Media

26 entries. 32,652 words.

January, 2016

• Star Wars and X-Files (Spoilers). 2016-01-28 1:36 PM.
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  • Musings
  
  Star Wars: The Force Awakens Apparently the moratorium on spoilers for Star Wars is over, although personally I don’t think it should end until a film is released to streaming or rentals. The theater experience is not as good as my house, even though I don’t have an especially great television or sound system like I used to. Movies in theaters are generally awful experiences. There are very few movies that would get me to go to a theater anymore. Not any of the comic book movies, not The Martian, not Interstellar, not any of the upcoming nerdy movies coming out this year, pretty much nothing … except a new Star Wars movie. A Star Wars_ sequel_. With the original cast in it. 1,435 words.

April, 2017

• Rogue One (Spoilers). 2017-04-29 4:00 PM.
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  I did not see Rogue One in the theater. I regretted that decision for a day or two, then felt good about it. I decided that it was “fan fiction”-a term I don’t use in a particularly positive sense. (Sorry superfans.) I waited until it came to FIOS VOD. Then I forgot about it. Then I remembered it. I went into the movie with very low expectations. I wasn’t expecting “real” Star Wars. (I am expecting to repeat this behavior for the “Han Solo” movie.) 550 words.

May, 2017

• 13 Reasons Why (Spoilers). 2017-05-06 3:00 PM.
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  After Two Episodes I have seen a number of people on Twitter talking positively about the new Netflix show 13 Reasons Why, so I watched the first two episodes last night. I expected it to be a touching drama about a teen suicide, but it appears to be more of a tense psychological thriller, somewhat in the vein of I Know What You Did Last Summer (except that we, the audience, don’t know). 2,963 words.
• Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. 2017-05-11 3:00 PM.
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  This is another in my recent series of posts that I’m calling, “What in God’s name can I possibly find to schedule for publishing today.” I saw some folks on Twitter talking about the Farseer books by Robin Hobb, and since I’ve been looking for new stuff to consume, I bought the first book on Kindle, Assassin’s Apprentice. I almost used an Audible credit on it, but I have some complex rules about whether to get books in text format or audiobook format, and this one came up as text format. Besides, it was only $1.99. 836 words.
• The Shannara Chronicles. 2017-05-13 3:00 PM.
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  Continuing my pseudo-regular new series on television shows and movies I’ve watched recently, because … well, it’s something to write about. These are not “reviews” per se, but merely thoughts and observations. You can assume, though, that if I’m writing a post about a thing, it’s notable to me in some way, either especially good, or especially bad, or otherwise relevant somehow. Today I’d like to talk about a little show called The Shannara Chronicles. 1,277 words.
• Off To Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer. 2017-05-16 3:00 PM.
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  I needed to use up some Audible credits, so I picked up an audiobook called Off To Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer. I found it by looking up the works performed by Luke Daniels, one of my favorite audiobook readers, ever since I discovered him from listening to the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. (If you like the Harry Dresden books, you might also like IDC. It’s the same sort of thing, but with an Irish wolfhound.) 819 words.
• Grimdark. 2017-05-17 3:00 PM.
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  Grimdark TMNT from [1d4chan][1]. Artist unknown. A tweet caught my attention Friday and I thought about responding, but it was a topic that would fill a lot more than a couple tweets and I was looking for something to write about anyway. i'm never going to understand why people keep writing grimdark shit all the time. the world is miserable enough as it is. don't add to it. 995 words.
• Accountant, Bourne, 10 Cloverfield Lane. 2017-05-20 3:00 PM.
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  Last weekend I rented The Accountant on Verizon VOD. It was decent, but not quite good. I felt a pretty strong connection to Ben Afleck’s character because I can identify with many of the symptoms he reeled off about “high functioning autism.” I’ve never been diagnosed but I’ve always assumed I’m on the Asperger’s spectrum somewhere, enough to be recognizable, but not enough to be debilitating. The plot that went on around him, though, wasn’t all that interesting to me (corporate accounting woohoo). Still, there were good performances all around. 310 words.
• Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson. 2017-05-25 2:30 PM.
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  I wrote this pseudo-review sometime in 2016. I finally got around to reading Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson, which had been sitting in my Kindle library for years. I knew basically nothing about the book, except that it was one of those books that comes up a lot in geek circles, so I felt like I was obligated to read it. Neil Stephenson is a hit-or-miss kind of author for me. Snow Crash is the only other book of his I’ve read. I only read that one because, again, I felt like it was one of those books that a modern nerd simply had to read. I remember almost nothing about the story now, but I remember enjoying it up to a point about two-thirds of the way through, when it took a weird turn and/or ground to a complete halt and I lost interest and put it away. 485 words.
• Chris Cornell and Audioslave. 2017-05-26 2:30 PM.
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  Today’s writing topic is: Chris Cornell, who sadly committed suicide. I might be a smidge older than some of the other folks reminiscing on Twitter about Soundgarden and Chris Cornell in the wake of his recent death. My memory of Soundgarden is limited to exactly two songs from 90s radio: Black Hole Sun and Spoonman. I liked both songs, possibly even loved Spoonman. I remember vividly where I was the first time I heard it, actually. It’s an enthralling song. 674 words.
• The Man In The High Castle, S01E01. 2017-05-27 2:30 PM.
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  The other night I discovered that Amazon Prime has a long list of original shows just like Netflix. I don’t know how this escaped my attention. Actually I do know: I usually find something to watch on Netflix before I click the Amazon button on my Vizio remote. Anyway, scrolling through the Amazon Originals list I spotted The Man In The High Castle, which is a show I’ve heard about often but never realized it was an Amazon show. I don’t know where I thought it was. I just assumed it was on some channel I didn’t have, like Showtime or Starz or something. 726 words.
• SEVENEVES by Neal Stephenson. 2017-05-31 2:30 PM.
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  • Reviews
  
  I’m back with another book report. This time it’s SEVENEVES by Neal Stephenson (I have to look up the proper spelling of his name every single time), which I read sometime last year. (Hey, at least I’m writing this post this year!) In my Cryptonomicon review, I said Neal Stephenson is hit-or-miss with me, but this time he delivered a solid hit. I loved this book. It’s about the moon breaking up and destroying the world, and the steps taken to save the human race. I have always been a sucker for “disaster” stories so it had me as soon as I heard about it. (I can’t remember where I first heard about the book.) 730 words.

June, 2017

• Is This The Life We Really Want? by Roger Waters. 2017-06-03 3:00 PM.
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  I’ve been trying to write about a movie or television show every Saturday, but I didn’t have anything ready for today. So you get an album review! I’ve mentioned before that I’m a long-time Pink Floyd fan, so when I saw that Roger Waters would be releasing a new album, I instantly clicked that pre-order button on Amazon. The CD and AutoRip MP3s both arrived yesterday, Friday, June 2. I was very nervous to hear this album. After all, Waters’ last album Amused To Death is a masterwork of musical perfection. It would be hard to top it. Also, the only criticism I ever had of ATD is that Waters’ voice didn’t sound that great compared to his earlier stuff, which I chalked up to the ravages of the aging process. That was way back in 1992. 407 words.
• Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. 2017-06-09 2:30 PM.
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  • Reviews
  
  I bought Prince of Thorns back when it was relatively new on the market (a few years ago?). I read the first chapter, didn’t particularly care for it, put it away, and moved on to something else. Recently I found it again in my Kindle library after I wrote that bit about the grimdark genre, remembered that I’d only read a single chapter, and decided maybe I didn’t give it a fair shot. It’s at least popular enough to have spawned two sequels, so somebody must like it. 853 words.

August, 2017

• The Mist (2017). 2017-08-26 8:47 PM.
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  When I heard that there was a new version of Stephen King’s The Mist available to watch, I ran to my nearest cable box and found the ten episodes of season one buried in Spike TV’s video on demand on FIOS. The Mist has always been one of my favorite Stephen King stories. It was a novella at the beginning of the collection Skeleton Crew. (Survivor Type is the other memorable story from that book.) 600 words.

September, 2017

• Week of Movies. 2017-09-10 3:30 PM.
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  I've been in a very passive media consumption mood for the last week, so I've spent most of my free time watching movies instead of playing games. Here's what I've watched in the past week or so: Amazon Prime Oasis. Pilot for a stylish science fiction series. A priest is requested at a struggling offworld human colony. I always find it interesting when people of faith are portrayed as something other than stereotypical villains, especially in science fiction. This priest is a little too far on the stereotypical "cool guy therapist" anti-trope side, though, but hey, it's a step in the right direction. Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation. Popcorn flick. It was okay. Good stunts, as usual. Terminator: Genisys. Popcorn flick. It was terrible. #NotMyTerminator 13 Hours. Story of the Benghazi attack. I expected this would be a typical Michael Bay seizure-inducing flick, but it was remarkably reserved. I question the details of the film, but overall it "sort of" matched what I had read of the incident and was better than I expected. The entire film I was distracted by the fact that John Krazinski looked exactly like Zachary Levi from Chuck. The Battle of Chosin. Documentary on a disastrous Korean War battle that I had previously not known about, and the entry of China into that war. I watched it because I wanted to know more about how we got to where we are today with North Korea, and the roots of that are very much in the Korean War. It was a good documentary, but a terrible event. Hornet's Nest. Documentary following two embedded reporters during the Afghanistan War and an intense battle with the Taliban. Initially I watched this to understand more about the conditions of fighting in Afghanistan, but as it went on I felt it was more important simply to bear witness to what those guys went through. (Incidentally, Sand Castle is another good movie about the Afghanistan War-it's a drama but it presented the political situation pretty well.) Apocalypse Now. I'd never seen it before, and it's been on my "I should watch that someday" list for ever. It was okay. Some parts were good, other parts seemed to be drowning in pretentious cinema or like you had to be high to enjoy it. Not surprisingly, young Martin Sheen looked exactly like Emilio Estavez from Young Guns. Netflix Jaws. Never seen before. It was pretty good. Better than I expected a movie from the 1970s to be. The Siege of Jadotville. Dramatization of a Cold War incident that I'd never heard of before, about Irish soldiers trying to defend a town in the Congo during the 1960s. Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden. A dramatic recreation in the form of a documentary. It was okay. Tropic Thunder. Parody of Vietnam War movies by Ben Stiller. It was funny, but it was the kind of humor that you're ashamed to be laughing at and would probably not admit to anyone that you thought it was funny. :) Generally I prefer my humor to be a little more subtle, and this movie kind of hit you over the head with it. Still, it was better than I expected it to be. 538 words.

November, 2017

• The Dark Tower (Good vs. Evil Edition). 2017-11-01 1:52 AM.
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  [UPDATE: If you’re here to find out what the “Good vs. Evil Edition” actually is, as compared to the movie, I don’t know. I did not see the theatrical release. My best guess at this point is that the “Good vs. Evil Edition” includes a behind-the-scenes featurette after the movie, which I did not watch.] Mere moments ago, I finished watching The Dark Tower on FIOS-on-demand. This post will probably contain some spoilers for the movie and possibly even the books, but it’s not that bad, really. 900 words.

December, 2017

• The Last Jedi (Spoilers). 2017-12-18 3:30 PM.
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  This is a post about The Last Jedi, so don’t read any further until you’ve seen the movie. I’ll give you some blank lines to click away. Note: I added an update way at the bottom of this post. I’ll give you a few more blank lines just in case you accidentally flick your eyes down lower on the page. Okay, get ready. Brace yourselves. This is going to change everything you’ve ever known about everything, and your life will never be the same. I mean, it’s actually not like that at all. That sounded like an exciting invitation to keep reading. But really, don’t do that. 3,889 words.

February, 2018

• A Podcast Experiment. 2018-02-11 3:16 PM.
  • Administration
  • Media
  • Podcast
  
  I’m excited and terrified to announce that I’m launching an experimental podcast project tentatively called Main Quest and you-yes you-can listen to the first two episodes right here! Well, down below a bit, anyway. Have you ever been sitting at work, or driving your car, or waiting at the dentist, and thought, “I wish I could listen to the story from a game right now?” Well I have. A lot. So much so that I’ve recorded a lot of my own gameplay with OBS over the last two or three years, converted it to mp3s, and put them on my phone, just so I could listen to them at work. (I’ve never been able to play videos or watch Twitch at work.) 380 words.

August, 2018

• Nineties News Nostalgia on Netflix – Blaugust 9. 2018-08-09 7:48 PM.
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  • Media
  • Musings
  
   I just finished watching the American Crime Story: The People Versus O.J. Simpson series on Netflix. It’s pretty good. I’m not sure it deserved to win any Emmys, but I enjoyed it anyway, especially the second half of the series. I didn’t remember a lot of the twists and turns. I didn’t see much of anything about the whole OJ Trial when it happened. I remember the basic framework of it: The Bronco, the trial, the gloves, the acquittal. Oops, spoiler alert! Anyway I didn’t pay any attention to the details at the time. For example, I never knew that OJ’s friend is the same Kardashian that spawned all the Kardashians we know and love today. 297 words.
• More Netflix Documentaries – Blaugust 10. 2018-08-10 6:13 PM.
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  You might have noticed I don’t post a lot about games here, and that’s mostly because I haven’t played much of anything in the last month. So the “here’s what I played last night” style of post is completely off the table for me so far in Blaugust. It makes it kind of hard to think of something to say. :) I could tell you what I watched last night, which was a Netflix documentary called Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist. I had never heard of the so-called “pizza bomber” before, and the 4-part series fascinated me, in the same way that one is fascinated watching a train wreck. I don’t often watch documentaries about recent events (though I suppose one could argue that 2003 isn’t exactly “recent” anymore), and I was struck by how strange and unsettling it was to see a lot of HD footage. Documentary footage is supposed to be grainy restored film or old photographs moving around with Ken Burns’ panning and zooming effects. 550 words.
• Sunday Browns and Disenchanted Disappointment – Blaugust 19. 2018-08-19 3:36 PM.
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  Drustvar, the brown zone … for a few steps, until the lighting changes. Today is not just an “I can’t think of anything to write” day, it’s an “I actively don’t want to write because I hate the way I write” day. I was working on a post about comments last night but it’s not finished and I don’t want to post it until it is. 581 words.

May, 2019

• Game of Thrones Notes: Season 8, Episodes 1-3. 2019-05-04 11:24 PM.
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  The following is a slightly edited but mostly unedited copy of the notes I take while watching Game of Thrones. I watch with a laptop and bash out thoughts as they occur to me, then I go back after the show and fill in extra details in brackets. I had ideas of turning these notes into real posts but since I never did it for season 7, and there’s over 4,000 words of stream-of-consciousness commentary down below, at this point you just get what you get. 5,888 words.
• Game of Thrones Notes, Season 8, Episode 4. 2019-05-12 10:07 PM.
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  I’m still playing Sekiro, so not much to write about until I’m finished with it. Until then, more notes on Game of Thrones! Thought I should post them before the new episode airs to lock in my predictions for the Internet office pool. Episode 4 Seeing from Twitter that there are spoilers for the episode and not even 5 pm yet. Was there another leaked episode? Probably. Undoubtedly. I had to find the leaked episodes last season so I could watch them before people posted spoilers from them. Was a pain. 2,245 words.
• Game of Thrones Notes, Season 8, Episode 5. 2019-05-17 9:26 PM.
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  Yes, I’m still playing Sekiro, so nothing else to talk about. I will publish a massive, massive post when I’m done (I’m on what I think might be the final boss as I’m typing this, then I have some backtracking to do). I’m aware that there’s a new episode of GW2 but I couldn’t care less. I’m aware that WoW Classic is in beta but I couldn’t care less. I’m aware that there’s a new thing coming for ESO but I couldn’t care less. I’m aware that City of Heroes is ironically the most exciting and popular new MMORPG out now but I couldn’t care less. 3,237 words.

August, 2020

• Worldview-Shaping Media. 2020-08-03 3:19 PM.
  • Media
  • Musings
  
  Or: “I could actually use a bionic eye about now.” I didn’t intend to write about every Promptapalooza topic this month, but I don’t have any games to play at the moment, and I’m trying out a new blogging idea called “writing and publishing posts.” The prompt for August 2nd, which was actually the third prompt, [started with Mailvaltar][2], and asks What are some key sources of media (games/movies/etc) that have shaped your worldview? 487 words.