Amusements • j********o@***.com 11/06/1996 00:00:000 UTC Just saw the Phantom: pretty good, although I also recommend theatre (matinee) viewing for best effect. I like the Phantom: 2040 cartoon show, so it took some adjustment to get used to Phantom: 1939. Odd him not having all his hi-tek gadgets (pistols? OK...), and fighting the Singh Brotherhood instead of MAXIMUM Inc. and the very disfunctional Madison family ("Bodelare says it's your turn to change his pan, Graft..."). Phantom: 2040 is the best outlet for Peter Chung's talents: F'd up, but not too much to enjoy, as contrasted with Aeon Flux (strange how seldom she gets killed since the show got picked up regularly...). Also recommended, especially for technologically inclined Forumites, is the Dilbert comic strip, especially the "Still pumped from using the mouse" collection. Brian and Herr Sterner, in particular, should delight as I do in the kind-hearted but savage razing of technical culture as well as societal foibles. Join Dogbert's New Ruling Class (DNRC) before it's too late! Welcome to the Virtual Electronic Nation of Dogbert (VENOD). Very G. "My technological superiority makes me master over all the other engineers, with the possible exception of...Techno-Bill ! !" "We're over our head count anyway..." Then there's "How to Boil Water," on the TV Food Network (appearining in slightly different format as "Cook's Choice," this season, although the old episodes are still running). I stumbled on this by accident and have become a regular viewer, although I could care less about cooking. It's like a cross between a regular cooking show and a very funny hostage situation down at the local asylum. Cathy "Culinary Guru" Lowe, in a steadily escalating role, attempts to teach the incurragable Sean Donnellan how to cook (actually, he may have gotten too good for the show's good already...). "Sean, why are you always making fun of my names for these things?" "Well, Cathy, pretty much, that's my job...I mean, basically, that's why they hired me..." Very amusing. I prefered the old set, since their were more places for his toys and garbage, and more of a claustrophibic atmosphere. The Magical Mystery Oven seems to have been lost altogether in the spacious new quadrant of the biosphere, but I guess they're moving up in the world. The banter, scolding, and teasing are all the same, so it's still lots of fun. GORNO Piffle and Tripe! • s******j@**.com 11/06/1996 00:00:000 UTC Ditto Gorno's comments on the Phantom. This was GREAT! A kind of B movie for the '90s. SFX were competent without being overwhelming, and the casting was good despite having no big stars . . . perhaps BECAUSE it had no big stars. (I was amused that the wolf they used to portray "Devil" was arthritic and greying . . . kind of like a canine Bela Legosi. Probably worked for a bag of snausages.) Ditto kudos for Dilbert. To quote the firechief in Ren & Stimpy, "I've known fellers like that." The Graduate School for Industrial Administration has special classes on how to grow your hair like Dilbert's boss, and on using phrases like "concentrate on our core competency." (The first time you hear that from a real person, you will know True Fear.) Dilbert comics, sometimes modified to fit the school milieu, have edged out The Farside and Tom Tommorrow for most popular office door comic. A recent one that has Dilbert's boss looking under his desk for a lost network token caused much mirth in my department (the Information Networking Institute). -- +-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ ***@***.com ~ s*****s@a*****.***u.edu ~ s******j@**.com http://www.ini.cmu.edu/~sjones/ • j********o@***.com 13/06/1996 00:00:000 UTC Forgot that theater can be spelled that way: lousy tea-bags! Just saw Dragonheart. OK to start but the end degenerates into schlocky generic fantasy. They hold off showing us a dragon for a while (cost-conscious?), as if we are expected to gasp in awe when he appears. None of the five people in the _theater_ I saw the movie in (myself included) did so. The dragon, as most will agree from the commercials, is too darn cutsie, but he was convincing (I'm seldom impressed by these creatures: the brachiosaurs in Jurasic Park were big enough to be impressive, but even then, I guess it's not the graphics that impress me so much as the critter itself, if you see the distinction.) The dragon was pretty and convincing though, and they had him cavort in amusing ways that I suppose were challenging to do well. Anyway, the last half was pretty annoying. Naturally, the other dragon-slayers are incompetent, a chief bad guys get vanquished by a character who shouldn't have a chance, and the Evil Prince is just plain evil. Dragons are good! Humans are the bad ones! The Celts (pronounced "selts," since they're dead wimps anyway) lived in harmony with the dragons, but the evil Romans, etc., persecuted them! I wish they had written it that the prince was only evil _because_ of the dragon heart. Maybe we could see that most dragons were evil (maybe a matter of defying fate). Oh well: meant for kids, I guess. GORNO "I know I'm shouting, I like to shout!" • s******j@**.com 24/07/1996 00:00:000 UTC In article <4t542u$***@r****.****t.net>, Glen wrote: [to Gorno] >Have you played Civilization 1 & 2 yet? I recently picked up a copy of >Civ-2 and found it even better then the first one. Once you've reached >the Nuclear Age, your diplomats are replaced with Spies. They can do >everything that a Diplomat can do and more. You can send them in to >"poison" the enemy's water supply or "smuggle" in nukes into enemy cities >and detonate them. Nooo! Evil! Addictive! Maybe I should be mean and scuttle Gorno's job hunting efforts by sending him Civ for Windows, a copy of which I thew in the back room of the basement of my parents' house to get out of my sight. >At last, there is Masters of Orion. You get to run a Galactic >Civilization and you have to beat all the other races either through >brute force, voted as supreme dictator or wipe out every race. Of course >being such a wise-ass, I won a game without building a single warship. I >was voted into office because nobody was afraid of me. Evil, but not as addictive. I sent most of my games to T.O.G., who I haven't heard from recently, so I figure he's either dead or spends all of his time playing. -- +-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ ***@***.com ~ s*****s@a*****.***u.edu ~ s******j@**.com http://www.ini.cmu.edu/~sjones/ • j********o@***.com 24/07/1996 00:00:000 UTC Just saw Independance Day: it was pretty silly, excessively telegraphed, and filled with hoary story elements (instead of drawing out the kamikaze strike at the end, just get it done with; the mandatory disaster-movie"snivelling coward" bit towards the end was pointless, since there was no option anyway). I wasn't expecting much, but since the same guys did Stargate, which I wound up loving, I hoped for a surprise. I have no problem with advanced aliens being hostile, or in the possiblity of humanity defeating them, depending on the situation and criteria of victory and defeat, but aliens who build things that actually have (as opposed to appearing to have, maybe) the mass of medium moons would hardly need the resources of a terrestrial planet. I would have prefered the odds to be more balanced, even if they have to appear hopeless to the humans: an attack by someone like the Ra of Stargate or another small band of Hi-Techs, rather than by an entire civilization, and/or balancing the odds by giving the aliens some likely cultural weakness, like Immortality Induced Cowardice ("They killed Louie! RUN!!") (a variation on Viet Nam syndrome). The struggle should have been more nuanced: there were lots of ways this could easily have been done, like having the research boys at Area 51 (that bit was kind of amusing, though) have already made some technical progress on the alien technology before they arrive, or having the aliens be scavengers whose ships and computers are patchworks of stolen technology that these space locust don't really understand. It bugged me how the human weapons were _totally_ ineffective at first: if they'd started out weak but not useless, I would have prefered it. The irony and surprises, tempting alternatives and necessary sacrifices, mistakes and half victories of real warfare were unfortunately absent. The trip to the alien ship was too silly: the whole computer thing could have been a tense and remote battle of wits rather than a ludicrous thrill-ride. It would also have been cooler if the aliens' plan of world conquest had been thwarted but the stranded survivors here had taken over and dug in on some continent at the end. Since they appear to have thousands of fighters, it's silly for them to borrow our satellites! Of course, we have Hollywood's terror of the Bomb. For Christ's sake, if one of those F'ers appeared, nuking 'em would be idea one, not the last resort! And like the Russians, Chinese, etc., would wait for us to think of the idea! When they do try the Bomb, they use a Tac Nuke?! On a structure 15 km across?!! (While getting all bent out of shape about global winter!) You call Moscow and have them drop one of their 100 Megaton party-poopers on top of one before you call it quits in a situation like this. Oh well, the air is the air... enough random gabbing for this missive. Gorno • g*****o@l**.****t.net 24/07/1996 00:00:000 UTC : Prescript: I stumbled once again into the Solitaire game that ships with : Windows, and finally decided to figure out how to play the damn game. : Playing it (on screen and off) has turned into a small mania: I can : understand why people always play the game in old movies. It combines a : certain degree of inevitability with just enough intellectual drudgery and : stimulation to be a great time killer. Should be great for situations : where you just want to fill the time (waiting rooms, etc.) Ah, it gets even better. Try playing it where you Draw three cards every time you get new cards from the deck. You can even play with the Vegas option so you can see how much money you're losing. I can't see how anybody in their right mind would ever go to Vegas and play Solitaire for money. It's like flushing your money down the toilet. My all time favorite Windows packaged game is Mine Sweep. Now there is a game you can loose yourself in for hours. It's only fun when you play it with the big field. Have you played Civilization 1 & 2 yet? I recently picked up a copy of Civ-2 and found it even better then the first one. Once you've reached the Nuclear Age, your diplomats are replaced with Spies. They can do everything that a Diplomat can do and more. You can send them in to "poison" the enemy's water supply or "smuggle" in nukes into enemy cities and detonate them. Another favorite is Mech Warrior 2. You get to run around in "giant robot killers" and blast away at enemy clans. Usually you are outnumbered 4-1 so you need a lot of strategy to get you through ever scene. Go-bots, Go-bots, stupid robots, Geeks from Cyberdum! At last, there is Masters of Orion. You get to run a Galactic Civilization and you have to beat all the other races either through brute force, voted as supreme dictator or wipe out every race. Of course being such a wise-ass, I won a game without building a single warship. I was voted into office because nobody was afraid of me. --Glen • _should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN 24/07/1996 00:00:000 UTC Glen (g*****o@l**.****t.net) wrote: [snip] : Another favorite is Mech Warrior 2. You get to run around in "giant robot : killers" and blast away at enemy clans. Usually you are outnumbered 4-1 : so you need a lot of strategy to get you through ever scene. [snip] Ahh... Mechwarrior 2... Just recently discovered the netmech upgrade Lets you play up to 8 people on a LAN... -Aakin • j********o@***.com 24/07/1996 00:00:000 UTC Prescript: I stumbled once again into the Solitaire game that ships with Windows, and finally decided to figure out how to play the damn game. Playing it (on screen and off) has turned into a small mania: I can understand why people always play the game in old movies. It combines a certain degree of inevitability with just enough intellectual drudgery and stimulation to be a great time killer. Should be great for situations where you just want to fill the time (waiting rooms, etc.) Highly recommended (long overdue as I just remembered it): Cabin Boy. This was a highly amusing (funny, cute, and charmingly sarcastic) little movie (on cable from time to time) starring Chris Elliot. A quasi-modern fish story, about an annoying Fancy Lad who accidentally sets sail on a rotten, stinking fishing boat, "The Filthy Whore." There he suffers himself upon the scowling crew, who do their best to abuse and endanger the little bastard. Thanks to him, the ship sails off course into "The Devil's Bucket," where the crew has encounters with whimsical, fantastic situations and creatures of all sorts (from Sharky the Sharkman to Kali, the six-armed "Love Goddess," and her jealous husband, Mulligan, a large and angry appliance salesman), and the Cabin Boy learns how to be a man, sort of. I hadn't expected such a whimsical and funny movie. The cast were tres amusant. Gorno "According to the story, it all started 400 years ago, when a Viking ship sank in the Devils Bucket: a female shark fell in love with one of the Vikings and saved him. Well, you know how these things are: one thing led to another..., and Sharky was born." "He knocked up a shark? Jeez-uz, just when you think you know every disgusting fact about the Devil's Bucket..." "But why's he so tempermental?" "I don't know. With a matchup like that, you gotta figure there's some kinda... chromosomal imbalance or something." "Hmmm... purple lightening... that's always a good sign." • j********o@***.com 21/08/1996 00:00:000 UTC Honorary Science Fiction movie: Rapa Nui. Quite amusing story of the decline and fall of Easter Island, not too far from the truth, and daring to present Polynesian culture honestly ("That is Taboo: you must die!" "This too is Taboo!"). An ecological message isn't too offensive, and the half-nekkid women ain't bad neither. The movie really transports the viewer into this tiny little world which is all the native know. "Maki-Maki will surely devour your soul in Hell forever for this!" Gorno "And Delta women think the world of me."