Two Reviews and an Anecdote
Last year, I told Sandeep Parikh I would watch The Legend of Neil, so before I see him this year, I figured I would actually catch up on his webseries. Which is about-I kid you not, it is well described in the theme song-a guy who, while drunkenly playing The Legend of Zelda, masturbates to the fairy and asphyxiates himself with the controller and somehow gets transported into the game. Yeah.
I never played Zelda, I don't think, but I know the general gist of things and I'm familiar enough with various tropes of the genre to get most of the jokes. For a low-budget webseries, the costumes, makeup, and special effects are surprisingly good, especially in the second season, when I presume they got more money. And although you don't need money to be funny, the show is definitely funnier in the second season, although it doesn't reach Guild-level hilarity. I'm honestly not sure how funny the show would be to non-gamers, though. You can burn through the first two seasons in about ninety minutes if you want to give it a try.
Also, it features Felicia Day as a horny fairy.
Last night, after the Olympian show, I noticed a guy who looked familiar, but I wasn't sure why. He was with Marissa, the box office manager, at the White Horse afterward, and I went up to him and said, "You look really familiar." He thought I looked familiar as well. I thought it had to be a theatre connection, but he'd only moved here a month and a half ago. His name, Matt, didn't ring a bell. He was from Dallas, though, and I was from Arlington! But he didn't go to my high school. He did do some math-science and Academic Decathlon stuff, but that didn't seem to be it.
Marissa said we should go on Facebook and see if we had any mutual friends, but he liked this method better. I agreed.
And then we discovered we both went to Rice! Okay, now we were getting somewhere. He was at Lovett, and I was at Hanszen. He started naming people, and I didn't know any of them. I started naming people, and he didn't know any of them. He wasn't in the MOB. He was '06, and I was '03, so we only overlapped by a year. Could we really have just seen each other around on campus a lot? We both agreed the familiarity felt a lot stronger than that.
Then he asked me if I took any writing classes. Oh, I'd taken a bunch! The one I remembered in our overlapping timeframe, though, was the one I took my last semester, with Dr. Kathleen Cambor.
He was in the same class.
And there we had it. We had spent a whole semester reading each other's work, although neither one of us actually remembered what we'd read. But that explained why we were drawn to each other.
To add to the randomness of the encounter: he and Marissa were introduced by a mutual OKCupid friend. I love the world.
This morning, I saw Inception in LIE-MAX. Although I had to watch the trailers, I avoided as much as I could so I could go in knowing as little as possible, so I won't go into any specific plot details. The movie drops you right in anyway and lets you learn how the technology works gradually. There is a lot of exposition in the first half, but, honestly, I didn't mind or notice because it was handled so well and the characters were so compelling and entertaining (Nolan assembled a pretty fantastic cast). It's all a setup for the second half, which is a fucking thrill ride that occasionally manages to be three times as intense as any other action film and features an amazing, beautiful fight scene in the midst of all the chaos. As if all this weren't enough, the action, intensity, and suspense are rooted in character emotions. Plus, the score and sound design are great.
The movie is so good. So good. I don't know how Nolan manages to do it every single time. This movie is so good that I didn't even mind that basically every "cool" shot was in the trailers. Because they were all so much more powerful in context. It's a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and I never once wished for it to be over.
I never played Zelda, I don't think, but I know the general gist of things and I'm familiar enough with various tropes of the genre to get most of the jokes. For a low-budget webseries, the costumes, makeup, and special effects are surprisingly good, especially in the second season, when I presume they got more money. And although you don't need money to be funny, the show is definitely funnier in the second season, although it doesn't reach Guild-level hilarity. I'm honestly not sure how funny the show would be to non-gamers, though. You can burn through the first two seasons in about ninety minutes if you want to give it a try.
Also, it features Felicia Day as a horny fairy.
Last night, after the Olympian show, I noticed a guy who looked familiar, but I wasn't sure why. He was with Marissa, the box office manager, at the White Horse afterward, and I went up to him and said, "You look really familiar." He thought I looked familiar as well. I thought it had to be a theatre connection, but he'd only moved here a month and a half ago. His name, Matt, didn't ring a bell. He was from Dallas, though, and I was from Arlington! But he didn't go to my high school. He did do some math-science and Academic Decathlon stuff, but that didn't seem to be it.
Marissa said we should go on Facebook and see if we had any mutual friends, but he liked this method better. I agreed.
And then we discovered we both went to Rice! Okay, now we were getting somewhere. He was at Lovett, and I was at Hanszen. He started naming people, and I didn't know any of them. I started naming people, and he didn't know any of them. He wasn't in the MOB. He was '06, and I was '03, so we only overlapped by a year. Could we really have just seen each other around on campus a lot? We both agreed the familiarity felt a lot stronger than that.
Then he asked me if I took any writing classes. Oh, I'd taken a bunch! The one I remembered in our overlapping timeframe, though, was the one I took my last semester, with Dr. Kathleen Cambor.
He was in the same class.
And there we had it. We had spent a whole semester reading each other's work, although neither one of us actually remembered what we'd read. But that explained why we were drawn to each other.
To add to the randomness of the encounter: he and Marissa were introduced by a mutual OKCupid friend. I love the world.
This morning, I saw Inception in LIE-MAX. Although I had to watch the trailers, I avoided as much as I could so I could go in knowing as little as possible, so I won't go into any specific plot details. The movie drops you right in anyway and lets you learn how the technology works gradually. There is a lot of exposition in the first half, but, honestly, I didn't mind or notice because it was handled so well and the characters were so compelling and entertaining (Nolan assembled a pretty fantastic cast). It's all a setup for the second half, which is a fucking thrill ride that occasionally manages to be three times as intense as any other action film and features an amazing, beautiful fight scene in the midst of all the chaos. As if all this weren't enough, the action, intensity, and suspense are rooted in character emotions. Plus, the score and sound design are great.
The movie is so good. So good. I don't know how Nolan manages to do it every single time. This movie is so good that I didn't even mind that basically every "cool" shot was in the trailers. Because they were all so much more powerful in context. It's a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and I never once wished for it to be over.