Randomness VIII: The Great Green Arkleseizure

[TGP]

Also. Anybody else having problems with the quote feature acting all wonky tonight?

Seemed as kludgey as it normally is when using a phone.

[Kheprera]

We have no electricity. Getting up is useless with no coffee.

 

Going back to bed.

[Dai-Mongar]

Sabbath was good fun. Music was great, but I'm not a fan of Ozzy as a showman; he had about four phrases that he repeated at various intervals, but that was about it as far as audience interaction went.

I had a great time, but I enjoyed Blue Öyster Cult more.

[Pingo]

 

 

I've mixed feelings about that. I've some of the animated adaptations and a live action adaptation on disc and I don't feel they captured the magic of Pratchetts writing very well.

I know that there's been others, Hogswatch for one, so I guess it's just a matter of keeping ones fingers crossed.

The animated versions were done early and on the cheap. Like for example, they did the common practice of every voice actor recording their lines in complete isolation, which meant that no one could respond to the tone of anyone else and so a lot of what were supposed to be jokes, funny lines, and banter fell flat. Also the drawing was hasty and crude. And really, there is no way to film a satire of rock music without using actual rock music somewhere in it.

I appreciated that the cartoons were there, but they felt like they were holding places for something better to come.

I feel like Hogfather was orders of magnitude better, really worthy of annual holiday watching. And of course there are any number of live theatrical adaptations, although I haven't seen a production.

Which live action production do you have?

The Color of Magic with David Jason, Sean Aston, Tim Curry, and featuring Christopher Lee as the VOICE OF DEATH.

With that cast you'd think it would be better than it turned out. I think part of it was that it felt like many of the actors were miscast in their roles.

As an aside, I was a fan of David Jason in A Touch Of Frost mystery series and always thought he'd make a great Sam Vimes. Seeing him cast as Rincewind just didn't seem right. He's much too old for the part.

I've never seen Hogswatch but I've heard good things about it.

Wow. You know, I had totally forgotten about that production.

 

And that's saying something.

 

"The Colour of Magic", the first of the Discworld books, is in my opinion among the weakest and worst of all of them. When recommending the series to people I usually suggest they skip it since it is so very different from so many of the later, more powerful, funnier books as to give an utterly false impression of whether the readers would like the rest of the series or not.

 

Rincewind I always envisioned as a relatively young, perennial grad student. Not some greybeard old Gandalf-type, but more of a tall, underfed young fellow built for running, with a scraggly beard and sandals.

 

There are also aspects of the story which make me a little uneasy. Twoflower is very obviously meant to be a far East Asian satire, but a horrendously stereotypical one. Having an Asian actor playing him would feel creepy, but having a white actor screwing up his face to play him feels worse.

 

In Hogfather they cast Constable Visit the Heathen With Explanatory Pamphlets (a paraphrase of his full name) into an Indian-Pakistani rather than the pilgrim-Puritan he so obviously was. I'm okay with that -- he's not a jmajor character there. But why whitewash Twoflower?

[Dai-Mongar]

Rincewind I always envisioned as a relatively young, perennial grad student. Not some greybeard old Gandalf-type, but more of a tall, underfed young fellow built for running, with a scraggly beard and sandals.

Congratulations, I am now imagining Shaggy from Scooby Doo as a wizard.

[Chaoswolf]

I may just bring a bunch to Reapercon and when no one is looking dump them on the 'paint and take' table. Or just shoot them across the hall with a slingshot, while singing 'it's raining men'

Note to self--follow SR around with video equipment.

 

We have no electricity. Getting up is useless with no coffee.

 

Going back to bed.

I hope it comes back for you soon.

 

Sabbath was good fun. Music was great, but I'm not a fan of Ozzy as a showman; he had about four phrases that he repeated at various intervals, but that was about it as far as audience interaction went.

I had a great time, but I enjoyed Blue Öyster Cult more.

Sounds like a pretty good time.

 

...and the phone just rang, gotta go to work. The weekend is NOT off to a good start.

[Crowley]

Morning all!

 

:wub: :wub: :wub: :wub:
 

http://marvel.com/news/tv/26104/netflix_orders_marvels_the_punisher_to_series

Yes! Good news indeed.

 

And Ub3r! Get with the watching!!

 

 

I have exactly ONE Crown Royal bag. It holds many dice.I know many gamers who have ONE Crown Royal bag. It was kind of a rite of passage in my social circle to buy ONE bottle of Crown Royal, for the bag. And then drink yourself stupid...

I think my husband may once have had a Crown Royal bag, but if so it has died long since.

My first dice bag was lost with all contents around 1986 and I still am not quite considering everything acquired after that my "real" dice yet.

My second dice bag was gotten at an SCA event and was heavy gold curtain brocade. It lasted well until it abruptly disintegrated all at once a few years back.

My husband suggested I dragoon one of the reusable printed cotton gift bags I had made up, so I fit my dice into one with a print of flying saucers and little kids dressed as spacemen drawn crayon-style on a black background, a remnant from a gift pair of overalls for the baby of a friend who was involved with Star Trek in a professional capacity.

Then my husband surprised me with a dice bag made from a sparkly spider print with glow-in-the-dark skull beads on the drawstrings. I also got more dice, so I put all the d6s and my last original D&D dice in the flying saucer bag and everything else in the spider bag.

Now I have just acquired a bag which came with a free soap sample. It's a little small and it is white velvet -- the worst dust magnet since, well, it's just the worst. Ask any rueful winter bride. It is also *extremely* fragrant. But it -- it wants to hold dice.

Hmm. Must consider.

 

I've never had a crown royal dice bag... My current one is from TSR's silver anniversary tour. A little black bag with a TSR patch on it.

 

Mmmm.. The first cup of coffee is the best, isn't it? Now to do some writing for my blog. I'm behind on the A to Z challenge...

[Erifnogard]

 

I spotted a Darsc in the usual Randomness tonight.  I was getting worried that he had crossed over into the Ordered portions of the forum, never to be seen again but nope, he's still around.  And that's Greeaaaat!

  

I sense you may not be taking my ghost bunny sighting seriously.

Two Darsc sightings in one day!

 

But seriously, I was merely taking the opportunity to poke fun at you a bit and welcome you back to Random.

 

ETA:  Also, how often has anything been taken all that seriously in Randomness? 

Edited April 30, 2016 by Erifnogard

[Pingo]

 

Rincewind I always envisioned as a relatively young, perennial grad student. Not some greybeard old Gandalf-type, but more of a tall, underfed young fellow built for running, with a scraggly beard and sandals.

Congratulations, I am now imagining Shaggy from Scooby Doo as a wizard.

 

Yeah, pretty much.  Maybe a little more sleep-deprived and anxious.

[TGP]

 

 

 

Rincewind I always envisioned as a relatively young, perennial grad student. Not some greybeard old Gandalf-type, but more of a tall, underfed young fellow built for running, with a scraggly beard and sandals.

Congratulations, I am now imagining Shaggy from Scooby Doo as a wizard.

Yeah, pretty much. Maybe a little more sleep-deprived and anxious.

That is how I pictured Rincewind.

 

I never really pictured Two-Flower as Asian. But I encountered him as the Tourist Class character in Nethack first, before I read Colour of Magic. Just reading the book I would not have picked up on the Hawaiian shirt, I only got that part of the joke because that is what the Nethack character gets 'equipped' with. (It is like cursed armor that you can take off. If you don't remove it shopkeepers charge you double—because you are an obvious tourist. )

[Pingo]

 

 

 

Rincewind I always envisioned as a relatively young, perennial grad student. Not some greybeard old Gandalf-type, but more of a tall, underfed young fellow built for running, with a scraggly beard and sandals.

Congratulations, I am now imagining Shaggy from Scooby Doo as a wizard.

Yeah, pretty much. Maybe a little more sleep-deprived and anxious.

That is how I pictured Rincewind.

 

I never really pictured Two-Flower as Asian. But I encountered him as the Tourist Class character in Nethack first, before I read Colour of Magic. Just reading the book I would not have picked up on the Hawaiian shirt, I only got that part of the joke because that is what the Nethack character gets 'equipped' with. (It is like cursed armor that you can take off. If you don't remove it shopkeepers charge you double—because you are an obvious tourist. )

 

Twoflower comes from the Agatean Empire (a joke on the Jade Empire), a sort of mishmash of ancient China, Communist China, ancient Japan, and modern Japan.  He is loaded with Japanese-style modernish tech and travel conveniences and dresses and acts like a stereotypical cheerfully oblivious Japanese tourist as seen in 1960s and later American humor.

 

In a later book Twoflower returns as a deeper and even tragic character, but in the first two novels he's very lightweight.

[Kheprera]

Still no electricity. No idea when. Headache.

 

Coffee required. Can't reach achievement. Bleh.

[Pegazus]

So the plan is breakfast, then some adulting, afterwards a little hobby time. Going to be tricky moving thru all the other sinks to my time.

 

One good thing is I won't be cutting any grass... there's 2" of snow on it and still falling.

Edited April 30, 2016 by Pegazus

[Froggy the Great]

Hogfather is very good. It doesn't read like the book, but is still very good.

[tiniest rhombus]

 

 

 

I've mixed feelings about that. I've some of the animated adaptations and a live action adaptation on disc and I don't feel they captured the magic of Pratchetts writing very well.

I know that there's been others, Hogswatch for one, so I guess it's just a matter of keeping ones fingers crossed.

The animated versions were done early and on the cheap. Like for example, they did the common practice of every voice actor recording their lines in complete isolation, which meant that no one could respond to the tone of anyone else and so a lot of what were supposed to be jokes, funny lines, and banter fell flat. Also the drawing was hasty and crude. And really, there is no way to film a satire of rock music without using actual rock music somewhere in it.

I appreciated that the cartoons were there, but they felt like they were holding places for something better to come.

I feel like Hogfather was orders of magnitude better, really worthy of annual holiday watching. And of course there are any number of live theatrical adaptations, although I haven't seen a production.

Which live action production do you have?

The Color of Magic with David Jason, Sean Aston, Tim Curry, and featuring Christopher Lee as the VOICE OF DEATH.

With that cast you'd think it would be better than it turned out. I think part of it was that it felt like many of the actors were miscast in their roles.

As an aside, I was a fan of David Jason in A Touch Of Frost mystery series and always thought he'd make a great Sam Vimes. Seeing him cast as Rincewind just didn't seem right. He's much too old for the part.

I've never seen Hogswatch but I've heard good things about it.

Wow. You know, I had totally forgotten about that production.

And that's saying something.

"The Colour of Magic", the first of the Discworld books, is in my opinion among the weakest and worst of all of them. When recommending the series to people I usually suggest they skip it since it is so very different from so many of the later, more powerful, funnier books as to give an utterly false impression of whether the readers would like the rest of the series or not.

Rincewind I always envisioned as a relatively young, perennial grad student. Not some greybeard old Gandalf-type, but more of a tall, underfed young fellow built for running, with a scraggly beard and sandals.

There are also aspects of the story which make me a little uneasy. Twoflower is very obviously meant to be a far East Asian satire, but a horrendously stereotypical one. Having an Asian actor playing him would feel creepy, but having a white actor screwing up his face to play him feels worse.

In Hogfather they cast Constable Visit the Heathen With Explanatory Pamphlets (a paraphrase of his full name) into an Indian-Pakistani rather than the pilgrim-Puritan he so obviously was. I'm okay with that -- he's not a jmajor character there. But why whitewash Twoflower?

I can only agree with your assessment 100%. So far Hogfather and Going Postal are the only two worth watching repeatedly.

 

Of course this may be just the latest round of speculation. We've been told more we're going to be adapted before... Wee free men was mentioned and I was all omgomgomgyesplease! Lol