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| Thursday, October 7, 2004 07:22 AM |
| What kind of trap was that again? |
 by Fëanor |
When Amy came to movie night with Disney's original Parent Trap (starring Hayley Mills, Hayley Mills, and Maureen O'Hara, in lots of horrible, horrible outfits), I made noises and faces of complete disgust and horror (despite the fact that I'd never seen the film before). But in fact, watching it with the movie night crowd was more fun than I've had in a long time. More fun, in fact, than a barrel full of monkeys wearing party hats! And that's a lot of fun there, mister, I can tell you.
Of course, I still can't really say that I've seen the movie, because we talked over the entire thing. But that was what made it great. By itself, it's a typical Disney film, pushing traditional values in a predictable and yet vaguely creepy way, with some strange sexual subtext in the background. But with our comments added, it became THE FILTHIEST FILM EVER MADE. We made more inappropriate and totally hilarious jokes during this movie than we've made watching any other movie. We covered pretty much every kind of sexual perversion imaginable, and even made some Hitler jokes. It was fantastic.
Amy's previous movie pick was Showgirls, but this movie was somehow far dirtier. We decided this was because with Showgirls, you really have nowhere to go, whereas with The Parent Trap, you have everywhere to go. And we went there. We went all over there.
And tonight is game night, and another session of "Betrayal at House on the Hill." Am I excited? Does the pope go in the woods?
Btw, is it sick that I'm considering sending out a kind of pre-registration form for game day, which asks people when they're going to arrive, and includes a list of possible games to vote on, so I can split people into teams and make a schedule of two concurrent gaming sessions?
Don't bother answering, I know it's sick. |
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| Friday, October 1, 2004 07:32 AM |
| Something Not So Awful |
| by Fëanor |
Thanks to Sarcasmo (as always) for linking to Something Awful, where I found many gems like these. Here are some more. Besides the LotR Christmas, there were also some video game crossovers, most of which simply confused me (I guess I'm not up on my video games so much anymore). But these were great, as were these.
In other news, less funny, Super Tarzan, Peccable, TrackerNeil, poppy, and I enjoyed our first game of "Betrayal at House on the Hill" last night. It was pretty great; we all had a lot of fun. It's a very clever and fun way of putting you in the middle of a cheesy B-movie, complete with evil monkey toys and blood daggers. My only problem is that the rules are sometimes a little vague, and sometimes it's really a pain trying to find the one little cardboard token that you need among the HUNDREDS of them in the box. But besides that, it's just tons of fun. It's a tile-laying game crossed with an adventure rpg board game--Hero Quest re-imagined by a German by way of Hollywood. If you can wrap your mind around that. Anyway, we appeased the crazed ghostly bride before she could marry me in death, so I feel pretty good about that.
UPDATE: Btw, for those interested, the main page of LotR Christmas images is here, and the main page of Video Game Crossover images is here. I lovingly hand-picked you the best images, but you can look at the rest if you must. Sigh. |
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| Wednesday, September 29, 2004 09:18 PM |
| Mwa ha ha! |
| by Fëanor |
I have fixed the archive page, in a matter of moments! Fear my power!
Ahem.
So yeah. Movie night didn't go as well as I'd hoped, because Azumi wasn't as good as I remembered. It was really slow, and long, and there were a few dumb scenes in there that I swear weren't in the version Sarcasmo and I saw at the festival. Which is quite possible, as foreign films often end up getting shown in different, edited versions when they're screened in the states. And this DVD is kind of an import, direct from the source, you might say. Kind of.
Or, as Sarcasmo pointed out, it could just be that neither of us remember the movie very well, since we saw it late at night, and I had seen many, many other movies just before, and saw many, many more just after.
Anyway, the point is, Captain Kronos is way shorter and stupider, and probably would have been a lot more fun.
I forgot to mention, when I was talking about the ridiculous storm we experienced on Tuesday, that once again a book that I borrowed from someone was ruined by the rain. I'm running along, trying to get out of the wet as soon as possible, in the hopes of keeping the things in my bag as dry as possible, when somehow my bag comes open, and what should hop out but the one thing in my bag that is not mine and that I just borrowed from my brother--his copy of The Gunslinger. Sorry, bloginator. I will get you a new copy. The same thing happened to me when I borrowed Peccable's copy of Cryptonomicon. I end up buying more books that way.
So, the moral of the story is, if you want a new copy of a book, lend it to me, and I'll end up having to buy one for you. The good part is, I end up getting to keep the messed up copy, which has a lot of character.
So, what else? Tomorrow (or rather, today I guess, now), my friends and I tend to ignore both presidential candidates and play "Betrayal at House on the Hill" instead. Woo. Hoo.
Which is not to say I wouldn't like to see the Bush Entity get its butt handed to it. But you know how I feel about live events. I mean, what if a nipple comes out? I'd be so mortified. |
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| Thursday, September 23, 2004 08:07 PM |
| Star Fighting! |
| by Fëanor |
If you didn't think they could make a musical of anything, well...you were wrong (thanks to Yagathai for the link)! This made me think of that Onion article entitled "Bush Cites The Last Starfighter As Inspiration For Entering Politics" (which I would link to, except it is so old that it is now available only to those with Onion Premium subscriptions, which I do not have). I imagined Bush starring in the musical, singing his little baboon heart out. Sigh.
Hey, looks like the Onion AV Club got its act together and fixed the link to that Takeshi Kitano interview I was talking about, so here it is. Check it out, it's good stuff.
Yesterday, due to a birthday miracle, my Star Wars DVDs arrived, yet a day after they shipped. Woo hoo! Of course, I haven't had a chance to watch them at all yet, but someday soon...
I also got some lovely presents from poppy yesterday, including the "classic" version of Risk (which comes in a really cool wooden box with a sliding lid, and also has the original text in the rulebook and the original map on the board), and a couple of pretty great CDs with pretty great titles that I listened to today at work: The Hives's Tyrannosaurus Hives and Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News. Both have a great, hard, raw sound to them that I really enjoy. I was bopping around a lot in my chair today.
Today was a pretty great day at work, actually. I started out confused and frightened, after Amy tried to explain something to me about my latest project, but as soon as I sat down with it and looked it over myself, I figured it out really quickly. Later on, Amy and Dave came by to take a look at my work, and suddenly these bugs appeared that I hadn't seen before and I didn't know what was going on. Sure enough, as soon as they walked away, I figured it out and fixed it. I think I'm sort of like that guy in Mystery Men who can only be invisible when nobody's looking; I'm only a good programmer when nobody is watching me.
Anyway, the point is, it's always a good day when I get stuff figured out and get stuff done. Very satisfying. And then there was game night! In which we finally played our first "legal" game of "Tigris and Euphrates" (we'd only played it with two players before, which you're not really supposed to do) and introduced Super Tarzan to the great and excellent game that is "Puerto Rico." Both are German strategy games which involve laying down tiles and tokens on boards, like all German games. They're pretty great.
Anyways, I'd say that's it for tonight. Tomorrow I hope to go see a movie in the afternoon/early evening. I think it shall be the pulpy goodness of Sky Captain. Aww, yeah. |
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| Friday, September 3, 2004 07:18 AM |
| So, you want to be a hero? |
| by Fëanor |
I mentioned movie night a few posts ago, so it seems only right that I devote a post to game night. Game night works pretty much the way you might think: some friends and I get together every Thursday night to play games. Board games, card games, whatever we feel like. Game night is a bit older than movie night, and was concocted by Erik and I over a lunch of tacos. We realized that we really liked games, but didn't get a chance to play them very often, so we decided to invite the folks at the place where we worked to meet weekly and indulge our gaming desires. We started by playing Risk, and moved on from there. Game night has been through a number of variations; we've met at many people's houses; we've played many a game, including lots of Cheapass Games (I highly recommend Diceland, btw; probably my favorite game ever).
Anyway, last night Super Tarzan, Sarcasmo and I met at Sarcasmo's place and played a game of Hero Quest. I've been talking about bringing it to game night since we started having game night some years ago, but I only brought it with me for the first time the last couple game nights. The time and number of players were both finally right last night.
Hero Quest was a great favorite of mine in Middle School and High School. My brother the bloginator and I used to play it all the time. For some reason, I never got into Dungeons & Dragons; instead, I had Hero Quest. It's basically an RPG system, but without all the hassle. You get a board with rooms and hallways on it, and a bunch of plastic figures, furniture, and cardboard tiles to populate, decorate, and shape your dungeon. The game comes with a book that describes various quests, with different layouts for the board and different story text. One of you has to play the GM/DM, who's basically the evil guy who moves all the monsters, and the other players play the heroes.
My brother and I got so into this game that we wrote a ton of our own quests, and then even went so far as to write all new rules for "outside," wherein the dungeon was above ground, the weather could affect play, and there were trees and lakes and stuff. Being the Star Wars fanatic I am, I also of course wrote rules for a Star Wars version of the game, with lightsabers, force powers, and Wookiees.
Anyway, last night Sarcasmo and Super Tarzan were nice enough to let me relive my high school days and we played the first two quests in the quest booklet that comes with the game. I was a little afraid that other people would find the game childish or lame, or that I myself, having not played it in a few years, would find it had not stood the test of time. But in fact, we had a ton of fun. I played Zargon, the evil wizard/GM, and they split up the four heroes amongst them. Sarcasmo expressed some dismay that the GM--the guy in control of the game universe--was also the villain of the game (sort of like Descartes's idea of the all-powerful deceiver). Luckily, I'm a pretty nice evil wizard. When I play as Zargon, I never really want to win. I want the heroes to make it--by the skin of their teeth, certainly, but I do want them to survive. I'd forgotten just how hard the pre-made quests were, though. The heroes were slaughtered in their very first quest. Luckily, the second quest wasn't nearly so brutal.
I purchased two expansions for the game, but I see here on Boardgame Geek that there were a few more released in America, and two more released only in Europe! No fair! Those Europeans have all the fun! I might have to find a way to purchase a few of these expansions... And it looks like there are plenty of fan-created expansions and add-ons. I'll have to check this stuff out, and maybe even put up a few Hero Quest pages of my own... |
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