I play an obscene amount of the deckbuilding card game Ascension, all of it on the wonderful iPhone port. I’ve played dozens of games against humans online and hundreds of games against AI. It’s a fun game that’s often tense, frequently surprising, and almost always satisfying: Few gaming experiences are as rewarding as executing a late-game combo…
9. Season 8 (My review) Ugh, this show got bad towards the end of its run. There was a lot wrong with it — unfunny stories, character development ranging from goofy to garish, narrative spinning wheels — but the most troubling thing about the show in its wretched penultimate season was how little it seemed to care…
I’m usually a little bit behind the release dates when it comes to appreciating pop culture. I rarely see movies in theaters, watch shows live, or pre-order books. But the next few weeks are very exciting for me because several bits of culture that I’m hyped to experience — in real time! — are clustered to…
A Song of Ice and Fire is one of my favorite book series. I know this isn’t a particularly novel opinion; with the explosive popularity of HBO’s Game of Thrones, everyone and their aunts are giving George RR Martin’s epic saga a read and discovering how rich, complicated, and satisfying the series is. While my previous look…
Due to my seasonal-related workload, I’m one of those people who gets bummed when the thermometer starts to rise. Summer means stress. Thus, I often get tempted in May and June to find some sort of chilly escape. This year, I read through the short story collection My True Love Gave to Me, which is a series…
Two summers, two well-reviewed teen cancer dramadies for teens based off of award-winning YA books. Though they are quite different in tone and theme, the two beg to be compared and contrasted. So: Fault vs. Earl. Who ya got? Let’s take a look, category by category. Source Book: I really, really love Earl — it’s somehow both funnier and sadder than Fault,…
Two years ago, I ranked my top ten favorite games, emphasizing that I expected the ranking to drastically change over time. I’ve been playing a lot of board games in 2015 (I’ve played 89 rounds of board games in 56 days; not too shabby!), so I figured this was a decent chance for me to check…
There are no bad episodes of Party Down. In two seasons of ten episodes each, Party Down — one of my favorite shows of all time — landed a hit with each half hour. The blend of darkness with warmth, fast-paced scripts filled with raunch, fantastic relationships between characters, and great guest stars almost every episode makes Party…
This is the third and final part of my Tomas Kalnoky/Streetllight Manifesto retrospective. Read part 1 here and part 2 here. After the release of Somewhere in the Between, Streetlight Manifesto’s incessant touring continued, as did their lofty promises. Within a year or two of the release of Somewhere in the Between, the Streetlight website announced a…
This is part 2 of my Tomas Kalnoky/Streetllight Manifesto retrospective. Read part 1 here. After BotAR broke up, Kalnoky got together a lineup that more resembled a traditional ska-punk band: trumpet, trombone, two saxes, guitar, bass, drums. This new band recorded an EP, signed a 5-album deal with Victory Records, and named themselves “Streetlight Manifesto.”…