We’re off to Louisiana for a few days, so I’ll wish you all a Happy New Year early. When I return, there’ll be my Comics of 2005, Boardgames of 2005, some hopes for 2006, and maybe, just maybe, a new Previews Order!

Have a happy and safe New Year

Games accelerating for faster-paced lives

When Kelli McNamara’s friend brought over a “Scene It?” DVD game to play after Thanksgiving dinner, McNamara admits she was skeptical. . . “We ended up playing for 30 minutes or 40 minutes. It whizzed by,” said the New York music marketing executive.

Holy cow! A whole 30 to 40 minutes?

“A lot of people are strapped for time, and they don’t want to pull out a game if they know it’s going to be an hour or more,” said Reyne Rice, toy trends specialist at the Toy Industry Association.

Faster games are easier for families to fit into their hectic lives, she said.

Those TPS reports aren’t going to write themselves, you know!

“In today’s world, if there’s a new entertainment experience, it’s got to be quick to learn and quick to play,” he said.

CAN YOU PLEASE SPEED UP THE FUN HERE, PEOPLE?

“Our games are designed so that you don’t have to read the rules…and then they’re all designed to be played in less than 20 minutes,” said CEO Nicholas Wodtke.

Maybe YOU have twenty whole minutes to waste there, lazybones, but I have THINGS TO DO!

“There will always be room for board games,” Wodtke said. But he added: “It’s no longer the ’50s and people just don’t have that much time.”

Next in the series: How “Everyone Go Into the Kitchen!” can be a good alternative to a tedious, time-wasting vacation!

This is one sick society.

Make sure you read Adam Lasnik’s “talkback” comment at the bottom.

More year-end wrap-uppery! I’ll be back after our Louisiana trip with posts about the Comics and Board Games of 2005, since both of those are things I plan to go into some depth about. But here are some other categories of things I liked in 2005.

Books (Non-Comic)

One of the few 2005 resolutions I stuck with was reading more non-comics. I plowed through a pretty hefty stack of things that had been collecting dust. Sure, there were some things that didn’t grab me, but some of the standouts were:

• Dude, Where’s My Country and Stupid White Men (Michael Moore) — Moore and Hillary Clinton tie for first place as far as the Right Wing’s most hated people. Hillary I can’t say much good about, but I’m proud to count Moore as an ally. He does righteous anger better than anyone, making very good points that his detractors don’t bother refuting because they’re too busy calling him fat. For too long I disowned Moore, seeing him as simply a left-wing Bill O’Reilly, but I wholeheartedly embrace him now, and wish we had more people like him.
• What’s the Matter With Kansas? (Thomas Frank) — Another political book, this was a fascinating and insightful look into the mindscape of the average Conservative Joe, who rails against the destruction of his way of life and then consistently votes for the people destroying it.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon) — A young autistic boy who loves math(s) and hates the color yellow uses his detective skills to solve a mystery. Becky and I both tore through this one, unwilling to put it down until the end.
• Perdido Street Station (China Mieville) — While I felt that the plot was kind of ho-hum, given the fascinating setting, I can’t deny that this book hooked me from the first page and kept me glued all the way through. A flawed work, to be sure, but still quite impressive and entertaining.

Music

The stuff I listened to this year was more “new to me” than “new”. I did listen to a lot more stuff this year, finally taking advantage of the fact that I sit in front of a fantastic musical entertainment device for about 10 hours a day. Some of the albums I really dug this year were:

• Pixel Revolt (John Vanderslice) — More about it here. This is the album the really grabbed me this year. Subtle and elegant, it got under my skin and didn’t let up. The song “Exodus Damage” in particular I found amazing.
• Thunder, Lightning Strike (The Go! Team) — The feel-goodest feel-good record of this or any year. As I’ve described it before, a kung-fu movie soundtrack performed by the pep squad. If you can listen to “The Power is On” without getting hooked, you’re a stronger person than I am.
• Funeral (The Arcade Fire) — Yeah yeah, way old news to everyone else. We had this for a while and I liked it okay, but recently I really listened to it and it grew on me immensely.
• We Shall All Be Healed (The Mountain Goats) — A band I discovered on KEXP and sought out more of, with great results. I fear they have the same problem as They Might Be Giants and Cake who, because they have lyrics that are “funny” or “weird” get dismissed as merely joke bands. This album and The Sunset Tree are both impressive.

PC Games

The winner has to be Diablo 2, since it’s pretty much the only PC game I played this year. I bought exactly zero games for the computer. Part of it is that my video card won’t run most of the newer games and I’m not willing to pay to upgrade it, but the larger part is that there aren’t any newer PC games that even tempt me to pay for the upgrade. I’m not a fan of First Person Shooters, Real-Time Strategy, Molecular-Level Simulations, or Online RPGs, so as far as the PC game industry is concerned, I can go hang. Maybe someday someone will once again release an RPG that doesn’t cost $15/month to play.

PS2 Games

For lack of PC Games, the PS2 stepped up to bat. Although we replayed a lot of favorites from 2004, some new titles also got some play:

• Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal — I’ve enjoyed every title in this series so far. They’re fun, they’re not punishingly difficult, and there’s lots of replayability. I can’t recommend this series enough!
• We Love Katamari — The sequel to Katamari Damacy is somehow even more charming than the original. And not only that, it deserves praise for the way it takes its very simple concept — rolling things up into a ball — and develops several different variations on the theme. This one will get a lot of play.
• Lego Star Wars — Talked about in more detail here, this game was charming and fun, and I hear that there’s a sequel, featuring the original trilogy, in the works. Joy!

Role-Playing Games

This was the year I think I finally said goodbye to RPGs. I just finally got to the point where I felt that the investment of time, money, and energy just wasn’t paying off. I was more interested in rules-lite games such as Primetime Adventures, Feng Shui, and Dogs in the Vineyard, but when it came down to it, I found that I preferred board games for my gaming ya-yas.

TV

Only one TV show mattered this year at all, and that was Doctor Who. I had been dreading the arrival of the new series, fearing it was going to be the final humiliation of this favorite of mine. Nothing was further from the truth. Not only did the show live up to my diminished hopes, it lived up to my secret high hopes and surpassed them. I never would have dreamed that the new series would, at once, provide both a first-rate depiction of the Doctor by Christopher Eccleston, but also a new favorite companion in Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). We just watched the Christmas Episode yesterday and it still warms even this calcified heart of mine. This show is like joy wrapped in delight wrapped in a second layer of joy.

So there’s some of the stuff I was digging on in 2005. Like I said, I’ll talk about comics and board games later on.

It’s year-end wrap-up time, and let’s start with movies. I did my usual routine of looking at a list of all 2005 movie releases and selected titles for three categories, one of which was “Movies I saw in the Theater”. We’ll get to that one in a moment.

I’ve looked at some other folks lists, which include stuff they saw and didn’t like and, as usual, I’m absolutely dumbfounded. That anyone paid to see Bewitched or The Dukes of Hazzard at all surprises me, but then those people went and felt let down. What exactly were you expecting? Can you not read reviews? Can you not just look at the posters or trailers for those and tell they’re going to be awful? Or are you one of those souls who never listen to the critics, dammit, I don’t trust you, let ME drink that milk and see how sour it is for myself dear god this tastes WRETCHED why didn’t anyone warn me?

The first category of mine is “Movies That There’s No Way in Hell I’d See, Even Though I’m a Big Geek and Sort of Obligated To But Dammit, I Have Some Shred of Self-Respect”:

• Batman Begins
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Constantine
• Corpse Bride
• Fantastic Four
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• War of the Worlds

There are precious few comic book movies I need to see. I know the origin of Batman, thanks, and don’t need to see it acted out on a screen to enjoy it. I don’t carry the Tim Burton Fetish gene, so I’m safe from his stuff. I have a warm spot in my heart for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy despite spending a lot of time around geeks quoting it constantly (including myself), but nothing I heard about the movie sounded like I needed to see it. I’m perfectly happy with the original War of the Worlds book and the 50s movie. I should add Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to that list, as everyone keeps telling me I should see it since it’s the best of the Potter movies. But folks, I didn’t read books 4 and 5, didn’t see movie 3, don’t remember much about the movies and books I did see — is it not obvious that I really don’t care about Harry Potter?

The second category is “Movies I Saw in the Theater”. Last year there were eleven of these. This year there were:

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Serenity
• Sin City
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Yep, I saw a whopping four movies in the theater this year. And none on DVD. No Top Ten for me, I guess. If I had to pick one as the best I guess I’d go with Narnia, which was pretty good, and certainly held together better than any of the others. Serenity was more disappointing the more I thought about it. Star Wars was, well, Star Wars. Being the best of the trilogy movies is kind of like being the tallest midget, so no points really scored there.

And Sin City…oh man. There’s the one that I’m saying “Why?” to. Physician, heal thyself…there was NO reason I should have gone to see that. I don’t like Frank Miller, wasn’t interested in the original comics, and knew the movie was pretty faithful to them. I deserved everything I got. Only four movies I saw and still there was one where I wanted my time and money back.

The final category is “Stuff I’d Like to See and May Yet Do So”:

• The 40-Year-Old Virgin
• Broken Flowers
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• King Kong
• The Squid and the Whale

What these movies all have in common, apart from King Kong, is that none of them really need to be seen on the big screen. Hence my not paying $10 to do so. These I can and probably will be happy to see on DVD, except for Kong, which will probably get a theater visit out of me.

Looking ahead to 2006 there seems to be…a lot more of the same. I wonder if I’ll even find four to see in the year to come.

Question the First: I’m about 2/3 of the way through Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. I need someone who has read it (and preferably the other two books) to tell me: am I getting close to where the plot begins? It’s not like nothing is happening in the book, but wandering from city to city isn’t exactly captivating me. Am I getting close to the point where I say, “Ah yes, this story definitely needed three thousand pages to tell!”? Or should I just bail now?

Question the Second: Et tu, Kinja? Not long after Kinja was recommended to me as a way to keep track of the blogs I read, the management there decide that their site isn’t nearly busy, bloated, and uselss enough and work to remedy the situation. So with blo.gs and now Kinja both falling down on the job I’m once again looking for a blog manager. Requirements are the same as before.

One of the things we got for Christmas was a new PS2, and that meant we could finally play Lego Star Wars! And boy, did we. We actually finished Lego Star Wars…not because it’s particularly short, but because we played it non-stop!

TEN WAYS ‘LEGO STAR WARS’ IS BETTER THAN THE PREQUELS:

10) Only one scene on Tattooine.

9) Mace Windu’s knobby head even cuter than Samuel L. Jackson’s real bald head.

Lego minifigs somehow better at conveying emotion than human actors.

7) Pod Race is slightly less tedious.

6) If you desire, final showdown between Obi-Wan and Anakin can be recast with Gonk Droid/Threepio slap-fight.

5) Prequels had no scene where Jar-Jar and Darth Maul were flipping around the Jedi Temple for money.

4) Power of the force, instead of used for dubious purposes as in the movies, used to make chairs and brooms dance.

3) Pregnant Padme minifig is only vestigial trace of hapless romance plot.

2) Jar-Jar has a purpose. Being the one dude who can jump higher than anyone else, Jar-Jar is pretty much required to get all of the canisters.

1) No dialogue at all. No midichlorians, no poop jokes, and Anakin never opens his mouth.

It’s a hoot, with plenty to do, and it’s cute as a bug. We had a lot of fun with it, and not just because you can make your least favorite character fall off a cliff over and over. I really, seriously, wish someone would put out a book called “Building Lego Star Wars” where they have plans for building some of the objects seen in the game!

Christmas is upon us, and that means carols, gingerbread, mistletoe, and painting!

You may recall the time back in October when we had about 200 straight days of rain. Well that rain seeped in through the roof and damaged our bedroom ceiling. Last week we had Scott in to fix the damage and he did a fantastic job of tearing down the weird painted canvas ceiling and replacing it with fresh new drywall. He also threw in a little electrical work as a bonus! He finished on Wednesday, so Thursday night we dove in with the primer and paint. In addition to doing the ceiling, since the furniture was already out and floor protection down, we figured it was as good a time as any to tackle the dingy walls as well. Here’s the result:

The ceiling is white and the walls are a sort of light green. As for the damage, check this before and after pair out:

 

And here’s the electrical work. We got rid of these horrible lights on the left and replaced them with a ceiling fan and a light in Becky’s closet:

 

The paint was all dry last night, so we were finally able to sleep in our own room for Christmas Eve (we’d been sleeping on the sofa bed downstairs.) The facts that all the painting is done is the best Christmas gift ever!