Midweek Geekiness: Bits & Bobs

Play Off Hilarity

Spring makes everyone turn to warm weather and NHL play offs.  I spend my time between CBC’s  Hockey Night In Canada and NBC’s hockey coverage.  Call me a traditionalist, but I prefer HNIC while merely tolerating Don Cherry’s rants.  NBC’s coverage is best likened to sitcom with the buffoonish neighbour (Mike Milbury), the equally buffoonish ex-jock (Jeremy Roenick), and the dweeb (Pierre Maguire).  I know people who HATE Pierre Maguire from his TSN days.  Maguire is annoying, but I fail understand the rabid hatred.

Then again rabid hatred rule the ice last weekend.  (Sidney Crosby I am looking at you!)  To pass the time between fights and concussion-causing hits, the people over at Russian Machine Never Breaks made up a bingo card based on the clichés tossed around during NBC’s hockey coverage.  The blog, a website really, has not affiliation with the Washington Capitals yet it definitely has that Caps slant to their writing. (Check out their Pittsburgh Penguins-themed hockey shirts.)  As for that ‘Russian Machine’ not ‘breaking’ well Ovechkin didn’t have a great year therefore that Russian machine broke down. *Cue Groans*

Say It Ain’t So George

Anytime people talk about George R.R. Martin they express their fear he will ‘pull a Jordan’.  No not an air Jordan dunk more like a Robert Jordan death in the middle of a sprawling series.  Song of Ice and Fire originally started as a trilogy, then multiplied into a seven book saga, and now comes word he may have to stretch it to eight books:

Do you still think you’ll be able to wrap everything up in the remaining two books?

I certainly hope so! That’s my plan, that’s my intent, that’s what I’m going to try to do. But at this point I know better than to promise anything and write it out in blood.

I think some fans are hoping we’ll end up with eight books.

Well, it’s grown in the past—I’m not going to say those fans are wrong. When I started out, it was a trilogy. Back in 1994 when I sold this, it was going to be A Game of Thrones, A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter—three books. But that scheme went out the window before I’d even finished the first book. I think it was Tolkien who said when he was writing The Lord of the Rings, “The tale grew in the telling.”

While Tolkien said his tale grew with its telling, at least he finished it.  I really like these books and fear getting series fatigue.  If you don’t know what ‘series fatigue’ means, the experience resonates with people.  A reader starts off a series devouring the early books, even re-reading before the new book comes out, and then either grows bored or frustrated enough to stop reading the series.   At some point a writer needs to wind up the saga and let people deal with how it ends.  Even if George R.R. Martin writes the final book, some readers will find some fault with its closure.  Me?  I expect to get my fair share of shocks in the final book of Song of Ice and Fire.  Westeros is not a fair world as witness by Ned Stark’s death.  I believe such moments set this book a part from quite a bit of fantasy before it, many trying to imitate Tolkien.  Martin did what good writers do in a genre; He knew the rules of high fantasy enough to begin breaking them a part to tell a story.  Now can he stick to one itty-bitty rule-wrap up the series.

If Kenny from South Park Were an Actor…

If Kenny from South Park were an actor, he would be Sean Bean.  For people not into South Park, and I watched enough to get familiar with it,  Kenny is the mumbling character in the red jacket, getting killed every episode, with his friends saying ‘They killed Kenny!’  What’s up with the Sean Bean comparison?  Anyone who watches Sean Bean notices two things:

1. He’s an underrated actor with a varied acting resume.
2. He often dies in movies…a lot.

There’s also a campaign, tongue firmly in cheek, to stop Sean Bean from dying in films:

Somebody with editing savvy and  time on their hands made a Sean Bean Death Reel.  It was made soon after (spoiler) Bean’s spectacular exit as Ned Stark in Game of Thrones.  As someone following Sean Bean since he caught my eye in Partriot Games, I noticed the deaths more than the number of times he played villains.  In fact he has the honour of dying in not one, but two fantasy series with his other death coming as Boromir in Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Ring.  (A death I still get teary over ten years after I saw it.)  After watching the reel, and trust me it’s not for the faint of heart, I went to Winnipeg Public Library to grab as many Sharpe videos as possible. (Click here for titles before hunting at your local library.) As Richard Sharpe he’s heroic, dashing, and  best of all doesn’t die.  I found this interview from a site called Digital Spy asking Bean himself how he feels about it, which also includes the reel itself.