Maybe the very last post about Star Wars that I ever make

To: Star Wars producers and fandom

Re: The Acolyte and social media insanity

I can't even anymore.  I feel like I've officially become an old man who can't keep up with the youngsters.  I went through enough of this crap twenty-five years ago. God only knows what it would have been like if there had been Twitter and YouTube back in the day.  To paraphrase the final line of a famous movie: "Forget it Jake, it's Star Wars."  This entire drama along with The Acolyte itself has taken the wind out of my fanhood's sails, and my fanhood goes all the way back to the late Seventies.  I shall always treasure the good memories along with the various trophies I've accumulated along the way (signed copy of Heir to the Empire, my self-designed and constructed lightsaber, the Yoda puppet autographed by "Weird Al" Yankovic...) and I can watch the classic trilogy in their original form anytime on my VCR.  But this is it.  I've already been on the bad side of a few breakups.  Now I'm finally finding out what it is to be the one who picks up and leaves behind something that won't get better.

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I'm getting #@&% sick and tired of EVONY ads!!

Whoever is responsible for all of those #@&% banner ads for Evony needs to be dragged out into the street and shot hung from the nearest telephone pole by his circular reproductive units with piano wire.

Seriously.

No, I haven't played this game. But I have heard from numerous sources that it is terrible. And the thing about Evony being "free forever" is a fraud: to achive anything in the game will likely microtransaction you into bankruptcy.

But that hasn't stopped the developers of Evony from running a publicity campaign that could be called full-bore faulty advertising, if not increasingly desperate. There is no "queen" to save (nor is there "your lover", My Lord).

I have tried numerous times to keep the Evony ads from popping up on this blog. They keep creeping in, like so many filthy cockroaches...

Want to see how badly the idiots behind Evony want you to play their cruddy game? Hit here, My Lord, for a gallery of Evony ads and watch how the raciness has escalated throughout this past summer.

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A message to every political candidate in the United States

To whom it may concern:

The very next "robocall" that comes into this house, I will go out, find the candidate who authorized it, and have him/her hung from the nearest telephone poll by his/her circular reproductive units. With piano wire.

This notice is being made regardless of party affiliation.

You have been duly warned.

Thank you.

EDIT 3:14 p.m. EST: I should elaborate that this only comes after I received four such automated calls from political campaigns within a span of five minutes. So yeah, I'm feeling more than a little honked-off right now...

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No TRICK 'R TREAT this Halloween (thanks for nothing Warners!)

Last December I attended Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9. For those who don't know, Butt-Numb-A-Thon is an annual film festival/geek pow-wow that Harry Knowles of the Ain't It Cool News website hosts at one of the Alamo Drafthouse theaters in Austin, Texas. For twenty-four straight hours, the invited are treated (and sometimes assaulted) with some of the best examples of the motion picture medium, hand-picked by Knowles. Almost a year later and I still can't help but giggle madly whenever I think of Feels So Good (the urethroplasty documentary that we watched during breakfast) and no doubt a lot of people who were there have tried to explain "BECAUSE YOU ARE WHITE!!!" to their friends. But anyhoo...

The final movie of last year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon - the one holding the coveted slot of "best unreleased film you had no idea was coming" - was Trick 'R Treat, a horror anthology by writer/director Michael Dougherty. Starring Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker and Brian Cox among numerous other familiar actors, I thought that Dougherty had crafted quite a wonderful "love letter" of sorts to Eighties-style horror movies with Trick 'R Treat. I wrote at the time that I was very much looking forward to watching it again when it was released the following Halloween. Y'all have no idea either how much I've been telling other people to be looking for this movie, 'cuz it was most certainly a terrific "treat"!

Except it ain't happening.

For whatever insane reason that they've got for doing this, Warner Brothers is withholding Trick 'R Treat from release. Barring some crazy miracle of distribution, it won't be seen this Halloween at all. Maybe next year though. Maybe.

Folks, there's a reason why Trick 'R Treat is being called by those fortunate enough to have seen it as "the absolute best horror movie" in years. It's darned perfect. The four tales told in Trick 'R Treat are so exquisitely orchestrated, the pacing is just right and the casting is spot-on excellent (to say nothing of Dougherty's wonderful script and directing) that this is a movie that demands not only a proper release, but for the suits at Warners to throw an unconscionable amount of money at Michael Dougherty's feet so that he can make that entire series of Trick 'R Treat films that he hinted about at Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Considering that the current slate of films is still recovering from the writers strike, Trick 'R Treat should be downright obligated to have prime territory at the cinemas.

This is, really, a very sad thing. I now feel like one of the lucky to have been able to enjoy this film. And everyone else should have the opportunity to be as delighted about Trick 'R Treat as we were at Butt-Numb-A-Thon last year.

C'mon Warners, give this film the wide release it deserves!

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Those insane courses on Wii Sports: Golf

This afternoon Dad came by. It's been raining here for most of the day, and it was pretty chilly out in his knife shop and he'd wanted to take a break from his work, and I needed one from some projects too. So we played a nine-hole round of Golf on Wii Sports on the Nintendo Wii that I got Lisa for Christmas.

How did we do?

Let's put it this way: if Robert Trent Jones ever designed a golf course as evil as the ones on Wii Sports: Golf, he would have probably been dragged out onto the fairway and shot.

We were doing pretty good until the ninth hole. If you've played Golf on Wii Sports you probably know which one I'm about to talk about: it's that one where the hole is in the middle of a rocky island, that you have to drive the ball onto. Dad and I both tried our darndest to get it onto the green... but it's impossible! The ball either goes into the water, or it ricochets off the cliff-side and then goes into the water. By the time each of us had hit +12 on the hole the game told us to "Give Up".

Somewhere at Nintendo Headquarters in Japan, some smart-alecy game programmer is no doubt laughing at his supposed cleverness for creating the golfing equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru "no-win" scenario.

Okay so anyone else who has this game: how the heck do we get the ball over the water and onto that tiny island??

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