Post-Celebration Congregation

Man, where did all these cobwebs come from?  I guess it has something to do with the holidays, a random illness, a much-anticipated game release and whatever other pitiful excuse I can locate in the dusty offices here at Doodlepunks.  We are back though, so make no mistake, your pointless and frivolous comic needs will be fulfilled on a more regularly based schedule.

How do I wrap up the past two weeks in a nutshell?  Let's just go with Holiday Cheer.  Especially this past weekend, we visited the local cinema not once, not twice but thrice to catch all the movies that we were interested in seeing.  Because I know that every visitor here demands my expert movie criticisms, I'll give you the bulletpoints: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was surprisingly entertaining and I would rank it as second-best, right behind the original; Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows was a worthy follow-up to a hopeful trilogy of interestingly tweaked classic characters; The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a long undertaking but well worth the effort with a captivating story and strong pacing to keep you from getting fidgety in those seats.

Whew, I'm glad that's over with.  Enjoy this week if you're lucky enough to have additional time off.  You'll need that extra energy for the parties coming up this next weekend!  Take a deep breath folks, we'll get through  this together.

Punch it, Chewie!

Anti-Climax!

Our diabolical villain to this tale seems to be fairly unfazed by the being forced to face his sins.  The reveal conversation was understandably my favorite part of the show for all the old Sherlock Holmes movies I used to watch on TV.  The only problem is that I got to stay up later than normal to watch them, making me that much more likely to fall asleep before finding out what in the world was going on.  The few times that I was able to pry my eyelids open wide enough to keep the plot straight, at the end of it there was no way any person could have solved the mystery with the clues provided.  Sherlock Holmes may be awesome, but the dude plays the cards a bit closer to the chest than I prefer.  I mean, he doesn't even like to let people know who he's leaning towards until Inspector Lestrade is there to clap the scoundrel in irons.

Going deeper into my detective rant, the Sherlock Holmes sequel hits theaters in time for the holidays, and I have mixed feelings.  While I loved the first movie, bromance and shirtless fight scenes and all, I'm having a hard time getting excited for the story.  They played the first movie so well by keeping the villain from revealing how or even if he was the one behind all the happenings around London.  From the commercials and trailers, and I know how they don't really indicate a movie more often than not, it seems as if Sherlock's going right for Moriarty in an even larger, more adventurous fashion.  I guess I'm just hoping that the same air of mystery isn't removed with all the witty banter and cross-dressing.

Another week's almost bit the dust and we're all left standing.  Huzzah for us.

Punch it, Chewie!

Curiouser and Curiouser

Apparently in the story, our protagonist's wife is following the first rule of detective work: follow the money.  If any monster crimes were to be perpetrated against me in my real life, I can be sure that the person who would figure out the beast's weakness would be my wife.  When she has a nugget of an interest in something, she can run that down until she knows everything about it, serious research skills from her previous life overachieving her way through school.

The Manor has succumbed to an illness we had trouble with a few years ago: we're completely back into the show How I Met Your Mother.  Since it's available to stream on Netflix we picked right back up where we left off, which was apparently half a season before all the female characters on the show got pregnant.  Now we're expert baby spotters, seeing how carrying a box covers a belly or suddenly a character is "angry" and won't hang out with the group for a few weeks (read: maternity leave).  It's still an awesome show with some pretty good writing, but what keeps us coming back for more is how goofy they can get without crossing that line into Scrubs territory (shudder).

Alright, nose to the grindstone, keep up the good work and all that.  Catch you again later this week.

Punch it, Chewie!

When Nerds Collide!

For those who follow this little internet fiefdom, you'll know that I collect/adore comic books.  I've been collecting for probably over 20 years though not with any kind of serious intentions.  Most of my collection would be described as a step below near mint, so a few notches off that price that everyone thinks they're worth.

My recent invigoration with collecting comics came at the perfect time to get back into it with a few friends.  This is also a weird situation for me since comic books have been a solo passion; all my knowledge and love for comic books was bottled up because there was no one to discuss them with.  That's now changed, and it's shown me a whole new level of nerd I didn't know I had.  The current project is depicted above, a digital catalog where we can keep track of what we have and what we've read.  There are programs that could assist us in this, but we take our nerd seriously; we're building our own.

I tried out the shooter game Brink because it's free-to-play on Steam this weekend, and I was less than impressed.  The game crashed several times just on the menu screen, and the in-game lag left me confused as to what movements I was making on my own using their "smart movement" system (a Parkour-style way of moving around the environment).  I followed this game in development somewhere around a year ago and I was very excited for it to come out.  Now having played it, I'm only reminded of how many games I've waited for and been excited by features in the magazines or demos, but that fall completely flat when you get your hands on it completely.  One would think I'd learn to lower my expectations, but that's a fight for a different day.

Punch it, Chewie!