Matt’s Week in Dork! (2/19/12-2/25/12)

Other Men’s Women:  A kind of douchy guy starts hanging with his swell chum and said chum’s understanding wife.  All’s well for quite some time, until Douchy McDouche and the cute young wife get a taste of something extra.  Before they can go too far, McDouche takes his leave, but not soon enough.  Problems and troubles.  Blindness, drunkenness, and lots of coffee.  Pretty good movie, though the end, like a lot from the pre-Code days, is kind of bent.  Still not sure what James Cagney is doing in the movie, other than dancing.

The Purchase Price:  Barbara Stanwyck is a torch singing floozy, who flees the life and ends up in an arranged marriage in North Dakota.  OK, sure.  The weird premise ends up working for the most part, and the leads are all quite charming.  It’s a fun old timey romantic comedy with lots of colorful characters and adventures.

The Wall Street Mystery:  This short film is feels like a TV show episode from 30 years later, but it’s enjoyable in a light sort of way.  Though, yikes.  The horribly racist portrayal of the elevator attendant.  Wow.  The investigating doctor is an odd bird, that’s for sure.

Platinum Blonde:  This movie is the berries.  A wise cracking reporter gets a hankerin’ for a rich dame, breaking the heart of his best friend (also a dame!).  Whatever it was that Jean Harlow did to men in her day, she does not do to me.  She’s got comic timing and acting talent, but her sex symbol status is beyond me.  Loretta Young, however, has a certain doe-eyed pluck I find quite charming.  The movie takes on the idle rich as a working man is tempted by the luster of wealth.  Is he a bird in a gilded cage?

A Perfect Murder:  I can’t help it.  I want Michael Douglass to succeed at every turn.  First off, his wife is awful.  Secondly, her boyfriend is a douche.  And thirdly, Douglass is just so danged charming.  The film is extremely 90s, with its no nudity clause sex scenes and almost made for TV, over sanitized feel.  But frankly, Douglass’ reference to a woman as a “Castilian femme fatale” alone was worth the price of admission.  It does serve to remind me just how much I don’t care for Gwyneth Paltrow.  How did she have a career again?

Frisco Jenny:  A young woman from the wrong part of town takes on the world with her wits and cunning.  She’s anything but an angel, but she has one light, her son.  Adopted by a family with money, makes good; better than he’d ever have made with his mother.  Jenny tries to be the young man’s guardian angel, but her shady life and sordid history will haunt them.  The movie follows an interesting path, leading to an interestingly filmed and edited courtroom scene.  Ruth Chatterton gives a heck of a performance as the title character.

The Studio Murder Mystery:  Donald Meek is back as the weirdass doctor/investigator, on the prowl for a good mystery.  His cop buddy that keeps calling him in is great, too.  Just a big dumb lug.  Look, Meek is a strait-up creeper.  I have no idea why they made more than one of these shorts.  And there’s a dude that looks like Nic Cage (once again…vampire?).

Midnight Marry:  “I’ll give you a ring sometime…Maybe.”  A hard-luck kid gets chewed up and spit out by the system, turning into a wild child.  Loretta Young plays the corruptible young woman in this bleak movie about crime, poverty, and the depths of life on the street.  The Depression hit’s the streets like a gut punch.

Terror of the Bloodhunters:  Lacking in the dubious charm of a Corman movie of the same era, this movie is just a bit too dull, and not quite sensationalist as it should be.  The cast is easily forgotten, nor are there any particularly fun or memorable moments.  It is.  That’s about it.

Liane: The Jungle Goddess:  Bad dubbing and awkward, somewhat exploitative stock footage go along with a moderately attractive woman who doesn’t seem to mind taking her top off.  Not at all a good movie, it’s kinda amusing in its way.  Pretty typical of the ‘blonde jungle girl’ subgenre of lowbrow adventure films.

Metropolis:  OK, I know I’ve reviewed this before.  Probably several times.  Heck, I’ve seen this movie countless times (in myriad versions).  But, seeing the complete version, on the big screen at the AFI Silver, with a live band, was a real thrill.  And seeing it with a friend who had never seen it, and another who had never seen any silent film before was a special treat.  What a way to first experience the movie.  And it is a heck of a film.  You can see the roots of so many movies over the decades in its visuals and concepts.  And of course, like many true classics, its messages and themes are as timely today as when it was filmed.  One thing I really like about the movie is that the villains aren’t truly evil.  Even mad scientist Rotwang can be sympathized with.  He is a wronged man, lost in grief, and driven to set things right, not some soulless monster.  And it might be corny, but the overall theme that the head and the hand must be mediated by the heart is something I genuinely believe.  I appreciate the visceral and the cerebral, the high and the low, the mind and the body, the civil and the brutish, order and chaos.  Balance.

Tarzan, The Ape Man:  In an EXTREMELY loose adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic adventure novel, Tarzan appears as a dumb, if handsome, doof.  A plucky young woman enters his life, screams and complains a lot, and romance is born.  There are some pretty cool bits, but I can’t help wishing the book had served as more than a source of a title.  And am I nuts, or are those Indian elephants with prosthetic ears?  I’m not a biologist or anything, but they don’t look right.

Tarzan Escapes:  Much of the goofiness of the first film remains.  But dang if Maureen O’Sullivan doesn’t look seriously hot.  For some reason, Tarzan is still an idiot.  One would think that simply being around Jane and listening to her talk would have taught him a thing or two, but alas, he still does little more than parrot her words.  This movie also makes use of stock footage from previous films.  Watch out for ju-ju, man.  On-gawa.

Coffy:  The movie that made me fall in love with Pam Grier and Blaxploitation, Coffy is crazy.  It’s violent, deviant, filled with memorable characters and performances (not always good, but memorable none the less), and lots of flesh.  If you want a taste of Ms. Grier, the subgenre, or if you’re already a fan but haven’t seen this, check it out.  It’s a must.

Heroes for Sale:  “It may be the end of us, but it’s not the end of America.”  The horrors of war and the winds of fate take their toll on two men.  A fortunate son who turned yellow in the trenches ends up with awards and accolades, while a workaday schlub gets injured and hooked on morphine.  But schlub or no, he’s got grit and makes good.  But, as with a lot of movies from the time, things don’t go well for too long.  The system crushes all.  And after our hero has been chewed up and spit out, he gets stepped on and ground into the pavement.  It’s no shock that folks in the Depression would identify with movies like this.

    And Ben and I checked out a couple TV shows; John Adams, The Outer Limits, and The Twilight Zone.  John Adams seems pretty interesting.  I need to finish it off one of these days.  It’s not an era I’m especially familiar with, but should be.    And of course, I love me some classic anthology sci-fi.

    I also got through the second disk of Smiley’s People, which I’m enjoying much more than Tinker Taylor Sailor Spy.  It’s a good series, with a slow building tension that makes me hungry for the next episode.

       Book wise, I finished the Halo novel I’ve been picking at for a while.  It was a good deal of fun to read, and I’m interested in what the next one will bring.

    With all that, I still managed to host a second game night, which went quite well, I thought.  I’ll post about that later.

-Matt

Book Review: Halo: Cryptum

    Greg Bear has been around for a long time.  His is one of those names I’ve seen on the sci-fi shelves whenever I’ve scanned them.  But I’ve only ever tried him once before, when I was a young lad when I read Strength of Stones.  Frankly, I didn’t like it, in spite of some awesome ideas.  So, when I saw that there was a new Halo book out, exploring the universe’s ancient past and the origins of the Halos themselves, I was very excited.  But when I saw Bear’s name attached to it, I became a bit wary.  I picked up the book none the less and gave it a go.

    This is the first in what is called The Forerunner Saga (not to be confused with Andre Norton’s Forerunner series, which I’m also reading), and deals with the mysterious race that built the Halo first discovered by man in the video game, and the others learned about later.  We learn about their culture, their religious devotion to something known as The Mantle, the corruption of that devotion, and the breakdown of a millennia old way of life.  And we see it all through the eyes of a spoiled brat of a rich kid, who grows up as his world falls down. 

    I find it interesting that Humans play a part in this history, and that even in this deep history, there is a deeper history going back countless ages.  That here, Humans have been active on the galactic scene before, having made something of an empire for themselves, before being crushed by the Forerunners and limited to their homeworld, which would become known as Earth.

    The book does take a while to really get going, and I found the narrator to be kind of a pain in the ass (though that is intentional) and the setting takes a bit to get a handle on.  But it’s worth the effort.  Once it does get on a roll, things move pretty fast.  There are some really grand ideas and images, some interesting characters, and a lot of stuff set up, hopefully to be explored in the next book.  Now that I’ve enjoyed this book as much as I have, I’m going to have to look back on some of Bear’s other work, and give him another go.

Halo: Cryptum
Author: Greg Bear
Publisher: TOR
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3004-8
Pages: 343

Prodigal Son: Reading Science Fiction

Part Eighteen

    I’ve been eating up science fiction since I was a wee lad.  Give me laser blasters, space ships, giant alien lizards, and hot ladies (yes, the green ones too) in jumpsuits and I’m there.  Serious stuff, silly stuff, heroic stuff, and sleazy stuff.  I love it.  Not to say I’ll read anything.  Considering I’ve read several Star Trek novels, enjoyed the heck out of the Aliens/Predator books, and love Warhammer 40,000 stuff far more than it deserves (and much more than I enjoy the game), I’m actually quite picky when it comes to reading novels.  Like art or pornography, I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.

    After several years with very little fiction outside graphic novels getting jammed in my brain, I recently went on a classic science fiction kick.  I read books by Andre Norton I’ve been meaning to check out since I was a kid.  I read the first in a long series of John Grimes novels by A. Bertram Chandler.  I even picked up a Halo novel set in that video game universe’s distant past (not gonna lie, I absolutely love the universe that game is sit in; the game is a ton of fun, too).  And then, this week, for some reason I don’t fully understand, I was prompted to order and pick up all (well, two aren’t out yet) of Poul Anderson’s ‘Technic Civilization’ books, which have recently been collected in a series of omnibuses (omnibi?) from publisher Bean.  I’d tried a Flandry novel many years ago, at my father’s suggestion, but for whatever reason, couldn’t get into it at the time.  Perhaps, the time is now…ish.  Flandry doesn’t show up until something like the fourth omnibus. 

    Going back to reading Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth books and Larry Niven’s Known Space stories in high school, not to mention Heinlein’s Future History, Frank Herbert’s Dune books, and Asimov’s Foundation a bit later, I’ve loved expansive, well thought out science fiction settings and the cool characters that frequently inhabit them.  I find myself trying hard to imitate the grandiose, sometimes bloated histories and mythologies of these settings in my own work, for what it’s worth, and to varying degrees of success.

    The kind of science fiction I’ve got in mind goes way back.  At least as far back as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars (about to have a film version released as it turns 100 years old), and taken  up several notches by the likes of C.L. Moore with her Northwest Smith stories (as I’ve called them before, The Adventures of Han Solo as written by H.P. Lovecraft…with sex).  It’s the kind of star-hopping, rocket fueled adventure brought to the funny pages in Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.  (Burroughs’ John Carter and the Flash Gordon serials were probably the two biggest inspirations for Star Wars all those decades later).  But it probably had its time in the sun during the late 40s, the 50s, and early 60s, as the postwar era of hope and prosperity, along with the space race and fear of world ending atomic war, drove writers to envision star system and galaxy spanning civilizations, peopled with all sorts of cultures, creatures, beings, and ideas. 

    Each generation of writers built on, and/or reacted to the previous, creating waves of style and concept as technology changed, our culture changed, and our perception of ourselves and our future evolved.  At some point, the reaction against the boundless imagination and hope of earlier generations became the stronger element in science fiction, and the naysayers and neo-Luddites took control of the genre, preaching the evils of progress, the essential darkness and hopelessness of the human condition, and lots of other depressing, self-hating, anti-human nonsense the likes of which has rarely been achieved outside of French film or the Bible.  Not all of this post-Twilight Zone, post-hippie, irony besotted literature was (or is) bad.  And heck, I like a bleak dystopia as much as the next guy, and I’ll always have a place in my heart for cyberpunk.   But a lot of the wonder and thrill went out of the more popular science fiction.  I suppose it migrated over to the Tolkien disciples writing fantasy, but I couldn’t stick with that for long.  Too much ‘chosen one’ and stark ‘good VS evil’ dichotomy for my taste.  Not to mention that spells and demons were never as cool as blasters and aliens, even if their archetypal place within the story was essentially the same. 

    I don’t know if that logically brings me to my next point or not, but, onward I go.  One of the types of gaming I’m most interested in, but have had precious little experience of, is that Golden Age science fiction style adventure.  I’ve played a bit of Star Wars, run some Star Trek, Fading Suns, and Blue Planet.  But, I never played Traveller, which is solidly within the subgenre I’m grasping at.  I suppose there’s almost a spectrum, with Star Wars (and Fading Suns) on one end, and Blue Planet on the other.  Star Trek seems kind of off to one side, toward the Blue Planet end.  And Traveller would be the very center.  Kind of generic, yet balanced in a way that makes it special.  My recent discovery and purchase of Diaspora, which I’m sure was part of what got me back on this kick, seems tailored to my interests and gaming aspirations.  With a setting at just about the right balance that Traveller has, and a system more in tune with my low-maintenance, low-math, simple, quick and easy kind of gaming style, it may be just what I need and just what I want to play (hopefully soon).  

    So, putting together a good reading list for the sort of science fiction I am specifically enamored of at this moment, I’ve come up with a few selections.  They vary quite a bit, ranging across the above indicated spectrum, from the near fantasy of Dune (the RPG Fading Suns is on this end) to the semi-realistic techno-thriller of a Michael Crichton novel or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (the RPG Blue Planet is somewhere in this area).  They appear on this list in no particular order. 


C.L. Moore- Northwest of Earth: A dashing rogue travels among the worlds of the Solar system, making a quick buck and battling nameless and ancient things that lurk in the shadows of dead and near-dead civilizations.  Moore’s stories manage to capture a lot of the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, but with a subtle humor and an undercurrent of disquieting sexuality that wasn’t all together common in her peers (though few were more asexual than Lovecraft). 

Larry Niven- The Known Space books, especially Ringworld, Protector, and The Integral Trees:  A super-science heavy, deep history featuring setting with lots of interesting characters and cultures.  This is some real Big Idea stuff.  Sometimes reading it, I get that very small feeling I get when looking at the night’s sky.  Don’t take that wrong.  I feel small.  I feel awed.  But I feel more alive than at any other time.  The universe is there.

Mike Resnick- His Far Future books, especially Santiago and The Return of Santiago:  Capturing some of the essential American Frontier vibe of classic Westerns, Resnick weaves myth with science fiction and creates magic.  Santiago was one of the most satisfying novels I’ve ever read.  It felt like I’d just sat across the fire from a master storyteller.  I imagine hearing Homer relate The Odyssey live would have felt something like it.  Also, if you enjoy Firefly’s special blend of science fiction and western, this should have plenty for you to love. 

Isaac Asimov- Foundation:  The Foundation trilogy is definitive Golden Age science fiction, with world-cities, sprawling civilizations, amazing technologies, and epoch spanning plots.  Like an archeologist finding the origins of our modern world in the remnants of ancient ruins, I found myself constantly picking up bits and ideas that would shape everything written after. 

E.C. Tubb- The Dumarest novels:  Though frustratingly difficult to get hold of right now, I’ve read a few of these, and the universe they create is interesting and exciting.  Dumarest is a wandering orphan of sorts, lost out there somewhere, just trying to find his way back home.  His home happens to be the mythological Terra, the supposed birthplace of humanity.  And some very bad people want to find it before he does.

Frank Herbert- His Dune novels:  Well deserving of its place as a classic of science fiction, I would argue that Dune is in fact simply a classic of literature in general, and should be much more widely read.  I even got a friend who HATES science fiction to read it, and he loved it.  It transcends genre like few others.  Juggling complex issues of science, religion, politics, and all the many things that we humans get up to when nobody’s watching, it features world building on a scale at least as big as Tolkien, but with masterful plotting and writing, too accompany.  And you know what?  I like all five of Frank Herbert’s sequel novels, too.  Yes, even God Emperor of Dune, a book where almost nothing happens for more than 400 pages, and I couldn’t get enough.  Herbert’s universe is grand, complex, heart stopping, sad, wondrous, and terrible.  And yet, as crazy as the specifics often become, at its heart, it always feels true enough to the world we live in. 

Andre Norton- Her Forerunner series:  What starts out as a fun but kind of forgettable Cold War era time travel story takes a turn for the crazy near the end, but doesn’t take it very far in The Time Traders.  However, not far into the second book, Galactic Derelict, things go bugnuts and this series demands to be put alongside Asimov as essential Golden Age reading.  Her career spanned a long time, and much of the latter two thirds doesn’t interest me one bit, but Andre Norton’s early work is top notch. 

Alan Dean Foster- The Humanx Commonwealth stories:  Foster has got to be one of the most prolific authors in the field, and sadly, that means he’s written a LOT of garbage.  However, most of the Humanx novels I have read (there are so many) have been good, and a few of them very good.  His particular setting feels very much in keeping with the above mentioned roleplaying game, Traveller.  And his books and stories span a lot of time.  I believe the most popular books from this setting are the Flinx and Pip adventures.  But my personal favorite is probably Nor Crystal Tears, a very cool first contact story told from the perspective of a Thranx, insect-like aliens who eventually become humanity’s greatest ally, but not without some serious problems.
 

    I still have to read more of Poul Anderson’s Technic Civilization, Jack McDevitt’s Hutch books, A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes series, and I have yet to even open Charles Ingrid’s The Sand Wars books.  And even from the above list, there are plenty of works I have yet to read, especially Niven and Foster.  And I left off a lot of stuff like the Halo and Warhammer 40,000 books, though some may very well be a part of what I’m talking about.  I’m also leaving off a lot of individual novels, like Richard Paul Russo’s Ship of Fools, because while quite good examples, frequently with lots of implied universe and history creation, they don’t do quite the same job of weaving worlds. 

    After quite a while of reading mostly non-fiction, it’s been nice to get back into reading novels and reminding myself of the wonder of classic science fiction.  It’s so rarely tapped in film, where I’ve always felt it could be stunningly realized if the effort were put forth.  Alas, for now, it’ll have to live in print and maybe, just maybe, in future sessions of a roleplaying game featuring yours truly. 

-Matt

Matt's Week in Dork! (6/19/11-6/25/11)

    I begin this this Week in Dork in the usual fashion, with the movies I watched.  It’s been kind of a weird week for me, and I’m actually not really sure how I got this many movies in, as the week was kind of a blur.  Anyway, here it goes…

Green Lantern:  Sadly, this is pretty much the movie the trailer made it look like.  Ryan Reynolds is playing Ryan Reynolds again.  Far too much of the film takes place on Earth dealing with exceptionally uninteresting things.  The space stuff doesn’t really have enough time devoted to it to be as interesting as it should be.  And if Blake Lively never steps in front of a camera again, the world will be a better place.  It’s not awful.  But it could and should have been better.  It may seem obvious, but if they’d devoted less time to the crap, and more to the good stuff, the film would have been better.  And there is good stuff.

Transcendent Man:  “Does God exist?  Well, I would say, ‘not yet.’”  Ray Kurzweil cuts an interesting figure.  At once sad and naively optimistic, he is clearly amazingly accomplished but somehow tinged with a sense of haunted failure (in the body of his late father whose untimely death seems to color much of Kruzweil’s life).  This documentary does try to play somewhat evenly with Kurzweil and his ideas.  It gives time to detractors, supporters, and those who fall in between.  There are some pretty interesting ideas put forth, though nothing is explored in any great depth.  What can not be denied is that Kurzweil has done amazing things and he forecasts even more.  We’ll see.

Tangled:  Considerably better than the trailers made it look, Tangled is still weighed down by needless, low quality musical numbers.  The humor is a bit forced, but Disney has done worse in that respect (Hunchback for example).  The CG is much better than I expected, though the character design leaves something to be desired.  The story is good, but the movie could have been better.  I’m not against musicals at all, but it was so clearly shoehorned in because it’s expected in a Disney film.  Ugh.  Still, much better than originally expected.

Doctor Who: Robot:  The first outing of Tom Baker as the Doctor has some cool stuff, and some good U.N.I.T. moments, but is kind of a silly story.  It’s basically King Kong mixed with Frankenstein, but with a robot in the place of the monster.  The mad scientist is delightfully strange and the cabal of scientific utopians bent on recreating the world in their Orwellian image are lots of fun.  This episode will always be special for me, though, because it was the first Doctor Who I ever saw.  I chanced upon it while flipping channels and was hooked from moment one. 

Kiss Me Deadly:  Ralph Meeker is all kinds of cold and nasty as Mike Hammer in this wild, atomic powered Noir classic.  He slaps, he punches, and I don’t even know what he did to Sugar Smallhouse, but poor Charlie Max didn’t like it too much.  He roughs up suspects, punks, thugs, and nice old men in the pursuit of justice.  And what justice.  One of the crazier endings I’ve seen.  Brutal.  Surreal.  And frankly, awesome.

Just how he says 'hello.'

Super 8:  (Upon my second viewing of this film, I found myself enjoying it even more.  This is probably in my top five films of the year, so far).  Like finding a forgotten gem in a video store, Super 8 harkens back to the kid adventure films of the 80s, like The Goonies, The Explorers, Space Camp, and so many others.  Filled with interesting characters and thrilling action, it’s got a lot of heart to back it all up.  And it sports a great cast of kid actors, each putting their stamp on various genre regulars (the Fat Kid, the Nerdy Kid, the Sensitive Kid, etc.).  Put aside your cynicism, and remember why we love movies.

Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks:  A pretty epic story of the very beginning of one of the greatest menaces to face the universe, Genesis of the Daleks introduces us to the people of Skaro before the end of their cataclysmic conflict, and to Davros, the mad genius behind the Daleks.  It’s a really good story, and unlike some of the longer ones, well deserving of the six episodes.  It doesn’t become repetitive or dull in the middle, as some six episode arcs do, and in fact, some elements feel like maybe they could have used some more time devoted to them, like the underground resistance.  A classic story, and one of the better to focus on the Daleks.  And even though Davros is just as over the top and two dimensionally evil as The Master, I simply find him more fun.

Deadlier Than the Male:  “I do all sorts of things when I’m tight.”  Classic British pulp hero, Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond gets a cheeky Bond style film adaptation.  Occasionally funny, often delightfully awkward, and constantly condescendingly chauvinistic, Deadlier Than the Male is a great deal of fun.  Chock full of ‘That Guy’ actors, beautiful women, and deadly assassins (who also happen to be among the beautiful women).  And the crazy final chess match almost feels like something out of The Avengers.  Great stuff.  Unfortunately, Johnson isn’t the most charming or dynamic of leads, but he’s passable.

Cursed:  Post Scream idiocy.  Lots of untalented, moderately attractive people run through some of the most lifeless paces you can imagine, hitting nearly every note at exactly the expected time.  Characters seem to work very hard to find the absolutely dumbest things to do.  All the while, what could be fun is mostly just dull.  I love the concept of the werewolf.  I just wish there were more good films using it.  This is definitely not one.  This film is cursed; with dullness.  And the finale is just awful.

From the film makers to you, the viewer.

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman:  Pretty much like an extended episode of the Animated Series, this may not be amazing, but like the show, it’s darned good and what I’d love to see from DC’s animated features.  I don’t need them to reinvent the wheel with each movie.  Just tell a good story.  Find out who Gotham’s newest cracked defender is as she tires to do the Bat’s job, taking down a criminal syndicate.  Though it has strong similarities to Mask of the Phantasm, it manages to do its own thing and have a moderately clever twist.  For fans of the show, this is a welcome addition to the franchise. 

    I also got a chance to watch some of Warehouse 13, and was surprised how much I liked it.  It’s sort of a mix of the old Friday the 13th series and Special Unit 2.  Goofy, but a lot of fun.  And it may be the first time since Unforgiven that I’ve liked Saul Rubinek.

    And I watched a handful of episodes of the completely cracked Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  Crazy Quilt.  Wow.  As one would expect from a character called Crazy Quilt, he loves to leave clues for Batman in the form of…that’s right, paintings.  What is up with DC?

    I finished another volume of Conan, Rogues in the House and Other Stories.  Probably the weakest volume to date, but it’s still better than a lot of Conan material I’ve read.  And due to circumstances totally within my control, I didn’t finish Reality is Broken.  I did get more of it read, but not nearly as much as I should have, and I have no excuse.  Should finish that in the next couple of days, unless I really choke.

    On the video game front (which for some reason has been active for me recently), I was involved in a co-op game of I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1  in which we seem to have beat the game.  Total madness, and I’m not gonna lie, it left me feeling pretty friggin’ jazzed by the end.  Perhaps laughing a bit maniacally.  Perhaps.  And, had a chance to play some Halo deathmatch with a couple friends.  It was nice playing against people substantially better than me (who weren‘t jerks about it).  I got my butt handed to me, but reveled in every kill, because I knew I worked for ‘em.

    On a final note, I got to thinking about how my life lacked something important.  I realized what I really need that I don’t have is a team of sexy henchwomen.  So, I want to try to remedy that.  Thus, I’m currently doing an open casting call for sexy henchwomen.  If you’re sexy, have a style all your own (or look really good in uniform), and maybe want to go to a comic convention to have my back, then I want to hear from you.  As with any good hench-job, it’s dangerous, thankless, and short.  But it’ll look good on a resume.

-Matt