Twelfth Night (1988)

Finally finished this -- it was long enough to need to watch in two parts, and Veronica Mars has been so entertaining that we watched through disk 5 of that before we had a night where we were waiting for a disk. At any rate, Netflix describes this as "directed by Kenneth Branagh." Well, actually, Branagh directed the stage production, and Paul Kafno directed the filming, and it shows, because it's a straight filming of a stage production and lacks Branagh's keen eye for transcribing Shakespeare into film. As such, it falls flat because the actors are performing for stage, not film, despite Branagh's melancholy take on the play and some fine acting (though Richard Briers stands out head and shoulders above the rest).

We can officially drop Frankie K from future consideration for "greatest reliever ever"...

... because he walked Mariano Rivera (the current presumptive favorite for the title, though it's debatable) to force home a run. Sorry, thanks for playing.

A fitting tribute?

It makes me uncomfortable when people get emotional over the deaths of celebrities they've never met. The best I can do for Michael Jackson is to play the Thriller album on Audiosurf. RIP, king of pop. My whole family learned the moonwalk in imitation of you. The Thriller music video (while probably more appropriately classified as a short movie) is still the gold standard in my book. And one of my favorite Murray-Dodge open mike night moments was when someone read the "Bad" lyrics as if it was free-verse poetry. Hilarity ensued.

Flattening the Curves: Good and Bad

Tom Evslin's Fractals of Change blog is in my Google Reader, and lately he hasn't been blogging so much because he's busy managing VT's share of the federal stimulus funds. He has posted some really interesting stuff on bringing a smart grid to VT, and the opportunity it affords. I love the simplicity of the argument "for" smart grid and the fact that the movement has a catchy phrase: "It's all about flattening the curves." Here's hoping it happens.

In a bit of serendipity, the same day Free Range Kids blogged about the child who got lost in the woods. It was actually the comment left by nemopsy on June 24, 8:13pm, that caught my attention because it says (with typos corrected) "Here in France mothers (and fathers) think to do everything instead of their children even when they are 25. They want them only to have the best of their lives. So there is no more best because there is no worst." That's a bad flattening of the curves.

Conversation starter : player character death

The A Perennial Favorite entry at Penny Arcade touches on the issue of player character (PC) death. It doesn't offer any real answers (aside from mind flayers), but is a great conversation starter, and it's a discussion that we have annually at PrinceCon. I'm one of those GM's who rarely kills players. I'm not against PC death, but I tend to run towards wanting to make the players feel as if they're in mortal peril and bringing their characters close to death without actually killing them. The problem, of course, is that over time players will get to feel "safe" because they know I'm not *really* going to kill them. Killing more characters seems like an easy solution, but even there I want to be careful to not kill PC's off randomly. After all, this isn't real life, it's a story we're telling in which the PC's are principals, so if there's going to be PC death, it should help to advance the story**, either as a tragic slaying at the hands of the Bad Guy, or as a heroic sacrifice.

** obviously, if the player is being a nitwit, their character can be killed at will. I'm assuming competent players without deathwishes.

Veronica Mars (2004)

Based on the first two discs from season 1, it looks like we've got Encyclopedia Brown meets Twin Peaks meets Beverly Hills 90210. It's eminently watchable. Kristen Bell is very good in the title role, Enrico Colantoni (the dad) and Jason Dohring (Logan) deserve praise for excelling in complicated roles, and the rest of the cast does well, too. Special kudos to Daran Norris, who plays the defense lawyer. It's a caricature so far, but he plays it perfectly and has precisely the right voice for the role. Perhaps more as we get through the rest of the season.

Season saved?

Is an otherwise pedestrian season for the Padres saved by one single sight?

San Diego Padres
Hitters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	#P	AVG	OBP
T Gwynn CF	2	1	2	0	3	0	23	.325	.426

"Saved" might be too strong a word, but damn it does feel good to see a Tony Gwynn batting .300 for the Padres again.

Fanboys (2008)

Fanboys doesn't suck, and like the main characters anticipating the Phantom Menace, I was worried it would.  It *is* a mostly pedestrian, paint-by-numbers road trip movie where the vast majority of the primary jokes fall flat and you end up living for the slightly subtler ones (my favorite is the sight gag of the bulging pants on the Kirk/Khan statue).  Great cameos from Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher, and generally good incorporation of lines/situations from the movie (they actually could have done more of this).

**spoilers**

My biggest beef might have to be with the characterization of Zoe as "one of the guys".  Fanboys would be swarming all over her *precisely* because she's female and knows all of the "guy" stuff.  Even the biggest geek in the galaxy would recognize her as someone highly desirable to date.