This is a review of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion by someone who didn't care for the original Gloomhaven. Let's step back a bit. Gloomhaven was published in 2017. It created a bit of a stir. At $140, it was among the most expensive board games published (though that price point has been exceeded since then). It…
With a title like that, you might think I'm going to talk about how Karl Marx's economic and political theories apply to racial inequality. Nope. I'm going to talk about racism in the Marx Brothers movies. Recently, with much pandemic-induced free time on my hands, I re-watched all of the Marx Brothers films, in chronological order. They…
In reviewing The Last of Us Part II, I'm going to do my best to avoid spoiling both that game and The Last of Us. That's not easy, because the first issue I'll discuss is whether you can play The Last of Us Part II (tLoU2) without playing The Last of Us (tLoU) first. Strictly speaking, you…
As I played Detroit: Become Human, I was strongly reminded of two other games I've previously reviewed: Batman: The Telltale Series and Batman: The Enemy Within. They are all "choose your own adventure games": The emphasis is on the story. While there's some combat, it's all in the form of QTE's (see below). The story evolves as…
Right now, the PS4 game that everyone is talking about is The Last of Us, Part II. So I'm going to talk about GreedFall. GreedFall, published by the French game company Spiders, is a story-based role-playing game in the same vein as Bioware's Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. The flow of GreedFall is the same: -…
At the time I'm writing this, the Watchmen HBO TV series is available on Hulu, and possibly other streaming platforms. That first sentence was for the web-link summary. Let's step back a bit. I stated in an 2009 blog post that I felt that Watchmen was the finest comic I ever read. Part of the reason I…
Today I had a new signal about my project to write a biography of Isaac Bonewits. From a post I made on Facebook: I was cleaning out old stuff from a bookshelf, and I found a pile of Isaac Bonewits' papers that I never got around to sending to the University of Santa Barbara. In an extra…
Whenever someone tells me, either personally or professionally, that they're getting a new computer, my first words are "What about backup?" I liked to think that I took my own advice and that I was well-protected against hard drive failure. This is the story of how I was wrong. Almost. The bold beginning Let's start with my…
When I switched Wordpress providers, many of the pictures did not import properly. You may want to view the old site's post instead. Tainted Grail If you've been following the saga of my experiences painting miniature figures, you may remember that a big incentive was to paint the elaborate miniatures that I knew would come with the…
It's been two weeks since the party. I said it then, and I'll say it again: It was the best party I ever hosted. I don't think I'll host a better one for the rest of my life. This is one of my longer blog posts. I want to get all the details down so that if…