Not one, but two shows debuted this fall, concerning fairy tales in the modern world. Part of the inspiration for this blog, in fact, involved looking at these shows and how traditional stories and their heroes have carried forward in modern times. In the spirit of states hosting their primaries as early as possible, ABC [...]
Archive for October, 2011
I talked games where one of the players takes the role of “it”. Then there are games where one of the players takes on the even more involved role of game master. When I was a kid, “game master” was the person who knew the rules of the game, taught it to the rest of [...]
At the end of Betrayal at Game Day, I asked what games had one (or more) of the players in the role of villain—not just opponent, but actual villain. I couldn’t think of any outside of Betrayal at House on the Hill (unless you count playing as the Axis powers in Axis and Allies, but [...]
Yesterday was game day at work—at least for our team. Just one of the benefits in working for a game company: sometimes you spend your afternoon around a table, surrounded by cards, dice, and in today’s offsite, legos. (If you’ve never played Creationary, I highly recommend it. Think Pictionary, with legos. And who doesn’t need [...]
It would go something like this: daddy daddy daddy daddy food food daddy daddy food daddy food daddy food food daddy. And that would be a perfect understandable narrative for her. Of course, it leaves out the part where the cat leaps out from under the bed on a nightly basis and attacks her—but really, [...]
Yesterday, I wrote about the loss of the inventor as hero. There are exceptions. Steve Jobs is one of them. Here’s where I see the accolades being given to Jobs. In many ways, he’s celebrated his success as a businessman, for bringing the Apple brand to such prominence. However, he’s also celebrated for his role [...]
When I was a kid, I remember very distinct heroes that were impressed upon us back in history class. There were Revolutionary War heroes, probably first and foremost. After that, the main heroes were inventors. Sure, their inventions helped shape the course of history—but it the focus seemed to be just as much on the [...]
Last night’s dream may have come courtesy from my viewing of The Thing. John Carpenter’s The Thing (in preparation for watching the most recent version). In the dream, I was on a cruise ship and one of the attractions was a living dinosaur found encased on a block of ice. The ice was partially melted, [...]
Apropos of extremely little (except pirates), I’ve wondered about another long-standing pirate motif: the parrot on the shoulder. It’s been there ever since Treasure Island (as a kid, even one of my G.I. Joe action figures, Shipwreck, came with a tiny plastic parrot). Poking around, it’s thought that pirates really did collect parrots on their [...]
I mentioned the Dread Pirate Roberts yesterday, in my Superman dream. It’s a great premise (and also a plausible fan theory for James Bond). On the topic of pirates. My new favorite factoid (again, from Cracked): The reason why pirates are depicted with eyepatches? It’s not because they lost their eyes in battle more than [...]
