Michael Hopcroft

"Now, let's kick Hasbro in the ****!"

"There are no guards -- only Prisoners and the worlds they have made." "I am the Duke of New York! I am A Number One!"

Q: Is that a turkey leg in your pocket, or are you happy to see me? A: That you need explicit directions to boil water is disturbing.

Q: What do you mean, no drumsticks? What are you serving us, anyway? A: He is serving the people, with fries and a Coke.

Q: Why should I be happy about being a damned pig? A: This Young Turkey isn't getting any younger. He's not getting older, either...

That he isn't Captain Poultry.

Even when doing things like this. there was already a certain gravitas about the young Morgan Freeman. In hindsight, he was able to clown around with the best of them -- without looking at all like a clown.

Q: What do Klingons listen to when they want eight hours of uninterrupted sleep? A: I don't know how you were diverted, perverted, and inverted.

Travel certificates that provide a golden excuse to get out of office Christmas parties. . NT: Real-life candidates for a good old-fashioned Scrooging.

I know there's talk (as there always is) of an NFL team in London. Bad idea to expand to Europe, but if they do -- wouldn't Frankfurt be a better choice? Better facilities, more knowledgeable fanbase with a Gridiron tradition from the old NFL Europe, and so on. The big thing is that the Jaguars are finally turning things around, and Jacksonville had better embrace this team or they will lose it.

Q: This new Order of the Stick TV series is fantastic, don't you think? A: He sits all alone on the sidewalk, hoping that you won't pass him by,

Q: So, Suzie, when will you finally be willing to go to Prom with me? A: Madam, I'm afraid we're all out of Arsenic Sauce, but we do have a lovely Balsamic Belladona Vinaigrette or perhaps you would like a Hemlock Latte.

An extra day's pay for the retail workers who have to deal with the terrifying mess that is Black Friday. (I am facing that for the first time this Friday. I am fearful, and no I won't get a bonus or get paid for Thanksgiving.)

It is not uncommon for one half of a long-married elderly couple to pass away soon after the other. Johnny Cash dying a few weeks after Juen Carter may be the most famous example. If you are already deathly ill, a broken heart can be enough to push you over the edge. The thing is if you're ninety years old and in hospice already you might not mind and might even find the thought comforting -- and even hopeful. This would be especially true for a deeply religious person like Jimmy Carter, who is thoroughly convinced his beloved and his other loved ones are awaiting him on the other side of the veil. The point is that Jimmy Carter is well aware that life on Earth is finite and seems to have accepted it will soon be his time.

Q: Waiter, I have a question about the Dessert Menu. What is this "Sweet, Sweet Tase of Death?" A: You shagged Rasputin? You shagged Rasputin? Of course I'm not jealous!

This race was a PR nightmare for the FIA. While the conditions were not quite as dangerous in Qayar, the condition of the street track was almost undrivable. By F1 standards the track in late night conditions was very cold, making traction an adventure. Cars were sliding all over the track, and Verstappen took a ridiculously mild five-second penalty for forcing pole-sitter Charles Leclair off the track on the very first turn. In the end it did not matter because Verstappen was Verstappen and Red Bull was, well, Red Bull. Fortunately, a state-of-the-art F1-ready track is under construction in the Vegas suburbs and may be ready for the 2024 race. With so many issues regarding the track and the organizers' treatment of fans who paid up to two grand for a weekend of racing on the Strip, F1 street racing on the Strip will hopefully be left for the videogames where track conditions can be handwaved away. I still don't know whether Andretti Racing will be the F1 equivalent of an expansion team or take the place of one of the existing bottom-feeders. With one race left on the schedule, it's about time to look back on the past season. Certainly, Verstappen and Red Bull had the most successful season in Formula 1 history in terms of race results and point production, but what of the rest of the field? The racing was much better in the mid-pack than it was in front where it was like Verstappen taking an unpressured Sunday drive most weeks. So with a few exceptions (Qatar and Vegas) the races were not unwatchable. But it must have been truly demoralizing for fans of the other nine teams, and especially for the drivers consigned to the back rows of the grid in most of the races. You don't become an F1 race driver to compete for two to three points a week by getting in the Tope 10. You become an F1 driver because you want to win races and championships. So do we appreciate the incipient greatness of Max Verstappen or fervently wish for Ferrari or Mercedes to catch up in 2024 and give Max some compensation for the top of the table at last?

Mark McKinnon owes me money. I have not picked up Absolute Power -- dropping the Silver Age concepts takes away the essential charm of the game. I did pick up BESM 4 against my better judgment, but can't even begin to figure out what I'm supposed ot do with it. BESM 2nd edition was fresh and exciting when it came out. Now BESM 4 feels a bit stale, like the field has passed it by. On an unrelated note, Jeff Dee, who co-created the second edition of V&V and turned it into a somewhat playable game, was strongly opposed to the OGL when it was introduced.

I just found out that the Virtual Tabletop Roll20 offers a compendium for Champions Complete. I'm not sure quite how much this makes for Hero, but it is there. Rather than a PDF, Roll20 Compendiums are non-downloadable and look more like old-fashioned, link-heavy websites. I only found out about it because I dropped some money on the recent (now expired) Roll20 Humble Bundle, which included things like Dragonbane and several of the Modiphus media tie-in games. (It also included a web version of Pathfinder Second Edition: Player Core). ( ran a couple of games on Roll20 in the past. I might do so again if I can find the time between work, writing, and trying to get some rest.

Given that Klatuu (the band) was itself a scam (Random musicians trying badly to sound like the Beatles so people would think they were the legendary group reunited), this fits the profile. The obvious denouement would, of course, be when the real aliens show up and the cultists' efforts to control them prove somewhat unconvincing...

Appropriate, since the song is inspired by a section of Ecclesiastes. which is one of the Old Testament's darker philosophical books, whose protagonist (claimed to be the legendary King Solomon, last rules of a united Israel) despairs of the purposeless of his life and how nothing he does can fill the hole in his heart. His conclusion is that meaning can only be supplied by God, without whom we are directionless and void. There are numerous problems with this, but I would need a more appropriate space if I wanted to discuss them further.

I'm thinking in terms of the villain who wields so much "mundane" power that he cannot be touched. He is nowhere near where anyone can even get at him if he does not wish them to. And he won;'t fight the heroes. He doesn't have to. He has more than enough loyal associates that he can ruin the lives of anyone who gets into his crosshairs, wittingly or otherwise. Not just agents or supervillains on retainer, but also lawyers, corrupt police, politicians, and judges, and so forth. You can catch up with his minions but never get enough on him to merit direct intervention. An example is Rupert Thorne, from Batman: The Animated Series. He was the one enemy Batman could never touch. One of the two principal bosses of Gotham's underworld, he was far too busy running an illicit empire of drugs, gambling, prostitution, and all the other things you didn't dare mention on a "family show" to have time for the sort of capers most of the Batman villains would try to pull. Batman was determined to pull him down, but never managed it. He was the master of half that was evil and all that was undetected in Gotham, and not even Batman could do a damn thing about it. Here's a real-world example. In the 1950s, my hometown of Portland was the Mos Eisley of the West Coast. The city had a crime lord who ran casinos and other "dens of iniquity" throughout downtown. If he saw someone heading into his territory, he would trick them into buying their equipment from him, letting him set up the operation and saying he would keep the police off his back. But he also had the press, cops, judiciary, and City Council in his pocket, and the trap would be sprung when his pet reporter ran a story on this terrible new cesspool of vice, which would inevitably prompt a raid. The mark would have no choice but to slink out of town with nothing, while the boss bought back his own equipment from the police at pennies on the dollar and get ready to run the game all over again. (At the time, it was the sort of city where a Jack Napier could accurately say "Decent people shouldn't live here. They'd be happier somewhere else.") The deadliest villain is the one you can never reach. You might not even know he exists until you're in his crosshairs.

The "Evil Vizir" trope used in films like Aladdin and The Thief of Baghdad tends to get cliched in "Arabian Knights" settings. They are motivated by jealousy -- they do all the hard work, and the idiot Sultan who spends all day cavorting in the harem gets all the credit. On the other hand, they wield all the real power in their realm, and by adding sorcery to the mix they become even more insidious and dangerous. You could also subvert that trope by having the Sultan be the sorcerer and the Vizir a loral servant of the Kingdom trying to restrain their lord's wilder impulses and keep him from being too destructive. In both cases, the Vizir character would assert love of the country as the justification for his actions. But in the first case, it would be because he sees the Kingdom as an extension of himself, while in the second case he is one of the few who can see where the threats really lie and still live (at least for now).

One common trait associated with Merlin is that he knew what was going to happen in the future because he experienced time in reverse -- the future was his past and vice versa. It must have made it difficult to interact with people who were not used to dealing with him. What warnings he chose to give and which future events he was going to let unfold were largely up to his whim and what he believed would benefit his friends most. That may be a reason Merlin never warned his King about Lancelot or Mordred.

I have not read the book in question, but I am assuming there is some sort of Merlin involved. He might well have been lured into the ice by now, or he might still be active. What sort of powers would he still have, though. Merlin has never been a Deus ex Machina on call to bail Arthur or Camelot out of trouble. He has always been playing his own game, with his own goals, and if they don't happen to coincide with Arthur's... Lancelot would have a few powers based on his "holiness" -- about which he might well become arrogant. These powers desert him when he begins his illicit affair with Guenevere. What happens next depends on his psyche and whether there are active attempts to corrupt the once-pure hero. Arthur might well know of the affair and look the other way, deliberately, to keep up appearances and to maintain a strong relationship with them. (In sufficiently "adult" campaigns he might involve himself directly, or perhaps he is just as much in love with Lancelot as Guenevere is...) There are also other entities in play. If you're going to do a grand campaign, you might want to include characters like Morgaine (Arthur's resentful sorceress half-sister) and the Green Knight. Perhaps the Green Knight is a humanization of the spirit of the forest itself, which is why he could survive decapitation -- you might have to kill every tree in England to get him to actually die. (Yes, I did see The Green Knight a few years back -- and I still can't make sense of any of it other than the vaguest notions of the nature of Gawain's quest and an appreciating of its visual beauty. I also watched Sword of the Valiant on home video years before -- it was clearly just another paycheck for Sean Connery, but he seemed determined to enjoy earning that check almost as much as he enjoyed cashing it.) And, most of all -- What's up with that **** Grail?

The cops call you to say they found your car smashed at the bottom of a cliff with the surprisingly uninjured cat. Turns out your cat can drive -- just not v ery well. NT: Unexpected consequences of teaching cats to pilot jet airliners.