Game Of Thrones: Updates – Season 3 Teaser & Photos! Plus Season 2 Blu-Ray Details…

Being a Game Of Thrones fan has been pretty exciting for the last few years. It’s not often that an epic, sprawling, complex fantasy series is adapted near perfectly into a TV show that transcends its initial fandom. I, like many other fans, had only tangentially heard about the Song Of Ice & Fire book series in passing, up until news of it being adapted into a TV show started to surface. Having been a staunch Hard SF advocate most of my life, fantasy fiction was something that never quite held my interest, but I decided to give the first book a go. I quickly found myself really wrapped up in it, and started watching the show while reading the book in tandem. A few weeks later the first season ended, and I found myself addicted to the novels, and read right through and up until the third.

I’ve since finished the third book, and I’ve found myself at a curious standstill, unable to continue. Watching the second season was a curious experiment, as I found myself noticing what was changed or different, rather than just sitting back and enjoying the show. Since A Storm of Swords was such a captivating book, I plan these next two seasons to be the last I spend, with foreknowledge of the novels. I’d rather be surprised by what’s happening in the show, and read the book later, and have it act as a sort of “extended directors cut” version of the story. I have books 4, 5 & 6, but for now I’m content to let them sit on the shelf, until season 4.

Well lately it seems like progress is rolling along for season 3 of the show, which will be adapting A Storm Of Swords, what is considered by fans the best entry in the A Song Of Ice and Fire series. It’s considerable length will come into factor and end up being split into 2 seasons for the show, meaning season 4 will still be events from ASoS. The sad thing is, all we have to go on right now are some meager set photos. HBO is keeping a tight ship on this season, and for good reason, as this season is packing most of the bigger wallops from the books into it, and will assuredly floor fans of the show who haven’t read the books. Everyone else who has, will get to enjoy all of their friends reactions to the twists and turns of the story, and be surprised by what new changes are made….

So while these aren’t the most exciting set photos on the planet, at this point any details of the show I’m ready to gobble up. I’m anxious to see my favorite scenes from ASoS onscreen, and even more antsy to see how horrified my friends reactions will be to what happens this season. In the future, I’m hoping we’ll get some better promo materials, or far more revealing set photos to speculate on. For now, we’ll just have to wait patiently and live with this teaser…

One last thing: For those who are looking to whet their GoT appetites, you’ll be happy to know the DVD/Blu-ray of Season 2 is now available for pre-order. As usual it’s packed with extras, bells, whistles, and comes in a delightful box to hold it in. The good folks over at [IGN] have the full list of extras:

[quote]

Blu-ray with HBO Select – includes all DVD features plus:

  • War of the Five Kings – Track the claims, strategies and key players involved in the battle for the Iron Throne with this interactive guide that follows the movements of various armies detailing their victories and defeats.
  • Histories & Lore – 19 animated histories detailing the mythology of Westeros and Essos as told from the varying perspectives of the characters themselves and featuring, in-part, illustrations from Game of Thrones storyboard artist Will Simpson.
  • In-Episode Guide – In-feature resource that provides background information about on-screen characters, locations and relevant histories.
  • Hidden Dragon Eggs – Find the hidden dragon eggs to uncover even more never-before-seen content.

DVD:

  • Creating the Battle of Blackwater Bay – See how the epic Battle of Blackwater Bay was brought to life in this exclusive, in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the climatic episode. The 30 minute feature showcases never-before-seen interviews with cast and crew.
  • Game of Thrones: Inner Circle – Actors Emilia Clarke, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Michelle Fairley and Liam Cunningham talk in detail about their experiences shooting season two in this roundtable discussion moderated by executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
  • The Religions of Westeros – Hear author George R.R. Martin, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss discuss the competing religions in the series and how they influence the various characters in Westeros and beyond.
  • Character Profiles – Profiles of seven major characters as described by the actors portraying them including Renly Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon, Robb Stark, Theon Greyjoy and more.

Audio Commentaries – 12 commentaries with cast and crew including David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, George R.R. Martin, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington and more.

[/quote]

The best thing out of all of those has got to be the audio commentaries. I remember being disappointed by the limited commentaries for the blu-ray of season 1, and wishing there were more. I can’t wait to marathon the first 2 seasons in preparation for season 3.

This Week’s Best Geeky ‘Pinterest’ Finds

We’ve returned for another edition of “The Best Weekly Finds in the Pinterest Geek Category!!!!!”. There is a wide variety of pins in this one, everything from breast exams to USB thumb drives. Without further adieu, let’s get on with the show.

With all the news recently regarding Hostess and their connection to comics, it only seems appropriate to start off today with this one.  I’m fairly certain that The Hulk would love the “real fruit filling”. I am curious as to where they acquired that massive fruit pie as it’s much larger than any I’ve ever seen. Then again, The Hulk looks rather diminutive so who knows what the hell is going on there.

Pinterest is a great place to find tattoo ideas. They actually have an entire category dedicated solely to tattoos but there are times where the body art bleeds over into the geek category.

This is one of those times. I’m equally intrigued and appalled by this. On one hand, it’s cool. On the other hand, there is no way I would even consider getting one like this. I have no aversion to tattoos, have a few myself, but they are certainly not of the Steve Buscemi/Darth Vader mash-up variety.

This song is everywhere. Unfortunately my husband loves this song more than life itself so I’ve had the great pleasure of listening to this song ten thousand times in the last month. Now that I think about it, perhaps this might find its way into his stocking this year. A great gift for any YouTube viral hit fan in your life.


I think we all, unfortunately, know someone who has said something like this. For whatever reason, the general non-nerd/geeky public seems to think that all comic book characters exist in the same world. Even if they know the names Marvel and DC, they really don’t understand what those two things entail. It’s a sad, sad situation. Thankfully there are people like myself, and you dear reader, who find it within ourselves to attempt to shine a light on the ignorance. Fight on my friends, fight on.

I’m torn on this one. I really want to hate it just on principle, but honestly? It’s rather entertaining. I can’t say that I would have sought out an interpretation of The Lord of the Rings by My Little Pony but thanks to the wonder of the internet and Pinterest, this has come into my life. I’ve decided that it is better to just embrace it rather than fight it. If nothing else, maybe it will bring a new generation to Tolkein’s work. I have to tell myself that so I can get some sleep at night.

When I came across this one I damn near clapped because it is such a good idea and it something I never would have expected to see.

If you are of the womanly persuasion, you’ve no doubt seen the traditional self breast check diagram. I think we can all agree that this one is far superior. So now there’s no excuse ladies, check yourselves! If She-Hulk can do it, so can we.

That concludes this edition of “The Best Weekly Finds in the Pinterest Geek Category!!!!”.  Perhaps next week I’ll kick off the Christmas holiday season with geeky Christmas related pins. If they exist, I’m do everything in my power to find them.

Until next time!

SNL: 38.7- Jeremy Renner & Maroon 5

I was looking forward to this episode mainly because in the back of my mind I’d hoped there would be a Cobie Smulders sighting with an Avengers sketch. Sadly there was no Cobie Smulders but there was an Avengers sketch. Unfortunately the episode wasn’t all that funny. There were some bright spots however, not as many as last week, but a few nonetheless.

One of those bright spots was the cold open. Everyone in the world knew that General Patraeus and his side projects would be the subject for at least one sketch, but SNL thought he was good enough for two sketches and a Weekend Update sketch. The cold open was Cecily Strong as Paula Broadwell reading from her new book All In. This was one of those sketches that I can’t believe they were able to keep a straight face. The second time I uttered “dirty girl” I would have been a goner. Strong got through it without even cracking a smile, that’s impressive. All I could think of though, was Allison Janney in 10 Things I Hate About You as the smut writing guidance counselor. She would have loved Broadstone’s book. Well the SNL version at least.

Jeremy Renner

The monologue was just bad. Yes there are fangirls who are absolutely beside themselves with excitement that Jeremy Renner sang for his monologue but when you are doing a musical monologue the week after Anne Hathaway killed it with her Les Mis monologue? It isn’t going to go well. It’s not that he doesn’t have a good singing voice, it just wasn’t that funny. I will give him this though, he played off the technical difficulty quite well and even though he was visibly nervous, he did perform well, I just didn’t find it entertaining.

http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/xnxx-92/widget/widget.html?vid=1424422

Another thing I had really looked forward to in my “dream SNL episode” was another short type of piece with Adam Levine because “Iran” remains one of my favorite sketches to date. I get that song stuck in my head all the time. However, as disappointed as I was that there wasn’t an Adam Levine short, I have a feeling that the “Tourism ad: Your Hometown” piece might be a new favorite. If for no other reason than I can relate to that completely. Granted my mom doesn’t send us home with leftovers but I can not tell you the number of times I’ve had to hear about my “crap in the basement”. I’m not one that would ever return to my old high school but just the image of Taran Killam sitting in the parking lot and then changing his mind about going in makes me chuckle. That was the highlight of the night for me.

My feelings on “The Californians” were addressed the last time this awful sketch was rolled out.

“The Situation Room” returned to General Patreaus and frankly, wasn’t that funny. The highlights were playing the one bit of footage they have of Jill Kelley over and over and when they then decided to go with a “CNN Dramatization” I woke up my “sleeps like the dead” husband because I laughed so hard. How could I not laugh at Tim Robinson dressed in a pretty pink dress as he happily pranced to his car?

Jeremy Renner
Tim has a nice rack.

“The Standoff” was actually a really good short. Much like the shorts have been this year, it wasn’t in your face funny but it definitely had its moments. When it was over I was left with more of a “you know I enjoyed that” feeling rather than “Oh that was hysterical!” one and even though I watch SNL to laugh, it’s hard to not appreciate when they put something together that is well done even if it’s not slapstick.

Jeremy Renner

Bobby wearing suspenders in the shower though made my night.

Maroon 5 was good, there wasn’t really any doubt they would be. Thankfully they left their screensavers at home.

When Weekend Update has two guests, I usually love one and can’t stand the other. This week however, both guests were great. If you haven’t seen any video of Katt Williams then make your way over to YouTube immediately and watch some. You will then appreciate how spot on Jay Pharoah’s impression was. If he petted his hair one more time I was going to lose it.

Jeremy Renner

When Seth Myers announced Chris Christie, I fully expected to see Bobby Moynihan again. Instead, we got the real thing. Whether you are a fan of Christie’s or not, I think we can all agree that he did a good job. He was quite the good sport and I appreciate that in people. Make fun of yourself a little bit and you’ll go far. Well done Gov. Christie, well done.

Not well done? The Avengers sketch. Lazy, lazy, lazy. The joke of Hawkeye not really doing anything was funny but the execution of the sketch just sucked. I was quite disappointed because I (like I’m sure many others) was looking forward to seeing what they would do. Thankfully Thor asked for a scrunchie otherwise the entire sketch would have been a loss.

Jeremy Renner
“Thug #2” seemed like a throwaway sketch. Not much point to it beyond, Jason Sudekis is an ass and his name is Dick Fuel. That’s about it. Boring.

I thought I’d been transported back to the 90’s with the animated “Cool Drones” piece. So much so that I actually went to the internets and looked up to see if Robert Smigel was involved. Smigel being the man behind “TV Funhouse”. He actually was not a part of “Midnight Snack” as it was done by Augenblick Studios. Whoever had the idea to turn drones into a boy band needs a big kiss on the mouth because that was awesome. Here’s hoping there are more episodes of “Midnight Snack” in the future.

If “Tourism ad: Your Hometown” was my favorite part of the night, the final sketch of the night was my second favorite part. It was a simple sketch but they did a good job with it. I am somewhat amazed that Taran Killam did not absolutely lose it as Bill Hader was beating about the head and chest. I don’t think he even cracked a smile and that is impressive.

As a whole, the episode was weak. It felt like they wrote sketches that they then put Jeremy Renner into instead of writing sketches for him. I personally am not a fan of episodes like that. Then when they did write an episode for Renner (I’m assuming “The Avengers” was written with him in mind) it was just lame. Very disappointing.

I really wish they had included this “Thanksgiving Dinner” sketch that was put up on NBC’s site from the dress rehearsal.

http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/xnxx-92/widget/widget.html?vid=1424415

Here’s hoping that the show on December 8th (there is no new episode the next two weekends) with Jamie Foxx is much better.

Until then SNL fans, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

D&D 1st Edition Revisited!

Having play tested the newest version of D&D Next aka 5th Edition, I can firmly say that I’m pretty excited to see where things are going in the game. Playing the newer version invoked a lot of nostalgia for the older versions for a lot of us in my gaming group, and luckily for us Wizards Of The Coast saw it fit to reprint premium editions of the old 1st Edition rulebooks. Being curious of how far things have changed from this edition to what we know now, I decided to pick up the 1st Edition Players Handbook and Monster Manual, and our resident GM picked up the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Since we were all mostly familiar with either 2nd, 3rd, or 4th edition, this was almost an entirely different game for all of us, and it was readily apparent the moment we cracked open the players guide.

The Players Handbook.

What we encountered was a trip back into a far more difficult, older mechanics we weren’t used too, and definitely not familiar with. Sure, everything we knew was there, but it was in a rawer, more rudimentary form. Some things like hit dice, character requirements, or especially Armor Class worked entirely differently from how we were used to them. I’ll still have difficulty trying to understand THAC0 in it’s entirety, but on a turn to turn basis I got it eventually. The books themselves were filled with lots of tables, charts, and long descriptive bunches of text for differing rules systems. It’s the sort of game that is definitely not meant for novice Tabletop RPGers. When I think about people in the 70’s having to learn this game from scratch, with no prior knowledge or conceptualization of what this game is supposed to be, I’m very impressed that it ever even took off. It’s a testament to the game itself though, that it held onto public interest despite such a daunting and intimidating ruleset.

However, after a few hours of brushing up, group clarification, and basic training on the way combat works, we decided to go for it, and started the first step of every tabletop RPG: Character Building.

Now, normally I’m the kind of player who plays the tank. Need a Dwarven Fighter in your party? I’m your guy. I like to swing a big axe, do lots of damage, break things, and eat and drink everything I can in the vicinity. In fact, in my gaming circle I’m a bit notorious for doing this, as I once played a Barbarian Half-Orc named Grakk Hornsblood who violently tortured a Kobold for information, boiled a big pot of water, dunked him into it, then let him brew in there until I had made a giant pot of Kobold tea. After drinking it my character became violently ill, and known locally as a psychopath, but I digress. The point is that I like playing the heavy hitter. So to buck trends and try something different, I decided to try building a new type of character I’ve never really tried before. So I decided to make a wizard,which any D&D player will be familiar with, is almost the complete opposite of a heavy hitting rabble rouser. In fact, they’re traditionally pretty squishy, and have to stay in the sidelines, or preferably in the back, casting spells from a safe distance.

This is the kind of guy I love to play as. Normally, I’d have a necklace made of all the ears from my fallen enemies.

So it was with great shock that I realized I only would start with 1d4 of health points. For the uninitiated, this means I would roll a 4 sided die, and whatever came up was the amount of health points my character would start with. When most level 1 monsters in the game do 1d4 of damage, this means you’re particularly vulnerable. Furthermore, when I was making my character, due to some technical reason that I’m now fuzzy on, my 1d4 HP role was actually subject to a -1 penalty. At best I could roll a character with 3 HP max. I gave it my best try, which is to say of course it ended up terribly, and I rolled a 1.

1-1= 0. Zero health points. I had rolled a dead character.

Only you know, I was already rolling him up.

After laughing about this for a solid 5 minutes, we found a rule that clarified that you cannot start with less than 1 HP no matter how badly you roll. It set the tone for the bizarre and terrible adventure my wizard would have, with his near instantly killable status in the game. My group and I decided that our characters would all already know each other, and were a band of traveling male strippers who went from town to town entertaining the local womenfolk for coin. Dutifully, I named my character Magic Mike, and set about queuing up “My Pony” By Ginuwine on my phone for every role playing segment in which we had to perform.

C-Tates would be proud.

Our adventure started out at a local club we had been hired to perform, where a bunch of elven, human, and orcish women were cheering us on. We took different checks to determine how effective our dance routines were, with one player doing particularly well and getting nearly 6 gold in tips alone. If it wasn’t apparent already, I’ll remind you that the games of D&D I play, are almost never typical games of D&D in any way, shape or form. From here on out, things only got stranger. The Dwarven bouncer had to kick out a rowdy male Half-Orc, who seemed a little too interested in my character, and shortly after wrapping up our dance routine we were called in the back room by our boss for payment.

Our boss then old us that along with payment, we were sent a scroll from somebody, and it seemed to address us all. I read it aloud to our group, and it was more or less a summons for known adventurers, travelers, merchants, and minsters to a distant town, to locate an old artifact. The scroll itself wasn’t signed by whoever sent it, but it did sound promising. Our boss then paid us half of what were we promised for our performance that night, and told us that was all we had. Since we were all lawful good players, we accepted his word. The scroll mentioned that anyone who successfully retrieved the artifact, would be paid handsomely, and being that our party was currently dead broke, this venture seemed opportune.

It was then, that suddenly a portion of the wall started to collapse, and a hole cracked open. From it a giant badger appeared, snarling it’s teeth, ready to kill us all. After laughing about a giant badger appearing out of nowhere, we proceeded to attempt to kill it in combat. Unfortunately this is where I forgot what kind of character I was playing, and ran up to it, and attempted to cast my spell of the day on it. Earlier that morning, my character had taken the time to recite and memorize a spell from my spell book. In 1st Edition, you get to memorize one spell each day, and once you use it, that’s it. That morning I had memorized “Enlarge” because I figured it would be useful for our show that night. However, I had forgotten to use it, and perhaps that’s why my character wasn’t tipped very well. Thinking quickly I thought I could simply enlarge the already giant badger, and his girth would fill the hole, blocking it and keeping him from escaping whilst simultaneously keeping any other badgers from entering to attack us further. I began casting my spell, which takes 3 turns. After I began, it was the badgers turn, and he attacked me, doing 4 points of damage, which was of course, 4x the amount of damage I could take, and thusly my spell was interrupted and I fell unconscious.

If It wasn’t for the Dwarven bouncer, we would have all died, as he was the only one who could take more than 2 hits before dying a horrible death by badger claws. After slaying it, the rest of the characters took notice that I had somehow been poisoned, and was now either dead, or in a coma. Having no knowledge of healing, nor money to pay a local cleric, they left me to stay in my death/coma, vowing to retrieve the artifact, gather the money themselves, and come back with a healer who could fix me up. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.

After spending a few weeks in a coma, my character awoke to a strange woman performing a healing ritual on me. After asking her about who she was, where I was, and where my friends were, she informed me that they had left without me. She dodged most of the questions about who she was, or why she had healed me, but gained my trust simply by virtue of saving my life. After telling me where my friends went, she gave me a magical scroll, that could teach me a new spell. The spell was Magic Missile, a old standard for wizards, and one I had not yet learned. I took it thankfully, and headed off to find my friends, ending the first session of our 1st Edition game of D&D.

If there was anything we all took notice of immediately, it was just how VERY HARD this game was. Nearly everything can and will kill you, and healing, resurrection, and day to day maintenance was either extremely difficult, expensive, or both. While we all had fun playing the game, the fight mechanics seemed a bit more extensive and difficult for our DM to keep track of, in relation to newer versions. He did a great job at it, but I could see myself getting a big headache trying to calculate all the damage being taken and done by and for each character in the game. It’s the kind of game where you’d need an experienced, knowledgeable, and most of all patient DM in order to make things fun. Thankfully ours was all of those things.

He’s a good guy DM.

While our adventure certainly didn’t end there, we eventually stopped playing and went back to other tabletop games instead. The novelty of trying 1st Edition had worn off a bit, and its clunkier, harder, and overall less fluid mechanics slowed down our games, and seemed to wear down the will of our GM to keep going from week to week. It was fun to try out however, and the games we played ended up having many memorable moments, including a character’s hand getting injected with poison after testing a trap, and my immediate gut reaction was to command our Dwarven player to chop his hand off, so the poison wouldn’t spread and kill his character. It turned out to not actually be poison, and his hand was needlessly chopped off, but how was I supposed to know that? Regardless of life or loss of limb, we enjoyed it for what it was. After playing it was easy to see how the game could capture the imagination of all those who first started playing back in the 70’s, and made it a bit easier to imagine how it was truly different from everything else at the time.

Even if the game wasn’t fun and challenging, the reprinted versions of these 1st Edition D&D books are quite beautiful, and flipping through them casually is a hoot. It’s fun to look at the older drawings of monsters in the Monster Manual, and see how the progression of a classic monster like The Beholder, or even a skeleton, has advanced through the years. D&D has been around for a long time, and playing the 1st Edition was a good reminder that no matter how complex a game can be, it’s the magic of storytelling, roleplaying, imagination and creativity that make a game fun. While 1st Edition may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the newer editions are far more accessible to the average gamer. If reading this has made you at all curious to play a tabletop RPG, go out there and try one with a group of friends. You may be surprised at how much fun you’ll have.

Knock Off Corner: Fifty Shades of Whaaaaat?

Fifty Shades of Grey has been storming the book charts, with pretty much every one (aside from me, I still have my copy of The Story of O to read before I read any of these) giving it a sneaky peek and looking for the rude bits. I hear that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and with this book, there has been a fair amount of imitation. Much like whenever anything gets big and famous, there will always be the people that want to ride that bandwagon for all its worth.

Continue reading Knock Off Corner: Fifty Shades of Whaaaaat?

From the Ashes of Industrial Ovens, Will Hostess Rise Like (Marvel’s) Phoenix?

Fruit Pie the Magician’s best trick may yet be coming back from the dead. Or, more specifically, the death of Hostess, the company famous for making Wonder Bread, Fruit Pies, Ho-Hos, Ding-Dongs, and Twinkies, among others. Hostess today filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection — that’s the kind of bankruptcy where you wind the company down, sell off the assets, call it quits, cease to exist. The company will be unwinding over the next few months; already it has dismissed a veritable legion of workers, just in time for the holidays. Sucks for them far worse than those with a nostalgic sweet tooth. Let’s keep that in mind as we discuss.

Continue reading From the Ashes of Industrial Ovens, Will Hostess Rise Like (Marvel’s) Phoenix?