GSL 2012 Season 1 Finale: And then there were two…

GSL logoI’ll admit it, I was wrong about DRG. There was some irrational part of me that wanted to believe that he’s an unproven commodity, that his meteoric rise was a byproduct of flashes of talent and not a consistent prowess. For the first two matches in his semi-final bout with GuMiho, it looked like I may have been right. GuMiho used a heavy macro style combined with a more tech-heavy early game to gain massive economic leads. Twice in a row he defeated DRG in convincing fashion.

Then DRG did it again. He just up and decided to win three games in a row like it wasn’t no thang. He truly is a top 3 Zerg.

As wrong as I was about DRG, though, I take heart in just how right I was about Genius. Alive was straight up outplayed by the strategically superior Protoss. As the season of team MVP draws to a conclusion, a PvZ final looms on the horizon. The question is, will it be worth remembering?  Read on…

Talking the Walk: Episode 210 “18 Miles Out”

Forgive me for being late with Week 3 of Talking the Walk. I had obligations to watch the Oscars, and that… was an ordeal. Billy Crystal. Meryl Streep. Christopher Plummer. Silent movies. All night the Academy was raising figurative corpses of its own,  youknowwhatI’msayin’? -waits for high five-

But it’ a shame that a big event like this overshadowed “18 Miles Out,” which, for most the most part, was a climatic season 2 episode. Rick vs. Shane finally came to a head… not quite in the way I had hoped. Rick and Shane drive a hooded and bound Randall (the Philly survivor Rick, Glen, and Hershel saved last episode) away from the farm to find a safe place to snuff him out. But at a crossroads (OH, SUBTLE), Rick pauses to clear the air with Shane, revealing that he knows not only about Otis’ murder at the school, but about Shane’s affair with Lori. Rick puts his foot down, staking his territory around Lori and Carl, and, to his credit, Shane takes responsibility, cites the circumstances, and all around observes the proper dude-bro code.  Read on…

The (Dis)United Districts of Panem

Besides being a great story, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a great way to get acquainted with geography. The trilogy is set in the country of Panem, a post-Apocalyptic land subtly (or not so subtly) revealed to be America (somewhere Charlton Heston is collapsing on a beach). Panem is divided into 13 Districts and while the relationships between these districts are important, their relative locations are never clearly specified. The following is my attempt to map out the districts in the Hunger Games. Click on the image below for a full map of Panem: Read on…

Talking the Walk: Episode 209 “Triggerfinger”

And we roll on to week two of Season 2, Part 2 of The Walking Dead! This has spoilers.

Last week’s episode was basically a summary of Part 1 of the season, leaving my recap a recap of a recap (BRAHHHHMMMM). But it ended strong with Lori flipping her car on the interstate in search of Rick, who was busy being pinned down with Glen and Hershel in an abandoned pub after the killing of two aggressive Jersey-sounding survivors from Philly. OH! Fugetaboutit! Gabagool! Racial epithet!

The first half hour of “Triggerfinger” might be some of the finest minutes of the series thus far. It opens with Lori awakening from her car crash, pinned inside the vehicle in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Scary enough, right? Nay! Zombies are also trying to push themselves through the mangled car frame, jagged glass peeling back their rotting, bloody skin. NOW YOU”RE SPEAKING MY BLOODTHIRSTY NERD LANGUAGE, AMC!

*HITS INHALER*  Read on…

Hospital Beds and Angry Fairies: A Modern Take on a Shakespeare Classic

The Great Night (cover)

Score: 90/100

Messing with Shakespeare is hardly anything new. His universal themes can come alive and reveal even deeper depths when applied to a different place or time. Also, how many times do you want to watch Romeo climb up a trellis in Elizabethan pantaloons? From the serious-minded (Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth) to the ill-conceived (Julia Stiles in O) to the whackadoo (Hamlet 2), Shakespeare’s characters have wound up in all sorts of times and places.

Usually the attempts to mess with Shakespearian setting have to do with desperation to lure in jaded fans or new audiences that are uncomfortable with antequated speech. Someitmes you’ve gotta wonder if the producers were just getting high backstage. (“It’s Othello… in SPACE.”)*

For Chris Adrian, author of The Great Night, the choice seems much more personal. 

The Great Night is, ostensibly, a retelling of A Midsummers’ Night’s Dream set in Buena Vista Park, modern San Francisco. Some actual characters, like Titania and Oberon, are there. Some stand-in characters appear for Lysander and Demetrius, but they’re not exact allegories. There’s sort of a play within a play and there’s sort of a love triangle, but it doesn’t match the original play point for point.

Read on…

Talking the Walk: Episode 208 “Nebraska”

People, people, people. The Walking fucking Dead.

This should go without saying, but here there be spoilers:

Season 2, part 2 is finally here and debuted last night to what I will assume are pretty impressive numbers. It seems like only yesterday that Rick and crew had been taken in by farmer Hershel Greene during their search for little Sophia, only to find out ol’ Hershel had a soft spot for walkers, keeping a barn full of them right on his property. Both Carl and Daryl got clipped by friendly fire, Andrea got busy with Shane, Glen got busy with the farmer’s daughter, a preggers Lori finally told Rick about her and Shane, Shane lost his ever-loving shit, and the crew finally found Sophia a member of Hershel’s quarantine, leaving Rick to gun her down. -phew- Lordy! Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, Dale kept his nose firmly planted in everyone else’s business and T-Dog definitely said some black guy stuff.

There. All caught up.  Read on…

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