Author Archives: Evan

A Culture War Report: The 2013 StarCraft II WCS Finals

The 2013 StarCraft II World Championship Series Finals. How exactly does one sum up an eight hour event, one that largely consisted of staring at two South Koreans waging war against each other with virtual armies?

It was, in a word, great.

Yours truly opted to stand behind the VIP seats for the better part of the event. My legs were killing me.

A friend and I arrived at the Toronto Congress Centre a few minutes before 1:00 PM, and stepped into an immense room that was already largely full. There had to be at least 1,500 people there when we arrived, and hundreds more would wander in as things began. Everyone was concentrated either on the stage, if they had good seats, or five four-foot-wide screens on the left and right, or the huge screen you saw upon entering the venue, in front of which were seats for VIP members only. Continue reading

What I Did With “Do What U Want”

As someone with an unabashed love for pop music there was only one thing to do when I found out that Lady Gaga had collaborated with R. Kelly on the infectious earworm that is “Do What U Want”: listen to it as much as humanly possible. Apologies to the more sensitive for the image featured in the video.

It wasn’t long after posting it to Facebook that my CWR co-writer commented with a clearly sarcasm-laced “Great.” to which I reiterated to her what I just said above about my unabashed love for pop music. Then, of course, she made a comment about the lyrics being worthy of kitten-filled high school inspiration posters and I was forced to look them up. Continue reading

Shame Day: Bob Kane

Let’s start things off with a question. Who here likes Batman? Oh, yes, Commissioner Gordon?

Thank you for that very thorough answer, James. But you know what else is important, and begs asking when we all like something? Where that something comes from. Y’know, who made it, that sort of thing. So, who made Batman?

Go ahead and pick up that Batman graphic novel lying next to you, don’t pretend you can’t see it. Tell me what it says inside there, somewhere between the front cover and the beginning of the actual comic. You can read it aloud, that’s fine.

“Batman created by Bob Kane” Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S3E5 “And the Cronuts”: A TV Review

cronuts

I’m not going to bore you all with the same  old “this show has lost its premise” talk again; we’re past that, it is now the topic that shall not be named. What I do want to focus on, however, is how much this show appears to struggle with conflict. There’s a simple formula in sitcoms [and every other form of media] that goes as follows: (a) a problem arises, (b) that problem is solved. I cannot boil it down any simpler than that. I obviously don’t speak for everyone, but for most viewers what’s really important is what happens between those two points.

Let’s take this episode and view it through the formula above:

(a) The words “Cupcakes are so over” spell out doom for the girls’ business, and they must find a way to make their product appealing once again.

(b) Max’s tendency to dip french fries in frosting leads to “Cake Fries” which are a huge hit both flavourfully and monetarily.

That on its own is really not a problem. I’m always going to be down for an episode of television that revolves around chimeric foodstuffs [though adding too many parts lead to disaster], but as mentioned it’s not so much the end result as it is the journey that takes us there. Continue reading

People Really Like Adéwalé [Surprising Me In Particular]

connoravelineI am all about Assassin’s Creed, you guys and girls. A series of games that mixes painstaking attention to historic detail and stabbing people with hidden blades? Yes, please; sign me up. Add the fact that their last game,
Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, featured
African-French Assassin Aveline de Grandpré scores them major points.

Having her team up with the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed III, the English/Mohawk Ratohnhaké:ton [Conor Kenway]? Icing on the cake.

The last time I wrote about this franchise I covered the racist backlash that Aveline’s character received, and how fans seemingly couldn’t accept the fact that she was a) a woman, and b) Black. I was of course thrilled because, hey, gender and racial diversity in extremely well-made games.

I ask readers of this blog to do this all too often, but imagine my excitement when I found out that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag would be about pirates. I was beyond thrilled. Pirates are the coolest and you [and a good number of the later Pirates of the Caribbean films] will never be able to convince me otherwise. Continue reading

Evan and Gordon Talk: TCKs and Other Cultural Stuff

GORDON: Well people, we did, at long last and after many a tearful plea, get suggestions for this week’s topic.

It was all of a whoppin’ two, but hey- progress is progress.

EVAN: That being said, today we are going to turn our sights on a topic presented by Hannah, one that all three of us in particular can relate to:

I’d like to hear your take on what it’s like to be a TCK, whether it’s possible to really be a “global citizen”, and how you make judgements (if you can) across cultures.

For those of you who didn’t know, “TCK” stands for “third culture kid,” a little something we know about seeing as a) we were from one culture before b) being implanted into another culture and c) not finding ourselves fitting fully into either created a third.

That’s sort of the dictionary definition of things, anyway.

Continue reading