This is awesome. And I learned a lot about Kant’s aesthetics.
[from i09]
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Lots going on here. And by “here” I mean “in my head” more than just us being busy. I’ve got lots of fairly unfocused thoughts flying about, on all sorts of topics. There’s the usual teaching and committee work. I’m plugging away at the philosophy of travel research and writing. And I’ve been doing lots of thinking about gaming, as the previous post attests.
Thus, when today’s blog entry by Neil Gaiman led me to Curious Expeditions, I gave a small squeal of delight (hopefully unnoticed by by coworkers and students), because this blog is filled with photos and articles of the odd and wonderful that feed both the travel and the gaming fires. Seriously, look at the latest entry on The Dark Church. Doesn’t that make you want to go there? Or, barring that, plan an adventure where the PC’s are chased down that dark and narrow staircase by some Unspeakable Horror?!
Maybe that’s just me.
File this under “I wish I had thought of it first” (but if I had, maybe I’d be working for Neil Gaiman).
I read Neil Gaiman’s blog. Mr. G is in China now, so isn’t blogging, but his pal Dan is keeping the blog active while he’s behind the Red Curtain. I found today’s entry, both the Twilight spoof and the Miley Cyrus reference, particularly funny. The later certainly fits with the theme of my blog, such as it is.
You see, the thing about that damn “Party In the U.S.A.” song is not that it’s fairly innocuous pop. I’m fine with that. It sticks in my head like a splinter, granted, but I can deal with that. I can even deal with the Brittany Spears name-checking. It’s actually the “It’s a party in the U.S.A.” line at the end of the chorus, which just seems ridiculous and out of place. Why can’t the song just be about you, Miley? Why?
I could make up some excuse like “I’ve been busy” to explain my blog neglect. While I have been busy, I know that’s just a lame excuse. It’s really just a matter of priorities, of writing instead of watching TV or random internet surfing. It’s so hard to get into the habit of writing and so easy to get out of it.
The past week has been busy. Classes ended Monday, with my last class coming last Friday. I can honestly say that, for various reasons, this has been the hardest semester I’ve had since my first semester of teaching. Now, though, it’s over with only a small mountain of grading standing between me and summer. This summer is still a bit of a question mark. I’m scheduled to teach two summer classes (one in May and one in July), but only the Maymester class has made so far. I certainly hope both make, as we definitely could use the extra money. On a pure credit hour basis, Winthrop’s summer school is actually cheaper than regular tuition, so there is incentive to take summer classes.
This past weekend I drove to Raleigh for NC Game Day, a mini-convention of sorts. By this point, though, it’s more a gathering of friends who happen to game. I’ve met most of the regular attendees before; most of them I know through the ENWorld and CircvsMaximus. I think it’s great that a messageboard can be the springboard for some great friendships and some great gaming. I played in two very fun games — Savage Worlds Pirates of the Caribbean and the new Song of Ice and Fire game from Green Ronin. For the second time ever, I ran a game at NC Game Day. I’ve been tinkering with a setting that’s a mismash of Conan, The Dark Tower, The Road Warrior, and Westerns. I ran a game in that setting using the Savage Worlds system. It went very well, I thought, considering it was the first time I’ve ever run a Savage Worlds game. Hopefully, I’ll be able to devote an entire entry to that soon.
The other big thing going on is that my daughter has been sick. She woke up from her nap last week with a red, swollen eye. At first we thought it was just allergies, but a fever developed over the weekend, so we took her to the doctor on Monday. She had a serious eye infection, to the point where the doctor immediately gave her an antibiotic shot and told us to come back today. The eye was a little better and the fever was gone, so we got an oral antibiotic prescription and a Friday appointment. My daughter is already doing better this afternoon, so hopefully she’s getting over this thing and will be back to normal soon. The doctor told us that eye infections can be serious because they can easily spread back to the brain, which is why she treated it so aggressively. I am glad she did!
That’s a brief update. There’s a new Lost this week (100th episode!), so there will be another letter, plus other entries this week. I need something to do besides grade papers! I also need to work on getting back into the habit.
I have my issues with io9. They put out a lot of stuff that I am not interested in. They have a little too much snark. And my Lost updates are better. But this post coins one of the best phrases I’ve heard in a long time: Nerd Cultural Insurgency.
Although I prefer the term “geek”, but let’s not quibble.
I like Chabon a lot, not only for his writing — Gentlemen of the Road is one of the best things I have read in years — but also for his “coming out” as a Serious Literary Writer who is also interested in comics, genre lit, and — dare I say it — story. His Q&A at Wondercon covered some of these topics; he pointed out the growing (or maybe even mature) place of genre influence in serious art circles.
This makes me think about Watchmen, which opens Friday. It just occured to me that a lot may be riding on a movie based on a comic that is widely regarded as a paradigmatic example of the comic genre’s ability to be serious art. If the movie is just an action fest, especially one with “dark superheroes”, then it may hurt the sort of integration that Chabon is advocating. If the movie works on an artistic level similar to the comic, then it could further the breaking down of genre barriers. More about Watchmen later, as I hope to have a post about it later this week.
I thought this was pretty funny.
Kevin Garnett and the Quest for the Holy G
It also has better special effects than the original.
As I write this, The Empire Strikes Back is on television. As anyone who is remotely involved in geek culture will tell you, this is the best of the Star Wars movies. We get Han Solo being a badass in various forms, some romance, Luke beginning to learn about his past, and the harsh, dark ending: Han frozen in carbonite and “Luke, I am your father.” Awesome. I remember standing in line to get into this movie in 1981 with my dad and my neighbor/best friend Travis, just as I remember my jaw dropping with Vader’s revelation at the end. We were at the theatre in Owensboro in the shopping center just down from K-Mart, the one with the Sir Beef in the parking lot near the main road.
It’s a very strong and positive memory.
Except now I can’t watch this movie without thinking about the horribleness that is Episodes 1-3. Yoda has gone from wise and wizend old master to mini-ninja on jumping juice. Vader is no longer the Dark Lord of the Sith, but a incoherent, petulant child. The mysterious and deadly Boba Fett is some cloned child, coming from a plot thread so convoluted and full of holes, to point them all out would require more time than I can devote, even with my furlough days. Let’s just pick one: why does Yoda have to inform Obi-Wan that “there is another” hope? Obi-Wan was there when Leia was born! And Chewbacca and Yoda were friends! What the hell?
I know it’s de rigeur to hate on Lucas and the prequels; I am jumping on a bandwagon that’s already very, very full. At first I was dismissive of the hate. Lucas made bad movies (I think we can all agree on that), but I said he didn’t make them for me, or any other 30ish fan. He made them for himself and, probably, for kids today. That’s fine, I said, I still have my original three movies and all the fun and joy they brought me. Except I don’t, not only because I think about the prequels every time I watch the original ones, but because he’s tinkered with those original ones to such a degree.
It’s like you have a favorite dish from childhood — your mom’s meatloaf. It’s awesome. You lived on it as a kid. Every time you eat it now, or any meatloaf, really, it makes you feel young and warm inside. Sure, it may not be the best food in the world, but it tastes good and occupies a special place in your heart. But one day you go home and your mom has changed the recipe a little. Not too much — it’s still her meatloaf — but she’s added a few spices. It’s not the same, but the basic taste is there, along with all the warm feelings you carry with the memories of the original meatloaf, so you eat it up and feel okay about it all. She tells you she doesn’t make the original stuff anymore, so you take what you can get. Then, one day, you come home for meatloaf and she tells you she’s made this great salad that you need to eat before the meatloaf. It’s got all these wonderful tastes and spices that make the meatloaf even better! So you eat the salad. And it’s horrible. Just gross. And it does remind you of the meatloaf. Except now you can’t eat the meatloaf without thinking of the disgusting salad. You want too, because you love the meatloaf. The meatloaf recipe hasn’t changed (your mom even says she’ll cook you the original meatloaf recipe), but now every time you taste the meatloaf, the salad comes to mind. It’s all ruined.
Thanks, George, for spoiling my meatloaf.
I collect comics. I have, on an off, since I was 11 or so. It started with some random G.I. Joe issues which coincided nicely with all those toys I kept loosing, but the first comic I ever really remember buying for myself was Amazing Spider Man 298. Collectors will note that this is Todd McFarlane’s first issue, which makes it valuable. I didn’t know or care about any of that, however, when I bought it off the spinner rack at convienience store named “The Pantry” just up the street from my grandmother’s house. That was in 1988. I tried to buy all the Spider Man I could find after that, a feat that was made easier when Two Guy’s Comics opened in Conway, right next to my dad’s office. Sometimes I would walk all the way from West Conway Middle to the comic store, a trek of 4 miles, to hang out and get my comics. Come to think of it, I probably annoyed the crap out of the two brothers that ran the place.
My high school years, and the zenith of my collecting phase, coincided with the rise of The Speculator and, in general, a transition to a very crappy period in comics. It’s sort of like what Lester Bangs tells young William Miller in Almost Famous — too bad you missed it kid, but you get to hear the death rattle. Sure, good stuff was happening. McFarlane was drawing AMS. Some guy named Jim Lee started drawing Uncanny X-Men. Robin got blown up by the Joker due to a phone-in vote. McFarlane gave way to Eric Larsen because he got his own Spider-Man book and, later, started Image. Venom went from being a cool enemy with a nice backstory that tied it into Spider history to some sort of anti-hero. Somehow everthing got sat on it’s ear and Rob Liefield became popular. Yet, truth be told, I have more Eric Larsen Spider-Man books than McFarlane Spider-Man books. I probably have more Liefield X-Men than Jim-Lee X-Men. Which probably explains why I think The 40 Worst Rob Liefied Drawings is so amusing.
(And I still haven’t gone to the comic shop in Fort Milll to fill in my AMS lag, dammit).
I am a big Simon Pegg fan. I loved Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and am excited that he’s Scotty in the Star Trek reboot. As the tag line of this blog suggests, I am also a fan of taking rather trivial pop culture phenomena (say, zombie movies) and thinking seriously about them (say, arguing that shambling zombies are a metaphor for death). Both of those reasons are why I love Pegg’s review of Dead Set in The Guardian.
I, too, am a proponent of Slow Zombies.
All the excitement generated by del Toro’s upcoming two-film version of The Hobbit has gotten me thinking about the novel a bit. It was seminal in my childhood, but that didn’t stop me from a reaching a critical realization today on the drive home: The dwarves in that story accomplish almost nothing whatsoever.
Let’s look at the evidence:
- The dwarves get captured by the trolls. Gandalf saves them.
- The dwarves get captured by goblins in the mountains. Gandalf saves them.
- The dwarves (and Gandalf) get cornered in trees by goblins and wargs. The eagles save them.
- The dwarves get captured by spiders. Bilbo saves them.
- The dwarves get captured by elves. Bilbo saves them.
- The dwarves can’t get in to the mountain. Bilbo goes in (in all fairness, this was his job all along).
- The dwarves don’t kill the dragon. Brand of Lake Town does.
Granted, the dwarves do a lot of damage in The Battle of the Five Armies, but it takes the eagles to turn the tide against the goblins.
Am I missing something, or did those dwarves kinda suck?
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