I’ve never been very comfortable with the fact that I’m crap at chess. As a lad I self-identified as a smart kid, but when I stepped up to the board, I had nothin’. I just told myself I had other strengths and went back to drawing Thor on my math notebook. But an uncomfortable feeling lingered.
Despite this, or maybe because of it, I …
I’m going to add a short addendum to my Achewood post the other day, since it got mad comments, and I could use the traffic.
Most of the comments were people saying, in various eloquent ways, that Achewood is awesome. With which I concur. Someone pointed out that I didn’t mention the blogs for the various characters, which is totally …
The shortlist for the 2006 Arthur C Clarke Award is up. I always try to keep an eye on the Clarke, which skews a little more literary than its colonial equivalents the Hugo and the Nebula. In the past they’ve given it to China Mieville (sorry, too lazy to do the accent) twice, and to Mary Doria Russell’s amazing The Sparrow, and Neal …
There came a time not long ago when I realized that a goodly percentage — not 50, but like, you know, 15 or something — of my media intake consists of webcomics. A quick census of the sites in the toolbar hovering over the browser window in which I write this post would include links to Penny Arcade, Order of the Stick, Achewood, PvP, …
I don’t know whether to be happy or sad that George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice & Fire is going to be an HBO mini-series. Not that it’s up to me. HBO has repeatedly proven itself to be capable of creating quality content, one example of which is Rome, which I sometimes watch, and one of the Rome producers is working on the Martin project. …
Probably most of you are aware that the World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade came out at midnight two nights ago. It raises the maximum possible level from 60 to 70. The first character to max out the new level cap hit it this morning at 4:04 AM. Dude is Gawell, a gnome mage, who is played by a 24-year-old French guy. There’s …
I’m in the middle of Susanna “No H in My Name” Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu, which is pummeling me relentlessly with its greatness. Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in years, though her publisher savvily packaged it like straight literary fiction, so non-nerds won’t feel the shame …
I can’t quite get my mind around the fact that J.J. Abrams now basically owns the entire Star Trek franchise. After the success of Alias Paramount handed him the whole thing, like a Hummer or a couple extra points on the back end. Star Trek is a living, breathing cultural entity. You can’t just give it to somebody.
Except you can and …
I was going to blog about Harrison Ford turning down a Han Solo spinoff, but the story feels off to me — the sourcing’s not so good. I don’t buy it. Let’s all be quiet and maybe he’ll make Indy 4.
So instead…here’s Robert Downey, Jr! Every year Time does a piece about great performances from the past year. Because we’re geniuses …
There’s been a lot of hype lately about the rising tide of you-culture and user generated content. Much of which I wrote with my own 8 fingers.
So what with the iPhone coming out and all, it’s interesting to look at Apple in that context. Because it’s the least you-culture company I know of. They do no market research on new …
So James Cameron is making Avatar. Or sorry, Avatar — IMDB isn’t that helpful.
I don’t totally trust Cameron. Yeah, he’s made some geek classics — in fact the streak comprising Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and then T2, all in a row, 1984-1991, is probably one of the all-time great feats of nerd cinema. (I was going to attempt some …
I don’t really get the new vogue on the part of studio execs for publicly calling-out the talent. Maybe they’re tired and cranky from counting all their money. But last summer Sumner Redstone got all up in Tom Cruise’s grill, and now some guy from New Line is all, like, no way is Peter Jackson making The Hobbit here. I don’t pretend to …
