David and I recently found the game Firefly Fluxx and it is just as much fun as one might expect. If you have played any version of Fluxx then you understand the basic mechanics of the game. Part of what is so wonderful about all the versions is the fact that you can just pick it up at any time.
The great part about playing the version based off of Firefly is all of the inside jokes and references. One of the little extra details that is great about the Firefly version is also the fact that there are quite a few ways to steal Keepers from each other; Wash gets Serenity, Zoe gets Wash, Simon gets River, etc. So since there is not much extra to talk about with the game here are some of my favorite cards from Firefly Fluxx. Continue reading →
Last week, Netflix released the latest iteration of the Voltron franchise. I’ve been cautiously optimistic about the new series, Voltron: Legendary Defender, since I heard about the project. The more I saw animation clips from Dreamworks and interviews with showrunners Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, the more torn I became. Legendary Defenders looked amazing. It sounded like the folks involved were on the money and trying to create a show that both old and new Voltron fans could enjoy. Still, I couldn’t let myself get too excited. I’ve been burned by too many lackluster reboots and updates, and Voltron is important to me. I don’t think I would’ve made it through fourth grade without Voltron. I debated whether I should tune in on June 10, and after much angst, I decided I would watch the first three episodes. I ended up watching the whole series. This post is not so much a review but a reaction. I’ll have reviews and more indepth commentary in upcoming weeks, once Comparative Geeks makes its move to self-hosted.
Editor’s Note: post includes a few excited expletives.
So we have started occasionally showing the Geek Baby some videos and such online – like Winnie the Poohper our poll – and then we remembered that HBO bought Sesame Street, and that means we have access to it there.
We’ve watched a bit of classic Sesame Street, and the Geek Baby can’t really sit through a whole episode, so she wanders off a bit into it but it’s fun. Holly and I both certainly get some nostalgia from it.
And then today we put on the most recent episode, last weekend’s Music Magic. And who cares what the Geek Baby thought… we were awestruck.
This fairy, in fact.
First, the long opening segment was about Elmo being left the new fairy character’s magic wand. He casts a spell, and suddenly everyone around him is singing whatever they say. And they can’t stop singing whatever they say. Holly and I could not stop thinking – and it seemed rightly so – of the Buffy episode “Once More with Feeling,” the musical episode.
Good times. And then the episode went on, you know, songs and letters and numbers. These things. Anyway, it continues on to a segment about listening carefully. With Cookie Monster.
At Hogwarts.
“Furry Potter and the Goblet of Cookies,” to be precise, and there’s a muppet of Dumbledore there too with a funny name and it was amazing. There were cute house banners in the background, Cookie Monster doing magic, it was just…
When did Sesame Street become so geeky? I don’t know, but I like it. I think this watching kids’ shows thing might work out for us…
In today’s world there is no such thing as an untouchable franchise it seems. Anything is up to be redone and remade into a new image. Now whenever we hear about a new remake there is always a concern about whether it will do justice to the original if the original is beloved. Then there are times that a lesser known product gets remade and comes out without much fanfare. At the same time there are people who loved the original and don’t want to see it remade they’re just not as vocal about it.
Thinking about all the remakes that have come out and will be coming out, here are some remakes that have definitely made an impression. Continue reading →
I’ve been amused to hear that Hover Boards are finally showing up, that people have been pushing forward to create them. The deadline they were aiming for was the date from Back to the Future 2 last year. Which made Hover Boards like a prophecy: that they would happen in that year.
More than anything else in that movie, the Hover Board is what seems to have captured and held our collective imagination. Or maybe because it seems easier and more likely than flying cars or Jaws 19. Maybe because it’s a sellable commodity that you can hope to make a bunch of money off of – but no, I think more than that. It seems like a labor of love. Of trying to bring a bit of the “future” here to us now.
Because this world we’re living in – as we pass dates from future visions, like Days of Future Past and Back to the Future – looks nothing like what science fiction envisioned. And what did science fiction envision?
Thanks, Commander Sisko.
We were expecting flying cars. Hover Boards. Things that move us around faster. And space travel, moving us into the stars. What we got instead, as the commercial says (and which has stuck with me all these years) is the Internet. Or maybe, drones, which work as a networked extension of ourselves, rather than us moving ourselves.
Rather than transmitting ourselves via improved transportation, we’re transmitting ideas. Meaning that we get to both bring the world – information-wise – to us, and we get to send our ideas back out. In such a way as science fiction somewhat failed to predict. That’s part of the reason why something like Neuromancer (a 1984 novel) is seen as such a classic: it was far closer to right than wrong when it comes to predictions of the future. Certainly better than so much other science fiction.
I’m not saying the point of science fiction is to perfectly predict the future. Nor that it’s our job to try to build the future that has been predicted. Which makes the anecdote of the Hover Boards being created just in time for their “predicted” date just so interesting. It’s a little piece of trying to create not the future we’re building towards, but the future we dreamed up.
And so maybe, if we can perfect the Hover Board, we can create some of the other things science fiction has dreamed up. Or solve some of the other societal problems science fiction shows us moving past. Maybe we can avoid some of the pitfalls science fiction warns us of. Maybe, just maybe…
Comparative Geeks 