Weekly Geekly Rundown for May 24, 2024

Bad Video Games, Online Awards, Reviews, and Recommendations. Let's Geek Out!

👖Bad Idea Jeans IP Adaptations are Nothing New

We often talk about how IP is so ubiquitous today and how it is corrupting popular culture more that it ever did in the past, but I don’t think that is really the case. Pulp author, and ghost author extraordinaire, Ron Goulart wrote a book called The Assault on Childhood in 1969 that focused on the way that Baby Boomer kids, and the then upcoming but unnamed Gen-X kids, weren’t being allowed to have a normal childhood. Instead, they were being turned into consumerist Superkids. Every piece of entertainment was being designed to sell something to the kids and Goulart argued that this was taking away from the kids having time to use their own imaginations to explore play and ideas.

The book does sit on my “Satanic Panic” shelf of books where people cry wolf about how some element of popular culture is destroying the youth of “today,” whenever that today is. I’m skeptical of Satanic Panic arguments in general, regardless of who is making them, and tend to be in the “Kids are Alright” crowd. I think it’s easy to get overblown with the desire to protect the kids. That doesn’t mean that I think there’s nothing to Goulart’s argument about super consumerism or of new arguments regarding the overuse of cell phones. I do think they are problems, but I also think they are addressable problems that we shouldn’t overreact in our attempts to engage with them.

Maybe it’s growing up listening to people shout about how Black Sabbath was a Satan worshipping band, even as their messages were about how we needed to fight against evil as perfectly advanced on the Master of Reality album. Maybe it’s because people tried to tell me that a game created by a Jehovah’s Witness, a devout Christian, and heavily influenced by a Latter Day Saint was devoted to “real witchcraft.” I’m just very skeptical of these kinds of claims.

Having articulated all of that, I’ve got to say that there is no greater evidence that Ron Goulart may have been correct that the production and release of two Kool-Aid Man games in the 1980s, one for the Atari 2600 and the other for Intellivision. In order to purchase the games, kids needed to send in proofs of purchase for Kool-Aid and hard cold cash. In return they got some pretty weird games. Of the two, I think I like the Intellivision one the best. It’s got some problem solving elements, though as you can see by the second video below it also has a pretty strange reward structure. While you are supposed to collect enough supplies to transform you kids into Kool-Aid Man to defeat the baddies, once you transform you want to stall for as long as you can in killing the baddies so that you can consume as much fruit as possible.

Neither of these games looks particularly good and they are rooted in crass consumerism. They are both over 40 years old and this makes the arguments suggesting that modern movies being based on board game IP is new or novel fall completely to the side. Besides Battleship, which is exactly the same movie as Avengers right down to the ethnic food friend making at the end, is underrated. Like Avengers, it follows the tried and true alien invasion plot structure from beach head to counter attack and eventual victory for mankind.

🏆 Please Consider Nominating Me for the CRIT Awards

I wasn’t sure if I was going to do this, but I’ve decided that I am. Yes, it’s a bit last minute, but I’d love to get more attention for this Newsletter and be able to eventually hire some of the talented people I know to write more content here and transform this into a go to site for pop culture conversations.

Nominations for the 2024 CRIT Awards have been open for a while and have out there to recognize TTRPG creators in a variety of categories:

Our mission is to celebrate and recognize the contributions and achievements of our community in a way that is inclusive, diverse, and represents the values of our community.

The category that this Newsletter would fall under would be the Best Blog or Article Written in the TTRPG Space. I’ve put a lot of work into this space, and have been pretty good about the Weekly Geeklies, so I’d appreciate a nod. Obviously, I don’t expect the Weekly Geekly entries to be the nominated articles, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d give me a nod.

If you enjoy what I’m doing here, please consider nominating Geekerati Newsletter for a CRIT Award.

Important dates:

• April 1 - May 31: Nominations open

• June 7 - July 7: Voting for finalists

Don’t limit your support to this Newsletter either, nominate your favorites in a variety of categories for a CRIT Award

Weekly Film Article Cavalcade

The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson

Luke’s on the toy beat this week and has a preview of a couple of Batmobiles coming down the pike in an article at SuperHeroHype. In this case, it’s the Tumbler Batmobile from the Nolan films and I’ve got to say they look nice.

Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat

Hey, AI Might be taking your job and destroying the entertainment industry, but that’s no reason to avoid making pro-AI propaganda right? Courtney Howard, who is a HUGE J-Lo fan, gives Atlas the big thumbs down in her review at AV Club. After reading her review, I can’t help but think that Michael Crichton’s relatively low budget film Runaway (at $8 million it had the same budget as Karate Kid) was a more accurate depiction of AI and it’s benefits/threats than the film Courtney describes.

It may not be time for a Butlerian Jihad yet, but maybe a rebellion against studios committed to advancing plagiarism tech over creativity might be in order.

Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings

Scott Mendelson

’s latest podcast discusses whether the recent $33 million opening for John Krasinski’s IF was a success or a flop. The film has received mixed reviews, even amongst the critics I highlight, but it is also being released at an interesting time in the industry. What is the state of the early summer film?

Ep 16: ‘If’ Doesn’t Whiff but the Amy Winehouse Biopic Fades ‘To Black'

Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse

I have to say that I’m really annoyed at the little squabble between Twitter (X) and Substack. In the before times in the not now, I could copy a link from Twitter (X) and it would nicely embed into the Substack post in a way that directed traffic and credit to the original poster. It allowed me to share both content and engagement. I may not have the biggest account, but I know that the primary driver of growth in any internet endeavor is engagement and cross promotion helps to build community and engagement.

Why do I mention this? Because Ed Greenwood has been sharing come great content over on his Twitter (X) account and I wanted to share some of it with you, but I had to engage in a weird workaround to come close to what was once possible.

Anyway…

Back to Ed Greenwood’s fantastic content. Ed Greenwood has long been one of my favorite setting designers for Dungeons & Dragons. He created the Forgotten Realms before Dungeons & Dragons even existed and began giving us glimpses of that world in Dragon Magazine. Eventually, he sold the rights to the setting to TSR and gave his notes to Jeff Grubb who expanded them and edited them into one of the best gaming campaigns ever written. The Forgotten Realms setting was THE major setting for late 1st edition and the default setting for 2nd edition AD&D. It’s a rich setting filled with cool stuff. Lorraine Williams made a lot of mistakes when she was in charge of TSR, but buying the rights to the Forgotten Realms was not one of them.

Ed is an active Twitter user and has a Patreon where he shares insights into his creation. In one recent clip, he gave a glimpse at the real secret to how and why Drow are such a powerful force in Faerun. The clip is extremely inspirational, but even more so it demonstrates what a great storyteller Ed is and after watching this clip, I've added "sitting in on a game with Ed Greenwood" to my bucket list. He has such a great way of describing things and I could listen to his voice for hours. When I imagine what the perfect DM sounds like, this is it.

Robert E. Howard scholar

Mark Finn

’s weekly update has a ton of great links and reminds us that we should all be reading his geek blog, which is different than his newsletter. Finn has done great work in spreading appreciation for Howard to future generations and while I am more forgiving of L Sprague de Camp’s Howardian efforts than he is, Finn is a part of why I am such a huge Howard fan.

Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 05/24/24

Matt Thompson

’s most recent

Critical Hit Parader

has a discussion of Bear McCreary’s rock concept album The Singularity. It sounds like an amazing album and I’ll have to pick it up. McCreary has been a very successful film and television composer for some time now. Many may think his career started with his work on Battlestar Galactica, but I remember him as the “go to” composer for poor and struggling film students. His compositions were affordable and he never phoned it in.

The Singularity from Bear McCreary & Cirith Ungol's Farewell

Retroist

takes a deep dive look into Indiana Jones games throughout the years. There have been a number of strong video game entries using the Indiana Jones IP and that includes the old Atari 2600 game. Where a lot of Atari games were content to be simple, the Indiana Jones game pushed the limits of that system in interesting ways. I can’t wait to listen to Retroist discuss the series.

Retroist Indiana Jones Video Games Podcast

I initially wanted to share the YouTube link to

Stan!

’s interview with Karen S. Conlin, but it looks like the video has been taken down for some reason. Needless to say, I’d ask that you take a minute to read Stan!’s post about the interview and to hunt down more information about Karen S. Conlin. She helped guide the creation of so many D&D settings and products and she’s an unsung editor. If you are a fan of any of the work that came out during the late 80s and throughout the 90s, you might have Conlin to thank for some of that joy.

Where to Watch Episode 17

There is now an official Conan YouTube channel and the first video is a discussion of who “The Real Conan the Barbarian” is. Believe it or not, this is a HUGE debate in fandom. We often argue over minutiae regarding who should portray Conan and how or whether a particular story actually captures the essence of Conan. This video gives a glimpse into the philosophy of the current IP holders, a company I am fond of, an provides a decent amount of information to get you started on the “Who is Conan” wars.

Role Playing Game Recommendation

In many ways, this is the toughest recommendation to come up with from week to week because there are a lot of games I want to recommend that are not only out of print, they are unavailable in any legal form. As much as I’d like to recommend DC Heroes, it’s not legally available in any format. It’s my absolute favorite role playing game, but no one is selling it in any legal form. That game is not alone and highlights a frustration I have. Given the ease of publishing digitally products that already exist, there is no excuse to not have a game available for sale in pdf if the license is available. Based on the series that DC did with Freddie Prinze Jr., it appears that they believe they own both the IP and the mechanics of DC Heroes (I’m sure Bill Willingham would have a comment about that based on his recent comments regarding Fables), but if they do then they could just be selling it.

So DC Heroes isn’t the role playing game recommendation this week. Instead, I’m going to recommend another “dead” game that is a ton of fun.

The game is Star Ace from Pacesetter Games and created by Gali Sanchez, Garry Spiegle, and Marc Acres. Towards the end of Gary Gygax’s run at TSR, the team of employees who became Pacesetter Games left the company and formed their own gaming venture and a very ambitious venture at that. Pacesetter released several boxed sets (Star Ace, Chill, and Timemaster) that all shared a core mechanical foundation that was percentage based and used an action table partially inspired by the action table being used by mid-80s TSR games like Marvel Super Heroes, Conan, Zebulon’s Guide for Star Frontiers, and 3rd Edition Gamma World.

This should come as no surprise as Marc Acres and crew worked on most of those products and the action table was the cutting edge of approachability for new gamers at the time. Given the make up of Pacesetter’s design team, the company is in many ways what TSR would have looked like if the Blume brothers hadn’t pushed out so much TSR talent before they were themselves pushed out by Lorraine Williams.

What makes Star Ace stand out as a game worthy of your attention is not just its ease of play and compelling heroic setting, but the fact that the game incorporates ship to ship space duels as a part of the role playing experience. The game is in many ways a mashup of Rogue Squadron and Rogue One. The combat and skill systems are simple to learn, but play extremely well and the use of color coding on successes makes adjudicating success levels a breeze.

I highly recommend checking it out. The only place you can currently buy the game is via Paizo’s online store. Philip Reed’s company owns the rights to the game and has been publishing it on Paizo for some time and based on recent Facebook exchanges it looks like Phil might be looking to rekindle the property. I can only hope that’s true. Like most Pacesetter Games it was sadly overlooked at the time it was released.

Music Recommendation

Since last week’s recommendations were all in the punk genre, I asked my wife what kind of music I should recommend for this week. Her response was, “what genre of music is that song at the end of Napoleon Dynamite?” I asked her if she meant The Promise and she said, “No, the other one just before that one when they are playing Tetherball.” I didn’t know the name of the song, so I had to look it up. It’s called “Music for a Found Harmonium” and it’s by the Irish Folk band Patrick Street (it’s Irish Folk).

Not only is it a great song, but in researching the song I found out an interesting fact. Patrick Street was founded by a fiddler named Kevin Burke. Chris “Doc” Wyatt, one of the producers of Napoleon Dynamite, is also a successful animation screenwriter having written for Ninjago, numerous Avengers cartoons, Spectacular Spider-Man, and Iron Man Armored Adventures. In fact, the work that he and his writing partner did on Iron Man Armored Adventures is what inspired one of my daughters to want to be a Mechanical Engineer. His writing partner’s name? Kevin Burke.

It’s not the same Kevin Burke. I know Doc’s writing partner, he went to film school with Jody. He’s a darn good guitarist, and performs on the song at the end of Jody’s thesis film Freshmyn, but he doesn’t play the fiddle. I asked Doc if he and Kevin knew that Patrick Street’s fiddler was named Kevin Burke and he responded “We Do!”

Small world and a beautiful tune.

Speaking of beautiful tunes, that are also folk music though in this case English folk music, I’ve always been a fan of Jon Boden’s “How Long Will I Love You” that featured in the film About Time. Okay, I haven’t “always” been a fan, but I’ve been a fan since I first heard the song and the folk version that is used in the film is far superior to my ears to the Ellie Goulding cover. She’s very talented, but there is something about the folk yearning of the film’s version that really pulls the heartstrings. About Time is, in my opinion, the best travel movie ever produced. It is funny, heartwarming, tragic, and filled with love. It is one of Richard Curtis’s best films, though he has many, and it always makes me cry with happiness and sorrow. There are few romantic comedies that touch on multiple kinds of love, but About Time does and it is wonderful

Since we are in the land of folksy sounds, I just can’t resist recommending the classic They Might Be Giants tune Istanbul. It’s tremendously catchy without becoming an annoying ear worm and it kind of bridges the gap between the folk songs above and the punk songs from last week.

Classic Film Recommendation

I know, I know, it’s the second week in a row that I’ve recommended a Western as the Classic Film Recommendation, but Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid holds a special place in my heart and the new Criterion Edition comes out soon which means I’ll be rewatching it with a bunch of extra content.

I don’t know if Pat Garret & Billy the Kid is the first Western film I ever watched, but it is the first one I remember seeing and it set the foundation for how I view the genre. Just as my first real exposure to Fantasy literature was the work of Michael Moorcock, the Elric Saga in particular, my first exposure to the Western genre was a revisionist look at the genre. The Billy the Kid presented in this film is not a hero. He’s a bad person. But he’s a bad person played by a charismatic lead who is fighting against even worse people. He’s fighting a range war that ended a while ago and he’s committing additional random acts of violence and chaos. He’s doing this while also fighting, symbolically, to preserve a kind of rugged individualism. He’s a bad person, doing bad things, in the pursuit of something higher. It’s a wonderful and complex presentation.

This presentation is in contrast to what many think of when they envision the Western. Even though the 1950s saw the production of a lot of morally complex Westerns, like the Anthony Mann and James Stewart films, the common view of the Western is often what I call the “Bonanza view” where heroes in White Hats defeat villains in Black Hats and all is right with the world. Cinephile fans of the genre know that this is reductive. The genre has been poking fun at that stereotype since at least 1939’s Destry Rides Again, a film that is essential viewing if you want to get all of the references in Blazing Saddles. In some ways, just as with the “chosen one” stereotype in Fantasy and SF, the “Bonanza view” is a unicorn. It isn’t actually real in film, even if it is in Bonanza, Wild Wild West, and other TV Westerns. Westerns are the tale of American expansion and that’s an ugly story.

Though the best Westerns have always known this, and expressed it, the particularly raw storytelling of Sam Peckinpah makes it even more apparent. His Westerns from Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch to Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Straw Dogs (yes that’s a Western) have a brutality to them. They have the dirt and grime of a Budd Boetticher Ranown film combined with the brutality of an Anthony Mann Western.

Peckinpah films can at times be hard to watch, especially Straw Dogs, but there is a power to them. There is also an almost nihilistic commentary about the cruelty of man towards man, even as there is hope that there are people capable of overcoming it. Of all of the films, Ride the High Country comes closest to having a happy ending and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid has the saddest ending. Just when you think equilibrium has been attained, a balance between cruelty and aspirations towards honor, the old range war raises its head again.

Give Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid a try. The imagery is beautiful, the leads ooze charisma and charm, and the music is hauntingly sad.