Notes on Stuff You Should Know: Horoscopes
Listening to Josh and Chuck discuss astrology on a recent episode of Stuff You Should Know called up some memories of when I wrote that particular article, so I thought I’d write up a few notes about it for SYSK…
A simple system to eliminate “tanking” in pro sports leagues
All of the major American sports leagues have had instances of teams “tanking” to reach last place and get a strong draft pick to rebuild the team in the last ten years. There’s an easy way to fix it. If…
Movie review: Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence)
I could not miss the limited American showing of Shin Godzilla. I realized this is the first time I’ve seen a proper Toho Godzilla movie in a theater since Godzilla 1985! It was an excellent, albeit very strange kaiju movie….
Use Your Illusion — The Final Cut
It’s an interesting mental exercise: can you take Guns N’ Roses’ sprawling, goofy, indulgent conjoined twin records, Use Your Illusion, and reshape them into a single, cohesive album that would stand alone as the undisputed 2nd best thing GNR ever…
Mothman: An Exposé
A bizarre creature terrorized a town in West Virginia in 1966 and 1967, leering at locals with glowing red eyes, flying over their cars and causing radiation burns and even the collapse of a major bridge over the Ohio River….
An Alternate Blade Runner Theory
A lot of Blade Runner fans like to contemplate the true meaning of the movie, what the origami means, whether or not Deckard himself was a replicant, all of which changes based on which cut of the movie you’re watching….
TinyPlots – A Way to Manage the Many Plot Threads in an RPG Campaign
There’s an archnemesis whose evil conspiracy has been hinted at since the PCs were second level. There’s the current adventure’s story, the seeds of which were sown in the last adventure. There’s the bard, who’s been searching for a family…
Instrumental Music for Writers
If you’re a writer, you probably like to have some background music on while you work, maybe to set the mood, maybe to drown out the other yobs in the coffee shop. Music with lyrics is too distracting, so everyone…
Movie Review — Jack Palance in Attack! (1956)
It’s easy to think all 50s movies are bland, conformist, patriotic pap, but this intense World War II drama has a surprising amount of bite, and it stars a young Jack Palance at his seething best. It’s also got one…
Something’s Bugging Me About Tolkien
I’m working on my roughly biennial rereading of the Lord of the Rings — this is my fourth or fifth time through them, but having just finished Fellowship, something’s started to bother me that I hadn’t noticed before. It isn’t…