The latest episode of The Round Table has been posted. This time out, Chuck Tinsley and Lonnie Ezell from the excellent Dragon’s Landing podcast join Mick Bradley and Chris Miller around the table to discuss incorporating the monomyth and mythical archetypes into table-top roleplaying games.
Go download the show or take 2d12+4 points of damage from my Gaze of Nerdly Disapproval!
Comments(2) The team went out to dinner at DeNunzio’s last night, despite the fact that someone in the office claimed Johnny Carino’s is superior. The fact that Johnny C didn’t send some of his boys down to make sure the DeNunzios slept with the fishes last night (at least, not while we were there) leads me to believe that he’s no capo.
I enjoyed a cup of the wedding soup, some fried calamari and the chicken saltimbocca, all of which were pretty tasty. During the meal, I was filled in on some of the antics that occurred after I retired on Tuesday night. Listening to the tales of drunken revelry, I determined that there is one advantage to returning to the hotel at 10PM instead of staying out at the Tiki Lounge until 3AM: plausible deniability. Everything I “know” about what went on after I left is hearsay, and will never hold up in court. What happens in Pittsburgh stays in Pittsburgh until the special task force is assembled.
After dinner, we said farewell to three of our elite shadow force and they vanished like the colony of Roanoke. Then the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the X-Men teamed up in an unprecedented across-the-aisle effort to defeat the forces of Apocalypse. That went on for about two hours before the involved mutants got sleepy and went to bed.
The other apprentice and I will be fleeing the state this evening, but I did add two of Monroeville’s more exotic locations to my “Been There, Done That” list. The first is a local eatery called Quizno’s, which features a menu chock-full of delectable sandwiches. After your chosen ingredients are piled high atop whole wheat (or white, if you must) bread, the entire assembly is placed on a conveyor belt where it descends into the very bowels of the Earth and is cooked to perfection by molten lava. They have raspberry lemonade, too, which is made by either faeries or elves, whichever is less likely rile the lawyers at Keebler.
Finally, there is The Exchange, an establishment spoken about only in hushed whispers behind tightly closed doors. So secret is this place that even The Internet has never heard of it. There are wonders to behold behind the doors of The Exchange (provided you can actually find the damn place) the likes of which my tripping fingers cannot begin to describe. I will say only this: at The Exchange, you can purchase a Shadowrun SEGA Genesis cartridge for a mere two dollars and fifty cents. Well, actually you couldn’t, because I did.
I have uncovered all the secrets this town holds, I fear, and soon it will be time to journey westward once more. The final stop in this town of hidden treasures and ancient mysteries will be a gas station, where the MVoD will drink deeply of the enchanted elixir that is the lifeblood of Monroeville, PA.
Comments(5) I was in bed by 11:00 last night, which is apparently four hours earlier than the rest of the team. We all ate at Fat Heads, but I bailed early in order to get one more dose of Advil Cold & Sinus and seven hours of fitful sleep. I will say that the Pittsburgh skyline after dark is very nice when approaching on Interstate 376, and the Bay of Pigs sandwich was pretty tasty, if a bit spicier than I anticipated.
While eating raisin bran and drinking orange juice in the hotel breakfast nook this morning I saw (but did not hear) part of a morning show piece concerning out-of-control snakes on a plane, presumably in Florida. They showed the results of a confrontation between a 6-foot alligator and a 13-foot python wherein both critters died; you may recall the incident from last year. That’s just the sort of random stuff that’s likely to make it into my dreams tonight. If I wake up tomorrow morning to find that my pillows have eaten me, I’ll be all sorts of upset.
Today and tomorrow, we’ll be in the Monroeville office. I’ve now visited five locations in Monroeville: the hotel and the adjoining Outback Steakhouse, Eckerd pharmacy (Riiiiiiicola!), John Harvard’s microbrewery and restaurant, and GameStop (X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse: $17.99 used). Though I’m far from an expert on the area, I feel fairly comfortable declaring that the traffic around here is off the colloquial chain. When one is mired in the seemingly endless river of fiberglass and sheet metal, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the length of time a given light remains red can only be calculated by measuring radioactive decay in the vehicle’s occupants.
On the bright side, we figured out the quick (if not intuitive) method to get the hotel television to use the auxiliary RCA input jacks. This has resulted in many of my curvaceously polygonal avatars falling before the awesome power of Kilik’s mighty man-stick.
On the not-so-bright side, my coughs have chunks. I’m pretty sure I have a pallor, too. In my experience, there are three types of people who can be said to have a pallor: goths, the sickly, and corpses. As I have no inclination to dye my hair black and begin listening to The Cure, I’m pretty sure that eliminates the possibility that I’ve somehow contracted the goth (which doesn’t necessarily preclude the goth from being communicable). Also, I’m definitely coughing, which is a form of breathing I guess, so I’m probably not dead. I am, therefore, the sickly. Excuse me while I rasp pathetically and mewl about “the vapors.”
Comments(2) Penn Hills and Monroeville are both suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. According to the local news, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ season opener yesterday resulted in significant employee absenteeism and cost local businesses a number of dollars that would probably have left a lasting impression had I not been hacking up my left lung at the time.
My other apprentice and I are in Penn Hills and Monroeville for the purpose of a software upgrade pilot, I’m coughing up gobbets of rainbow-hued phlegm and I’ve all but lost the ability to speak. When you put it all together, that spells F-U-N.
I can’t tell you a whole lot about Penn Hills or Monroeville, except that there’s an Outback Steakhouse next door to the Hampton Inn in Monroeville. The Outback (and the nearby Max & Erma’s) both close before 11:00 on Sunday night, so 10:09pm isn’t the ideal time to arrive in Monroeville if you’re hungry. Also, trying to take a left onto Rodi Road between 5 and 6pm is a fool’s errand.
Last, but not least, trying to get the hotel television to use the auxiliary inputs is a royal pain in the ass. This is important because my Xbox connects to the auxiliary input, and I’d rather play Soul Caliber II than try to find something to watch on hotel cable. I can’t watch television without TiVo anymore, anyway.
Comments(9) Last night Mick Bradley, Max Massey, Chris Miller and I recorded episode 2-4 of The Round Table podcast, with special guest host J.C. Hutchins. I expect the episode will be available for download in the next day or two.
J.C. Hutchins is the author of the podiobook 7th Son: Descent, a tale of assassination, conspiracy and cloning. Given the subject of my 2004 NaNoWriMo novel, Bubba, I suspected that this might be right up my alley, so I subscribed to 7th Son: Descent at Podiobooks.com. I’m three chapters into the book and it has not disappointed in the slightest. The story opens with the assassination of the President of the United States by a four-year-old boy and launches directly into the abduction of seven men from all walks of life who all turn out to be clones of an eighth man. How are the assassination and a top secret cloning project related? I have no idea, but J.C. Hutchins has got me right every author wants their audience: I am hooked and I want to find out what the hell is going on.
After we finished recording the show, Chris and I recorded some new bumpers for Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcast and one for Dragon’s Landing that I really hope Chuck and Lonnie play in their next episode. We had a blast recording the thing, and I think it turned out really well.
Chris and I also began work on a little side project we’ve codenamed Free Eggroll. I’ll release details as we declassify them.
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Some films just don't stand the test of time, and Enter the Ninja is one of them. Fight sequences that once were top-notch now seem awkward and anti-climactic, and the plot is stolen from every Chuck Norris movie ever made.
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Hidden beneath the titillation and gore is a subtle, complex and surprisingly rich cautionary tale about the dangers of...oh, who am I kidding? This movie is utter trash and proud of it.
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Laura says that the big problem with Get Smart is that it gets too hung up on having a plot. As weird as it sounds, I tend to agree.
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One of my favorite bad movies of all time. There's something incredibly appealing about a car that repairs itself, though the cost (human souls) does rival what a mechanic would charge.
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