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Hungry For More

April 20, 2011 Books / Food / Friends / Games / Internet / Movies / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011
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Thanks in part to the Suvudu Cage Match but mostly to Isaac L’s sug­ges­tion, I picked up the Hunger Games series a cou­ple of weeks ago. The books are short and aimed towards the “young adult” crowd so I man­aged to burn through the tril­ogy in a weekend.

First impres­sion — the first book is very sim­i­lar to Bat­tle Royale, only with a dis­tinctly Amer­i­can female per­spec­tive. And like with Bat­tle Royale, I would have been happy if the story ended with the com­ple­tion of the games. Even if Suzanne Collins planned for it to be a series the whole time, I think it would have been bet­ter if she had ended the first book a few pages sooner instead of set­ting up the sequel.

Unlike Bat­tle Royale, I did enjoy the fol­low ups. (Not so much as the first, though. I’ve real­ized I’m very milieu-​oriented.) The action made sense, even if the teen-​angst got old. It (or at least Kat­niss) wasn’t as polit­i­cal as Suvudu led me to believe, but I sup­pose not every­thing can be Dune. I did like the Capitol/​District con­flict more than Bat­tle Royale’s gen­er­a­tional one. The Hunger Games as a form of both con­trol and enter­tain­ment works bet­ter than a bizarre way to keep juve­nile delin­quents in line, and I hon­estly did feel Katniss’s hunger (read­ing straight through helped, too) and appre­ci­ated my own life cir­cum­stances a lit­tle more.


(from Kate Wheeler)

I hear they are mak­ing it into a movie, too! I like Jen­nifer Lawrence for Kat­niss. It’s pretty sim­i­lar to her Oscar-​nominated role in Winter’s Bone, so I’m sure she’ll do well. Plus she proved on Oscar night that she cleans up well for the Capi­tol scenes. Not sure about the cast­ing for Peeta and Gale, though. Josh Hutch­er­son seems scrawnier than I had pic­tured for Peeta, but he can fill out. Liam Hemsworth, on the other hand, seems too bulky for Gale. Maybe he can pull a Machin­ist, but I highly doubt it.

If you haven’t read the series, you should check it out!

You Don't Know Forbidden Castle Pucks

April 12, 2011 Board Games / Friends / Games / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Television / Video Games
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After we wrapped up Act 1 of the Games of Non­cha­lance, Thu H and I caught a bus back to my place, and I drove us to meet up with Aaron L and Sue L for some board game action and to watch the Sharks game. Orig­i­nally, Sue L was going to host, but Chris T and Tina K offered up their place, so we headed to Hayward.

Got there in the mid­dle of a game of Car­cas­sonne. Got to try Kona Brew­ing Co.‘s Koko Brown, a coconut beer.

Pretty damn tasty!

Also had some Asahi Black while we watched the Sharks game. Chris T and Tina K also put out a cheese and dried fruit plat­ter and we classed it up with mul­ti­ple wines, includ­ing a Passover kosher one. Aaron L explained that to make wine good for Passover (“the bread­less hol­i­day”), they remove the yeast early before it raises. Not sure where that point is in the wine fer­men­ta­tion process, but it def­i­nitely tasted like it was stopped and then fortified.

Jason G also stopped by, and we played a cou­ple of games of You Don’t Know Jack, which Chris T had for his XBOX. Turns out, he used to play the orig­i­nal on PC back in the day, too! Play­ing with four play­ers at once was really fun. I really wish we could do it with the Steam ver­sion. Or bet­ter yet, net­work play!

After that, we taught every­one For­bid­den Island. Started on Nor­mal on a rel­a­tively easy board (all the impor­tant spots near the cen­ter), but still lost due to the water level reach­ing instant death levels.

After that, headed home. All in all, a fan­tas­tic way to spend a Saturday!

Getting Lost In SF

April 12, 2011 Archives / Friends / Games / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories / Videos
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So Thu H and I headed back to 580 Cal­i­for­nia for our 2:40 appoint­ment for induc­tion at the Jejune Insti­tute. Like I said before, it was a busy day for them. In fact, Sat­ur­day was sup­pos­edly the last day the induc­tion would be held, so there were six other peo­ple wait­ing in the recep­tion area for us to come back — they wanted to join us in the induc­tion! (We let them join us for the intro­duc­tion and agreed we would split up for the hunt portion.)

Be warned, the rest of this post details our adven­ture, com­plete with pho­tos. I don’t think I’m spoil­ing any­thing at this point since Act 1 has closed, but just in case you want to unof­fi­cially run the game, like some peo­ple are doing now.

If you want to con­tinue, click on the link imme­di­ately below for Page 2.

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