1. John Carter (directed by Andrew Stanton)

Everyone shat on this movie when it came out.  I went to the theater and saw it and had a great time.  I bought the bluray and watched it two more times and still like it.  It’s based off a selection of pulp novels from the early 1900s.  The reason everyone hated the film was because it felt like everything in it had been done.  Because it had.  Because everyone had been stealing from these books for the greater part of a century (Star Trek, Buck Rodgers, Star Wars (especially Star Wars.)

The director had worked with Pixar and got free reign on this film.  That ended up for the best.  The public reaction means it will probably never happen at Disney again.  Which gives you a tiny bit more reason for worry the Star Wars sequels if you still care about those.

There’s a lot I like about this movie that I would feel like spoiling if I told you.  I also don’t want to speak in generics.  But I almost look forward to watching this film with my kids in the future as much as I made my parents see Top Gun.

2. Boy Sets Fire – The Misery Index

Here’s the second track of the album.  Please listen to it while you read the next 2 paragraphs that are pointless because you either like the music or not and really my words probably wont’ change that.  Continuing the path of stuff I like and no one else does, here’s a political (?pop?) hardcore album by a band that just recently reformed.  This is their “last” album.  They have a new one that isn’t bad either.  I’m not sure there’s anything here that is particularly original or that I just caught this album at the right time of my life (and for the past 5 years that time hasn’t stopped.)

I think the album has lots of great touches.  That the final song changes into a song from their hit album is a great final note for the band.  They are a political band that have said in interviews they aren’t going to instigate any real change they are a BAND.  If you like boysetsfire and want more don’t get “Tomorrow Comes Today” which every (remaining) record store in America has 10 copies of.  There’s a reason they have 10 copies.  You might well find some way to sample TCT because it is the same 3 songs 4 times in a row.

3. Ridiculous Fishing (iOS)

This was a darling on twitter a couple of months ago.  I went ahead and downloaded it and let it sit for a long time.  When I finally did play it, it made the hour and a half in the hospital waiting room fly by.  After you cast your line you use the gyro sensor in the device to navigate the bait.  As soon as the bait touches something it zooms back towards the surface.  Suddenly you aren’t trying to avoid everything, you’re trying to collect everything.  Then everything flies out of the water and you shoot it with your machine gun to get money to do it again with better equipment.  As phone games go, it is pretty much perfect.

4. Jordan, Jesse, Go! (podcast)

How you found our incredibly niche podcast and haven’t listened to JJGO is beyond me, but you should probably listen to these guys too (please stay with us (we’ll record and release soon we promise)).  It’s 90% dick jokes and that is exactly the kind of humor that I love.  Their level of banter is my eventual goal with Chris.  This fairly early episode is one of the first one where the format is locked and is an excellent example of just Jordan Morris and Jesse Thorn.  Usually they have a fantasticly funny guest.  There is also an infamous episode where the Penny Arcade guys came on and the chemistry was awful.  P-A guys describe it as Gabe and Tycho being furious the whole time.  JJGo describe it as them being in a terrible mood the whole time.  The actual episode (which you can find with searching) is not good radio.

5. Magic the Gathering 2014 (PC, 360, PS3)

I’m not sure how good this thing is to someone that hasn’t played Magic.  I played lots and lots of Magic 10 years ago.  I still have decks that I pull out when I see friends I played with.  I don’t see those friends very often.  I downloaded the demo for this to try out as a potential thing to play online with those friends. I ended up playing that demo for 2 hours.

Again I don’t know if this is good for people that haven’t played Magic.  It looks like it would teach you how to play.  The problem with trying to play Magic with people as an adult is I would probably have to go to a card shop.  The guys that would hang out at a card shop in 2013 probably spend a couple hours a day reading Magic forums and know exactly what kind of deck to use at all times.  Also the rules have slightly changed in ways I don’t like, and I have a feeling there would be a lot of contention when I brought that up.  In this 10 dollar game everyone is going to be equal.  Again I played the demo for 2 hours.  It’s not that the demo took that long (probably 30 minutes). I just played the same matches over and over again.  It’s got lore and story or whatever, but just give me a new deck to crush.  Also I hope to god in the full version I can up the AI because the worst part about the demo was how often the AI had me and then didn’t do anything.