I made an interesting realization last night, one that I hadn't noticed before, but one that makes sense to me now. You are either in the mood for an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or you're not. There is no in between. On Monday, I had started watching the MST3K episode, "Hercules vs. the Moon Men" and got about half way through it. I wasn't really enjoying it so much. I figured it was probably just one of the crappier episodes, but as I finished the movie last night, I simply realized that I wasn't in the right mood for an MST3K feature. I don't think there was enough sarcastic and cynical attitude running through my veins on Monday. So, with that figured out, I now know that I have attitude based prerequisites for watching MST3K and if they aren't there, I need to remember to save the movie for another day.
On another tv related note, I recently started watching the anime series The Vision of Escaflowne. I'm up to episode 8 out of 26 and I must say that it is simply enthralling! I'm really digging this series. It manages to cover all of the traditional anime bases. There's the main character who has a special power, but doesn't know how to use it yet. Then you have the two brothers fighting on opposite sides of the battle, each trying to convert the other. There's a revenge quest. There's giant robots. There's swords and flying cities. There's dragons and fantasy elements. It's amazing that this series isn't simply a train wreck because of the amount of disparate elements that are being integrated into one series. I'm really anticipating watching the rest of the series.
Besides watching anime and MST3K, I've also been reading a solid amount of comic books lately. I really, really wish that I was more gung-ho to read actual books (I'm still finishing off Dracula in case you're curious, but I'm close to done) in my spare time, but it's so hard to get motivated to do it when I'm writing documents and reading documents all day long. My eyes just need a break from straight text, so that's why I turn so heavily to comics--they have pictures to go with their words!!!
So over the last couple weeks, I've been reading the Marvel series Exiles, and I can say that I was impressed at how Judd Winnick managed to cross an X-Men style team book with the concept of What If? and had it not suck. Don't worry, the book eventually reached a low point of suckiness, but it occurred after Judd left and Chuck Austen took over. In the 30 or so issues that Judd wrote, I was captivated by the series, usually just to see the different alternate universes that he came up with, but in only a few issues Austen managed to characterize almost every member of the team completely wrong and write a completely asinine plotline before Judd came back for a small stint. Unfortunately, Austen later took over again, but his run has come to an end with Tony Bedard taking over with the current issue. Thank goodness that Austen finally got his untalented paws off of this book, one that Kristin and I both equally enjoy.
Further explaining what I do in my free time, how could I leave out video games. I've devoted a lot of time to Knights of the Old Republic for the Xbox lately. Before playing this game it had been quite a while since I'd played a role playing game and I am now realizing why I haven't--they take forever to play. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because I like the immersive storylines and level building your characters, but I have less and less time to devote to video games so for me to beat an RPG, it could take a month or so. Luckily, Knights is good enough to keep my attention and I want to keep playing it, even after putting in 15 hours over the last two weeks or so (and according to some of the people I talked to, I'm only about a third through the game). I'd easily recommend this game to any RPG fan, and I'm anxiously awaiting the sequel even though I haven't beat the first one yet!
Well, I suppose I've distracted myself long enough. I might as well say what I've been avoiding saying, and that is that my great grandma Ziemer died today. I didn't feel like talking about it right now, so that's why you were treated to my rambling about video games, tv, and comics. Yay for filler! Boo for the grim reaper!
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