'New' Codex syndrome?

It may be the ‘new’ codex syndrome – having just read their codices, but the Tau look like they would be fun to paint and play. I like the look of the Kroot and the Crisis suits seem interesting. I’m not going to rush out and get them but they remain on my ‘interested’ list.

I read the Eye of Terror last week. The Space Wolves 13th Company looks like fun as well. How could you not like werewolf marines?

The Necrons also caught my interest back when they came out. Since the only Warhammer army I could field is my Undead one, I like the idea of undead in space – either in Terminator metal or ceramic white.

The Demonhunters book looks good too. A small dynamic force of figures to paint – inquisition, grey knights, demonhosts. It looks like fun. Again, not sure how it would actually play though – so on to my ‘interested’ list.

While these codices aren’t ‘new’ as such, they are new to me. I have seen the figs and had lots of time to mull them over already. Should I find time (and funding) I will probably pick up a few of them.

Lost - I want my six years back

We've been watching Lost since the first season when they crashed on the island. We watched the finale. We watched the extra preshow, and even watched the Jimmy Kimmel Live afterwards.

We knew that they couldn’t wrap up all the questions they had created in a final two hours – since they hadn’t really answered most of them all season.
But to have what I consider a bad, St Elsewhere snowglobe / Dallas dream-in-a-shower ending was bad writing. Especially since the writers had already come out early in season 1 or 2 and said that the characters were not dead already.

Some people said the island was them trying to change and when they did they could die and move on. We would be willing to believe that – but then Sawyer had redeemed himself a few times – jumping out of the helicopter, time with Julia, etc and was still around. The writers just didn’t want to get rid of the character.

And if all the island stuff was real – how do you explain the smoke, the light, Richard not aging, Darma, etc? I’m still leaning towards bad writing.

See I think they had the idea have the characters die and move on but when it took off, then they realized that they had to pad out the stories. That’s why they kept introducing new characters – the tailies, the others, Darma, the islanders.
They knew 2 years ago that they had two years to wrap it up. This is what they did instead.

The writers always said ‘if we give away the secret it will ruin the story’. To me, that sounds like bad writing – if your story hinges on a secret twist, and can’t be enjoyed by knowing that twist, then it’s not that good a story. See Identity – you can figure out the twist in the opening credits if you pay attention. If not, they tell you 2/3s of the way in. Knowing either way doesn’t affect the story.
Memento had a twist – but the story itself is compelling even placed in proper order.
Watching The Village knowing when it takes place doesn’t affect the story.

Would people have watched Lost knowing all the characters were already dead – doubtful. If the characters were not already dead, then there are too many unexplained events about the island to make sense – and that have not been resolved.

We knew we were in trouble when they showed the recap show at the beginning of the season to bring those others up to speed for the final season, and then they didn’t even mention Michael or Walt, any of the Tailies, or Russo.
All of which were huge points during the seasons they were in.

So.
Not.
Impressed.

Long Weekend - recap

The pool was filled, the filter hooked up, and salt added. We are switching from chlorine to salt this year and set up the connection.

No fire but barbequing done.

We saw friends at Keycon, visited the dealers’ room – I was the only one who managed to not buy anything.

We also managed to watch a lot of TV. We cleared up a bit of space on the PVR and maintained it over the weekend.

I didn’t do any work on the figures but did manage to read through most of the codices I had won.

It was a nice relaxing weekend. It felt very much like being on a holiday.

May Long Weekend

It’s the long weekend up here. So far we have some plans but not too many. We’ve already started the yardwork – including spreading two yards of dirt and three yards of gravel. We’ve cleaned and set up the pool and have started filling it. We plan to pop into Keycon on Saturday to visit the dealers’ room and touch base with some friends. Depending on weather (which is forecasting rainy right now), we’ll barbeque and maybe have a fire.

Mostly we’ll try to catch up on our TV. We are hitting the buffer on our PVR and need to clean up a bit. Luckily, a lot of the shows are finishing their season.
I’m going to make a solid effort to either base those western figures to finish them, read the codices I got recently, or do some more work on the 40K models I’ve picked up.

Ideally, it should be a relaxing, but fruitful weekend. Hope yours is equally well.

Turn Signals on a Land Raider

This comic strip was about a 40K army – the Emperor’s Pointy Sticks. If you play 40K and haven’t read this yet, you really should. He’s stopped making new ones so you have a finite amount to catch up on.

He did start a new series called Proxy Wars but didn’t get more than three strips so far.

Codex - 9 down, 7 to go

I got a lucky bunch of wins on ebay from one seller and now have the current codices for Necrons (3rd Edition), Tau (4th edition), Daemonhunters (3th Edition), plus the Eye of Terror sourcebook as well as older versions of the Imperial Guard (late 3rd edition) and Orks (3rd edition) on their way to me. I still need to get the newer Ork codex as well as the Eldar to be almost caught up. The books themselves were very cheap – the shipping was not.


Update - While out shopping on Saturday for Shan’s birthday I popped into Face-Off and picked up the 4th edition Ork codex. So now I have all the current editions of the codices except for Eldar and Dark Eldar – not counting Black Templars, Blood/Dark Angels, Chaos Demons or Chaos Space Marines, in which I am less interested.

In which the Sith have Revenge!

Darths & Droids has made it to the third film. If you haven't been keeping up with it, you can catch up now.

Again, it takes the movies as a RPG gaming session - which helps to explain some of the decisions therein. And it's often quite clever.

Iron Man 2

We saw Iron Man 2. I think it was easily as good as the first one. Iron Man, Whiplash, War Machine, Justin Hammer, and the Black Widow – what more could you want? I used to read Iron Man from about 100 – to up in the 200s. This movie (and the first one -Rhodes, Stane, Iron Monger, Fury, SHIELD) were everything I could want from the Iron Man franchise – drinking problems, inventing, armor-on-armor battles, corporate maneuvering.

Some people don't like this one as much as the first. Granted, the first Iron Man was really, really good - especially since it incorporated the origin pretty close to the original. I maintain that this one was as good.

The only downside - is that the son now wants me to build a Warmachine costume for him for Halloween. It's not as impossible as it seems. There's a lot of good pepakura files out there that could be scaled down. It would just be a lot of work - and I don't think our current computer is up to it. We'll have to see how he feels closer to the summer when I have a bit more time to work on these.

Movies - Dragon Training, Titans Clashing, Ass Kicking

We have been able to see a few movies lately.

How to Train Your Dragon - We didn’t read the books but it was still a fun movie. The 3D effects worked well with the flying. It’s well recommended for the family.



Clash of the Titans – I had seen the original and liked it better. We saw it in the faux 3D and found that it was a bit distracting. I hear it’s a bit better without it. The visuals were good, the story okay. I don’t recall any djinns in my Greek myths. All in all, still pretty fun but I recommend seeing without the 3D.



Kick-Ass – was aptly named. This was a very fun movie with a lot of good nods to us comic book fans. We’re big fans of Hit-Girl – now we have to see how we can make a costume for G for the conventions. Big Daddy looks like it would be more trouble – upon further detailed study the boots could be tricky.

Figure painting total - April

Even though I had started painting them in March, the need to add them to bases has prevented me from actually finishing any of the cowboys yet. I’ll have to put in a bit more effort to get at least something in the painted column. Luckily, I’ve also kept my purchases smaller. I did pick up the following though:

- 40K Drop Pod (in bits) - 1
- 40K Ork Stormboyz (enough bits to make another squad) – 5
- SST Plasma bug - 1


April figures bought 7, figures painted 0

Running total 2010 – figures bought 81, figures painted 0

Robert Pasternak - Visual Chew

Our friend Michelle pushed us to go see Robert Pasternak’s Visual Chew exhibit at Martha Street Studio Gallery before it closed. It was pretty neat to see. We took the kids as well. He had some pop-type art as well as other type – a lot of which was at a pretty reasonable price.


He had a lot of small works that were very reasonably priced. We ended up picking up some Micro Dot Monsters for $5. As well, he had two gumball machines – one with Secrets of the Universe for $0.25 each and another for $2 that had a mix of items in it. We really wanted to get some of the Fun Gum so we gave it a try. We only had two twoonies and we got Booklets and Love. The folks at the gallery didn’t have twoonies to make change and didn’t seem super keen to help.



I popped in the next day on the way home, which was the last day of the exhibit to give it another try. I’ve seen Robert before and recognized him in the gallery when I got there. I picked up two more Secrets (I really like the container they came in) and gave the other machine another try. Six tries later, I had War to go with my Love, and five more Booklets. Robert and another patron had come around to see who was using the machine. I mentioned that I had been trying to get some Fun Gum and he took one of my Booklets and swapped it out for the Fun Gum. He asked if that was fine and even offered to buy back some of the others. I said they were great but did switch a second Booklet for some more Fun Gum. We also chatted a bit about his Palettes – he uses an ice cream tub lid for a palette and saved his dried paints for several years.


I first came across Pasternak art with Andrew who used to have a large Nightcrawler painting done by him hanging in his hallway. I’ve seen him a few times at Keycon as well. He also seems quiet and like a nice chap.
Checking him out online, you can get some of his art at his store – most quite reasonably.