Essays, Not Rants! 068: Violence and Video Games Violent video games are a hot topic, or at least they really were six months ago. Well, here’s the thing: video games aren’t violent. Angry bears are violent. Video games aren’t. That said, there is violence in video games. The thing is, the portrayal of violence in video games is as varied as in books of film. Can video games glorify violence? Sure. Look at Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel. You play as two mercenary-commandos sent into a cartel-ru
Here we are. Again. Finally. I've been busy. Welcome To The 4th Annual TMD Music Awards! Once again I find myself ranking ten albums from 2012 in order of bestness. As such there is not much need for an interlude, just that all ten of these albums are great albums you should check out. Special EP Mention: Freaks EP, The Hawk In Paris These guys are amazing. And Birds on a Wire is one of my favorite songs of the year. Give the EP a listen, a full album will be out in 2013. Top 10 Albums
Essays, Not Rants! 044: In Defense of Fan-Fiction I’ve written my share of fan fiction. Be it about Star Wars, Bionicle adventures, or Mega Man stories; trust me: I’ve written my fanfics. Thing is, that was years ago. I’ve hardly done anything remotely fan fictiony (be it an animation or a piece of writing) in years. I guess I grew out of it; I wanted to make my own worlds and not lean on someone else’s work as a basis. I wanted my stories to be mine and independent. Of course, I still read
Essays, Not Rants! 318: High Stakes For a reason that can be tracked back to one specific thing that won’t be discussed due to spoilers, I’m thinking a lot about stakes. There’s this idea in a lotta stories that really good stakes are “will they die?” It was Game of Thrones’ modus operandi in the early seasons, and it was the explicit reason why Chewbacca was killed in the first book of the New Jedi Order book series. The logic makes sense enough, if there’s the chance that anyone can die in a
Essays, Not Rants! 117: In Defense of Michael Bay Michael Bay gets a bad rap. His movies are criticized as being low on plot and depth with anything worthwhile being substituted with mindless explosions. His characters are either terribly dull or more resemble caricatures than actual people. Also, sometimes they’re Megan Fox. Michael Bay makes movies that, when boiled down to it, are just excuses for big action set pieces that feel ripped from a lousy Saturday morning cartoon. And, way I see
I have a ZipCar subscription (ostensibly 'cuz I end up driving film equipment around somewhat often) and I found out that on Monday nights you can rent one for a flat rate of $35 from 6pm to 8:30am. So my brother, his girlfriend, and I decided to hit Brooklyn to do an errand and go to Ikea Ikea for food and some basics. Made sure we drove across both the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. But it was not even 10pm. We could have the car for longer. So I asked a couple friends if they were up for
Essays, Not Rants! 126: Antisocial Gaming My brother recently got Titanfall which means that I got to go a few rounds at it. That game is fun. It’s also unique in that there’s no traditional single player mode; the only way to play is competitive online multiplayer. It makes sense. There are plenty of games out there where the single player campaign is often passed over in favor of the far more popular multiplayer. But here’s the thing aboutTitanfall: only one person can play per console. If y
And then... And then... I'M ON FRIGGING IMDB. I have an IMDb page. This is real. This is actually happening. Part of me can't believe it. Now let's get this sucker screened at a festival.
Essays, Not Rants! 181: Expository Conflict Othello really hits the ground running. The first time we see the titular character in Shakespeare’s play he’s on trial in a war room. Now, it’s important to note that this is his introduction, this is when we learn who he is. The easiest way to clue the audience in would be to just give us an infodump. Have people go “This is Othello, the Moor, who’s a general, and married to Desdemona, a senator’s daughter” in some fashion. No, it’s certainly not
Essays, Not Rants! 008: The Artificial Family I grew up on a ship. Well, not really grew up exactly, more spent four very key years of my youth onboard a ship. It’s a long story. The thing about living on a ship, though, was that with only two hundred people on board it was a small community. Smaller still were the number of kids on board. I’m not kidding when I say there were a handful. Out of necessity we became more of a family than a group of friends. Life’s changed and gone on, but even t
What's that you say? You have $2.99 lying around an a device capable of running the Kindle app (that is, any pc, mac, smart phone, iPod touch)? Why not help two aspiring writers pay for college, food, and other such necessities? You, yes, you can help! And not only will you get the satisfaction of doing something good, but you'll get a collection of no less than SIX short stories! They're stores about being in airports, about that weird feeling of in between you get when traveling. Some du
If you've been reading Essays, Not Rants! you'll have realized that I was a huge fan of the movie Chef, in no small part to the food. I love cooking (and eating), so a movie about it was a pleasure. Having recently coming across the recipe for the Pasta That Seduced Scarlett Johansson, the girlfriend and I decided to make it for dinner. Dang. It was good.
Do we call 'em pilots? Like is the first episode of a Netflix series a pilot? I mean, by virtue of the way Netflix does their shows it wasn't commissioned to see if the show worked so...? How much of classic television parlance carries over into new distribution methods? Anyway. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Lot to say. Action is impeccable. Dude. Also really digging the very different tone; how it's gritty and dark, but not overbearingly so. It's doesn't feel washed in grimness, there's st
So I didn't really sketch out much for the adventure, opting more to go with however the players went. It meant the break was a little too easy. I was also a bit under-nourished as a GM, having only had cereal for breakfast before arriving and having a couple beers. Soooo... But yeah. Was fun. PC's spent more time at the cantina than I expected. Leesi pickpocketed everyone. Fran found the most emotionally vulnerable person there and charmed him into buying drinks and offering Imperial codes th
tl;dr: I no longer have a bar in my chest. Longer version: Got into Singapore on the 10th. Spent the intervening time playing video games and eating, Monday morning local time went into surgery to have my bar removed. Since, y'know, it's time. Everything went well; the bar's sitting on a shelf here in the hospital room (along with some chips of bone [my bones]); I can walk and move and stuff. Useful abilities, those. Current signs point to heart being alright. So yes. I did just pull an Iron
Three years ago to the day I was hospitalized for the first time on account of my heart trying to kill me. What's happened in the last three years? Here's the quick timeline: July 13 2010, Josh goes for a cardiac stress test, his heart goes into Ventricular Tachycardia and hits 255 BPM. Is subsequently hospitalized and diagnosed with ARVC: his heart is turning to fat. Plans emerge to implant an ICD (defibrillator), however an MRI discovers water near his heart and the surgery is postponed and
Hey guys. Yep. It's late. As it happens college is conducive for procrastination. Whodathunk? Welcome To Josh's Fifth Annual Movie Awards Part One As usual I'm listing every movie I saw this year. You get the idea. Naturally these are all subjective. Legend: º means did not see it in cinemas Multiple * denotes number of times saw in cinema - — Eh. More or less sucked. -/+ — Meh. See it if you want. + — Fairly good film, worth a watch. ++ — One of the better films of the year. Definitely
Essays, Not Rants! 089: Why I (seldom) Write About Ships I grew up on a ship. I also like writing. Now, these two should go hand-in-hand. Write about living on a ship, it’s what you know! But then, who lives on a ship. No one would believe that. So I write science fiction. Because it’s easier to believe folks living on a spaceship than on a real ship. Less time explaining stuff. Also, I really like science fiction. But, and I do get asked this, why don’t I write about a real ship instead?
So the girlfriend and I recently started watching Star Wars Rebels. And holy cyprinidae it is so good. We're only five-or-so episodes into Season Two (she's studying for Major Graduate Physics Exams), but dang. I'm surprised by how much I unapologetically enjoy this show. Also: Chopper is wonderful.
Essays, Not Rants! 176: Why I Take Issue With Johnny Storm Being Black So y’know that new Fantastic Four movie coming out next week? It caused a bit of uproar when casting was announced since Michael B. Jordan’s playing Johnny Storm, a character who, in the comics, has been white. This is further complicated by the fact that his sister, Susan Storm, is being played by Kate Mara, who is rather obviously white. This ‘race lift’ given to Johnny Storm has caused quite the hullabaloo. In an appa
