Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

Anyone who has met and spoke with me for any length of time has typically been treated to two of my favorite subjects: Star Wars and Soccer. Hell, I even confuse people here in the States by calling it football. If the subjects don’t come up somehow, then usually tattoos have in some way, and I’ve got one for each, on each shoulder. On the left is a Mandalorian emblem, and on the right is the crest for Manchester United. These facts are well known to my friends, so last week they all started sending me the same video, over and over. Even my ex-wife sent it to me in a rare show of “no one loves soccer and Star Wars more than this guy”. So then, why don’t I love the new Addidas World Cup commercial featuring Chalmun’s Cantina in Mos Eisley from Star Wars?

Pretty much the coolest idea ever

We tune in only because we know the characters, forgiving massive plot holes and shoddy acting in favor of familiarity, and we do it to the tune of billions (with a “B”) every summer. For the company shoving a crappy ball down the collective throats of the world’s best players, maybe it makes sense to emulate a model that has sold us sparkly vampires and nameless Decepticon fodder.

This is the only ball you're looking for...

Syfy likes reimagining books and turning them into mini-series. At the end of 2007, The Wizard of Oz became Tinman, with Zooey Deschanel as DG and Neal McDonough as Cain, also known as the titular Tin Man. Last December 6th and 7th, Alice in Wonderland became Alice, the story of a black-belt who accidentally follows her boyfriend and his abductors through the looking glass and into another world. Once there, the viewers recognize that they’re not in the Wonderland from the novel. Written and directed by Nick Willing, Alice shows us what Wonderland might look like in modern times, almost 150 years after the novel was written.

Transformers 2 was the biggest piece of soulless cinematic crap this side of the centennial divide. The film was poorly written, poorly directed, and all too often “we’ll fix it in post” was used as an excuse for making a film in the same way Ed Wood used to make his “masterpieces”. Now comes word that genre favorite, Alan Tudyk, famed for dying on screen far too often, has signed on for Transformers 3. I guess he looked at it as a way to finally kill his last shred of dignity on film too.

My Gods… what have I done. This review is going to be insane.

DnD was what I cut my teeth on. It’s how I discovered roleplaying. I went over to a friend’s house one night in the wild outback of Washington State, and I woke up chewing on his book. I was about 8 years old.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a group of four 7 to 9 year olds play Dungeons and Dragons, or any tabletop game, but they don’t precisely follow rules. We would roll up characters, and then roll a die randomly to determine what level we were, and then just pick a bunch of spells that were cool out of the book and hurl ourselves relentlessly at random stuff included in the books.

For those of you that don’t know what DnD one looked like, here’s an archeological reference:

We didn't read this

See how it says “Read this book first” up at the top? With a fucking exclamation point? Yeah, obviously that didn’t apply to us. We picked through, tossed out all the bullshit rules (anything our 7 year old brains couldn’t comprehend) and started playing.

The 2nd Ed. Player's Handbook pretty much eclipsed Dark Sun for my friends because, all of a sudden, they didn’t have to worry about dying in a desert from dehydration, or from Jamey psionically controlling them to jump into a large pool of silt that they thought was water. Jamey, by the way, was playing a world-class jerk. His alignment was Lawful Asshole.

3.0 was so entirely, horribly broken that I can’t even believe, for a single minute, that they even bothered to playtest the dice they advised using in this lump of horsecrap. A archaeologist friend of mine got bored one night and created a half-orc paladin who could dual-wield halberds. At first level. Know what a halberd is? It’s an eight foot shaft tipped with a foot-long blade that is used for defending against charging fucking horses and crap. He had one in each hand. Without any negative effects.

The following is an addendum to the preceding article, which originally appeared on Templeofconflict.com:

My thoughts raised some hackles. Some people didn’t agree with my viewpoints, but that’s okay… because that’s just what they are. They’re my viewpoints. Some people took personal umbrage to my viewpoints, like I woke them up with a bucket of moosedroppings to the face before personally pissing in their favorite bowl of cheerios. These people made me laugh a bit, but still, I was thankful to hear the opinions they had.

Well I believe it's safe to say we're all fucked, fictional characters are coming to life and assimilating with us all, RUN LIKE HELL!

     The Hangover is very much a case of the little movie that could. With a crude, smaller budget film like this, no one really expected too much out of it. Even Lindsay Lohan turned down a part because she did not think it was ever going to go anywhere. Surprisingly, The Hangover turned out to be one of the biggest hits of 2009, raking in scads of cash and assuring a career for everyone involved. I have a little history going into The Hangover. I saw it in the theater and was not terribly amused. I thought the acting was sub-par, the plot ludicrous, and the humor dumbed down to the point of being retarded. However, then I saw it again.