TheLastBaron

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by TheLastBaron

  1. Posted

    I wouldn't typically say this to someone with a video game goal, but I feel that this behavior is so extreme that my suggestion is to learn to cook, or learn to paint, play the guitar, go to the gym, read a book, or try literally any other form of enrichment.

     

    Just throwin' it out there, gonna leave it out on the table for anyone to pick up n think about. If nobody does, then hey; no harm done.

    That's my post.

    Do you feel the same way about speed running? I ask out of curiosity because you say this is so extreme when to me it seems like a less extreme option than speedrunning (no time goal and when you're done you're actually done).

    Personally I think this is cool, good luck!

  2. Posted

    I just finished Southern Bastards #8 which ended the second small arc and man this book is just so good. I just finished it on a Monday which is the longest I've ever waited after an issue has come out (which is on Wednesday.) Scalped was my favorite book when it was coming out, I'm almost certain it's my favorite series in the 2000's, and I thought there wouldn't be another series like it but so far Jason Aaron is doing it again (not to discount how much Jason Latour is doing as well). It's not for everyone, but it's basically everything I like in comics. It takes the intimate/personal stuff I like in books like Essex County and Optic Nerve and combines them with the character-driven crime stuff I like in books like Stray Bullets and Criminal.

  3. Posted

    I've been watching a lot of Cheers recently and the guy who plays the judge in night court shows up a fair amount so I decided to watch some Night Court since it's been a while. I'm pretending that it's a spin-off since Harry Stone's character is the exact same as in Cheers (where he was also named Harry) and it's pretty good. And by good I mean it's Night Court.

  4. Posted

    Every year Calgary's indie music festival has a different guest curator. Last year, Kathleen Hanna put together a great show, the year before it was Pavement. This year, Godspeed You! Black Emperor is curating, but I know nothing about them. What should I expect?

    It's always hard to tell curated things, I used to try and guess who would be in the lineup for Meltdown based on who was directing it that year and was usually wrong. Godspeed has a lot of members with a lot of different backgrounds so it'll probably be pretty eclectic, which is good for a festival. Other than that I have no idea what to expect.

  5. Posted

    I didn't realize that the Love Letter variants weren't just reskins. I saw the Lord of the Rings version at a game shop near me the other day and assumed it was like other light games like Munchkin or Fluxx or what have you that just pick a new theme and reprint the game.

  7. Posted

    I saw this thread last night and ended up re-reading The Filth because I hadn't read it in several years.  Still great.  Makes me think I should maybe do a re-reading of that whole cycle, going back to Flex Mentallo and The Invisibles before giving this a go again.

     

    In other Morrison stuff, I finally got around to reading Ultra Comics, and, man... I don't know if it's possible to produce a comic that is more meta than that.  I think I liked it, but I think that one's gonna take a few more reads to really sink in.

    I haven't been reading much of anything from the big two the past couple years so I have completely ignored The Multiversity up until now (though part of that is because I figured I'd wait until it was all done and collected, and I think I actually did buy the PAX Americana issue and never got around to reading it).  I heard a lot of good stuff about this issue though, so I picked up Ultra Comics and man, I think that might be the most Grant Morrison book Grant Morrison has ever done.  I mean that in a good way, It just seems like a really distilled version of Grant Morrison's brain and the way he thinks about comics (or at least the way I think Grant Morrison thinks about comics from reading a lot of his work including Supergods and also reading interviews with him).  He really likes to explore the whole "what does it mean to be a super hero" thing, or even what does it mean to be a comic book, and this was an interesting study of that.  There's definitely didn't get a lot of stuff and agree it's going to take a few more read (and even then there's going to be stuff I miss), but I'm glad I picked this up.

  8. Posted

    This is vaguely sports but man, Wrestlemania had an incredible ending this year.  Nice to see the company not completely make a mess of things for once.

    I had a friend who's been watching since he was eight or nine (almost 20 years) who went to it and wont stop talking about it.  I kind of wish I had gone now even though I've never been into WWE and also hate going to Levi's Stadium.

  9. Posted

    The paperwhites are all like the Kindle touch right?  Meaning there's no actual buttons and you swipe to turn pages?  I have a really hard time reading if I don't use my finger to keep track of where I am (when I read I usually just swipe my thumb under the lines really fast and I'm fine, otherwise I'm constantly losing my spot) and as far as I can tell this would be constantly be turning pages if I were trying to read on a paperwhite, correct?  It's not a big deal as my Kindle keyboard is still going strong and I have no problems with it.  Does anyone here ever use x-ray? 

  10. Posted

    Since Pittsburgh doesn't have an MLS team I chose the Chicago Fire back in 06 and I look forward to another lackluster season.  Shipp though!

    I actually really like the Fire as far as other teams go.  My neighbors' son played for the Fire for a few seasons probably 10 years ago and I have a friend who works for the organization so I'd like to see them do well.  I also really like Mike Magee and now that he's not on LA I'm allowed to.  I hope he's back playing soon.

  12. Posted

    Question to the thread: Do you think your interest in sports was directly impacted and perpetuated by your father (or mother)?

    Context: I was a sporty child up until I left High School where my University didnt really offer sports. I still keep fit and my dad and I follow Liverpool FC, so i was always interested in football, whose winning the premiership league, whose moved from where, whose winning whose loosing.

     

    In 2012 he died, and I haven't watched a game since. I feel like my love(possible wrong word) of football was context sensitive, i liked it because my dad liked it, it gave us something to bond over and discuss. No dad = no need for football.

     

    Thoughts?

     

     

    Definitely is the case for me, here's a post I made a little while back.

     

     Mostly every sport/team I follow is related to my dad (with one exception).  I live in the Bay Area, but my dad is from is from Boston (well he's actually from Littleton which is 40 miles west and a fun fact is that Steve Carell used to be his mailman) so I follow the Red Sox and the Bruins rather than the Sharks and the Giant's/A's, in fact I really don't like the A's because I've never been to an A's game that wasn't A's vs Sox.  I've sort of gotten a little cold on following baseball though, it was by far my favorite sport growing up and most evenings I would sit with my dad on the couch watching it. It's not as big of a deal as it used to be which is probably related to them winning the world series.  On the other hand I've never cared for the Patriots or the Celtics.  The Patriots my dad has never followed as a result of them being terrible when he was growing up, and he likes the Celtics, but I just never was into Basketball probably because I never played it growing up.  Hockey is kind of weird because when I was super little I liked the Sharks, but at some point switched completely over to only really caring about the Bruins which is again probably related to watching games with my dad.  These days I don't have cable so don't watch much, but will listen to Bruins games on the radio, whereas I just check the scores for Red Sox games usually.

     

    All that being said my favorite sport is soccer and my favorite team of any sport is the San Jose Earthquakes.  This is definitely just from me playing growing up, I played on club teams and then in high school.  It's almost the opposite of other sports, my dad knows nothing about soccer (well he does now) so if we're watching a game together it's a lot of him asking me stuff about the game which is what I used to do with him.  I have season tickets and I don't care how bad they are I'm super excited for the new season and new stadium.  Not having cable does kind of suck though because as much as I love the Quakes the MLS is the MLS and I used to watch every single Premier League game for years (which isn't actually very much since teams only play ~once a week) and now I get once game a week over the air if I'm lucky. 

     

     

    Also regarding MLS, the Quakes' first game at their new stadium was yesterday and we beat Chicago.  I ran into a lot of people I haven't seen in years at the game too which was cool, it's not the biggest stadium (18000), but it was sold out so I wasn't expecting to recognize people left and right as I was walking around.

  13. Posted

    Promethea might be good (just saw that Codicier mentioned it already so consider this me seconding it). It's Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III doing metaphysical so if he liked Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison (I'm assuming the latter based on Animal Man) it might be a good shot. 

  14. Posted

    I could have sworn that when Scribd first launched comics How To Be Happy by Eleanor Davis was on there and then when I went to read it a couple weeks later it was gone.  Maybe that's what happened.  Either way my free month ended last week and I didn't opt to subscribe.  I might check it out later though when there's some new stuff and I am glad with the time I did spend on it as I checked out some stuff I never would have checked out otherwise like The Cage by Martin Vaughn-James.

     

    By the way the final issue of The Private Eye is now up at http://panelsyndicate.com/

  15. Posted

    Sounders season is a couple of games in and I just haven't had time to even watch the highlights. I hope I make it to more games this year, but I have a feeling I won't.

    As a pretty big San Jose fan I was so happy when we beat the Sounders last weekend. I wasn't expecting much this season (we were last place last season) and lost our first game. When we got a red card 50 minutes in I figured it was over, but we managed to pull it out (and by we I mean the Sounders gave us a free goal).

    I'm still not hoping for much, but we have our new stadium, a new (technically old) manager, and some new players so maybe things will turn around this year.

  16. Posted

    I guess I'm just not enjoying a show that vindicates Saul as a good man over and over when I know from Breaking Bad that eventually he succumbs. It robs the show of tension for me because I know that sooner or later, probably owing to his brother's condition and/or his brief association with the Mexican drug lords, he's going to slip and that's going to be it. There is literally no other outcome possible, without some crazy breaking of the continuity, and with knowledge of that, the show's slow pacing isn't anything but slow for me.

    I also just didn't like this most recent episode in particular. Not only does he do the right thing, he does so at immense personal cost and risk to himself, and it just feels corny.

    I was about to say the fact that you know how he ends up doesn't mean it can't still be interesting even if he ends up a pretty bad guy. And then the example I thought of was Darth Vader and ugh, I think I'm going to think of the prequel trilogy every time I watch this show now.

  20. Posted

    I was at a Sheffield Wednesday game where a Leeds fan punched Wednesday's keeper in the face and that basically ruined fans on fields for me. Most people aren't Leeds fans, but it still bothers me even when it's benign now. The streaker at the world cup pissed me off.

    Edit: I found the clip, it was more of a push to the face than a punch, but it's still stupid.

  21. Posted

    Oooh, Jhonen Vasquez is going to start doing Invader Zim comics! I love Vasquez, but I felt his style translated a little too shoutily in that show for me to enjoy it as much as I wanted to, so this is the perfect news for me.

    Even though I knew it wasn't going to be through SLG it still feels really weird to see him somewhere else since they're so linked when I think of them (he's from the same are as me and so is SLG so I used see him and get my books signed at SLG). That being said there's no way SLG could do the book, they can't even keep JtHM in print and it's their most popular book (I think it's been out of print since 2011). Also as much as I really liked them in the late 90's/early 2k's I don't think I've bought anything they've put out in over a decade.

    I'm interested to see how it ends up, but at the same time all his stuff is so specific to a certain time for me (middle school) so I don't know how well it'll translate for me personally regardless of how good it is. Either way I'm glad to see him putting something out, his output is very sparse (I can't think of anything recent he's done outside of a Marvel anthology by alternative creators.)

  24. Posted

    I really liked it, if the preview is what I'm assuming it is (just checked, it is) obviously it's a big set piece, but I thought the book stayed strong all the way through. It's also a really pretty book. Obviously from the preview the art is good, but also the book design is great. It's just a really nice book to look at.