Category: Entertainment

Postcards from Paragon

A few months ago I promised to upload the second of a pair of antique and frankly low-res MMORPG videos I had rattling around on my hard-drive, both of sunsetted, much-beloved MMORPGs. This second video was actually a public stream. In 2010, one of my guildies, Zaphir, won a major architect mission contest developed by City of Heroes’ Paragon Studios,…

The year of the false spring

Last week, I finally got caught up on this season of Game of Thrones, though not without having been mercilessly spoilered by the internet. “Spoilers?” one of the MOP writers asked me. “Didn’t you read the books?” I did, fervently, in college and a few times since, usually whenever a new installment was released. (George Martin even signed my A…

In defense of Episode I

Ask any Star Wars fan about Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and you’re likely to hear some variation on a list of its weaknesses relative to the Original Trilogy: Episode I is formless and lacks a protagonist Wunderkind Anakin and Jar Jar Binks complete the kiddie-fication that began with the Ewoks Padme acts as though she’s been injected…

With songs they have sung

My takeaway from Mad Men Season 4 came in the form of a revelation about the gender norms of today, not of the bygone days in which the series is set: A lot of men really still are pigs. I don’t like the realization. My generation grew up pretending sexism didn’t exist, and for many of us, that made it…