First things first, I have no point of reference for this movie going in. I haven’t read the manga nor watched the anime.  I went in blank slate other than a couple of trailers and I enjoyed it a lot. 

     I didn’t expect the layered emotional stories of self-assurance and genuine confidence, and filial belonging, while weighing those concepts against the the more self-destructive ambition and the less positive form of grief one can feel having lost someone.  The action sequences and fighting was great but used primarily to progress the story.  This film is at its core a drama wherein a family builds itself from disparate beings working through various traumas and manages to move forward together.  Of course, a story reminding of everything I’ll never have in my own life.  Despite that I like how they handled that story balancing it well with the sci/fi, humor, and action.

      Performance capture is progressing at an extraordinary pace.  There are moments in this film when you see in the character of Alita glimpses of true joy and profound anguish.  Rosa Salazar does a spectacular job of portraying a youthful vulnerability and an unrelenting will to live.  Not just survive but to be happy.  And to genuinely fight for what is right and win.  I like this one a lot.

     I recommend you see this movie.  It’s set for release in theaters February 14 but showtimes are available today, the thirteenth.  Enjoy the show. 

     A couple days ago we reached a goal of mine with the podcast.  We got over a hundred downloads in a single day!  Thanks to you guys we’ve been downloaded more each month than the month previous and last month we almost hit 1,000.  So far in February we’re on track to beat all of that.  And if you have any friends or family in Arizona or Nevada, get them to listen to our show.  That’ll get us althoughout the pacific southwest.  Once we get downloads in all fifty states we’ll do something special.  I don’t know what.  Let’s burn that bridge when we get to it.

     We played the new set for Magic the Gathering.  Allegiance is the second set of the third block taking place in the plane of Ravnica.  I had some friends come over for a small booster draft to explore the new creatures, characters, and keywords introduced in this set.

      The first Ravnica block is to this day one of my most favorite eras of Magic the Gathering.  I enjoyed the new concept of guilds.  The pairing of colors and new keyword mechanics specific to each guild served well in gameplay but also filled out the storytelling just within the collecting of cards.  I was in a lull at the time the second Ravnica block was on shelves so, I missed out on that at the time and haven’t had a chance to explore those sets. 

     Now, my friend Devon and I briefly reviewed Guilds of Ravnica on our twitch channel.  And we enjoyed it much.   I found that the new keyword mechanic I used. OST in our game was ‘Spectacle’ which is the new Rakdos mechanic.  It was useful and worked well in my deck.  Although, I think my favorite mechanic in this set is the Gruul keyword, ‘Riot’.  When you caste a creature spell with ‘Riot’ you can give either a +1/+1 or haste.  In seventeen years of playing Magic I can’t think of nor imagine any instance where you can’t find a use for one of those options.  Beside that, I pulled Domri, Chaos Bringer and I’m super excited to build a deck for that one card.

     So far Allegiance is shaping up to my favorite Ravnica set.  It’ll take a little more for it to be my favorite set utterly but I’m not ruling it out.

     So, I’ve been lounging about all day instead of getting things done, per usual.  I was too lazy to turn the channel so I’ve been watching Forever Verse and other Geek & Sundry shows all day.  It’s been fun but I was meaning to catch up on Grace and Frankie.  I’ll do that later.  I did watch season two of The Punisher.  It was absolutely worth the wait!  I haven’t read any announcements yet about The Punisher being cancelled so I imagine that news will drop this Friday or Saturday.  And I can’t recall where Jessica Jones is in regard to the cancellation of that show, I don’t think it was cancelled yet but I don’t remember. 

     I did create a new character using the Marvel Super Heroes system that I love so much.  That was a good way to avoid getting things done.  And that character will be one of a handful that will be available on the Patreon page...as soon as I figure out how best to do that.  My favorite part of these games is creating characters so, if you need a character for a game, contribute at least $1 to the Patreon page and tell me what game you want the character for and I‘ll put it together for you.  I’m most familiar with the games we’ve played on the show but I books(.pdfs) for many other games.

Fantasy Football Update Week Sixteen(Semifinal) 

     The weeks have been hard for The Dragons.  Their morale waning with each conflict.  Seeming to have lost the will to continue many of the Dragons trudge forward more and more slowly.  Few have any hope the Dragons shall taste victory again before year’s end.

     As the battle begins our enemies move swiftly.  Denying all but one direction for our forces to march.  The Dragons carry on ever forward to no avail.  The enemy outpaced our warriors all throughout.  Unrelenting the Dragons fought with boundless courage nonetheless, there was no returning to a positive standing in this battle.  The Dragons wiould fail one last time.

     12 Reasons Why slayed The Level 20 Red Dragons 217.5-141.77.

     Well, this took me forever to write.  Having to do laundry and eat peanut butter sandwiches, I got distracted.  Also, I have to figure out exactly what I’m going to do about this week’s episode.  A group of us played with the new set for Magic the Gathering, Ravnica Allegiance, but some things did not work out quite according to plan.  There were a few problems with the video recording but the audio is great.  So I may just trim down the audio for the podcast.  In any case, it’s pretty late right now and I’m thinking I need to get up early to run errands before work.  If I don’t manage to get the episode out by the afternoon I’ll write a review tomorrow and then get the episode up on Friday.  Later.

     FanX had its press conference today.  They broadcast it on Facebook live instead of hosting it at the State Capital like they usually do.  Previously they announced that Val Kilmer is coming back, Mike Colter from Marvel/Netflix’s Luke Cage, and Irene Bedard who may be best known as the voice of Disney’s Pocahontas, to name a few.  And a couple new names I’m excited to see on FanX banners, Warwick Davis of multiple Star Wars films and others.  And my new crush, Aimee Garcia, the funny and cute medical examiner from Lucifer.

      I’ve been getting into Pokémon Go again over the last couple weeks.  Should I periscope whilst on safari?  There are a couple poke stops nearish to my apartment I could swing by relatively quick.  And there’s a gym I took yesterday and some of us are holding for the Red team.  It’s been fun!  On one of my accounts I have a snowy Vulpix.

     We played the new set for Magic the Gathering Sunday night.  It was a good game.  We had a lot of fun and reviewed Ravnica Allegiance.  We wound up not streaming it to periscope like I had planned.  If anyone knows how to use Switcher Studio and periscope feel free to explain to me how I fucked it up, that’d be helpful.  We saw some sweet cards from just a handful of packs and I managed to pull off a pretty sweet play late game.  I do have some video so I may be able to put out some extra content this week.  I’m working on all that right now.  More to come.