Like I said in a previous post, I have a tendency to hear about some great show half-way through the season and then end up catching all the episodes online. Last year I watched the first two and a half seasons of Lost
Spoilers below if you don’t like reading those type of things.
Some of these ongoing dramatic shows like Heroes
I got hooked last year with ‘Dexter
Still looking forward to “A Song of Ice and Fire” series on HBO if it ever gets made.
Dean Koontz’s ‘Cold Fire
‘Cold Fire
So, for future reference, if you’re going to take a cool idea and start explaining it, make sure that your explanation is cool too.
I just finished reading (I guess ‘listening’ would be a more appropriate term, since they were audiobooks) ‘Blaze: A Novel
King’s novel was released as one of the “Bachman” books that had been sitting in a shorter format, forgotten for decades before King rediscovered, rewrote, and published it. The novel is told almost exclusively from the perspective of Blaze, a hulking man with a dented forehead that has left with a somewhat diminished mental capacity. Blaze and his partner, George, are in the process of planning the ‘one, last, big score’. In this case the crime they are planning is the kidnapping and ransom of the infant grandchild of local millionaires. George is smarter, older, and more pessimistic than Blaze, but as the story unfolds, we also discover that he’s dead. The question as to whether George exists solely in Blaze’s head or in a supernatural form that guides Blaze’s crimes is constantly raised throughout the book.
The interesting perspective that this book takes is that there is essentially only one character. George is around and constantly talks with Blaze, but he’s not physically there. If this story is ever filmed, Blaze would be the only character that you see for most of the running time. Regardless, the story never suffers from this limitation. It occasionally moves through flashbacks, and these detours let us see more and more of Blaze’s tragic life. The end seems inevitable but is never strained like some of King’s other works. King sometimes seems to get a great idea for a story, but writes himself into a corner. His endings sometimes bare the scars of these literary cul-de-sacs as he struggles to wrap things up at the end. Books like ‘It’, ‘Salem’s Lot’, ‘The Shining’, and ‘Blaze
I’ve been spending the week trying to catch as many series premiers as I can. I’m tired of hearing about a show being great after half a season and having to watch the episodes online to catch up. This way, at least I’ve seen the first of everything to get the idea. Take ‘Chuck’ for example. How to describe this one… not really comedy, definetly not drama – more like action packed humorous series. I think this one will have to improve for me to watch any more because it definitely had its funny moments but the action was a bit forced. My wife and I watched NCIS
Call me a geek, but I do find the D&D motivational poster spoofs very funny. I made a poster that combined the nine D&D alignments for my brother.
Lawful good – Superman
Lawful neutral – Judge Dredd
Lawful evil – Emporer Palpatine
Neutral good – Batman
True neutral – Ash
Neutral evil – Darth Vader
Chaotic good – Minsk
Chaotic neutral – Jack Torrance
Chaotic evil – Norman Bates
Now, you may disagree with the alignment of one or a few of those characters, and you may think of better examples of the alignments. However, if you recognize the reference of all nine of those characters, you truly are a geek and a master of obscurity.
So I’m sitting in a “Computer Training Center” trying to stay busy while everyone around me learns more about the computer systems and programs. On the walls around me are a series of those ridiculous inspirational posters.
‘Persevere’ shows a runner ‘persevering’ up a hill with a quote about going the extra mile.
‘Goals’ is combined with a foggy photo of the Golden Gate bridge with some blurb about goals being bridges. Sublte.
‘Risk’ shows a schooner sailing around icebergs, ‘Courage,’ a windsurfer under a giant wave, and ‘Success’ is compared with a canoe.
Really? A canoe? How exactly is success a canoe.
My guess is the development team for these posters had the following conversation:
“We still need a photo for ‘Success’?
“What about the canoe photo?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a great photo. There’s a lake and a sunset and a canoe.”
“Yeah, it is a great photo. Nobody’s disputing that it’s a great photo, but how is it ‘Success’?
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a successful canoe. Let’s just wrap this up and go home.”
“Fine.”
That’s what I call inspirational.
So, returning to more obscure things than football. Back in the days of the past century, my brother had a Super Nintendo, and the greatest game created for that ancient system was Uniracers
Uniracers is a side-scrolling racing game with unicycles. Not with people riding unicycles, no, the unicycles themselves would race. The strange unicycle anatomy consisted of a seat-shaped head. The wheel spun on its own to move the creature about, and the rest of the frame made up the body.
The unicycles would race across a two-dimensional track with loops and turns and jumps. Performing tricks with your unicycle gave you a boost of speed with more complex performances of daredevilry giving extra acceleration and velocity. The more complex tricks also gave you some bit of 80′s slang. “Awesome” “Tubular” “Wicked” If you couldn’t get your wheel down in time to hit the track and landed on your head (seat) instead, you lost all of your momentum. The desperate push for more speed led to riskier manuevers. The only downside of the game was the eventual overuse of the L and R buttons. To this day they barely work.
The game moves with amazing speed considering that it’s running on a Super Nintendo. This isn’t your standard car race game where the road scrolls by underneath you. This has more of the feel of Sonic the Hedgehog with the camera struggling to keep up with the sudden changes of direction and bursts of acceleration.
I really hope that somebody decides to update this game for today’s slightly more robust systems. Combining this game with the Wii’s motion sensitive controller would lead to an incredible experience. I’d be first in line to buy it.
Another week, another creative way to lose. As a long-time Phoenix resident, I always hope that the Cardinals can find a way to win, and it’s alwaysa good feeling when they do manage a win. However, most of the time, wins are rare. It’s not that the Cardinals consistantly get blown out. To the contrary, they’re usually in a game to the end with a good chance to win. What makes the Cardinals the Cardinals is the creative ways they find to lose games.
When the Cardinals played 49ers in the first game of the season, they held a lead late in the game. The defense had held firm for the entire game until the last 3 minutes. Even after this defensive collapse, they still had a chance to win the game. A 49ers receiver fumbled the ball into the endzone and right to the feet of a Cardinals defender. Instead of falling on the ball and winning the game, the defender tried to pick up the ball, missed it, and allowed the 49ers to recover, score a touchdown, and win the game.
The third game against the Ravens started out as a blowout, but the 2nd half heroics of Kurt Warner led the Cardinals back into the game and only trailing by three. Warner led the team back into the redzone, threw a perfect pass into the endzone which was dropped. They settled for a field goal and a tied game. An unnecessary roughness penalty later, and the Ravens get close enough for a game-winning field goal.
Now, I never expected the Cardinals to beat the Ravens, few did. But it is just like the Cardinals to find a way to almost win, then find another way to blow it.
Good thing I’ve been a Cowboys fan for longer than the Cards have been in Arizona. They’re 3-0.
I have a weakness for board games. My wife finally forced me to pack up half of my board games so we could shut the game closet door. Yes, we have a closet just for board games. It started playing Risk with my dad in 2nd grade. We would play after dinner for three or four days to finish the game. And we always played to the bitter end. Years later our battles evolved into Axis & Allies. Again, we would play until every last Japanese infantry was destroyed in Tokyo. There was no such thing as surrendering.
My brother got me Ticket to Ride a year and a half ago and it was a big success with our family and friends. It finally seemed to be a perfect blend of strategy and fun that didn’t take forever and that I could convince my wife and sister to play too.
This year for his birthday I got him Ticket to Ride – Europe. The basic premise remains the same with a few rule tweaks and a new map. The Europe map seems smaller, but ends up being about the same size as the original US map, with a few more cities that you’ve never heard of. The design is great once again, and the rules easy to follow.
The biggest improvements over the original are the ‘long route’ cards and the stations. The original game started everyone off with three routes. The unlucky player that ended up with three low point cards was usually doomed to finishing in the middle of the pack. Europe separates out ‘long’ from ‘regular’ routes to give each player at least one chance at a high scoring route. Our first time playing still had one lucky player get one long and three regular routes that all basically overlapped, while the rest of us had to carefully choose which routes to keep.
The train stations are the best addition to the game in that they allow everyone to stay in the running until the end. The original game frequently featured some players stuck just one stop away from a city that they had to get to. The train station in the new game allows players to piggyback into a blocked city on someone else’s route. Players that manage to get through the game without needing to use the stations are rewarded with extra points.
The other additions to the game, tunnels and ferries, were interesting and added some variety to the game, but also made it more difficult to compete in some instances.
I can’t wait to break open the box and play it again.
All aboard!
I haven’t spent this much time playing console video games since my grade school days playing Final Fantasy (the first one, not VII) and Crystalis (how’s that for obscure). Of course, I’m talking about Guitar Hero
This is the rare video game that literally hooks you from the moment you first play it. There are other games that draw you into an elaborate tale or enthrall you with incredible imagery or blow you away with sound design. But Guitar Hero is one of the few games that will hook you from the first time you play, just because it’s fun.
It’s also one of the only games that I can regularly get my wife to play. She loves it. Her friends love to come over and play. It’s all the fun of Dance Dance Revolution without the ‘looking stupid’ part or the Japanese anime music. I’ve now gotten to the point where everyone that stops by the house has to at least try “I Love Rock n Roll.” After that they’re hooked too.
I’m going to predict it now. We’ll see what happens down the road.
The Guitar Hero (and related games; ie. Rock Band) will be the most successful video game franchise in history.
Ok. Here’s my little obscure rant about water. The little solution to so many little problems.
First of all, if you’re thirsty, drink some water. Some prefer filtered, others purified, still others tap. Some even prefer the unique taste of water from the hose. Iced or lukewarm, from the bottle or the glass, just drink the water. Sodas and tea and coffee and beer and juices are all fine at certain times, but if you are just plain thirsty, drink water.
If you’re on a diet, limit yourself to just water. You can call this the Eric Plan if you want. There is no sense in starving yourself day after day and not losing any weight because you’re drinking all of your calories. Anything other than water will add to the calories that you eat in a day but will not limit your hunger. You will end up hungry and miserable on a constant diet without actually losing weight. The only true “Diet” soda is water.
The opposite of dry is wet. This sounds so obvious, but it seems like there are millions of people who think that the opposite of dry is moisturized. Therefore, if you’re skin is dry, drink water. Same thing with chapped lips. Drink water. Applying moisturizer or lip balm will temporarily treat the symptom without curing the problem. In the long run your skin will adapt to the constant application of moisturizer and result in constantly dry skin. Drinking more water will permanantly cure dry skin.
I am currently re-reading and becoming re-engrossed in George R. R. Martin’s
There have recently been rumors of HBO turning these books into a mini-series with each installment taking up a season of episodes. HBO has recently had a fairly good track record with original programming, so I am cautiously optimistic that the story will survive the translation to a different medium.
Welcome to The Blog O’ Obscurity!
I can’t think of any more wonderfully obscure topic to kick off this blog than one of my favorite movies of all time. Not favorite like “The Godfather
Never heard of it? Exactly. That is why this is The Blog O’ Obscurity.
The ‘film’ ( I use the term loosely) begins in outer space with some New Wavy synthesizers rocking with the credits. Actually, the song sounds vaguely familiar. Turns out that the band is Real Life, who made it big in the 80’s with “Send Me an Angel.” I’m not saying that being featured in this movie in any way contributed to their lack of subsequent hits, but… Well, maybe I am saying that. This movie is nothing to include in your resume.
Anyway, through the vastness of space the title appears and is thoroughly smashed to pieces by a giant, flying, electric guitar. No, really. It’s even a “Flying-V” design to improve aerodynamics. (Not that there’s air in space.)
Inside this colossal musical instrument, a robot scans that galaxy for “Rock And Roll”. Strangely enough, he finds a duet from Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora. This has nothing at all to do with the rest of the movie, so just sit back and enjoy. Jermaine Jackson leads a gang of pseudo-Mad Max inspired punks along a beach when they encounter a gang riding mopeds dressed like nuns with too much eye makeup. Pia Zadora sits behind the leader of the Moped Nuns with silver eye shadow up to her hairline, but when Pia and Jermaine look upon each other, they are filled with an unquenchable yet forbidden desire. That’s what was probably written in the script. What we see is two people staring awkwardly at each other for some indeterminate amount of time. Long story short: Pia and Jermaine meet, fall in love, dance, and sing in harmony; the Moped Nun gang must now fight Jermaine’s gang with vicious dance high kicks; and then… Like I said, it doesn’t even relate to the rest of the movie.
So, the robot wakes up the alien crew (the band, Rhema) to tell them that he has located Rock And Roll on Earth. Rhema seems to be a cheaper and less talented version of Devo, and they subsequently break into an 80’s music video. We’ve now established the pattern this movie will follow: snippets of plot and dialogue sandwiched between music videos. Awful, terrible music videos. Hilariously overacted music videos. 80’s music videos.
Speaking of 80’s music videos, Dee Dee (Pia Zadora) is on the beach of Lake Erie and decides to dance the afternoon away with her boyfriend’s band (Jimmy & The Mustangs). This band combines the punk rockabilly of The Stray Cats with the hair of A Flock of Seagulls. Dee Dee’s boyfriend, Frankie (Craig Sheffer), shows up and shuts down the fun. Turns out, only Frankie is ‘allowed’ to sing in the band. (Even though he never actually does.)
Meanwhile, (and this movie does lots of ‘meanwhiles’) the Devo clones travel to Earth in a telephone booth transporter, transform their robot into a fire hydrant (eventually leading to gags involving parking tickets and urinating canines), and hit the town. When Abcd (Tom Nolan)(pronounced Absid; all the aliens have alphabetic names) sees Dee Dee for the first time he explodes, literally. Devo-band picks up the pieces and puts him back together in yet another music video. Eventually the aliens decide to play at the high school cotillion Battle of the Bands, and Abcd agrees to let Dee Dee sing with them.
Meanwhile, two chainsaw murderers escape from the local asylum, the bald one recognizable as the bald guy from the original “The Hills Have Eyes” (Michael Berryman). The psychos crash the party at the Battle of the Bands and interrupt Pia Zadora and all of the other 30 year old high schoolers in the middle of some bizarre “Don’t take your hands out of your pockets” dance. Dee Dee’s tomboyish best friend, Diane (Alison La Placa), is cornered by the bald psycho but ends up helping him fix his chainsaw in a mildly amusing scene soaked in obvious double entendre.
Meanwhile, a giant squid that we’ve occasionally glimpsed throughout the film wraps itself around the school. Dee Dee, Abcd, Frankie, Diane, and the bald psycho battle the squid to save the day.
Finding a copy of this ‘gem’ might prove difficult but is definitely worth it. The silliness of the plot combined with the constant music video interruptions makes this a completely unique experience.
About once a year I get really excited about an upcoming movie. This year I must have been extra good, because I’ve been absolutely out of my head waiting for two movies. Not the kind of movies that sound good the more you hear about them, but the kind of movies that fill you with the spark of anticipation from the instant you hear of them.
The first movie this year for me was 300.
The second is The Mist.
Stephen King has always been a favorite writer of mine, and a couple of years ago I finally read his short story, The Mist. When I heard that they were making into a film AND that Frank Darabont was directing, they had me sold. I didn’t need to hear another thing about it. I would see it opening week. Darabont has directed, not one, but the two best movie adaptations of King’s work. The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile were phenomenal books and movies. Other adaptations have met with mixed success. The Shining and Carrie also rank high as great movies, and I expect The Mist to join these as the best adaptations of King’s work.
It also helps that the trailer looks awesome and the cast features Andre Braugher. That dude’s can act.
Hey. Have you ever seen a really cool board game at the store, shelled out 40 bones, brought it home to discover that it was really, really lame. Have no fear. The people at boardgamegeek.com feature reviews and suggestions for all types of board games.
War games, party games, trivia games. See what other people had to say and whether it’s worth the money. Will it be an instant classic, a surprise treat, or a dusty box that sits on the top shelf. Find out.
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