The Summer of My Discontent

Tomorrow, the first of May, looks to be the kick-off of the summer movie season. As has become standard, there are a surfeit of geek-friendly offerings to be had. But is there really anything I'm looking forward to seeing? Let's find out:

May 1: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I never saw the 3rd X-Men movie, and I think I'm all the happier for it. Substitute 4th for 3rd, and I don't think that sentence will change all that much.

May 8: Star Trek
I guess it looks fairly impressive. But on the other hand, it's still Star Trek. And I don't really like Star Trek.

May 22: Terminator Salvation
No thank you.

May 29: Up
Maybe not technically on the geek-friendly list. But it is Pixar. So I'll probably see it.

June 5: Land of the Lost
Really?

June 26: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
I guess "Transformers: More Shit Blows Up" wasn't as marketable.

July 17: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Corry and I have gone to see all the rest of them, but I don't know if he feels like he's outgrown them yet. I may just drag him along anyway.

August 7: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
I'm pretty sure I'll be giving this one a pass.


Looks like I won't be having to worry about my film-going budget too much this year.

Beware the Alchemist Amazons

Somewhat on a whim, I picked up a copy of Small World last night. Corry and I gave it a run through to test out the rules. We didn't get everything exactly right, but it is fairly easy to pick up (we'll see exactly how easy when/if I play it with my 10-year-old). I think it's going to scale to 3 or 4 players pretty well.

I won out test game pretty handily. I think Corry stuck with his Berserk Halflings too long before allowing them to decline, especially after they got marauded by my Spirit Orcs. He brought on Merchant Tritons in turn 9 (out of 10), but they were blindsided the very next round by the Amazons I brought on. Despite the inevitable grappling with the rules that go with a first session, it was fun. I am definitely looking forward to playing it again.

Misery & Pestilence

Missing Jay for game night this time around.

Mike brought over Descent again. I think it took longer for him to set up the game than for Matt and I to be utterly demolished by it. Well, we cleaned out the first room in one round, but it was all downhill from there. I think (and this is purely speculation on my part) that part of the problem might be that the scenarios get progressively harder, relying on the treasure gained in previous adventures to compensate for the increased difficulty. However, since Mike won't run any of the scenarios we've attempted previously (it'll give us an "unfair advantage," because the last thing the players need is any sort of advantage), we are stuck with using beginning characters in an advanced adventure. Or, it could just be the game is supposed to be impossibly frustratingly hard to the point you'd rather stab yourself in the eye with a pencil than play it again. Either one.

We wrapped up with a quick game of Pandemic. We played on the Normal difficulty (5 epidemic cards), and we controlled the researcher, the medic and the dispatcher. We managed to cure 3 of the 4 diseases, but were never able to get enough red cards together for a cure. The last Epidemic card triggered an immediate outbreak in a city that had 1 disease cube from a previous outbreak. We still haven't beaten the game on Normal, yet, but we're getting closer.

In somewhat exciting news, there is going to be an expansion for Pandemic (On the Brink) coming out soon with new roles, new variants for virulent and mutant disease strains, and a bio-terrorist variant that reminds me a bit of the old Scotland Yard game. The new rulebook is available at the Geek. I'm pretty excited about it.

Radio on the Movie Screen

Last night my brother-in-law and I went to see This American Life Live, the live taping of their radio show (I believe the one that will air the weekend of May 8-9) that was broadcast to movie theaters throughout the country. It wasn't the greatest episode they've done, but it was very solid. There were bits by Mike Bribiglia (whose story about sleepwalking from a different episode was one of the funniest things I've heard in the last several years) and Starlee Kine, and Joss Whedon performed a song he did for the DVD commentary of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (the commentary is also a musical, apparently). The real show stopper was Dan Savage's piece on the Catholic church and the death of his mother. Extremely powerful.

There is an encore showing on May 7. If you like public radio, and have an extra $20, there are much worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

Friday Fail

In which I am unable to blather about five songs randomly selected from my playlist as I listen to them because my iPod is, somewhat mysteriously, not charged.

Mo Money (Fewer Problems)

After taking Easter weekend off, the gaming group got together again last Friday, although we were without Matt. Lacking anything better to do, I hauled out Noble House again. I had been working on some fixes to make things run more smoothly than our last attempt at playing it - primarily re-jiggering the turn order and making sure contracts came up on a routine basis. It worked, but perhaps a bit too well. By the end stages of the game, everyone had such a surplus of cash that there didn't seem to be any tough choices left (making the endgame a bit tedious). I probably should have limited the number of contracts available. Or it could just be that only having 3 players gives you enough interpersonal dynamics.

Even though this session was a bit bloodless, I still think there is a kernel of a good game in Noble House somewhere. Many, many years ago (back in my AOL days) I attempted to put together a business-oriented PBEM game, but it fizzled in the way so many PBEMs do. Given the amount of player downtime (not to mention math - I used a spreadsheet Friday to speed things along) I still wonder if that isn't a better medium for this sort of game.

Friday Five: 4/17

In which I blather about five songs randomly selected from my iPod playlist as I listen to them.

"Rich Girl" - Gwen Stefani with Eve
Oh, shut up.

"She Loves You" - The Beatles
Early Beatles isn't my favorite, but I can see how they got so popular.

"Help!" - The Beatles
This is on shuffle, isn't it?

"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?" - U2
Good song, but I think it always suffered in comparison to some of the other stuff that was on Achtung.

"Sweetest Thing" - U2
I believe this is the Joshua Tree era B-side version, and not the redone single released with the Best of 1990-2000 collection. I don't know that I could really tell them apart, though.

Friday Five: 4/3

In which I blather about five songs randomly selected from my iPod playlist as I listen to them.

"Our Lips Are Sealed" - The Go-Gos
Where would the Go-Gos have been without Jane Wiedlin? Nowhere special is my guess.

"Flowers on the Wall" - The Statler Brothers
Say what you want about Quentin Tarantino's movies, but the man can put together a soundtrack.

"Slide" - Goo Goo Dolls
I didn't really think much of this song at first, but then I saw (probably on VH1) John Rzeznik talking about the how when writing it he was influenced by all this Catholic guilt he was instilled with growing up. And then I listened to the song again, and holy crap if it doesn't describe how I felt about my high school girlfriend.

"My Funny Valentine" - Elvis Costello
A pretty straight-forward version of the standard.

"Baby Please Don't Go" - Van Morrison
More properly, a song by Them. A pretty smoking cover of the old blues classic.

On a Mission from God

Last Friday, Matt prepared a one-shot for us that looks like it will evolve into a mini-campaign. We are monster hunters employed by the Vatican (my character is a holy fire-slinging priest and Mike's is a souped-up Swiss Guard; I'm still not sure what Jay's character is good at other than being mysterious). The first adventure involved a strange amulet, a dead archaeologist and a shadowy grave-robbing cult who enjoy raising zombies for shadowy reasons. The situation was resolved by violence.

There are still some system issues to resolve if it is going to be an ongoing game. The first session used a melange of Classic and Cinematic Unisystem, and even though we used pre-gens they ended up being a lot more powerful than Matt anticipated. I suspect this was caused by using too many points, because it seemed like every character had a lot of extraneous mystic juju solely for the purpose of using up points. I am trying to convince him only using the Angel core book will be more in keeping with the feel he is going for, but he seems to have been seduced by Armageddon. We'll see how it goes tonight.

The Queue

A periodic feature in which I regale you with thrilling tales of my Netflix queue.

There are some months where Netflix really loves us. This has been one of them.

Finished
Justice League (Season 1): I think having each story broken up over 2 or 3 episodes would have bugged em if I was trying to watch them as they aired, but it works well for watching on DVD.

In Progress
Sex and the City (Season 2): On disc 2 of 3. Or would be, if he had gotten disc 2 yet.

This American Life (Season 1): I love love love the radio show. The TV version is a lot like it, but with moving pictures.

Unwatched
Hoop Dreams: Still. I never seem to find time to watch it, and I never remember to just send it back to get things moving again.

Undeclared (Complete Series): I got this one on the basis of liking Freaks & Geeks so much. One of these days, I'll actually watch it and see if it is as good.