Category: Miscellaneous

Hexenmeister you say?

  • July 24, 2017

In response to B’s comment on this post, I decided it was about time to kick the gamebook collection into the next stage. What’s next when you own all the books in English? You start buying foreign versions!

From the left, those are two French and one German copies of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. The middle (French) one is a reissue from 2003; both others are original imprints.

Le Sorcier de la Montagne de Feu is an interesting version. The paper is thin and glossy, reminding me of a bible, but aside from the translated text the book seems more or less the same.

However when you turn the book over and flip it around it contains a few dozen dense pages of puzzles! From what I can tell they are fantasy themed versions of classic logic and word puzzles and solutions are even included at the end. My copy seems to be a special edition for younger readers (is the text different?); there was also a normal (sans puzzle) version released in France as well.

Der Hexenmeister vom Flammenden Berg is a beautiful book. Trade sized, with rigid card covers and the almost Tolkien-inspired cover my copy is in astonishingly pristine condition considering its 35 years old!

Interestingly the text seems to omit about half of the art! I can only speculate why, but perhaps it was due to it being a children’s book and some images were considered a bit too grisly? Compare entry 275 with the French edition above:

The book seems lacking with so much art missing. I can only hope they reinstated it for later versions!

I also purchased these three:

Two French and one Spanish. The left two are reissues, the right an original. All are in fantastic condition (as new actually). Because of my Japanese copy of Demons I had to get a French one; the other two were bought because they were exotic 🙂

Needless to say finding foreign versions isn’t easy (I bought these online) but I find them very interesting and may try and get a few more languages. (I also got a French Lone Wolf.)

That’s an photo of my FF collection right now. In a week or so it will expand even more due to the brand new books that just came out! 

And yes, they’re still good reads. Every time I do a post like this it always takes much longer than expected since I get sidetracked reading through the books. Maybe I should review a few here on the blog?

The Last Nightmare

  • July 7, 2017

I had a dream last night in which I watched the entirety of The Last Jedi (the upcoming Star Wars film) and it was terrible! KLS suggested I blog this since it’s so vivid in my mind, so here we go.

I was watching the film in a church with a large crowd. A gigantic screen had been hung over the altar and we were filling the pews and everyone was excited. It seemed to be launch day so no one had any knowledge of the film in advance. The church may have been my childhood church, St Marys of Charlestown.

The film opened in some sort of meeting between a few SW characters (Poe Dameron, Han Solo, Lando) and a bunch of DC superheroes. They were in some giant computer room talking to the computer. I forget details here, but I do remember Clark Kent (holding an umbrella like the 7th doctor) was the prominent character.

The film then cut to a lengthy sequence (easily over an hour) where a group of heroes went on a mission to a rocky desert planet to find a software upgrade for C-3PO so he could wield a lightsaber. This was in fact the main plot of the film: 3PO was for some reason the chosen combatant to fight the ‘bad guy’ but had to be prepared. The First Order was in the film, but the specific villians such as Snoke or Kylo Ren weren’t. Instead those roles were filled by DC heroes (not villians) including Silver Surfer and Aquaman.

During this desert sequence the film progressively became more stylized until it ultimately became a full-blown cel animated movie in the stule of 1980s Hanna Barbara cartoons. The group of heroes by now included Kent, Solo, Lando, some girl (not Rey), Garazeb (from Rebels, who was tiny and looked like Yoda) and a few others I forget. They were fighting off crab monsters and giant worms to get to some shrine in which they found the upgrade for 3PO as well as armour that they bolted on to him which made him strongly resemble the robot Maximillian from Black Hole.

It was bad. Really bad. I was grief stricken at how awful it was and at this point I exited the church to look up comments online. Almost everyone had the same reaction I did (horror) but a few praised the frequent Coen Brothers references (none of which I caught) or the fact the director had projected the animated portion onto a mirror then filmed the mirror to make it more ‘dreamlike’. Meanwhile I was disappointed like I had never been, but returned and kept watching.

I recall the film used licensed music (including Tainted Love by Soft Cell and some classical piece I can’t recall) and the characters broke the 4th wall more than once. CGI battle scenes were heavily obscured by fog (to minimize the workload?) and the sets became increasingly minimal as the film progressed. It also eventually returned to live action as well, with elements introduced during the animated sequence being retained. For instance while they (Clark actually) piloted the Millennium Falcon to the desert planet, they left it there and instead departed in a ship that was nothing more than a giant hollow metal cube with a tiny control pedestal rising from the middle of the floor. There were no windows or exterior or interior detail at all. When the film returned to live action, this ship still existed as a set.

Anyway the finale was in a city that resembled the Gold Coast with the exception of the buildings being closer to the ocean. The actual final battle was C-3PO vs Aquaman with 3PO using a lightsaber. Aquaman was 80s-era in his classic outfit, and he fought by throwing big balls of water at the heavily armored 3PO.

While this was the end of the film, it didn’t in any way seem like the end of the story. There was some subplot involving Luke (who was briefly in it) and Poe Dameron and involved flashbacks of Poe flying in the attack against the first Death Star and apparently being some very old friend of Luke. There was also another subplot involving a planet that had stopped spinning because of the Silver Surfer but that’s all muddy in my memory.

Anyway it was a real nightmare dream. When I awoke I was momentarily confused and upset before realizing it had just been a dream at which point the relief was real 🙂

Let’s all come back and re-read this in six months and see just how close to guessing the actual plot of the film I ended up being?

Cracker Night 2017

  • July 5, 2017

Yesterday was July 4, which meant fireworks! Of course we’d already had a pretty good ‘show’ last Sunday, not to mention letting the odd ‘cracker’ off here and there over the last few weeks. In short: a fortnight of fireworks!

We drove to NH a couple of weeks ago to buy some since they are cheaper there and you can get ‘launchers’ which aren’t legal in NY state, and between than trip and the ones we had bought locally we had a couple of hundred dollars worth to set off. This was 60+ fireworks, most that look like this pre-firing:

Some are slightly exotic, like those that ‘light up’ via cellophane ‘windows’ at the front:

Or the hand ones, very creatively named:

We even got – for the first time – some ‘smoke’ fireworks. We learned that in Vermont these are all that is legal!

As I said we had a great time setting these off the past few days. Lots of sparks and pretty colours and loud noises! Cracker night is every bit as good as it ever was!

As I have the past few years I’ve made a video of some highlights. I hope you enjoy it 🙂