Articles – Page 9

Don’t Watch Hemlock Grove

Throughout April, The Wife and I watched a show called The Killing on Netflix. It is an excellent crime drama with a fun twist: the entire two-season run focuses on a single case. My initial thought was that stretching one investigation over 20-something episodes would make the show too slow and repetitive, but I was so wrong. There were no filler episodes; each one offered something pertinent to either the case or character development. It wasn’t perfect but god damn if that thing did not have me absolutely hooked by the end. And the ending! Oh, that ending. Powerful, powerful stuff.

So after that, I was thirsting for something similar. I have never been big on the television crime drama, but The Killing left a very good taste in my mouth. So when Netflix started advertising for their upcoming exclusive series called Hemlock Grove, my interest was piqued. Here, take a look at the description pilfered directly from Netflix:

When the mangled corpse of a local teenager is discovered, rumor and suspicion spread like a plague through Hemlock Grove. As dark secrets bubble to the surface, everyone becomes a suspect in the hunt for a monster that may be hiding in plain sight.

Hey! That sounds exactly like what I’m looking for! Seriously, if you replace ‘Hemlock Grove’ with ‘Seatlle’ that could (very) loosely describe The Killing as well. If only I could go back to a couple weeks ago and tell my past self that no, oh sweet crepes no, it is not what you’re looking for.

The Netflix poster/cover thing for Hemlock Grove is a hand protruding from the mouth of a wolf. I figured that it was more symbolic than anything, especially since the O in Hemlock is stylized as a snake eating it’s own tail, as in the Ouroboros symbol. So, “okay,” I thought, “this seems fairly deep and rooted in some sort of mythology so I am so in.”

Yeah, it didn’t turn out that way. I won’t spoil too much, but Hemlock Grove is kinda like what would happen if Twilight took off the kid gloves. So it’s an awful, stupid, confusing mess, but at least it’s an awful, stupid, confusing mess that shows boobs pretty often.

Basically what goes down is that this chick gets killed -disemboweled “snatch-first”- and two teenage loners decide that they want to investigate the murder. One (Roman) is a rich pretty boy who’s got a blood fetish and can do the Jedi mind trick. The other (Peter) is a Gypsy that just moved into town and people just assume that he’s a werewolf for no real reason. Apparently there is some sort of vague enmity between their families (this is only barely touched upon in the final episode) but they bond pretty quickly. Which becomes somewhat problematic for the viewer.

The chemistry between these two is one of the more aggravating parts of the show. Roman has his way with all the ladies and Peter develops a pretty serious relationship with a girl throughout the series, but they are so impossibly gay for each other it hurts. I don’t know if maybe it was written that way on purpose or the actors just don’t understand body language, but they are constantly giving each other the look and spouting off gay innuendo but nothing ever comes of it. There is so much more unresolved crap in this show, but the sexual tension between these two is thick enough to bludgeon someone to death and if the two of them had just admitted their true feelings and gotten their queer on, I’d have been satisfied enough to not demand my thirteen hours back.

The very, very worst part is that the best, most sympathetic character, Roman’s sister Shelley, ends up just being a deus ex machina. It is infuriating and whyyyyyy do we not spend more time getting to know Shelley? All she is over the course of the series is the sheltered girl who’s pretty much Frankenstein’s monster less the neck bolts and sometimes she glows blue for no well-defined reason. I don’t really know about that last one, I fell asleep during the episode where I’m guessing that maybe they explained her backstory. But rather than have her slow growth towards independence mean anything, it just turns her into a big ol’ plot device out of nowhere. It is infuriating.

As for the other unresolved crap.. well, I guess the show answers the main questions, those being “who is eating all these vaginas?” and “why is someone eating all these vaginas?” but not a single one of the character arcs comes to a satisfying conclusion. Every member of Peter’s family has some sort of supernatural quirk about them, but not a one of them gets any real explanation. His mom sort of gets some backstory at the end, but even that isn’t enough to explain really anything at all outside of why she’s so damn frigid. It really confuses more than it enlightens. I guess the best way to explain it is that the show tries to frantically wrap up a handful of loose ends in the last episode rather than let the resolutions work themselves out naturally over the course of the series. It would make a much better payoff to have some sort of revelation during or at the end of each episode, rather than just adding a bunch more questions onto the pile. You know, like LOST. LOST was pretty great.

Side note: There is also a cubic buttload of fantasy terminology that is used but never even given context, nevermind outright explained. So if the words Upir and Vargulf and Ouroboros don’t mean anything to you (and they probably don’t unless you’re some kinda goth douche), you might want to keep your smartphone next to you while watching. You know, so you can Google some of the wacky fantasy garbage. Actually, Ouroboros is friggin everywhere in the show, but isn’t really all that meaningful in the context of the show. It sort of represents one character’s major development (at the very end), and is also the name for a big science project that we never learn a damn thing about. HEMLOCK GROOOOVE!! *fist shaking*

I suppose the “silver lining” here is that Hemlock Grove is based on a book, which is the first in a trilogy. So maybe some day its insanity will all work itself out, but really, that’s not the point. The point is that this first season of the Hemlock Grove TV show is deeply disappointing outside of some pretty gnarly gore effects. I guess two or three of the characters could have been pretty likeable too if they had gotten anything resembling real character development but oh well. Mostly every character who isn’t Roman or Peter or Shelley is a straight-up douchebag or a babbling idiot (sometimes both!), so why should I even care?

TLDR: Don’t waste your time on Hemlock Grove. Read a plot synopsis or something if you’ve got a burning desire to know what it’s about. Hopefully the writer will add some supplemental information, because that’s the only way any of this garbage is going to make sense.

Party Cake Peeps

There was a time, not too long ago, when Easter was a big deal here at TE. Actually, it wasn’t even called TE back then. So I guess maybe it was a long time ago. Yup, this is the worst introductory paragraph ever.

There was a time, long ago, when Easter was a big deal here. Not only was it exciting because I’d wake up to a buttload of free candy and maybe an awesome gift or two, but also because it was fun to write about. Well, the candy was fun to write about. I don’t know why, there’s just something that really clicks for me when it comes to Easter candy. More so than candy themed for any other holiday, even Halloween.

Alas, those days are naught but a memory, and while my mom does still put together a little something for me, I’m long since officially too old for Easter as I’ve always known it. Now it’s all about Jesus and brunch buffets instead of chocolate and jellybeans. I certainly don’t like the transition, but it’s not like I really have a choice, now do I?

Because of the wonderful power of maternal sympathy, the wife and I received a nice little package of goodies from my parents this year, and these Peeps are the most interesting thing that was found within. It also contained some mini Reese’s peanut butter cups, Cadbury Mini Eggs, a box of K-cups, and more chocolate footballs than I could count.

While at first it seems like it would be incredibly difficult to choose one thing to be the most interesting from that lineup, the Peeps have a serious edge that I didn’t even notice until I put the first one in my mouth Notice that they are, in fact, Party Cake Peeps. I didn’t notice this because I wrote off the festive box as just an Easter theme without actually inspecting it first.

So what defines the Party Cake Peeps? What makes them so much more interesting than their standard-issue brethren? Not a lot, I’ll be honest. It’s a stretch to call them interesting, even with that fancy-pants wrapper.

A Peep, normally, is just a chick-shaped marshmallow slathered in sugar. So, sugar wrapped in more sugar, if you want to be pessimistic. The Party Cake Peeps, on the other hand, are flavoured. I’ve never eaten -or even seen– flavoured Peeps before, so this was a major revelation for me. I didn’t know that the technology existed to endow the humble Peep with such a wondrous gift. The future truly is now.

Anyway, while the PCPeeps do bear a smell reminiscent of cake, the flavour isn’t nearly as strong as the scent, They mostly still taste like marshmallows, but with a little hint of vanilla? I’m not sure what the flavour is, I’m actually really bad at that. I know that there is a flavouring, but I am completely unable to identify it. It doesn’t help and disappoints me greatly that the package doesn’t actually tell me what it is, not even in the ingredient list. For all I know, these Peeps are party-flavoured, because that’s what the blurb on the back says. I wasn’t aware that “party” was a flavour.

The PCPeeps are also an irradiated shade of green, unlike the cool blue Peep pictured on the packaging. The little sprinkles are a nice touch. I like sprinkles because mentally I’m about six years old.

So, there’s not really much else to say about these little guys. Fact is that even flavoured, sprinkled Peeps aren’t nearly interesting enough to write about at length. I know; I just tried! Hell, thanks to this piece I might be the world’s most dedicated Party Cake Peeps fan by default. I doubt anyone else has or would even be able to put down more words about them than I have here, and I’m already padding this thing to high Hell. I dunno, I guess you could write a song or something about them. “World’s Most Dedicated Party Cake Peeps Fan” isn’t exactly a honour that I want to put on my resume.

Oh, and I suppose that if you absolutely need something to take away from this, yes, the Party Cake Peeps are yummy. A++ would eat again.

TE’s Top 12 Video Games of 2012

Another year has come and gone, and a big ol’ stack of videogames with it. I made a point in April to keep a list of every game I played throughout the year, and by the time July or so rolled around, I had decided to make up this list of the Top 12 Games of 2012. There are a few rules I decided to put in place for this list, though I ended up breaking them. Heck, there somehow managed to be 14 games in my top 12. Obviously the rules are more like suggestions.

Going in, I had decided that the games which would populate this list would have to be games that I started and finished in the year 2012. They would also have to be games that I’d never played previously. While most of the list fits this rule easily because they were released in 2012, I did make a couple exceptions. Technically there is one game that I did not beat on the list. However, I am right at the end of it, and I haven’t pulled the trigger on the ending sequence because there is more that I want to accomplish and I’ve heard whispers that ending the game ends the game for reals. Justified. The other exception is a pretty major one: a collection. I couldn’t help but add it because 2012 is the Year of the Video Game Collection and it’s by and large the best one I’ve seen so far. Also I did play through two of the games included on it this year. Good enough.

I think that earlier on in the selection process I had another stipulation on what could qualify, but I’m pretty sure that I broke it so many times that I can’t even remember what it was. Probably would have cut down the eligible games to under a dozen anyway. That said, let’s take a quick peek at the honorable mentions. These are games that either didn’t quite make the cut, or games that I really liked but didn’t even come close to finishing. They all deserve to have words written about them, but this is neither the time nor place. So let us look at their boxarts and dream about what could have been.

Now that we’ve got those losers out of the way, you can go ahead and check out what games earned the most of my affection and/or time last year. The list is exactly as Nintendo-centric as you might expect, but there are a couple games on here that will probably come as surprises. I’ll warn you now though, the total word count goes ever so slightly over 10,000 words, so if you’re in, be ready for the long haul. Maybe go get yourself a sandwich or a drink before you get started.

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TE’s “Top” 12 Bands of 2012

I mentioned in the Top 12 Albums article that I think making up year-end Top X lists is silly, and I stand by that statement. It’s a super-easy way to farm up some content that takes very little creativity and considerably less effort than writing something with a more original topic. I should know, because I’ve written more than a few of these for those reasons exactly. I’ll admit it, I’m a hack. This is just a hobby, and not one I take particularly seriously.

All that said, I’m getting more joy out of subverting the usual list mechanism by creating it using nothing but a handful of mostly inaccurate data. There’ll be no pondering for me, no mulling over which bands I like the most versus which bands I think deserve most to be on the list. Nope, I just checked the “last 12 months” option on the Artists chart, and voila: the worst of the work is done for me!

Keep in mind that given the method I used to make the list, this only partially represents which bands I would have considered my favourites during the last year. One I actually put any thought into would look considerably different. Hell, I don’t think I could even make a legit favourite bands list for a given year. It seems like a silly proposition, so “most listened to” will in fact be the criteria.

Note that these numbers were accurate as of January 14, 2013.

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TE’s “Top” 12 Albums of 2012

It’s January of 2013 now, and January means nothing if not “time to make lists about stuff from the previous year” and I intend to carry on that tired, thoughtless tradition. And, I’m going to make it even more thoughtless by having raw data determine the contents of this list, rather than make decisions on what belongs here based on my opinions.

To that end, I’ve gone onto my Last.fm account and checked the chart of most played albums in the last 12 months. Of course, the numbers are just so slightly skewed because we’re already almost halfway through January, but whatever. I know what I’ve listened to in the last two weeks, and I’ve made adjustments where necessary.

This data has been compiled through two sources: my computer, where every track I’ve played is logged through the Last.fm plugin, and also my phone, where sometimes the iScrob app sometimes decides to log tacks when it feels like it maybe. iScrob is a really crappy app that likes to drop tracks and I didn’t even use it for the first few months of the year or most of the summer. Not included are any songs played through any other source like, say, CDs or the iPod app on my phone. Also not counted are any tracks whose “album” tag is not filled out, though I’m pretty anal about keeping my basic tags correct and complete. So the numbers are going to be incredibly skewed, but whatever! Looking at data gives me total wood. And here it is! (The data, not my wood.)

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How to Train Your Animatronic Dragon

As a rule, I don’t go to a lot of live events, or shows, or whatever you want to call them; things that generally take place in an arena or stadium and the tickets for which cost somewhere upwards of expensive. I’ve been to a few concerts in my time, but they aren’t a thing that really matters to me. I love live music, but going to concerts is low on the priority list. Even lower on my radar are any other kind of live shows, be it Cirque du Soleil or a play or anything else of the sort. While a live experience is always neat, not many of those things are really within the realm of my interests.

With this in mind, I was reasonably wary when my parents offered me the opportunity to go the the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular, Stage shows have never been my thing, and I’d never even seen the How to Train Your Dragon movie, so the odds were more or less stacked against me as I went in.

After the fact though, I feel like the me in this timeline needs to build a dimensional portal so that I can travel into other timelines in which Alternate Ryans did not go see the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular, and punch them in the biscuits. If that doesn’t make sense to you, of if you’d prefer a tldr version: I loved the show. For anyone interested in all the other deets, read on.

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Ryan talks about Rayman

Video game characters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are big, some are small. Some are fun, slightly overweight plumbers, and others are cold, angsty teenage warriors. Many of them have not only their own series of games, but spinoffs and huge merchandise lines too. Of course, for every successful character, there are at least a handful that don’t have the chops to make it. Sitting almost squarely in the middle of that range is a plucky little hero who has no arms or legs, but a ton of heart.

No, not Plok. Why would I write an article about Plok?

I’m talking about Rayman, of course. That little guy created by Ubisoft way way back in 1995. It’s kinda sad that I can call 1995 “way, way back” without meaning it as a joke. The point here, is that I didn’t play Rayman for years. Hey, can you blame me? I didn’t have a Playstation yet, and I wasn’t big on PC gaming outside SimCity 2000 and Duke Nukem 3D. Given the chance, I probably would have played the game too, since it was an action platformer and I was still pretty hesitant to leave that genre’s warm embrace.

I think the real thing that kept me from Rayman was that none of my friends were interested in his game. Since he wasn’t on a Nintendo platform for four years, Nintendo Power, still my number one video game news source at that point, understandably didn’t have any coverage of the game. The internet was still pretty new in my household around that time too, also it was dial-up. I mostly used it to find breeding charts for Dragon Quest Monsters and to engage in some Yahoo chat. So really, I’m not entirely sure if Rayman was popular at all in his first few years. All I can tell you is that I’d certainly never heard of ‘im.

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Terrible Monster Costume from the Haunted Sea

It wasn’t long ago -in my second-to-last article in fact- that I proclaimed my love for campy old monster movies. Really, I’m a huge fan of the “drive-in movie” regardless of whether they contain monsters or not. Creature features just seem to be the dominant sub-genre in this case. Any why wouldn’t they be? Cheesy monster movies just work better when you’re huddled up in your car, out in the blackness of the night. You’re much more vulnerable and secluded that at a theater or in the safety of your own home. Not that most of these movies were ever frightening, but the setting definitely added to the movies’ atmosphere.

I don’t know for sure if the average drive-in screen is really bigger than your run-of-the-mill movie screen, but just by merit of it being out in the open, being forced to look up at it, it sure seems bigger. Maybe it’s because most of my drive-in experiences took place when I was about as tall as an Ewok. Anyway, whether it’s really bigger or not, putting a monster up on that big screen makes the monster seem bigger too, greatly enhancing the flavour of the film. Also, add a pinch of salt and a sprig of basil. Delicious!

Not that I’ve ever had the true drive-in movie experience. By the time I was old enough to understand complex concepts like “movies” and “the drive-in,” the golden age of cinema was long over, and with it the drive-in movie. By that point they didn’t make (nevermind show) movies like Phantom From Space or War of the Worlds anymore. No, when I went to the drive-in, I got to see stuff like Batman Forever and The Phantom. That said, going to the drive-in was definitely more about the experience than the movies for me.

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I Screme, you Screme: Cadbury Screme Eggs

The guy who is way too into spelling in me is going nuts right now. On a short trip away from my desk yesterday to seek out some throat lozenges and lunch, I came across something I’d never seen before: Cadbury Screme Eggs.

I’ve been mostly out of the candy scene for a few years now, only occasionally browsing dollar store candy aisles in hopes of finding something that has some sort of ridiculous quality to it. Barring the Star Wars Mega Egg -which I’d file under “Star Wars” or “Disappointing Garbage” before “candy”- it’s been over three years since my last candy article. And another three years to the one before that. I need to get out of my video game writing rut.

Hey, maybe three years from now I’ll rustle up the will to write another one.

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Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition

Internet, I have a problem. I’m addicted to Fargo.

Maybe it’s not so bad as addiction, but the summer trip south to Fargo has become a tradition that I can surely not break free of. I need it. I need it so bad that I managed to convince my now-wife that it’s where we should spend our honeymoon. So maybe it is bordering on addiction. I’m not a psychiatrist, I don’t know these things. Surely there’s a better way I could have started this article.

As usual, the trip was mostly to get away, relax, and just be together for a few days. And from what I’m told, that’s mostly what a honeymoon is about too. So to that end the voyage was perfectly successful. Of course we also spent a buttload of money. Like, way more money than we were even allowed to spend while down there. By some random stroke of luck, the amount you’re allowed to spend when crossing the border increased on the day we came home, so we didn’t have to pay duty on what we spent over the previous limit. It’s the first time crossing the border was a truly pleasant experience.

To that end, I should note that this is by no means a complete list of things I bought in the States. I’ve obviously excluded anything The Wife bought, because this website is about me me me me me and God forbid I give anyone else more than a passing mention. I also spend a bit on a few little house things and some clothes that I don’t feel are nearly interesting enough to write about. On that note, let’s take a look at exactly what I judge to be “interesting.”

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