More things in heaven and earth

Than are dreamt of in my philosophy, anyhow.

How am I ever going to play all these games?

I'm studying up on Twilight Imperium. I hear you have to do your homework before you play that one. It has common DNA with the games I have hated most so there's a good chance I'll want to set it on fire, but I'm going to tough it out. It looks like a ripping good way to spend 10 or 12 hours in a stinky room with 7 other guys.

I want to play both the Serenity and BSG RPGS from Margaret Weis Productions. They run on the Cortex System, right?

And I have all these frakking HackMaster books. And now they're out-of-date.

I've never played a sci-fi RPG (I was a very fantasy-centric kid). What's best--Star Frontiers, Gamma World, classic Traveller, Mutant Future, Metamorphosis Alpha, Star Ace? I've got 'em all.

I ran Dangerous Journeys for a year or two in the 9-tays. I still have the tattered old books. Maybe I ought to give the rules-lite Mythus Prime version a shot. I thought it was an dumbed-down embarrassment back in the day, but now it's just the way I wanna play.

And GDW also made all these Space: 1889 books that I still think are about the coolest concept ever.

Gah, I've never even played GURPS.

I have print versions of Cartoon Action Hour and its supplements, but the Season Two version seems more up my rules-fearing alley.

Star Wars D6. Or BESM?

Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord. But I have books for all the versions of actual D&D!

And I'm pretty excited about Shadow, Sword, and Spell.

That's it. I'm going to have to give up sleeping and leaving the warm circle of honeyed light from my reading lamp. You can't make me!

Oh, I'm going to need some players. Drat!

Let's Get the Band Back Together

First, a piece of personal communication that has no place in a stately public forum such as this blog: Alan (our first first violist and first second side drummer) told me last night at band practice that he read MY WHOLE BLOG.

I want to apologize for having wasted his time--or, worse than wasting it--like, actively abusing his time, like a cheese-grater of the mind's eye or something.

Anyway, I placed an order for Swords & Wizardry from my friendly local game store (All About Games in Boise) today. I hope you'll do the same. I hear that kind of thing is good for the hobby. I'll just have to take their word for it.

I guess this means I should play some S&W. Hear that Tommy? Maybe you can get some use out of the lovely rules booklet that you had so painstakingly spiral-bound!

Pretty soon I'll have me a copy of Raggi's The Grinding Gear. I wonder, is there a connection here? That title sounds like this adventure might be something of a meat grinder, which might just suit the kind of gaming groups I've experienced: abortive fits and starts.

Fine. I hereby assemble a gaming group and purpose to run them and dozens of their hapless 3x5-sized S&W characters through PITS OF RUTHLESS CRUSH.

Also, we'll graft on the soap opera rules from Amagi Games.

In loving memory of an opinion. . .

I'm finally coming around to an appreciation of Obituary's 1990 record Cause of Death. (I was prompted to revisit it by the chapter on it in the new collection of Decibel magazine's Hall of Fame features, Precious Metal).

It's practically musical in one or two places--and downright groovy in plenty of others, a welcome change from the dull pummeling of most early death metal reocrds.

Plus, the vocals remind me of Blaine Fart (of my favorite-band-in-high-school, The Accused) and that's always a good thing.

And one more capper: the first Lovecraft paperback I ever bought had that same Michael Whelan painting on the cover.

Looks like I'll have to hit up the corner record shop for The End Complete next.

Seriously, the trailer for the new Twilight film looked kinda awesome

Now, I didn't read the whole thing (spoilers for I show I've already watched but am re-watching right at the beginning of the article's subject) but there is an impressive post about Willow and Tara's relationship (starting in season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and the relationship's relationship to doors, here, at a kind of astounding blog called This To Say About That that I learned about today through whedonesque.com.

In the post (which surely deserves to be called an 'article') I encountered the word liminal for the first time. Yes, I am a little embarrassed about that. Turns out it means, in part, threshold, which is pleasing Anglo-Saxon looking word that I wanted to know more about--I wanted the Anglo-Saxon roots to be transparent to me. This is how I am with words.

The etymology of threshold is murky and doesn't really offer up its secrets, but the American Heritage 4th ed. does send us to the Indo-European root (that I don't know how to display properly) that is pronounced just like Tara.

I know, right? But that's not all. The first definition for that root is to rub, as in tribade--as in the the band Tribe 8, or as it appears in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (where I learned it), tribadist.

Yes, I will post everytime anyone on the internets compares something to Proust

Here's the latest Proust-parison, from Sunday's When Will the Hurting Stop:

"I will reiterate that neither comic is very good at all, but it's still pretty remarkable how they managed to sneak onto the stands on the very same day. It's like they're just trying desperately to see if anyone is awake at this point. It takes a lot of work to make Jeph Loeb look like Proust, but I'll be damned if his Red Hulk book isn't eleventy-billion times better than any of this shit. "

It's about two Marvel comics out last week. Who cares what they're called?

New Year's Resolution: Read 100 Comic Scripts

You've heard of fiscal years--well, this is a spiritual year (ignore for the time being the fact that the regular year probably has its start as a spiritual year): Halloween to Halloween. Let's hope it fares better than the Metal Year.

Okay, so it's yawningly trite. That's how you know it's Rooted in Tradition.

I started this blog a little over one year ago for no other reason than to follow Occasional Superheroine--then I discovered the Old School Renaissance and (sort of) focused on writing about that sort of business. I do still read to you from dictionaries from time to time. (Check out byronic--dude should be a vampire. In comics.)

That's about all the retrospection I wanted to do. To the Future!

There is an artist who personally requested that I write a comic that said artist would draw. Am I going to ignore this opportunity? It's likely, but this old post by Gail Simone has stirred me to action (I love the part about putting truth in a scene, and after reading Welcome to Tranquility I believe she can do it, but it's what she says about seizing opportunity that I'm high on right now). Read the 'part two' too, about civet-stink.

I know nothing about writing comics, natch. This will be no surprise to long-time readers, who are well aware I know nothing about writing anything.

So--READ 100 COMIC SCRIPTS. Gail Simone posted a few that will make a fine start.

Hong Kong Phooey as Reverse Don Quixote

Aside from the kung fu movie stereotypes that might possible be offensive to an entire hemisphere, this Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the mid-'70s has a premise plenty sturdy enough for a Saturday morning short-form cartoon from the mid-'70s.

And the lead is voiced by this dude:


(Scatman Crothers)

Who was also the voice for this dude:


(Jazz the Autobot)

So that's pretty sweet.

Anyway, I gathered you here today to talk about that premise: the Reverse Don Quixote. Hong Kong Phooey's alter-ego is a hapless janitor who believe he has learned super kung fu from a book but who is in fact a totally hapless lunkhead who's only success is that he doesn't notice how much damage and mayhem his lunkheadedness causes. Presumably, everyone else has mistaken his obliviousness for the transcendent grace of a sublime master and that his why the whole city holds him in reverence, worship, and awe.

Right--that worshipfulness is the Reverse part of Reverse Don Quixote--whereas Don Quixote's delusions of grandeur are obvious to everyone else, in Hong Kong Phooey's case his windmilling kung fu chops (that's for Choya, a kung fu nerd, who would be shouting "There are no chops!" if read this blog) are celebrated as the greatest way to save the day. So everyone is suffering Phooey's delusion, so maybe it's not so much a Don Quixote in reverse as a Everyone's Don Quixote. Let's just ignore that, hmm? While we're at it, Phooey also has a cat, Spot, who acts as his Sancho Panza, an overlooked and unappreciated partner who actually saves the day, by freeing Phooey from the file cabinet, or rolling him down the street when he gets stuck in a garbage can.

But I bring all this up because I suspect this premise has been used before--I mean the Reverse Don Quixote, not the forwards kind. That was in Don Quixote.

Surely it wasn't a Saturday morning show from 1974 that originated the premise of a bumbling hero who nevertheless saves the day and is treated like a hero despite his constant cock-uppery.
It's been reused by Pamela Anderson's V.I.P. ( I think--I haven't seen it), and to some extent in the USA network's Psych (haven't seen that either).

So, have you seen this before--before 1974--in something besides Cervantes?

Crap. I shoulda just gone to TV Tropes.