All posts by Eric

Eric lives in Southern California along with the highest concentration of hate groups in North America. He used to be involved in steampunk, ren faires, and medieval reenactment until he figured out that these are what the people in the hate groups do to relax. Now he divides his free time between his homemade tabletop RPG and the IWW.

Movies

Vintage Tomorrows (2015)

October 3, 2016 Eric Leave a comment

Director: Byrd McDonald

Recommended? Yes.

Vintage Tomorrows, currently streaming on Netflix, is a feature-length documentary about the steampunk movement. It is based on the book of the same name. It is a very personal film for me. I was a steampunk event organizer, DJ, blogger, and maker from 2007 until about 2013. I was such a fanatic that the large bureaucracy I worked for wrote a memorandum about hats in the workplace just to get the bowlers off my head. I know many of the people interviewed in this film personally. Full disclosure, one of the interviewees is Margaret Killjoy of this website. The film has clearly been in post-production a long time: none of these interviews or events took place any later than 2012, so this film is unintentionally a retrospective of steampunk at its peak.
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Under the Dome, Seasons 1-3

September 11, 2015 Eric Leave a comment

Under the Dome

Seasons 1-3

CBS, 2013-2015

Created by: Brian K. Vaughan and Stephen King

Based on: Under the Dome by Stephen King

Recommended? Not even remotely.

It was such an intriguing premise. A small town, and its surrounding farmland, is suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable dome. My mind reeled with possibilities and questions. Can they learn to live sustainably? Will they do away with conventional government and currency systems? Will they form collectives? Will they organize by consensus? I have a crapload of laundry to do — will I at least have an entertaining binge watch while sorting and folding? The answer to all these questions was a painful no.

Should you wish to share my pain, or judge for yourself, Under the Dome is a CBS series readily available on CBS.com, Amazon Prime, and DVD. Be warned though, this show is just good enough in its early episodes to make you keep watching for a long, life-sucking ride.
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The Man in The High Castle: A First Look at Comic-Con International 2015

July 22, 2015 Eric Leave a comment

Surviving San Diego’s Comic-Con is kind of like whitewater rafting. To navigate the tumult of over a hundred thousand nerds being desperately marketed to you half steer, half go with the flow.The cool thing is that the rapids sometimes carry you to some little island of pop culture you weren’t planning on seeing but turns out to be pretty awesome. That’s how I ended up at the panel for “The Man in The High Castle.” Continue reading The Man in The High Castle: A First Look at Comic-Con International 2015 →

Robin of Sherwood

June 5, 2015 Eric 2 Comments

1984 – 1986

Program creator and writer: Richard Carpenter

Recommended? Definitely 

Bechdel Test? Probably not.

England is a paradox. It’s repressive, class bound, notoriously racist, and practically synonymous with colonialism. It’s also a hot bed of left wing intellectualism, the adopted home of Kropotkin, and the country that made punk global. Its not surprising then, that at the height of Thatcherism, with The National Front killing South Asians on the street, one of the hottest shows of television was about an unrelenting anarchist militia fighting colonial power in the name of an indigenous nature spirit.
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