So it’s been a long time. And a lot has happened.

The weekend after I started this blog, Susan Boyle rose to international stardom. From the snippets I saw on the news, I didn’t think anything of it. But the news kept bringing her up and eventually one of my favorite authors linked a story with Boyle’s cover of “Cry me a River,” which is beautifully haunting. The Youtube video of Boyle is fantastic, if you haven’t seen it, and deserving of the commentary heaped upon it. It plays like a short movie. I would even go so far to say that it is the epitome of a short film.

This lead to some Youtube silliness over the week which uncovered three other note worthy clips- some AMV mashes of Avenue Q songs done by Disney characters and an AMV mash with Ariel and Hercules as an unlikely couple. The last is something we found on our Media TV set up called The Guild, with Felicia Day from Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.

Earlier this week, Penny Arcade did a comic about Chronicles of Spellborn from Acclaim games. I spent the next day downloading it and tried it out. While the graphics are pretty, the character customization at start lacks much- similar to DND Online, and to some extent, World of Warcraft. Call me spoiled, but I liked being able to choose what the proportions of my character are, as in City of Heroes. CoS only had three body types for humans- malnourished, super buff, and Andre The Giant. The beginning “armor” is only for looks and so are the beginning weapons. It doesn’t really seem to matter what you choose. The news releases I’d read commented heavily about the combat system, and Acclaim calls it “innovative” and “user controlled.” From what I saw, it was non-responsively similar to the combat system used in Oblivion and other first person shooter games, the main difference being that CoS is close 3rd person, over the shoulder rather than first person. I didn’t make it past the tutorial. After spending fifteen minutes chasing glowing white dots to learn controls that match CoH hotkeys and being given make busy quests by a cabin boy I decided I’d rather do some chores.

We also picked up a mountain of comic books thanks to a sale at our local shop. I’m finally caught up on Courtney Crumrin, and grabbed a few sample copies of the Ender’s Game, Battlestar Galactica: The Cylon War, and Superhero Human Resources comics as well as the pre-comic for Ghostbusters, which has been out for a while.

The Ender’s Game series is seeing some strain on being adapted, as I would expect for something so…culturally rooted. I’m still sad that Orson Scott Card couldn’t find a way to work with Wolfgang Peterson. Perhaps someone like Del Torro will come in next and just blow us all away with geeky pipe dreams. The main problem I would find for adapting Card’s work is probably best illustrated illuminated by Ender’s Shadow. While I enjoyed the book, Card had gotten into a habit of telling rather than showing character motivations and thoughts. He tells us that three year old Bean feels threatened and reasons out various things. He tells us, in Ender’s Game, Valentine’s feelings and motivations. If, instead, he’d shown us Valentine grimacing when Peter tells her how to write for Demostenes, that would be easy to move to a visual form.

Not too long ago, Angry Video Game Nerd did a series about the Ghostbusters games and how unsatisfactory they were. I hope he’s ready for the new release. It looks like it will have some of his favorite peeves redone for the Wii and 360. The pre-comic was very well done, putting the story right where it belongs and with unexpected ending.

As for now, the news media remembered “acts of God” are just the remedy for a slow news day, and are whipping themselves (and the public) into a frenzy with the swine flu, Sylar is sure to kill someone on tonight’s “Heroes,” and I have some eggs to hunt down for Noble Garden.

Media Nerd Girl

Upcoming:

Actual reviews of the rest comics, some of the most common questions on personal accounts (including “How’d they get my debit card number?” and “Where’d my money go?”), a review of the new “No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” book, and probably more youtube videos.