Edward's July 2014 Mix

 

This has been a July for the record books as one of the coolest July months in recorded history. A slight tinge threads through the air portending the upcoming autumn. And if that wasn’t enough, our local Hell Mart has stocked shelves full of school supplies. It’s fair time for our fair city, but backed by this unseasonable coolness, our small town’s   denizens are more intent on ushering in the fall season. That’s fine by me. Bring on the cool weather, my perfect excuse to stay inside and lose myself to my media whoredom.

 

1.      House of Cards Season One on Netflix: The roller coaster ride is starting to take off. Francis Underwood, the congressman so effectively played by Kevin Spacey is really getting to be a character I’m fond of, despite his wiley and unctious ways. His nuggets of wisdom so elegantly dropped in his southern educated drawl is the main attraction. I’ve not been fascinated by a character as much since Doc Holliday in the movie, Tombstone. Spacey’s ability to think ever so quickly on his feet, standing in rapid contemplation, and then being taken by a thought, like a wide receiver catching a touchdown pass, he takes the thought and runs with it. Sometimes it ends in disaster. But this is a man whose confidence always threatens to outpace him. And just when you think he’s a real scoundrel, he goes to his old college campus where they unveil a library named after him. He stands stoic at the podium and throws out his speech. He glances at his old group of classmates, and then back at the library and says, “Nothing lasts forever, this is all transitory. . . I wish I had the word . . . harmony, that’s the word that keeps coming back to me. An individual voice joined by others for one brief moment. A moment that lasts the length of a breath.”

 

2. F1 2013 on PC: I’m somewhat taking a break from Grid 2 to get back to what is the finest F1 simulation produced by Codemasters to date. I’ve just graduated Young Driver’s School, and got the achievement for it. Now I’m tackling some of the driver scenario challenges before I delve into the whole Grand Prix career enchalada. It’s a perfect match for my Logitech G27 wheel/paddle set. The devil is in the details in this one. The HD lighting, the rays of God streaming through the billboards and grandstands, the dust particles kicked up by the car in front of you, this game is easily the most gorgeous car racing simulation I’ve ever played.  

3. Double Star by Robert Heinlein: Lorenzo Smythe, a down on his luck actor is tricked into what he thinks could be the acting gig of his life. Instead he’s whisked off to Mars to double as an important politician who’s been kidnapped. The only problem is, Smythe abhors Martians. He has terrible bodily reactions when he’s around them, and now he must mingle with the masses of them! This is good vintage Heinlein. This was actually written three or four years before Starship Troopers, which in my opinion was when Heinlein was in his prime.  

4. Tik Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum on Kindle: Who would have thought a man who used racist terms and wrote editorials encouraging genecide of Native Americans could be such a beloved hero to our nation’s children? Ah, but he was! In this, his 8^th Oz book we meet a  minor princess in a minor province in the far reaches of Oz who decides to gather an army and march on the Emerald City. This book bears the same sort of repetition it shares with his other Oz stories. But it doesn’t grate nor does it bore the reader. In his usual manner, Baum keeps the violence on the down low, despite that terrible things happen to his characters.  

5. Magic: The Gathering collectible card game: I originally quit the game because of  Wizard of the Coast’s manner of constantly coming out with new decks of cards making all prior decks obsolete. It made me wonder if their employees wore t-shirts that said, “Cash Cow” on it. (Or if I should be wearing a t-shirt that said, “Sucker” on it while playing the game.) Oddly, this game is pretty much what’s consumed me in the month of July. The blessed reunion started with a new game store that opened in town. I entered a sealed booster deck tournament and ended up going undefeated, winning the tournament. And now I’m creating new decks, comprised of  expensive foil cards. Not only is this game consuming me, it’s consuming me in style.