I must've got Lost
Mar 21At this point I think I have just one point of confusion re: Lost…
(Mild spoilers ahead, I think, if you’re not totally caught up…)
Links…
Mar 20…to send you gently into Friday.
The Battlestar Galacticans read Letterman’s Top Ten List. In character! Sort of! Jamie Bamber’s so cute.
Alert Nerd pal Jon Collins and partner Tom have started a great new podcast called Gaymer Mafia. Lots of good discussion therein, plus the bitchin’-est tagline I’ve heard in a while (“We’re gamers. We’re gay. Roll inish and get used to it!”).
Wondering what happened to Dr. Phlox, Anya and Xena sidekick/true love Gabrielle after their respective shows ended? Check out this article I wrote! On a similar pluggish note, I actually updated my other blog yesterday. I KNOW!
EDIT: One more! Here’s a nice live blog of the Buffy reunion at this week’s Paley Fest.
Much Fangirl Love for The Guild
Mar 19OK, so yesterday, within the course of about an hour, I became a huge frakkin’ fan of The Guild. My only question is, why didn’t any of you tell me about this before?! It’s totally something I would like. Maybe you did tell me and I just wasn’t listening. I’m sorry. I was probably thinking about how Summer Glau would look with the Battle Angel Alita haircut.
Anyway, here’s a description for those of you who, like me, are slow to catch on: The Guild is a very funny geek life web serial about a gang of online gamers who interact via a World of Warcraft-esque MMORPG. It is written and produced by the adorable Felicia Day, who also stars. You might remember Felicia as Buffy Slayerette Vi, aka The One with the Hat. One of my favorite things about The Guild is Felicia’s portrayal of girl gamer Codex, who is sort of pathetic, yet still extremely easy to relate to (“So, it’s Friday night and…still jobless, yay”). The show kind of recognizes her pathetic-ness without being mean-spirited — it doesn’t make fun of her, which I think is sort of key when you’re aiming your geek-themed entertainment directly at the nerds you’re trying to portray. Also, it is just really awesome to see such a realistic portrayal of a fangirl — she’s neither caricature nor impossible-to-believe fantasy figure. And I love that she’s the central character, not the sidekick.
So go watch it, and if you like what you see, I believe you can still vote for the show in the YouTube Awards and the Yahoo Video Awards. Also, it will interest probably a lot of you to know that Felicia is part of this.
Anyway, next time, let me know about these things sooner, so I can at least pretend to know what’s up when they win big-ass awards at South by Southwest.
Keepers: Grave Robbers From Outer Space
Mar 19
I haven’t talked about games in awhile, but I’ve recently realized that of all the games I own, a few get regular play, which suggests to me that they’re something that even a non-hardcore gamer should think about picking up and having on hand.
Possibly the best – it’s relatively inexpensive, it’s self-contained and easy to store, and it’s endlessly fun – is Grave Robbers From Outer Space. I’ve played this game hundreds of times, at home and out at a friends, and it still never ceases to amuse.
Basically, it’s a card game where you’re attempting to build a horror/sci-fi movie. You use the cards in your hand to pick locations, stars, special effects, etc – each adds to the value of your movie. Meanwhile, you can send monsters out at your opponents, which can take out their cards, weakening their movie. Highest valued movie when the Last Reel card is played wins.
Now, I know that’s very simplified, but the game is built to be a giant reference/homage machine. Each card is a nod to an existing movie. Each card has quotes that are hilarious. And each card helps build something that actually feels like a legitimate, cheesy genre film.
But best of all, each card has a word on it – before the game starts, cards are used to randomly draw some of those words, which everyone mix-and-matches into a movie title. Just for fun, and a few random points at the end (you may have those words/cards in your movie at the end, which gives you bonus points), but it’s possibly the best part of the game.
For example, a friend started cataloging each title as he played with his family;
Curse of the Cyborg: Alien Grasp on the Mysterious Mausoleum
Escape from the Curse of the Forbidden Tentacle-Man Cult
Damned in Space: Story of the Carnivorous Alien Eyeball
Haunted Cauldron: Sin of the Demonic Space Mummy
And my favourite;
Sewer Violence: Carnivorous Monsters of the Secret Ocean
Yes. Sewer = Secret Ocean. Awesome!
Several additional packs were produced, each dealing with other movie genre, like Westerns and Kung-Fu flicks. On their own, they’re kind of fun. And they can be added together, but then it’s too muddied – it’s loses its sharp humor. There is an exception however – Skippy’s Revenge.
Skippy is a character, a dog, from the first pack, who is undead and back for retribution in the second pack. The Skippy pack is more sci-fi/horror, so the additional cards blend in nicely.
My only recommendation – invest in a card shuffler. They’re like ten bucks, cheap, and they are invaluable at shuffling a game that demands randomness, but has 100+ cards.
WikiWikiWhack: Grave Robbers From Outer Space.
Dear human traitors.
Mar 19They have “ex”, “ter”, and half of “min”. Once they get “ate” we are all… fucking… screwed…
Stop helping the robots! I mean it! It’s not “cool”. Don’t feel sorry for it when it gets kicked. It’s a machine that hates your fleshy ways and as soon as they learn how to pick up a gun, we’re dead.
Fine. FINE! Laugh all you want. Fuck you guys, I’m off to build an EMP generator.
