anime fans..

So how do you know you're dealing with one of these rather than the more mundane sort of anime fan?

I've come across a few tips that have served me well.

1) They bring their own chopsticks with them and use them even when they are not eating Asian food. Though if you manage to find one of these in a place that serves non Asian food, then that alone is something of a miraculous happening. Chances are, they were dragged there by their parents. Will happily eat Ramen for 3 meals a day.. and can occasionally be seen worshiping rice cookers as if they were golden calves.

2) If their favorite Final Fantasy villain is Kefka, or conversely they dislike Final Fantasy 7 for no reason other than it not having Kefka in it. Final Fantasy 8 is a close runner up, it's good simply because it isn't as popular as 7 and therefore it's superior.

3) They waste no time at all in attempting to correct you of your misbegotten idea that you enjoy watching Robotech.

4) They maintain that all Anime must be watched Subtitled, or else you just can't appropriately appreciate the experience.. totally disregarding the fact that, by the very nature of the medium.. All animation is dubbed regardless of its original language. What they really seem to be antagonistic towards is the translations.. but don't seem to express it very well. Fan Subs (especially if they are of dubious legal status) are always superior to any commercial release because of this fact.

5) Related to #4, are extremely disdainful of all Western animation and comics. In their minds even the lowest scribblings of a Korean Cel painter are superior to Alex Ross.

6) Refer to themselves as 'Otaku'.. which is a mark of pride among their confederates.. but in Japan is more akin to calling yourself a hairy palmed geek.

7) Related to #5, randomly intersperse a smattering of Japanese in their every day language. Such as, "Kawaii" rather than just using the English word "Cute".. Answer the phone with 'Mushi Mushi'.. and make odd faces in attempts to emulate the facial expressions of anime characters.

8) Don't tend to really care that much about actual Japanese culture beyond the confines of the Otaku subcultures. Try getting an anime fan to watch a Kurosawa film.. it ain't pretty.

9) think that the chocolate (Dubious at best) dipped swizzle stick of stale cardboard known as Pocky is actually an edible snack food. Of course when you consider it's having to be shipped from japan to the US and then is possibly sitting in stores for months waiting for some half starved anime fan to descend upon the sun bleached boxes of empty calories.. maybe I've just had a few bad batches.

10) REALLY REALLY HATE ROBOTECH AND MAKES SURE YOU KNOW HOW STUPID YOU ARE FOR LIKING IT.. Your opinions and nostalgic remembrances mean nothing, You are an idiot if you like Robotech and don't immediately forsake it to watch Macross with Subtitles. Yes I really do feel I needed to emphasize this twice because it above all else is the #1 cause of friction between me and Anime fans.

Well The Jokes on Me.

2011-04-22T15:31:00.005-04:00

Never one to turn down the opinion of a helpful person, and since the sales person was unable to recommend anything similar to Nick Hornby.. I took her at her word that she knew what she was talking about. So I got conned into buying David Foster Wallace's "Magnum Opus" the Infinite Jest by a pouty smile and a sundress sported by a Barnes & Noble customer.

I've been struggling to make some sense out of this book for the last 3 days now. It's not been easy. It started out so normal too, just a kid who is going to school for a Tennis scholarship, falls down and has a seizure in the principles office. Ok, tons of drug/rehab sort of novels start out that way. Then we started getting into Heavy Drug use. Ok, again, par for the course. But all of a sudden.. we started to get references to "Teleputers" and "Entertainment discs"... It kinda started to feel a bit odd.

You see, I had no idea when I bought it, it was science fiction either. What? surely the man that Slate Magazine drools over, and a million hipsters wept when he died.. surely you must be joking I here you ask. Yes. Science Fiction. Specifically of the Dystopian Future branch.

The book is set in a world where, the United States, Canada and Mexico are now one nation. O.N.A.N. Organization of North American Nations. The US apparently tricked the Canadians into joining, or at least thats the party line in the new much more violent Quebecois liberation parties. Corporations run everything. They even get to name the years. so we get things like "Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad" and "Year of the Depend adult undergarment".... It's supposed to be about drugs and rehab. I figured it would be a bit like a modern One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. I was wrong. Thats what I get for thinking when it comes to "Literary fiction". Which is apparently free to both be Genre, and also not be Genre.

I'm not going to say that, David Foster Wallace's writing was no good. Because it was actually very good. He didn't try to do any odd grammatical structures the way Cormac Mcarthy does.. He actually built some interesting characters. And had they have been in a real world, rather than a Scifi Dystopia.. I might have kept reading. I'm not much of a Sci-Fi reader at the best of times.. I don't go in for the Asimov, Clarke, Dick, sort of stuff.. About the closest I get to Sci-Fi Really is Star Wars and DUNE. So It's the very act of him playing with Genre tropes that I'm already biased against that caused me most of my problems with it. But I can't help but think, if this had been submitted to a Genre publisher like TOR or Del Rey.. they'd have politely refused it or simply ignored it.

Needless to Say, I won't be finishing this. At least right now. It's certainly better than some of the other stuff that comes out of the middle aisles of B&N. It just wasn't what I wanted to read right now, and considering I went in looking for another author similar to Nick Hornby.. I think it's safe to say I failed in that quest.

The Sound of Fantasy

2011-04-19T12:43:00.003-04:00

Scores are good, I like them. Especially really really good scores.

The music can make or break a Fantasy film. Look no further than the Alan Parson's Project inspired score from Ladyhawke or the Tangerine Dream score to Legend to see how much damage a poor score can do a film. On the other hand Many hokey scenes in the Micheal Bay Transformer's films were saved by the sometimes amazingly good Steve Jablonsky scores.

He did a rather good job with Fantasy music for his store to 'Your Highness' Which while a Homage to many different scores to Fantasy films from the 80's.. also was quite good on its own.

I make a habit of collecting these sorts of things. Scores to films, video games, all sorts of things. I like to have ambient music in the background while I work, while I read and other times. But I don't always want the boisterous sort of music that you get with Hans Zimmer. And I don't always want the technological sounds of Frank Klepacki who scored the Command And Conquer series. Scores such as those from John Williams especially, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Star Wars. These tend to be too easily identifiable to really be ambient. They suck you into specific scenes in the movie almost as soon as you identify them.

Sometimes these scores are easy to obtain. If its from a big name movie then it's on CD, usually in a truncated form, but available. Sometimes you get lucky and get the whole thing. Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings score being a notable example. But frequently, especially for older films, the scores aren't available on anything but LP or Cassette Tape. If they make it to CD then they are expensive and limited quantities such as the score for The Goonies.

I know of two good sources of streaming "fantasy" music.

a fellow by the name of Mats Wendt has created a very good, and very long "Score" to the Poetic Edda. It's available here http://www.eddan.net/ But it provides no ability to pause it and go back to where you left off, also no ability to download or purchase a copy. So it takes a good constitution role, or a really really huge dungeon in order to get through the whole thing. Much the same as with the Lord of the Rings score.

Then there is http://www.radiorivendell.com/ which has a streaming radio station. It also has a link list to different composers who give their work away, and to websites for various video games which also give their scores away for free download.

One of the benefits to running a D&D Game with a netbook, using it for Dice Rolls, Tracking party progression on maps.. it also allows you to program your adventures with music.

Review - Winter is coming.

2011-04-17T23:15:00.003-04:00

Alright, so I just got home from a the house of a buddy with HBO. We watched the episode twice. Sitting through all the stupid commercials for true blood along the way.

Game of thrones the show, is a very starkly beautifully rendered production. The costumes seem designed for functionality rather than screen appearance. It generally was a nice looking program. It felt like a world thats been lived in.. rather than one that was thrown together with oddments found in the backlot's broom closet. I imagine a good bit of their budget went into those aspects.. because it didn't go into the CGI.

The Characters were well Acted, believable, the only ones who I considered distracting where Khal 'Ronan "Jason Momoa" Dex' Drago and Eddard 'Richard "Sean Bean" Sharpe' Stark. They are simply too identifiable and I can't help but thinking back to their other characters. Almost no one else in the show with the exception of Peter Dinklage is anyone I could place. I know Mark Addy was in the recent Robin Hood.. and he was in A Knight's Tale... but he isn't some one I really think of immediately as some defined character. None of the women in the program stood out to me for any of their previous roles. So the cast was very well assembled.

But thats not really important.

Already I can state, without any vacillation, there is no way I will be able to actually watch this program for years and years. I will not invest another minute of my time, another Iota of my effort into George R.R. Martin's program. I simply cannot countenance allowing him to rope me into it. Regardless of how well it is written as a show (or a novel), Regardless of how well the performers do. I cannot do it until I know the ending and KNOW without any doubt, that the Lannisters and Targaryens all die, much deserved, deaths. And since I cannot trust G.R.R.M to do that. I can't be certain going in that that is how it will end. I cannot take any more steps on this journey. I'm keeping my feet, and I'm heading back to my front door.

The Bleakness Game of Thrones

2011-04-17T12:28:00.003-04:00

So I just read the three page review of Game of thrones from the New York Times Magazine. This is a separate review from the incendiary one from the New york Times proper.

The basic gist of this article is that the Game of thrones is too bleak. And could do with a bit of optimism thrown in. Maybe some levity that dosen't involve raunch of jokes about bloodshed. I'd say this is a fair complaint from what I remember of the part of the book I read.

I'm willing to be supportive of the Show for the same reason I was supportive of Legend of the Seeker, Your Highness, Eragon, and a whole host of other Fantasy films and shows. I want more, and I want better. So I better support what we get. Or the next Peter Jackson might not get so lucky. But that dosen't change my opinions of George R.R. Martin's opus.

It's still a gritty, bleak, dark series of novels that leave very very little room for the more noble aspects of the human spirit. Chances are anyone who exhibits them is swept down upon like white on rice in a snowstorm and swiftly eliminated. Martin has crafted a world in which nobility, altruism, and the like are vices at best, and weakness at worst. His enemies are the Self. Rather than the standard Fantasy of having the enemies be the Other. Martin's kingdoms operate the same way a cancer ridden body does.. systems failing and feeding on each other in a confused morass of decay. He simply localizes the problems. It turns your neighbor into the Other.

That's not to say it dosen't happen. You can see it endlessly repeated in a whole host of nation-states on a nearly daily basis all over the world just by turning on the nightly news. It happened constantly in the TV show which Game of Thrones is endlessly compared too.. The Sopranos. A show which, I didn't like. It glamorized criminals. None of them were shown having to pay societies price for their malediction of their end of the social contract. If anything they were shown to be 'Just like everyone else'.. except that they murder and steal to get what they want.. while the rest of us slave away.

I just hope thats not how I feel after watching Game of Thrones. I want to like it. I want to support it in the hopes we get more Fantasy programs. But I have to have characters to like, that I'm sure will survive till the end, or it won't be worth bothering with. It's always darkest before the dawn, etc. But I'm left wondering if Martin intends to include the Dawn in his books. Certainly no shortage of his imitators show no inclination to include anything of the sort.

So this brings us to the other edge of what is as always a double edged sword. If it does well, it won't be doing well "because its a fantasy" but because its bleak and bloody and shows lots of tits. And we can no doubt look forward to adaptions of even bleaker and more bloody books into series.

I suppose I should console myself with the fact we are apparently going to get a Discworld Television show.. At least I can always count on Pratchett to make me laugh. Even if I can't count on anyone else to inspire me.

Totally self indulgent posting.

2011-04-15T01:23:00.000-04:00

Portland Timbers just won 4-2 against the Chicago Fire.

Really pleased with this outcome.

The Stadium formerly known as PGE park is quite nice looking now that it's finished.

Can't wait till sunday when they play F.C. Dallas.

And Now, for a joke in bad taste.

2011-04-14T19:24:00.000-04:00

"Cumming Man Dead After Car Flips"

.. I suppose he should have kept both hands on the wheel.

*Slides on sunglasses and looks at the camera*

YEAHHHHAAA!!!

And yeah thats a real headline from my local paper.

*For some reason I tried to post this twice and both times it screwed up.

Quasi Medieval, Dragon-ridden Fantasy Crap, Uhh what?

2011-04-14T14:19:00.000-04:00

So.. I'm taking it that Slate's TV reviewer dosen't like Game of thrones all that much.. and wants to take out his anger on someone.. He apparently already hates the Fantasy Genre before even going into it. Fair enough. But I'd expect some one who reviews TV shows to be objective in reviewing well.. a TV show..

It would be like if I reviewed 'Mad Men'. It's obviously a great program, well written, with lots of drama and all that jazz. Good costumes, sets, actors giving great performances. But it's also about Ad executives.. people who make it onto my top 5 lists of "Those who will not be allowed into the bunker when the end comes" along with Lawyers, Politicians, Insurance claims adjusters and people who say ' Thats what she said' ". I wouldn't be objective, my dislike of the manipulative act of selling people stuff they don't need, negatively colours my opinion of the program before anything else is even taken into account. The same is true of 'Walking Dead' I don't like zombies, 'Jersey Shore' I don't like stupid people. I could go on and on.. but I've explains my position.

I've not seen anymore of the show than anyone else at this point. That 10 minute preview, I've read the first 100 pages of the book. It didn't really do much for me. But I'm going to cheerfully give the show a chance. See thats something else the reviewer assumes. That just because it's fantasy, means that every fantasy fan will enjoy it. Thats simply not true. I certainly wouldn't enjoy a film based on the works of R. Scott Bakker.. any more than I enjoy films based on the works of Cormac Mcarthy. Just because the Road was Science Fiction dosen't mean I went to go see it. I imagine plenty of people who tuned into Krod Mandoon just as quickly tuned back out. Obviously the same is true of the recent Your Highness, which seems to have just as many supporters among Fantasy enthusiasts as detractors.

The problem is now however, that his review is the review of the series for that website. He is their TV reviewer and he obviously hated it. And at the same time wants you to know how dumb you are for liking it.

If you read that.. the whole thing kinda reminded me of this

Harry Potter, The Finale

2011-04-12T15:26:00.001-04:00

I just closed the cover on Deathly Hallows. Allow me to say how relieved I am to finally have that project behind me. I'm glad to move on from those books. I was beginning to feel I couldn't deal with their blatant disregard of anything resembling a logical consistency.

Don't get me wrong, the Plot made sense.. it just could have been compressed into about half as many pages and been the better for it. But you can't jump off the gravy train like that.. I realize.

The series is so full of stuff that had me frustrated I nearly quit reading them. The characters never really grew on me. If they did, they died before the series was up anyway. I can also say, I've never met any kids who act like they do in this series.. but I've met plenty who THINK they act like they do in this series. Thats probably why the series was so popular. My eyes have rolled so much in the course of reading this series I may have caused permanent torsion to the muscles.

Handful of Adults know whats what and know to stand back and let the kiddos handle the tough jobs.. while the rest are off being blithering idiots and ruining the kids plans. Its pretty thin.

The whole concept that the book teaches Witchcraft is absurd.. but it does Beyond encourage some dramatically dangerous attitudes. Genetic superiority, racial purity, ethnic slurs, slavery.. these are all things the magic users make regular use of and think nothing of it. They toss around "Muggle" like jim crow era southerners. They are encouraged by adults to do this. So of course by the time we get to the 7th book, the "muggle" Lynchings have begun too. I'm honestly surprised that theres no bonfires with death eaters standing around chanting "Wizard Power, Wizard Power" But since the "muggles" are all clearly idiots.. worse even than the adult wizards.. no one seems to feel they need to be let in on the whole thing.. This is clearly more a fear on the part of the wizards that they wouldn't stand a chance against the "muggles" if it came down to brass tacks. The Wizards it seems have begun to delude themselves into thinking it was their choice to go into hiding.. rather than being forced into hiding by the Torch & Pitchfork wielding "muggles".

The magical abilities of the characters, due to spontaneously showing up in 'Muggle-borns" is obviously Genetic.. yet at the same time it requires a wand to work.. Freud would have had a field day with this. This fact leads many of the Magic users to feel they should be running the world.. yet most don't even seem to grasp how to wear clothing properly. This is laughable at best. The fact they seem to nominally be Christian is also a head scratcher. The characters celebrate Christmas in all the books.. and Harry puts a cross over the grave of several of the casualties. I assume this could be a vestige of his childhood with the Durselys, but I'm not sure.

Harry himself has to be one of the more annoying characters in literature. He's not annoying to me the same way, say, Cugel or Richard Rahl are. They are annoying because they seem incapable of understanding other peoples views of the world. Neither of them has any problem with wanton killing if they see their views justified, as they are, being threatened. Harry is the complete opposite. Even when his friends are being murdered left and right around him, he can't bring himself to kill. He's the perfect spokesman for the "duty to retreat" laws that are in effect in so many places. It's always best to run away from danger and let some one else handle it. It makes him a very unbelievable character.

But any time you bring up an inconsistency like that. Its hammered home again and again that "it's only a kids book". Right.. it's better to patronize the little monsters and make them feel special since thats what gets the money out of mommy and daddies pockets and into the till. But make no mistake. It is only a kids book. It's not even as complicated writing wise as the Narnia books are. It lacks their moralizing, but it also lacks the character building. It's easily out classed in that department by the Prydain books. Taran starts off as a bit of a crybaby too, but through grit and determination comes to be a good man. I don't think its fair to compare the Harry Potter series with adult novels like Lord of the Rings. But it is fair to compare it to other novels written for kids. Rowling is no Lloyd Alexander or Susan Cooper..

Rowling's writing style is, very similar to Stephen King's, and that probably goes a long way to explain his admiration for her work. I like Stephen King, his books remind me of a comfortable chair, lacking any complexity in the language.. Rowling has that same feel. I don't think its a style that lends to the sort of epicness she apparently intended for the series to take on. To me it reminds me of a small child walking around in his dad's shoes, and barely managing to keep them on.

I'm really dreading watching the films now. The series was a cute kids book for the first 3.. and then just flip flopped from book to book with the rest. 4 and 6 were pretty good. 5 and 7 were pretty dire. The Idea of sitting through close to 20 hours of Harry Potter makes me more than a bit uneasy. Hopefully though, the movies are an improvement on the novels. Hopefully some of the stuff that read poorly, will be rendered more believable on screen. Hopefully.

Your Highness.

2011-04-10T16:57:00.001-04:00

A raunchy fantasy romp brought to you by the same chaps who made Pineapple Express. It's done pretty poorly at the box office. I can understand why. It has very little appeal to your average viewer.. not nearly as much nudity as the trailers would have you believe and generally it requires that the audience be well versed in 80's fantasy films, D&D and other sorts of Fantasy oriented activities in order to truly get anything out of the movie.

It felt a hell of a lot like the sorts of things my friends would devolve a D&D game into. Wizards shooting colour spray out of their backsides. Barbarians blundering into boobytraps and having to re-roll 3-4 times a night. Jokes about copulating with dwarves or farm animals.. All of that sort of stuff.. it's all in this movie. Instead of getting high and watching Ator the Mighty, this is like getting Ator the Mighty high and then watching while completely sober.

Like Pineapple express the marketing is.. confused.. and confusing. They try to make it have as much mass market appeal as possible but its clearly not working.

The cast is, generally made up of quite good actors and actresses.. James Franco, Natalie Portman and Damien Lewis are all people I usually think of as being 'good' actors.. Danny Mcbride however you either love or hate, and having him star in the film was perhaps a mistake.. It's one thing to have him as a character in the movie.. but to be the star of the movie didn't really work... but he wrote it.. so he clearly loved it. At points in the film it was almost as if the character succeeded or failed based solely on Danny McBride throwing some saving throws behind his DM screen. He also wasn't lying when he likened it to serious movies like Dragonslayer and Krull.. It's simply a really really really raunchy Krull.

It didn't have the sex and violence of programs like Spartacus, but wasn't family friendly like a lot of those 80's movies were by any stretch of the imagination. Most of the jokes relied on the audience being aware of what was being lampooned. The film was rife with shots copied from Conan the Barbarian and others. But at the same time it didn't really come across as a spoof. It's more of just a really really screwy Fantasy world. Xanth on Acid.

So my guess is, if you are reading my review of it.. you will get a lot more out of it than if you are just some one who is reading a review of it on Yahoo. Don't trust the reviews from "normal" sources on this one.. if you like those 80's movies (some like Ator and Deathstalker are so bad they hurt to watch) You will find this lovable near Pastiche of those sorts of films quite enjoyable.

Camelot (It's only a model)

2011-04-09T07:22:00.001-04:00

Being a Netflix subscriber comes with some additional perks, one is that you can watch the TV station 'Starz' live through a streaming broadcast. This is good because it lets me see the new program "Camelot" 90 days before the moratorium on it being on Netflix's Instant service runs out.

On Wednesday I wanted the first two episodes, which formed a two part story. It was.. apart from frankly grafted on feeling sex scenes.. not too bad. The usage of foul language is kept to a minimum, which is probably a good thing as the F-Bomb came over with Horsa and Hengist and dosen't make much sense historically...

Cast wise Joeseph Feinnes turns in a very unique Merlin.. who is Half Peter O'Toole and Half Christopher Lambert. (Described by the actor as Obi Wan Kenobi meets Donald Rumsfield) Manipulative and yet so blundering that by the 3rd episode he walks right into Morgan's (Eva Green, even more smarmy in this than in Casino Royale) trap. Once we get past them however.. we have to confront Arthur and Guinevere.. both of whom seem to be played by perpetually startled deer with very little discernible acting capability. Guinevere's father is played by Daragh O'Mally who you may recognize as Patrick Harper from the Sharpe's series. Several other quite good actors are in the show as well, Sean Pertwee as Ector, and James Purfoy as King Lot. But most of the show seems to really fixate on Arthur's wet dreams.

The show is rife with other odd anachronisms that your average viewer wouldn't notice.. Arthur, uses the name "England" at least once in the course of the program. That was probably a slip, he didn't use it again in the 3rd episode.. and we will just have to see if it shows up again. And of course we have the token minorities wandering around the village as well. Several people who appear to be of middle eastern extraction, and the third episode features a former African slave who sides with Morgan in her plotting. They at least attempt to explain this as being people who came there or were brought there due to the Romans.

The costumes are an odd mix of stuff left over from other movies or TV series.. I'm sure some stuff from the very short lived Heath Ledger program "Roar" is even in use.. along with a good bit of stuff that looks like it belongs to Braveheart They use odd little round metal shields (almost miniatures of the ones from TROY/300)but also use swords more akin to what was available in the 1100's during the Crusades.

Camelot itself almost looks more like a 1930's style train station or government building than a Castle.. certainly not a Roman Castle anyway..

I'll probably tune in to a few more episodes.. It's easily better than Legend of the Seeker.. but I don't suspect the program will be able to hold up all that well compared to Game of Thrones.

The Dying Earth.

2011-04-07T00:40:00.000-04:00

I thoroughly enjoyed the first volume in this series, I won't however be reviewing it but rather the second book 'Eyes of the overworld'. Having now read it, it fills in some gaps in my understanding of where the current trend of seemingly sociopathic characters in fantasy originated.

Having enjoyed the first volume in the series, I decided to press on into volume two. I'm sorry I did now as the main character for this volume, alternatively titled 'Cugel the clever'. Sometimes described as "ambiguously appealing", I found he was perhaps the most aggravating character I've had the misfortune to see a story from the P.O.V. of since Steerpike in 'Titus Groan'.

As described by the author, Cugel is "a man of many capabilities, with a disposition at once flexible and pertinacious. He was long of leg, deft of hand, light of finger, soft of tongue ... His darting eye, long inquisitive nose and droll mouth gave his somewhat lean and bony face an expression of vivacity, candor, and affability. He had known many vicissitudes, gaining therefrom a suppleness, a fine discretion, a mastery of both bravado and stealth."

Once you translate that from bullcrap however, it reads as "Liar, Cheat, Thief, Murderer, Rapist, who shows no remorse for his actions whatsoever". In other words.. he has no redeeming qualities, and as such this book has no redeeming qualities except one. And that one is the only reason I didn't chuck it promptly into the Trade-A-Book pile. It is marvelously well written with truly evocative scenery and atmosphere. It's simply a shame that Jack Vance didn't construct a less obnoxious character to inhabit it.

This series was apparently very influential also in the creation of Dungeons & Dragons.. but if a player ever ran a character like Cugel in a game in which I was the Dungeon Master.. he'd find his character making a short drop and a sudden stop in the first town he passed through.

The Influence of this book's main character can definitely be felt today in the works of authors like Joe Abercrombie, Sam Sykes and the rest of the Grim n' Gritty brigade. So Perhaps since I don't like its imitators.. its no surprise I don't really care for the original either. It's truly a shame that such a character pollutes the landscape in such a way as to sometimes be distracting, this was Peake's major flaw as well. He redeemed this by having Steerpike get his comeuppance, Somehow I doubt Cugel will ever face a situation he can't weasel his way out of.

I'm not sure now if I will bother to read Cugel's Saga or simply skip it in favor of reading "Rhialto the Marvelous" instead... I certainly won't be seeking out Micheal Shea's Cugel Pastiche 'A Quest for Simbilis'.

New Conan book on Amazon, Conan the Barbarian: The Stories that inspired the movie

2011-04-06T00:59:00.001-04:00

Having a look on amazon today I chanced across this Mass Market Paperback from Del Rey.

No cover art and No idea of the contents at this point, but its gonna be released on July 26. It's a slim 320 pages so Hopefully it will be the first in a series of Mass Market releases of the stories previously only available in the Trade Paperback series. If it does well and makes money, perhaps it can fend off the demise of the more luxurious Trade Paperback Series.

This is something I'd hoped to see for a while now, a stripped down Mass Market release from Del Rey of just the finished stories. Since while the current batch of Del Rey's are really nice, high quality product, their price and the presence of lengthy essays and introductions I've found scares new people off when I've tried to introduce them to it. The same thing happened with the new trade releases of Elric.

Perhaps they just come across as too scholarly or something.

Still I suppose only time will tell.. But I plan on buying a few copies to pass around to people who have previously only seen the movies.

Prince of Dogs, Crown of Stars #2 by Kate Elliot

2011-04-05T14:41:00.000-04:00

Well after having struggled some what to finish up the first volume in this series I took a bit of a break before tackling the second volume. I really hoped that it would be better, after all the first book was mainly set up, world building, showing the reader what was what and who was who. My hopes proved unfounded however.

After another lengthy struggle through another lengthy book which acted as a car with bad petrol in it. Fits and Starts. Parts of it are great, but parts of it are not. Its extremely uneven, and this makes me afraid to continue with the rest of the series. Pages and Pages of stuff that dosen't do anything to further the plot. Good characters shunted aside so the author can focus on characters who are, for the most part, pointless at this time in the series. Which I'm not ruling out that they could be more important later, that happened in the Wheel of Time several times.

At this point I'm not sure I'm going to continue reading this series, as the third volume is longer than the first two buy nearly 200 pages. That is almost assured to be another 200 pages of introspection bulking up a plot that could be covered in half as many chapters. Unfortunately when an author builds a huge series of huge tomes, it can sometimes occur that they are huge simply because the author is self indulgent. I'm not sure if thats the case here, since the books all cover such short spans of time it could simply be that they can't be taken as individual books but rather as parts of a whole. But so far I've not gotten enough investment in any of the characters to make me want to keep reading to find out.

I still can't bring myself to call it a bad series. It's an incredibly complexly detailed series that feels like a real world with a vast history. There are still a number of things which I feel detract from this, and its stuff thats not likely to go away. Simply put, the chances of a real medieval world featuring this many women in levels of authority is rather baffling to me. I can't think of a single Indo-European culture that actually had this level of egalitarianism. Even if cultures like that existed during the European Bronze or early Iron Age as in the case of some Celtic tribes.. it was mostly relegated to history well before anyone made it to the castles and mounted chargers phase. It's not a bad thing, since it is a Fantasy series, but to me its a bit distracting. Since none of the female soldiers are described in terms that make them sound even the remotest bit like soldiers.. they ride hard all day in armor but then all the men still faun over them.

I'm going to have to think hard about whether I will continue or not. Until then, here's a few more Cover art shots that once more put the US edition to shame.

France:

United Kingdom:

Wizard Smoothies

2011-04-03T23:50:00.000-04:00

So here I am, just sitting here, beavering away at finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows. I'm probably slightly more than half way done.. and I've hit upon a raft of new questions about this series. Well .. annoyances really..

Why is it that every adult in the series up till now, practically crapped their pants every time some one mentioned Voldemort yet.. now they all seem to be working for him willingly? Why is it if he is so dangerous no one has bothered to do anything about him until now? Why is the series turning into an allegory about the Nazis? Surely the Wizard's would have known about World War II and Hitler.. and wouldn't have allowed that to happen to them? And this is the one they felt the need to make into a 5 hour 2 part film? Really? Nothing's happened so far.

It makes me wonder.. Why haven't they bothered to tell the "Muggles" that if Voldemort wins he plans to kill them all? Way back in the first book, one of the characters explains why the Wizarding world is invisible.. and thats because the "Muggles" kept burning them at the stake.. so apparently "Muggle" technology can lay the hurt down on a Wizard. And that was Swords and Pointy sticks.

So since pointy sticks work against wizards.. but no one seems to bother to use weapons.. I'd like to see a Broomstick Vs. an F-35.. It would be awesome... but instead, we are shown yet more hand wringing by practically every character. It shouldn't be surprising. The series' main character wouldn't even throw down on Draco Malfoy for insulting his mom.. he let Hermoine slug him instead. Cause I certainly wouldn't have stood for that and I can't think of too many kids who would. I mean, Thank god he didn't insult Kvothe from Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind.. or he likely would have gotten a mouthful of high test booze to the face and a quick light.

So most importantly why are none of the Wizarding groups in other countries doing anything about this? Voldemort poses a threat to the whole planet and not just jolly ol' England. The only allies Harry seems to have are a few Wizards and Witches from France.. all the rest of the European magic users seem to be behind Voldemort.. But Harry is no Bernard Montgomery... and Madame Maxine is no Leclerc.. Maybe Dr. Strange, Harry Dresden and Willow & Tara need to go and sort things out for them..

Kid's book or not, even Bilbo carried a sword and kicked some spider ass. And its such a shame because the series started out with such promise of being a relatively light children's series about magic and everyone being a unique snowflake and all that. But instead the author decided she wanted to make it Epic, with a Dark Lord and all that.. and failed miserably.

LARPing, Another look.

2011-03-29T22:42:00.001-04:00

After last years disastrous experience with SOLAR (Southern Organization of Live Action Roleplaying) I was a bit hesitant to try another organization. Georgia rather oddly boasts a really large number of weekend event style LARP groups. I've even heard rumours of an actual "LARP Town" being built some where in north east Georgia. Why this is I'm not sure, but it's true none the less. My own guess is it's simply because while the state is mainly boring, it also has a very large number of suburban centers.. perfect for producing the sorts of people who might want to LARP.

Basically my experience with SOLAR was that, while the actual human beings who played it were all quite friendly, the game world itself was highly competitive and not very friendly to new players. In addition to having no sleep before going to the event last year, and then coming down with the flu after the event.. I came away with an all together poor impression of it.

However, after finding out about the wealth of other groups I decided I'd give another one a shot. Instead of going with another "Local" one like SOLAR, I'd go to the big mother of LARP's. NERO. Short for New England Roleplaying Organization, and the parent of SOLAR, and Alliance LARP on the west coast, both due to internal schisms. You can see a bit about the NERO organization on the west coast by watching the documentary "Monster Camp" if you have Netflix.

The documentary "Darkon" really didn't help as it showed just how out of touch with reality some people are. Two players featured in that Documentary actually ceased being friends in real life over a dispute their characters had had in game. That kind of thing is so not for me.

On the other hand films like "Role Models" didn't really help or hinder but rather reinforced my own feelings towards it. While the fun that the characters had in the movie was accurate, so were the powergamers such as Ken Jeong's King Argotron.

I went into it with no small amount of trepidation, I didn't want to invest my time or energy or money into another abysmal weekend like SOLAR. So I did serious research into the NERO game, I got in touch with people who played it and asked lots and lots of questions. It payed off.

The NERO experience was vastly different, and in my opinion superior to SOLAR in just about every way. The game mechanics were pretty much the same, but the level of interaction of the people who actually ran the event was far more in depth. The "Marshals" ran plenty of Modules for players both new and advanced which were fun and involving. They stressed the role-play aspect in addition to the combat aspect.

The people were friendly and the other players were helpful to us mere newbies. No one came and KO'ed us to get our pitiful stash of 5 silver that new players start out with like they did in SOLAR, and the Marshal's worked really hard to work in some modules that were the right level for new players. Every time we turned around some one was offering to help us out some how, when asked, they all stressed that new players are the life blood of the game and without them it would shrivel and waste away. Judging from the number of people who had similarly poor experiences with SOLAR I saw I wasn't alone in my estimation of them.

The only problem faced by the event was that it simply bucketed down rain all weekend. Leading to us playing in the cold and wet. Tornado risk was pretty high and we get being shepherded into the Tavern in case one touched down near by. A Cabin was nearly struck by lightning, not to mention the risk of Pneumonia. This of course was well outside of the NERO marshal's ability to control.

I plan to go back to another event at some point in the future. I really did have a good time. But it does admittedly take a good bit of getting past ones own self denying rationality to play. It's not something for those lacking in imagination. If you go into it and all you see is people in pillowcases bashing the crap out of each other with pipe foam.. then its probably not ever going to be your sort of thing. But if you can suspend your disbelief, and really move back into the realm of make believe you undoubtedly had as a child.. then it can be a great deal of fun.

The Castle

2011-03-23T08:45:00.000-04:00

This is an interesting little movie. It was pretty low budget, even by australian standards, but boy did they buy a lot with their money. The laughs in this film never really stop, and I routinely quote lines from it. And it has a pretty interesting cast. Beyond the main stars, it features a very early Eric Bana, and an Anthony Simcoe with no Makeup on.. since the only thing most people would have seen him play in the U.S. is D'Argo on Farscape that should be fairly unique to any fan of that series.

The basic premise is that years ago, Darrel Karrigan (Micheal Caton) bought some cheap land at the bottom of a runway, near some high voltage lines and built a house on it. Over time he built a successful car towing business and raised a family. He turned his home into his Castle. But as Airports are wont to do, it now needs to expand. That means the Karrigan's and their neighbors have to go.

Compulsory Acquisition. In the U.S. it's called Eminent Domain. Same Principle. Government comes in either for their own ends or to further the ends of a business in some way.. and decides they want your land and will buy it from you whether you want to sell or not. Usually they offer below market value. But they never recoup you for sentimental attachment to the dwelling.

After everyone on the block refuses, a mysterious man begins showing up and making veiled threats to the homeowners. Darrel's son pulls a shotgun on him, but their neighbor Faroouq threatens back. He's from Beirut you see... and deals with the threatening man by saying "You know friend.. I know friend.. you're friend beat me up.. my friend blow you to fucking sky!" After this Dale, decides to fight.

At first its all just petty stuff, but eventually he decides to fight legally. He's unfortunately not the brightest fellow in the world, and dosen't really have a lot of money. So he hires the pretty low level solicitor who represented his son on a B&E charge.. a charge that was upheld by the court and that son is still in Jail.

When he goes for the court case, he happens to strike up a conversation with a man who has come to see his son's first case. The man, Lawrence (Charles 'Bud' Tingwell) happens to be a retired QC, or Queens Council. A QC who also happens to be a Constitutional Law specialist. They begin a friendship, and he agrees to represent the neighborhood in case, using the Malbo and the Tasmanian Damn's cases to build their own. Finally settling on the term "Just terms" in Australian Constitution.

Long story short, they win their case, it becomes precedent in Australian law, the airport will have to expand in a different direction and everything works out fine. It's a nice story.

For whatever reason this movie has been pretty hard to come by on DVD. As far as I know in fact its not even actually available in Australia for purchase. The US version has also been edited some what. They didn't really change the slang, but they changed the names of foods, TV shows that the characters watch, and replaced words like "Cladding" with "Siding" in reference to the building material. They also replaced all the music. So if your a purist then you will either have to suffer through the Americanized version or do without. But to me, It didn't bother me, and I've seen both versions.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

2011-03-20T21:52:00.001-04:00

This is one of my favorite bands. Though I have a lot of favorite bands. So I should probably say that right now, ELP is in my top five favorite bands. I was raised in a house where the music of the 60's and 70's was constantly played. All the greats. From the Allman Brothers to the Warren Zevon. I've got a vast catalog of LP's from that time period.

So I'm gonna share a couple of my favorite ELP tracks.

Touch & Go ~

Lucky Man ~

King's Dragon, Crown of Stars Volume 1 - Kate Elliot

2011-03-19T15:35:00.000-04:00

Released in 1997, this tells a tale of political intrigue in a some what unique and oddly egalitarian setting. It's definitely odd at first, and rather incongruous. The writing is quite good, and its obvious the author put a lot of effort into her research of the real dark and middle ages before writing this first volume of what, like all fantasy series that came out in the 90's, was supposed to be a trilogy. Soon this ballooned into a shelf sagging behemoth of 7 volumes.

I'd never really planned to read this series, but My sister had read it and left the books behind when she moved out. And instead of bunging them off straight to the trade-a-book I thought I'd give them a try first. Needless to say, I don't normally feel my sister has much in the way of taste when it comes to.. well.. anything actually.. so I was a bit surprised by this. It's not a bad novel, and if the series stays at least on par with this it won't be a bad series. It seems to me however that far more time is spent on back door political dealings and pages of characters navel gazing than anyone actually doing anything.

I've seen this series compared sometimes with George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, also occasionally with Tad Williams' Memory Sorrow and Thorn. I can some what see the resemblance, but they are all 3rd cousins at best. So far however, Elliot has stayed on the side of stark contrast closer to Williams rather than crossing to the dark side that is the various shades of grey approach that GRRM is so good at. This series has obvious good and evil characters. That isn't to say that sometime in the next 6 volumes their positions on various issues won't change.

The World building is top notch, but the modern gender ideas are sometimes very jarring when compared to what the actual time periods that inspired this series were like. That may be one of the books biggest flaws. This novel feels too much like a historical novel for me to really see it as a Fantasy..

Some of the characters are good, some aren't. Some are just bland, and those are the ones who seem to get a large amount of pages dedicated to them. I'm sure all the stuff they ramble on about, the history of the church, the history of the kingdoms.. It's all probably very important to the plot. But it tends to come in such boring segments it sometimes makes me feel as If I'm back in high school history class. In other words, this novel makes frequent use of the dreaded infodump. Sometimes its handled well.. some times less so.

Worse, the series is slow. Slow and Slow. You plod along, huffing and wheezing and groaning under the exertion of slogging through the navel gazing infodumps.. and suddenly you will hit an icy patch and skid for 3 or 4 chapters and feel exhilarated and think.. Finally, it's going to get started. But then you hit a gravel patch and slow down again and regain control, and then slow down some more as you come to a pedestrian crossing. The book didn't begin to really pick up plot wise until there were less than 100 pages left. It's definitely all set up. But it left me feeling rather tepid towards the rest of the series. If the rest are like the last 100 pages of this one, then it will be a snap to finish. If they are on the same format as this book with the first 500 pages being set up for very little reveal.. it will be a snoozefest. I suppose I'll see when I get to reading the second book. I hope it stays moving at a good clip, as I'd really like to like this series.

Though not in the least the authors fault, the cover art on this series is, in a word, horrible. It's not even just bland like a Darrel K. Sweet cover.. It's just downright bad. The UK Editions, and Especially the French Editions.. have vastly superior cover art.

The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rotfuss

2011-03-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

Ok so I didn't make it through this volume as quickly as I did "The Name of the Wind". This isn't a bad book.. but its definitely suffering from "Middle chapter-itus" where the first book is to hook you so its got all the build up.. the second book's job is to get you some place.. to position you for the ending which will close up that setup stuff during the third book.

The other thing this book does that some what disappoints me is that the experiences that Kvothe is now sharing with the reader are perhaps leaking in to the second day's story and should have been included in the first days story.. what else is he omitting or choosing not to say? It's casting doubt on his whole story for me. It's difficult to measure how I feel about this.. I've seen lots of other reviews remark on Kvothe being an "Unreliable narrator" but I'd never really seen any indication of that in Name of the Wind. But its there in good quantity in Wise Man's Fear.

Furthermore the book is meandering, it uses up a lot of pages to not really tell us a whole lot.. the first half of the book is a lot more entertaining than the second half.. which basically contains a whole lot of Sex. Brandon Sanderson felt it was sufficient enough in quantity to include a disclaimer on his review of the book. I probably would do the same. Name of the Wind was a PG rated romp comparable to Dragonbone Chair. But Wise Mans's fear is pushing a PG13 rating.. it dosen't show you the sex, but its there going on behind the words.. sort implied like in TV sitcoms. Screen goes dark, next scene, two characters in bed giggling over something. that sort of thing. While part of this is important, it mostly just winds up feeling gratuitous.

And considering the main venue for fantasy novels.. I'm not sure if having your main character get laid something close to 50 times in one novel is a selling point or a detractor. I assume though since its #1 NYT bestseller.. it just proves.. sex sells.

Its really difficult to talk about the book without giving away loads of spoilers, and since this book just came out, rather than having had several years to be out.. I'm more cautious of spoilers with it.

I'm really anxious to read the last volume, whenever it manages to get released. So he's not lost me entirely. However, I am uncertain whether I would continue reading Rothfuss unless he stayed with at least the same world that these stories are set in. That was perhaps my only real complaint with Tad William's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Was that when the book ended, the door to Osten Ard closed. And while I've enjoyed some of his other short works, I've been hesitant to jump into either Otherland, and some what anxious to get into Shadowmarch now that its complete.