Bullet Point Book Reviews

Astute readers may notice that despite my protests to the contrary, participation has decreased significantly over the past six months. Productivity is at an all-time low. While this directly corresponds to real life class changes, including prestige classes and grind burnout, it can't be denied that our blog is perilously close to entering that predictable "Sorry we haven't posted anything in two months" stage.

I blame myself. My dictatorial instincts have recently been focused elsewhere, and I've been suffering a crisis of conscience over whether or not content should be free. In general, I agree that free content is nice, as long as the providers aren't self-righteous about it. But ideally, I think their podcasts, blogs, v-logs, and YouTube stunts should be ancillary to work they are actually paid for. Gloating over the death of a magazine that would pay you for the same content you give away for free is the sort of thing that, hypothetically, might classify your podcast as no longer tolerable. And it upsets me greatly that the guys from LOSTcasts put so much thought into their work while TV reporters at the New York and LA Times are paid not to.

But I digress, and use "I" more than I'd like. In the interest of keeping our blog alive for at least a full year, allow me to suggest some changes to for our review formula. Specifically, how we go about book reviews.

A book-a-week reader as a student, I couldn't imagine a life where time spent reading books would become a luxury. But here I am. As a fully-employed reader, writer, and gamer, I currently view books according to three criteria:

• Time: Is it worth the time spent to read/listen to a book?
• Money: Is it worth the cost of the reviewed format of the title (hardback/audiobook/trade/etc.)?
• Wait: Is it worth the wait to get it at the library or for a different format?

Note that these are the same criteria I use to judge anything supposedly entertaining or enlightening, from Battlestar to Buddhism.

As a hibernating aspiring novelist myself, I hesitate to suggest that a book is not worth the time spent reading it (you can learn something from any book, especially the bad ones). But there's no reason we should treat books with kid gloves when we're so harsh with more collaborative media like television, movies, games, and porn. Yes, it's sad for Christopher Pike if he spends years (benefit of the doubt) on his latest adult novel, only for some interlard to dismiss it as a waste of your time. But it's significantly more cruel to bash BSG or Sakura Tales, something we do often. It's probably not Apollo's fault that Starbuck isn't dead, and Mika Tan puts a lot more on the line than Christopher Pike. His heart may be on the page, but you won't recognize his face at the mall.

I'm not advocating that we descend to 5-sentence book reviews, but I think if we keep time, money, and wait in mind, it might be less daunting to get book reviews up on a regular basis. We need something to write about until television comes back. And our 8 readers might appreciate suggestions on what else they could be reading when I get passive-aggressive and refuse to post.

Midseason Replacements

My Lost propaganda machine is on hiatus. Taking its place for the next 24 hours or so are topics everyone can agree don't deserve a full season. If the Internet fanbase to lost causes is vocal enough, the unaired conclusions to these thoughts will find their way onto the web in the near future.

Replacement #1: Joe Rogan Update

My opinion of Joe Rogan has come full circle. First he was Joe on Newsradio. My thoughts on that phase of his career should be obvious. Then he entered his critic-bashing stage, which I have commented on in the past. Early last year he ventured into new territory, getting into a fierce MySpace battle over whether he was funny or not. I wasn't sure what to think of that, other than that he won. But where would he go from there?

The new Videocracy feature at The Onion A.V. Club provided the answer. Joe would call out Carlos Mencia as a hack in a mini-documentary and distribute it for free on the Internet. (I have linked the iFilm site, as yesterday YouTube removed the video on Carlos Mencia's--excuse me--Ned's claim that him calling Joe a little bitch violated his copyright privileges.) I don't know if this claim is true or not. What I do know is that Joe risked employment opportunities to slam a comedian who trades in the lowest common denominators of racism and catchphrases.

Joe also writes a very dramatic blog. Give the man some duct tape.

Replacement #2: Intolerable Podcasts

I take great care when picking the links to extra content that grace this site's sidebar. It really is there for you when you want to read about/listen to the same topics we write about when we're too lazy to do it ourselves. Someday soon I will divulge what makes each individual link tolerable. In the meantime, allow me to discuss what makes a podcast intolerable--bad jokes, laughter that blows your ears out, uninformed commentators, condescension, and above all, lists. My hat of lists no know limit.

I had previously judged the Geeks On podcast as tolerable on the strength of its sci-fi/fantasy interviews and occasional recommendations (via list) that I had not heard of. I'll admit, I was also a sucker for the fact that the hosts not only seemed to enjoy living in Los Angeles, but found enough people willing to work gaming into their schedules that they could actually play board games and RPGs on a regular basis instead of staring longingly at their shelves while fondling their dice bags.

My enthusiasm waned as the self-proclaimed "weekly" podcast produced four episodes in the last two months. Three of those were dedicated entirely to lists: a Christmas geek list (which included such unknown gems as A Song of Ice and Fire and Watchmen), a list of geek movies coming out in 2007 (where they still didn't know that 1408 is based on one of the best Stephen King short stories evar, and that's why it will suck), and the Valentine's Day episode, which started out with a list that drove me into Tourette's fits during my commute, and continued with not only more lists and the most condescending dating advice evar, but used the word "geek" so gratuitously I actually started to get offended. And that was before one of the hosts' significant others confessed that she didn't get the difference between tabletop role-playing and LARPing. (It was eventually explained that the latter involved werewolves and cosplay.)

For the curious, the catalyst that lead this podcast into the realm of intolerability was a list of "15 Geek Films to See Before You Die." It contained such unheard and definitively non-mainstream films as The Fifth Element, Army of Darkness, Office Space, War Games, and The Matrix. Can any astute readers fill me in on what these movies are about? The Matrix...wasn't the guy from Point Break in that?

Geeks On, I always doubted that your geek was actually on. Now I know. You're off the list and you're off my iTunes. And when Mr. Bile goes back to double-check the tags on our first 100 posts, I'm having him delete every use of the word "geek" as well. You revelled in the label to a point where it became embarrassing again.

I'm not a geek. I'm goddamn interesting.

Replacement #3: Mr. Bile

I don't know what the fuck happened to him. Forget searching for more contributors. If he doesn't post something that only Mr. Bile could say by the end of the day, I'm holding auditions for a new Mr. Bile.

What About (Name Changed to) Bob?

Let me tell you what I know about (Named Changed to) Bob.

Bob lives in Canada. He likes role-playing games. He enjoys your role-playing game podcast. He has tried listening to other role-playing game podcasts, but his interest always wanes by the 15-minute mark. Your podcast is the only one he listens to. He likes it so much, in fact, that he listened to 30 episodes in one week. (Bob works 12-hour night shifts.)

Bob hasn't role-played in seven or eight years, but has stories about his role-playing days. Once, he played an elf in a Shadowrun campaign. His friend was playing a shaman. They fought some orcs and one of the orcs grabbed the shaman in a bear hug. Bob said, "Don't squeeze the shaman!" (He had been waiting two weeks for the opportunity.) Another time, shortly after the Tome of Magic came out for AD&D 2nd edition, he created a Wild Mage. He was Chaotic Neutral and casting Nahal's Reckless Dweomer as Magic Missle was his default strategy. His party encountered an army of flind(s?), and they decided to take out the flind leader in the hope the rest of the flind(s?) would scatter. Bob cast Nahal's Reckless Dweomer as Magic Missile on the leader and an anvil fell on the leader's head. He cast it again and that time the leader turned to stone. Unfortunately, it turned out the army was actually composed of several tribes, each with their own leader--

[A serious aside. Methinks the DM protest too much. The party took out the Big Bad easily, and the DM's ego left him with no recourse but to say, "No, you see, what you didn't notice before was that the flind(s?) are wearing different-colored armbands. Yeah, there's, like, a green tribe and a red tribe and a purple tribe, and you, though knowledgeable enough to spot a flind leader out of an entire army, didn't notice that there were other leaders, too."]

--so he cast Nahal's Reckless Dweomer as Magic Missile on the next leader. An inter-planar gate opened and a gorgon came out of it. The gorgon began turning everyone into stone. Bob shouted, "Look what that flind mage just did!" in order to place the blame somewhere else, and everyone but the ranger believed him. But Bob's favorite character was (Name Changed to) Dusk Condor. He played Dusk Condor in Heroes Unlimited and Champions. Dusk Condor could fly, see in infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, and more. But to make him interesting, Bob decided that Dusk Condor would be blind. This led to some problems, like when he had to tell the red wire from the blue one.

[I'm sorry, but I feel this point can't be made clear enough. Bob, your game master sucked.]

Bob is also creating his own role-playing game, one which either evokes the style of/takes place in the worlds of/or takes place in a setting similar to those depicted in M. Night Shyamalan's films. Coincidentally, your free indie role-playing game is exactly the same as the game he's been working on. And thanks to you, Bob is thinking about making his own podcast.

Why do I know this about Bob? Because you played four of his rambling voice-messages on one episode of your podcast.

This was a not only a disservice to your listeners, but to Bob. We don't need to hear stories about his characters, and you shouldn't allow him to expose himself on the Internet at time when he's dealing with a personal tragedy. He's probably very vulnerable at the moment, and doesn't need to know that we're glad he's not role-playing anymore, we don't care about his characters, and the chances that we'd listen to his podcast are even less than the likelihood of me listening to yours again.