World of Darkness

World of Darkness

Those who've followed my writings for a while know I'm an avid tabletop gamer. I even made my own role-playing system for Combat Frame XSeed. Unlike many in the #PulpRev and adjacent literary movements, I didn't cut my teeth on old-school D&D. My induction into the hobby came in high…
October 28, 20217 Comments
LinksAwakening

Link’s Awakening

My last full game review dropped over a month ago, and it's high time for another. The game in question probably isn't a surprise, since I've been telegraphing it for a while now. I've just finished my decades-delayed first playthrough, so this post will be written while the experience is…
October 26, 202130 Comments
Falling Down

Falling Down

I don't like to use the word "God" because it' overused in the United States ... it's been politicized and has become an attack--like if you don't believe in Jesus, you're not one of us! -Falling Down director Joel Schumacher Bar none, the movie that readers ask me to review…
October 18, 202121 Comments
Pop Culture Time Slippage

Pop Culture Time Slippage

About fifteen years ago I started noticing a curious phenomenon--a sort of jump-cutting in time. The effect wasn't internally consistent, like when I sit down to write at 7 PM, get into a groove, and suddenly it's midnight. The temporal anomaly I'm referring to is oddly selective. What happens is…
October 12, 202116 Comments
Typewriter Monkey

A Million Digital Monkeys

Hollywood gets short shrift around here, and it's easy to see why when they not only insist on accelerating ever farther out of touch, but reveling in it. Actress Geena Davis's latest role is getting artificial intelligence bots to monitor movie scripts to make sure Hollywood remains politically correct. The…
October 11, 202125 Comments
The Game

The Game

From time to time I like to revisit movies from around Culture Ground Zero. Since Western pop culture is now fully in the grip of a fanatical cult bent on memory holing the past, it's beneficial to look back on what we've lost. One of the most tragic casualties of…
October 4, 20213 Comments
Escape from LA

Escape from LA

In the early 21st century, an American presidential candidate wins a highly unorthodox election by leveraging a national disaster. As the front man for an extreme moralizing movement, he oversees the implementation of sweeping neo-puritanical directives to enforce his sect's moral vision nationwide. Federal law enforcement is tasked with prosecuting…
September 27, 202110 Comments
The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

One of my recent posts on the last great age of 2D gaming put me in a mood to revisit the tragically poorly served classic Link's Awakening. I'm still savoring this playthrough, so a full review will have to wait. In the meantime, here's an intriguing tidbit from retro gaming…
September 24, 202112 Comments
Shadow Hearts

Shadow Hearts

Victory may have defeated JRPGs, but video games represent the one segment of pop culture that survived Ground Zero. At least for a decade or so. Today, the corporatization of vidya has made up for lost time with a vengeance. Consider the outright disappearance of the entire video game midlist.…
September 20, 20214 Comments
Link's Awakening

A Link to the 90s

Recently in my internet wanderings, I chanced upon a rare buried treasure--the sort that used to pop up regularly before the death of the web. The following piece of archived video only runs three minutes, but in that short time it captures the look and mood of Nintendo headquarters in…
September 1, 20216 Comments