Rantery
We’ve been watching Once Upon a Time since it premiered last year, and I’ve had so-so feelings about it all along. I think it’s a show that has a lot of potential, but it just hasn’t had enough forward movement to be truly engaging. It came back from its holiday break this week with a new episode. Ava is doing the official Fandomania reviews for this show, so I’m putting my own thoughts here instead of there. If you haven’t seen up through the newest episode (“Desperate Souls”), beware of spoilers beyond this point.
Friday was Celeste’s birthday, and we had a great weekend with my parents, who took us out to dinner that night and with Celeste’s parents, who took us out to dinner last night and stayed at our house until today. After all the celebrating was done and everyone had gone home, I decided to hop on the Xbox for a little while. I fired it up and tried to log into my account, only to have it tell me that my account was invalid and needed to be recovered to my console. This has happened once before, due to what I had assumed was a technical glitch. I selected to recover the account and entered my username and password… and they came back as invalid. Confused, I went to the computer and tried to log into Xbox.com. Same thing… invalid password for my account.
(Photo by Jane Tyska - InsideBayArea.com)
Like many, I was glued to my computer screen last night, watching events unfold in Oakland, CA. I was going to be up until about 5am working anyway, so I decided to open a livestream to follow the protest news in another window. Eventually my work took a backseat to what was happening on the other side of the country. The live footage of the police attacking the protesters was unsettling and shocking at the time, but after a night to sleep on it and a day to see the attempted spin doctoring, I’m more disillusioned than anything else.
George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire begins its TV adaptation this weekend with the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones. As a longtime fan and evangelist of the book series, I’m naturally excited about the TV show after seeing what appears to be a staunch faithfulness to the original material. Advance reviews have started showing up online, and one in particular has stirred up a hornet’s nest today.
I like to think of myself as a person fairly securely plugged into geek culture. I watch lots of clever TV featuring robots and monsters, I read fantasy books that look like doorstops, I’m way into video games and collectibles, and I generally identify myself as a geek. Occasionally, though, there are facets of this culture that I just don’t get.
What’s the deal with mustaches and bacon, folks?
