Joe Walsh

We re-watched Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2 over the weekend. They’re still a ton of fun!

We just started S2 of Unreal. Pretty good stuff, but I'm not sure this will live up to the first season. We also watched the first three episodes of AP Bio via the Hulu preview. It's very funny so far!

In other words, Trump has sent parts of Utah back to the 1870s, and the Republican party plans to send the rest of the nation there, too. It's their longest-held, most fondly-wished-for dream: to go back to before the Progressive era, before all this voting-rights nonsense, yea, to before all this human rights nonsense. We're going back to the good old days!

Exactly. It wasn't that he was stupid. The GM was just a point miser, so Ralph's player did the best he could.

Finished The Punisher (season 1) on Netflix last night. They did a really good job with it. I liked that they dealt with morality, gun control, and Frank's complex relationship with Karen a bit. And they left lots to explore next time.

Agreed! The series never lived up to its potential, and it's been mostly downhill after the pilot episode. They've had several moments when it looked like they were going to turn it around, but they've always botched it in the end.

Watched the first three episodes of The Punisher last night. It seems OK, and mostly in line with the comic I remember from the 80s. It has its moments, both good and bad.

I watched the very poorly reviewed movie The Circle for free via Amazon Prime. It deserves all the poor reviews. What a wasted opportunity! I assume the original script must have looked good, or those a-list stars wouldn't have signed up. Maybe it died on the cutting room floor? Whatever the cause, the end result is a boring, predictable movie that doesn't really have anything interesting or useful to say. Black Mirror has much better commentary on social media and technology in general. Watch that instead.

We watched Jumanji at one of the theaters with recliners, an enormous screen, and an awesome sound system. It was a very fun movie, and I look forward to seeing it again when it's available for streaming.

Great stuff! Thanks for posting that, Pattern Ghost.

We watched the 1999 version of The Mummy last night. We hadn't watched it before, but after the reboot edition flopped (didn't see that either) a bunch of people said the 1999 one was worth watching. So, we gave it a try. And, you know what? It was good! Very good, even. Sure, there are oddities and plot holes, but overall it is a very fun movie. It moves right along, never gets boring, and is enjoyable throughout. There's plenty of humor and plenty of thrills, too. It's like a 20s adventure movie, a 40s adventure movie, and an 80s adventure movie were smooshed together to make one movie that hit all the best bits from each. I'm so glad that I hadn't seen it before.

Whatever you do, don't forget to pick up a copy of the errata. It has the fixes for the 4e Champions hardcover and softcover, the Hero System Rulesbook, and the Champions Deluxe hardcover. The version with the least errata is the softcover Champions book. That is also the version that was made into a PDF that's for sale at the Hero Games store and on DriveThruRPG. Champions Deluxe was made during the era when it was "in" to use graphic design that looked cool but was difficult to read, so it's not the best choice. It also has more errata than the earlier-released softcover Champions book. The original Champions hardcover's initial print run was problematic, resulting in an easily-broken spine. The later print run didn't change the interior at all (including still claiming to be the first printing) but is much sturdier. If you want a hardcover copy of Champions 4e, I recommend getting this one. (You can tell them apart by where the stock number (400) is on the cover. If it's under the word "and," it's the initial print run. If it's off to the far right side, then it's the print run with the better binding.)

Striking Appearance is a Talent, so you pay 3 pts per +1 to Interaction Skill Rolls and +1d6 to Presence Attacks. You can of course say "I'm beautiful, but there's no mechanical effect from it" and not buy that Talent. And of course you can use this to say your character's appearance is striking in a frightening way, which would help with a different set of Interaction skills, etc.

As you can tell, using any version of the game is just fine! The only caveats are that 3e is preferred to 1e or 2e because it's the most bugfixed version of the original and some excellent genre-specific games were produced for it, and Champions Complete or Fantasy Hero Complete are preferred over the two-volume 6e for everything but use as a reference work. My version of choice is 4e, with bits pulled from 5e/5eR as needed, and using books published for 4e and 5e since they're all very compatible. My recommendation for those new to the system is always Champions Complete, so they're not saddled with finding stuff on the used market. But in your situation, 5e is a fine choice.

I agree, the driving and music were both very good throughout.

Baby Driver - It started out OK, but got dumber as it went along. By the end, it was stunningly bad.

How silly! DC self-sabotages again.

Long, long ago, back in the early days of 4e, I statted out Artemus Gordon and James West for a campaign. A while back, my wife ran a character inspired by Annie Walker from Covert Affairs.

Right you are! The movie doesn't hold up for me as an adult, but some of the better bits of it still do. That whole segment is one of them.

Deficits only matter when the other party's in charge.

Burning's too good for him! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!

Yeah, up here in the frozen north I'd go for permanent DST. It's already practiced a majority of the year, and the shift back in the spring is always a bummer.

Over the weekend, we watched Me Before You, a 2016 romantic drama starring Emilia Clarke as a former waitress turned caregiver who is taking care of Sam Claflin's paraplegic millionaire character. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say it was a good movie with surprising depth. Well worth watching for free on Amazon Prime (I think it's on Hulu, too).

I'd go for more of a Mulholland Drive scenario.

Here's a good article by economist Joseph Stiglitz on the rise of monopolies in the modern American economy: how it came about, and the effects thereof. https://www.thenation.com/article/america-has-a-monopoly-problem-and-its-huge/