Viewed: DVD

I couldn’t finish watching this movie. From the DVD front cover image and the back cover text, I expected an exciting action movie. But what it proved to be is a chick talky flick with 60 seconds of action — uninteresting action. Granted, I stopped watching after an hour and a half. If there was more action at the end, I missed it.

I know the movie is supposed to be an homage to (or parody of) the 70s low-budget, independent, grindhouse flicks, so the editing “errors” didn’t bother me. But, if it’s supposed to be like the old 70s cheap flicks, it shouldn’t have 2000s pop culture and tech in it. The cell phones and text messages and such really felt out of place in this story. But, I could have overlooked the anachronisms had I been given the mindless action I expected.

Another odd thing was the decent acting, especially by Kurt Russell. I mean, I thought the whole concept of this movie is to recreate the feel of the cheap 70s grindhouse flicks, with bad editing, bad filming, bad acting, and all. But Tarantino gives us the bad editing, some bad filming, but good acting, and 21st century props.

And then there was the story. The first 45 minutes are just girls talking about . . . nothing. When Kurt Russell showed up, I thought, “Okay, here we go.” But he just added to the talking for another 15 minutes. Yes, the dialogue and acting is good, but it’s about nothing. I was completely bored. Nothing interesting was happening. Nothing.

Then there was the 60 seconds of car crash, and then a couple minutes of talking about it.

Afterward, we go back to another group of girls talking about nothing. I thought, Oh my god, you have got to be kidding me. I don’t want to listen to another hour of this pointless chit chat. I stopped the DVD at this point and just put the disk back in the case.

I intended to ask Blockbuster if they give refunds for crappy movies, but I forgot when I got to the store, and I just dropped the movie in the outside return slot. Maybe the movie got good and active at the end, but I really don’t want to sit through 105 minutes of boredom so that the final 15 minutes feel exciting.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

The party:
Human cleric 8
Human barbarian/sorcerer 1/6
Elf fighter (archer) 7
Human cleric 4 [NPC]

Important note about the campaign: The PCs are “Eternal Heroes”: they can raise themselves from the dead the morning after they die. They all know this, and the barbarian/sorcerer has risen from death twice before this game session. (The penalty is identical to the raise dead spell, but they can come back even without a body.)

The group was searching a sewer complex for the McGuffin, and they’d had an unpleasant experience so far. They came to a chamber where they fought and killed two gibbering mouthers. Beyond that chamber was another, in which they saw a large chest surrounded by a shifting dark cloud. In the cloud they got glimpses of eyes, tentacles, claws, mouths, and chaotic colors. The 8th-level cleric identified (Knowledge Planes) the cloud as a planar bleed, but didn’t know the plane.

They stayed back out of the room and lassoed the chest. When they started pulling it, the cloud belched out a mass of tentacles and claws: a chaos beast (though the 8th-level cleric failed to identify it). The fight was short (just two rounds), but the barbarian/sorcerer got clawed and affected by the creature’s corporeal instability. He fell into an amorphous blob, flopping around on the floor. Everyone in the group was stunned—no one knew anything about the creature or its powers.

After a few rounds, the barb/sorc pulled himself together (with a Charisma check), but he had lost some Wisdom. There was discussion about the situation, and two Players considered the end result of whatever was happening to the barb/sorc might be worse than death—especially since he can come back from death. The suggestion of killing the barb/sorc was mentioned, but no one attempted to act on the idea. The 8th-level cleric deduced (Spellcraft check with help from Knowledge Planes) that a restoration spell might help, but he didn’t have the spell prepared for the day.

After a minute, the barb/sorc fell back into the blob state, but made his Charisma check again after just a few rounds. The barb/sorc ran from the chamber and through the sewer tunnels. The elf followed on his heels, but the clerics were held up by environmental obstacles. The barb/sorc, with the elf following, ran all the way back to the entrance of the sewers. The elf then suggested running out into the sunlight. They both ran out into the city street, but nothing changed.

The elf had a weapon ready to slay the barb/sorc, but held back using it. The fear that the barb/sorc would eventually turn into a chaos beast was mentioned at the table. When the barb/sorc dropped to blob again, still the elf held off killing him. The barb/sorc had never consented to being killed.

A couple rounds later, the barb/sorc went from sloppy blob to chaotic monster and attacked the elf. The brief fight ended with the elf falling to a blob state, and the new chaos beast running off into the city.

The elf eventually made a Charisma check to take his normal form. He asked how near the local temple was (for a restoration spell), and I had him roll 1d6 for the number of minutes it would take for him to get there. Three minutes. He ran through the city but fell to a blob after the first minute. He managed to make another Charisma check, and took off again toward the temple. But then he fell to a blob after another minute of safety, and a couple rounds later, he became yet another chaos beast loose in the city.

By the time the two clerics emerged from the sewers, a general alarm had sounded through the city. Citizens were hiding in their homes and businesses, and the town guards and soldiers were patrolling looking for the dangers. I described a scene of a guard patrol killing a “blobbed” soldier.

I called the session to end at that point. Now I’ve got to consider what happens when two chaos beasts run amok in a populated city. The results could be catastrophic. I’m considering have the “secondary” beasts die after an hour or something. That way the “plague” is limited to only a few people. I never, ever, considered that the PCs would bring a chaos beast into the city, much less bring two!

They had the answer to the problem, but no one did what they had already admitted was necessary. Why didn’t they kill the barb/sorc when they talked about it? Why did the barb/sorc run out of the sewers and into the city? Why didn’t they kill the barb/sorc in the city street? Why didn’t the elf kill himself when he had two chances?

Now, I could understand if they were playing low Wisdom (the affliction drains Wisdom each round), but no one mentioned they were doing that. No one mentioned anything about the lowering Wisdom other than to speculate what would happen when all their Wisdom was drained.

* * *

Several years ago, as a Player, myself, my party encountered a chaos beast in my first D&D3 campaign. We were a group of five 5th-level PCs, and none of us knew what a chaos beast did. But when the monk got afflicted (my dwarf cleric got hit twice, but made his saves) and turned to a blob, we had the same concern that the above Players had: would he turn into a chaos beast? We decided to execute the monk. We then took the monk’s body to a temple and had him raised.

I remembered the encounter as very exciting and memorable. It didn’t affect the world outside our party; it didn’t wipe out half the party and set the stage for a city-wide epidemic.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Our neighborhood had a Halloween party, and probably 40 people showed up. A couple families in the one cul de sac on our street organize the event each year (plus one in the Spring); they supply the hot dogs and hamburgers, and everyone else brings sides and desserts.

It’s a good way to meet the folks on our street, especially new neighbors. When I introduced myself to the new neighbors I gave my address number as well as my name. Interestingly, I seem to be the only person who does this. Everyone else describes their house, “We’re in the blue house, down there, with the white van in the driveway.”

There were around a dozen families at the gathering, with about 15-20 kids between the ages of 1 and 9 years. My 6 year old was feeling shy and didn’t want to join the other kids in play. He and my 3 year old just ran around me chasing each other. We were there about an hour before they actually made contact with the other kids, but once they did, they were fully into running around with the others.

About half the kids were in their Halloween costumes, and a few adults were, too. The funniest thing about the gathering was that the kids spent most of the time playing soccer. There were two soccer balls being kicked around the cul de sac, with kids in colorful costumes chasing them around.

The food was good. (There were some delicious baked beans that I’d have loved to get the recipe.) What little of the chat I could get into was good too, but it’s hard to really get into conversations when you have to keep a close eye on your kids in the middle of an unorganized soccer game on a paved road. The younger kids were right in the middle of the action with the older kids, and a kicked ball can really wallop a 3 year old. There were several close calls, but fortunately, no one got smacked by a ball or another running kid.

We started walking back to our house when the sun went down. My boys were excited and worked up, so it took a lot of herding to get them both into bed. But they were so tired that once they actually laid down, I think they were asleep within a minute.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

You’ve probably seen the line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” I’ve seen it here and there, in various places, including in Peanuts comic strips as a line typed by Snoopy sitting on his doghouse. It’s often cited as “the worst line in literature.” In fact, there’s an annual contest, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, that has people write similarly “bad” lines.

For years, I never understood why “It was a dark and stormy night” was a bad line. It read fine to me. Sometimes, the concept made me wonder about my own writing style; if I thought that line was fine, how bad were my own lines that I also thought were fine.

But then, just a couple years ago, I learned the whole of the line:

It was a dark and stormy night, the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

It’s the opening sentence to the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Seeing the whole line, I can understand the reason it’s considered bad, and the reason it’s always shortened to just, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Ironically, though, the shortened version is a great line, in my opinion. It’s concise and evocative.

But anyway. . .

We recently picked up a children’s book from the library, titled, Winnie the Pooh’s Halloween, by Bruce Talkington. I tried reading it to our 3 year old a couple nights ago, and found it very Bulwer-Lytton-ish.

Here’s the first line of the book:

The late afternoon sun appeared to hesitate on the horizon, setting comfortably among the tip-top branches of the trees of the Hundred-Acre Wood as if reluctant to turn off its light and make way for the night.

First line of the second page:

“Perhaps it’s afraid of the dark,” suggested Piglet, who was much fonder of the sun’s arriving and spending the day than he was of its going to bed and leaving animals to bump around in the dark and bruise their very small shins and noses and upset their delicate nerves.

This is a children’s book—something parents read aloud to their children. By the time I finished reading aloud that first line, my mouth was tired. These are bad lines for an adult book, but they rise to the amazingly bad for a children’s book.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com