My Media Review Post
I've been plotting and scheming and trying to find a way to make this post a reality for a while now. Let's begin!
Extract came out last year and it's now on DVD, it's a Mike Judge movie. Have you seen Office Space? It's like that in general feel (except a factory instead of an office), but... a lot less good. Jason Bateman plays the same character he played in Arrested Development, a family/businessman trying to do right admist a sea of sleazy clowns. It works out alright. B-.
No plot, but Tina Fey and Steve Carell are brilliant together, and the writing of their lines is good too - perhaps at times a little close to home, even, as a partner in a couple. If you're not paired up with someone, it probably wont' be as good. But it's still hilarious, and awesome. A.
No matter how many times I complain about them, they still disappoint me. Yesterday's was no exception. I read almost all of them out of boredom and all I can say is that one of the chicks in the second panel of Judge Parker was kind of hot. Not really hot, nothing that would be worth my time. But kind of. A little. The first panel was a train wreck though, and I have no idea how people can follow a story with three lines of dialogue a day. Jeez.
So many comics are epic fail. Way past hit or miss to consistent miss.
Dilbert has run its course, even, but Scott Adams keeps on rolling. While every now and then the right alignment of dialog finds me appreciating it, the results are usually much worse. A set of strips included in a calendar a coworker has was a particularly noxious example. The crew had a new manager who had an ashtray for a head. The sole purpose of this, as far as I can tell, was to set up a joke about "your ash or a hole in the ground".
Uggh.
I've been playing this one on and off for a while.
I like it despite being annoyed with several aspects, most notably:
1)Too much Dialog
2)Inventory ARGGGH
2) is not as bad as fallout where you carried damn near everything on the off chance you might need it later. But there is a hard limit of 80 items, and you wind up accumulating a lot of them. Gifts - usually best for someone, but I'm too lazy to figure out who. For that matter, the various resistance and other stat boosting potions - am I going to need/use them? Probably not, but I want to keep them along - and hten I'm at 80 items deep in some crap dungeon, trying to figure out what to unload.
1)Is the more frustrating. For some trivial side quest where you need to talk to someone and convince them to do return the thing they stole, there's like 15 minutes of dialog. Every little step of every little quest, dialog, dialog, dialog! I feel like skipping it ruins some of the gravitas or something, especially on the main quest line. At other times though, I just want to do the quest, without hearing the characters whole sob story.
That said it's fun. Maybe because the world IS so developed. Playing an elf EVERYBODY NOTICES, and some people are subtley racist (assuming you're a servant for instance).
And I don't know, I kick a lot of ass, the combat is about right in terms of challenge and fun. I haven't really had to use tactics slots yet, but this is because the tactics are often too complex for that. I need to do so at some point though.
I like the cast of characters but limiting to me to 4 - of which the PC counts as one and so would the dog - is kind of sad. I don't know if more would be better, but part of the fun of the game comes from putting the characters in unique situations and seeing how they react.
I also rather enjoy the leveling system and the things you get to pick therein.
B.
Dwarf Fortress is the project of one man, and is like its own little world. The graphics are ASCII (though you can get other "tilesets" as mods). The interface basically doesn't exist - it is entirely keyboard based, though there is some minimal mouse support. It's a mile deep at places - the last patch saw him adding tissue layers (really) for weapons to interact with as they hit. The underground and the lore, it's a sprawling, huge game full of so many kinds of creatuers and items. The detail is incredible, the learning curve a cliff. The current version is buggy.
I am kind of obsessed. It's also free. A+. High chance you will run into that learning curve cliff and fall right off, though.
The Biggest Loser was initially compelling in an almost freak show kind of way.
What followed was kind of strange - a reality show without much drama. Everybody is trying hard, it seems, everybody is committed to staying, nobody really hates anybody else, except for the sole game player, Melissa, who was sent packing twice. People vote people off based on who seems to need more help in their "weight loss journey"
An effort is made to stir things up with every sort of variation from the challenge-main event format. The challenges are sometimes full of twists, like the winners getting to help the loser and avoid last place. Eliminated contestants come back sometimes.
Despite this, it gets repetitive because everyone is doing the same thing and everyone is fighting the same way. The "inpsiring message" gets hammered into your head as hard as it possibly can.
Also, the content gets very repetitive. Why is it 2 hours long?! The result is that the host has to always remind the contestants that they risk "falling below the yellow line and being up for elimination", at least a dozen times a show - and update us on who could be below the yellow line and who is safe after each contestant weighs in.
The product placement bits are almost comically amatuer. The contestants look confused. "Why are you suddenly telling us to eat cereal as part of breakfast? I guess this is good?" It makes the whole thing kind of funny.
Every now and then we find out more about the backstory of the contestants - what led them to being so fat, what issues and demons they are struggling with, and these are the interesting moments in the show. They are pretty rare when you don't usually get one with your 2 hours of show. That's the length of a movie, ffs.
Also I heard (trainer) Jillian Michaels is lesbian, which is hot if you think about it. I know I do.
C+
These are Chau's shows. I, however, have a weakness against TV, such that when it is on, I watch it. So for a time I got sucked into watching bits and pieces of Gossip Girl. I never cared about the story, and so don't mind missing lots of (or all of it). But I did watch it.
And it's a total soap opera, with no real redeeming value. The girls aren't that hot. Every now and then they'll try to spice it up with a threeway or some sexually ambiguous happenings but it doesn't work for me. D.
Don't blame Chau for making me watch it, she never did. But I did wind up watching on several occasions. I'm weak against TV elemental.
It's still better than The Hills, a show which Chau watches - and which even I can't watch a whole episode of, and that's really saying something. It's like you gave some people off the street - "kind of cool looking people" - a vague script and told them to try and act it. They do, and they suck at it, as you'd expect. Where is the value? There isn't any! They don't even fail hard enough to be funny. It just comes across as slow and awkward, as though they are thinking "what should my character feel in this situation? Oh, annoyed? Yeah, that's it! So I'll do annoyed now!" F.
I realize that I'm the sort of person who likes things that are almost agressively artificial - things like chicks with pink hair, anime aesthetics, hyperactive japanese pop music, "fake lesbians", massive airbrushing and so on. So you'd think Heidi - who is most famous for having lots of plastic surgery as far as I can tell - would work for me. She doesn't. Still an F, even though the first scene I remember was the girls sitting around in bikinis getting a tan (or something). STILL an F.
Speaking of airbrushing...
Playboy as a magazine is superior to Maxim in every possible way.
What impresses me most is the writing, which manages to capture a sense of "we don't really know for sure - but how cool would it be if it was?".
In contrast Maxim has become a huge advertisement. If prostitution was legal in more of the country I'm sure the girls would be there advertising their respective brothels. Every sort of product - car, beer, cologne, cell phone, alarm clock, whatever - is sold on the pages of Maxim, usually as some sort of editors recommendation as to how to be cool.
Playboy has a very different feel. It has ads and recommendations which are basically ads, but it just feels so much less pervasive. And most of the articles aren't about "buy this thing".
As for girls, I can get naked girls on the internet just fine, but I feel like playboy somehow covers them ever so slightly better than Maxim. I mean, in the writing. Actually, who am I kidding, they can both cherry pick interview comments and put them in a big font to make them sound sexy just fine, and it's not like I care if she likes pizza or not.
Anyway consider me all around impressed with Playboy and its writing, even if it isn't really that great. I particularly enjoy the "Ask Playboy" or whatever the advice column is called. B+.
I'll add more if I think of something. I feel like watching some sort of intellectually bankrupt ecchi anime, or something of similar value, because I just haven't had much cheesecake fluff in a while. On the other hand, I don't know how much I could enjoy that because the least common denominator has just gotten so very, very low. Megan Fox wasn't really succesful in giving Transformers 2 any value. Goodness that was a wreck.
No, another Akagi would be better...
I need to wrap up Dragon Age Origins so I can get to Mass Effect 2. I also need to clear out that space in the front of Chau's parent's yard so we can plant things where they actually get sunlight. (In contrast to our backyard plot - which did fine.... when trees didnt' have leaves_
Extract came out last year and it's now on DVD, it's a Mike Judge movie. Have you seen Office Space? It's like that in general feel (except a factory instead of an office), but... a lot less good. Jason Bateman plays the same character he played in Arrested Development, a family/businessman trying to do right admist a sea of sleazy clowns. It works out alright. B-.
No plot, but Tina Fey and Steve Carell are brilliant together, and the writing of their lines is good too - perhaps at times a little close to home, even, as a partner in a couple. If you're not paired up with someone, it probably wont' be as good. But it's still hilarious, and awesome. A.
No matter how many times I complain about them, they still disappoint me. Yesterday's was no exception. I read almost all of them out of boredom and all I can say is that one of the chicks in the second panel of Judge Parker was kind of hot. Not really hot, nothing that would be worth my time. But kind of. A little. The first panel was a train wreck though, and I have no idea how people can follow a story with three lines of dialogue a day. Jeez.
So many comics are epic fail. Way past hit or miss to consistent miss.
Dilbert has run its course, even, but Scott Adams keeps on rolling. While every now and then the right alignment of dialog finds me appreciating it, the results are usually much worse. A set of strips included in a calendar a coworker has was a particularly noxious example. The crew had a new manager who had an ashtray for a head. The sole purpose of this, as far as I can tell, was to set up a joke about "your ash or a hole in the ground".
Uggh.
I've been playing this one on and off for a while.
I like it despite being annoyed with several aspects, most notably:
1)Too much Dialog
2)Inventory ARGGGH
2) is not as bad as fallout where you carried damn near everything on the off chance you might need it later. But there is a hard limit of 80 items, and you wind up accumulating a lot of them. Gifts - usually best for someone, but I'm too lazy to figure out who. For that matter, the various resistance and other stat boosting potions - am I going to need/use them? Probably not, but I want to keep them along - and hten I'm at 80 items deep in some crap dungeon, trying to figure out what to unload.
1)Is the more frustrating. For some trivial side quest where you need to talk to someone and convince them to do return the thing they stole, there's like 15 minutes of dialog. Every little step of every little quest, dialog, dialog, dialog! I feel like skipping it ruins some of the gravitas or something, especially on the main quest line. At other times though, I just want to do the quest, without hearing the characters whole sob story.
That said it's fun. Maybe because the world IS so developed. Playing an elf EVERYBODY NOTICES, and some people are subtley racist (assuming you're a servant for instance).
And I don't know, I kick a lot of ass, the combat is about right in terms of challenge and fun. I haven't really had to use tactics slots yet, but this is because the tactics are often too complex for that. I need to do so at some point though.
I like the cast of characters but limiting to me to 4 - of which the PC counts as one and so would the dog - is kind of sad. I don't know if more would be better, but part of the fun of the game comes from putting the characters in unique situations and seeing how they react.
I also rather enjoy the leveling system and the things you get to pick therein.
B.
Dwarf Fortress is the project of one man, and is like its own little world. The graphics are ASCII (though you can get other "tilesets" as mods). The interface basically doesn't exist - it is entirely keyboard based, though there is some minimal mouse support. It's a mile deep at places - the last patch saw him adding tissue layers (really) for weapons to interact with as they hit. The underground and the lore, it's a sprawling, huge game full of so many kinds of creatuers and items. The detail is incredible, the learning curve a cliff. The current version is buggy.
I am kind of obsessed. It's also free. A+. High chance you will run into that learning curve cliff and fall right off, though.
The Biggest Loser was initially compelling in an almost freak show kind of way.
What followed was kind of strange - a reality show without much drama. Everybody is trying hard, it seems, everybody is committed to staying, nobody really hates anybody else, except for the sole game player, Melissa, who was sent packing twice. People vote people off based on who seems to need more help in their "weight loss journey"
An effort is made to stir things up with every sort of variation from the challenge-main event format. The challenges are sometimes full of twists, like the winners getting to help the loser and avoid last place. Eliminated contestants come back sometimes.
Despite this, it gets repetitive because everyone is doing the same thing and everyone is fighting the same way. The "inpsiring message" gets hammered into your head as hard as it possibly can.
Also, the content gets very repetitive. Why is it 2 hours long?! The result is that the host has to always remind the contestants that they risk "falling below the yellow line and being up for elimination", at least a dozen times a show - and update us on who could be below the yellow line and who is safe after each contestant weighs in.
The product placement bits are almost comically amatuer. The contestants look confused. "Why are you suddenly telling us to eat cereal as part of breakfast? I guess this is good?" It makes the whole thing kind of funny.
Every now and then we find out more about the backstory of the contestants - what led them to being so fat, what issues and demons they are struggling with, and these are the interesting moments in the show. They are pretty rare when you don't usually get one with your 2 hours of show. That's the length of a movie, ffs.
Also I heard (trainer) Jillian Michaels is lesbian, which is hot if you think about it. I know I do.
C+
These are Chau's shows. I, however, have a weakness against TV, such that when it is on, I watch it. So for a time I got sucked into watching bits and pieces of Gossip Girl. I never cared about the story, and so don't mind missing lots of (or all of it). But I did watch it.
And it's a total soap opera, with no real redeeming value. The girls aren't that hot. Every now and then they'll try to spice it up with a threeway or some sexually ambiguous happenings but it doesn't work for me. D.
Don't blame Chau for making me watch it, she never did. But I did wind up watching on several occasions. I'm weak against TV elemental.
It's still better than The Hills, a show which Chau watches - and which even I can't watch a whole episode of, and that's really saying something. It's like you gave some people off the street - "kind of cool looking people" - a vague script and told them to try and act it. They do, and they suck at it, as you'd expect. Where is the value? There isn't any! They don't even fail hard enough to be funny. It just comes across as slow and awkward, as though they are thinking "what should my character feel in this situation? Oh, annoyed? Yeah, that's it! So I'll do annoyed now!" F.
I realize that I'm the sort of person who likes things that are almost agressively artificial - things like chicks with pink hair, anime aesthetics, hyperactive japanese pop music, "fake lesbians", massive airbrushing and so on. So you'd think Heidi - who is most famous for having lots of plastic surgery as far as I can tell - would work for me. She doesn't. Still an F, even though the first scene I remember was the girls sitting around in bikinis getting a tan (or something). STILL an F.
Speaking of airbrushing...
Playboy as a magazine is superior to Maxim in every possible way.
What impresses me most is the writing, which manages to capture a sense of "we don't really know for sure - but how cool would it be if it was?".
In contrast Maxim has become a huge advertisement. If prostitution was legal in more of the country I'm sure the girls would be there advertising their respective brothels. Every sort of product - car, beer, cologne, cell phone, alarm clock, whatever - is sold on the pages of Maxim, usually as some sort of editors recommendation as to how to be cool.
Playboy has a very different feel. It has ads and recommendations which are basically ads, but it just feels so much less pervasive. And most of the articles aren't about "buy this thing".
As for girls, I can get naked girls on the internet just fine, but I feel like playboy somehow covers them ever so slightly better than Maxim. I mean, in the writing. Actually, who am I kidding, they can both cherry pick interview comments and put them in a big font to make them sound sexy just fine, and it's not like I care if she likes pizza or not.
Anyway consider me all around impressed with Playboy and its writing, even if it isn't really that great. I particularly enjoy the "Ask Playboy" or whatever the advice column is called. B+.
I'll add more if I think of something. I feel like watching some sort of intellectually bankrupt ecchi anime, or something of similar value, because I just haven't had much cheesecake fluff in a while. On the other hand, I don't know how much I could enjoy that because the least common denominator has just gotten so very, very low. Megan Fox wasn't really succesful in giving Transformers 2 any value. Goodness that was a wreck.
No, another Akagi would be better...
I need to wrap up Dragon Age Origins so I can get to Mass Effect 2. I also need to clear out that space in the front of Chau's parent's yard so we can plant things where they actually get sunlight. (In contrast to our backyard plot - which did fine.... when trees didnt' have leaves_