You got to know how to make an entrance

House of the Dragon - Tourney Jousting

The first few episodes have been ok.

The jousting in the first episode was particularly well done. They spent a lot in the pilot which is not reflected in later episodes. But it is easier to follow than the original GOT. So, there's that.

I will keep watching for now. 

House of the Dragon is here

I didn't have much hope in the new prequel of the "Game of Thrones" franchise. I was pleasantly surprised. 

Now they had to bow somewhat to political correctness as they had a black dude on the privy council and there was a lot of female empowerments rah rah stuff, but it wasn't too bad.

You see they kind of stayed true to the author of the work George Rape Rape Martin who revels in violence and gore especially directed at woman.

 

The tourney scenes where they jousted and fought at melee were the most realistic that I have ever seen. 

But the real scene stealer believe it or not is a birth scene. Not quite "Call the Midwife."

The Queen has not produced a male heir after several still-borns and miscarriages and crib deaths. So, there is a geriatric pregnancy in the hope of producing a male. The birth scene is horrendous. It rivals the scene where they burned an eleven-year-old girl at the stake while she called for her mother. It is heart wrenching. But probably true to the facts of medieval medicine when the heir to the throne is concerned. You have to see it to believe it.

On balance I think it is worth watching. For now.

The worst scene ever in the history of television

I think about this scene all the time. To me it is the essence of government. It is what government does. It is a small step from mask mandates and vaccination passports to the burning of daughters for "the greater good."

I can see Biden and Schumer and AOC and Liz Chaney and Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy doing this. Australia is a canary in the coal mine. Our liberty is at risk. Our Constitution is on the fire just as this poor little girl is in this harrowing horror scene. And we turn and walk away like the soldiers in this scene. We avert our eyes. 

It gnaws at me.

Game of Thrones....the Ending is coming!

So Game of Thrones is finally ending. It went on for about ten years. It is the most popular television series that was ever put on TV. Maybe not in ratings. But in cultural impact I think it is right up there with the best of them.

The wife and I saw the first season. Then we got caught up in life and didn't catch any more. We kept saying we were going to start watching but there was always something else going on. But we decided to watch it for this the ending.

Now I had read all of the books so I know all the characters. I also sort of kept up by watching excepts on Youtube of the best bits of each of the intervening year. You can sort of jump right in and get the gist of it. The CGI was great. Dragons. Zombies. Lots of cool stuff. The last season is only six episodes long. So you might want to check it out.

A Throne of Bones

I have just finished reading "A Throne of Bones" by Vox Day. For those of you who enjoyed "A Game of Thrones" I will really recommend that you get this book and start reading this series. It is extremely well done.

Vox Day uses the same format that Rape Rape used in Thrones. He starts each chapter off from a different perspective. However there are several different aspects to his work. He uses some of the conventions from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" in that there are elves and dwarves and orcs and goblins. As well as a stand in for the Roman Empire and the politics of the change over from Republic to Empire,

I zipped through it in two days and am on to book 2. It is a series and I am sure I will be waiting around for the next few books to be published.

I think this is in fact superior to Game of Thrones and I recommend it to all fantasy fans in the highest way possible. Get it if you can. You will be glad you did.

From Page to Screen Part One

It is always very interesting when one of your favorite books makes it onto the screen be it TV or movies. You always wonder if it will be portrayed the way you imagine it. Before the extensive use of CGI and computer effects it was never even attempted. Large scale epics were just way too costly. Only big budget movies could even attempt it.

But it is all different now. The Lord of the Rings being the most prominent example along with Jurassic Park. Computer generated CGI lets you have armies of orcs and elves and dwarves. Even a pissant little series like “Once Upon a Time” can really generate great special effects at a much reduced cost. So books that you never thought could be on the screen are suddenly viable. What is interesting is the ones that they choose and the ones that are successful.

The one that most people point to is George Rape Rape Martins “Game of Thrones.” It has become one of the most popular and talked about fantasy series of all time. Most of it is pretty true to the books. The problem for them is the Martin is famously lazy and can’t seem to produce more books for the series to produce for TV. They caught up to him pretty quickly.

"Game Of Thrones Is So Popular It Has An Effect On Porn Consumption"

Game of Thrones, not just one of the most popular shows on television, but one of the most popular shows in history, has on Sunday once again confirmed its impact on the world! Incidentally, on porn industry… as it happened, the online porn consumption has decreased by 4% on Sunday. And if you think that 4% is not significant, think again!

PornHub, one of the 60 most visited porn sites in the US, has released a statistic showing that 4% in terms of numbers is actually millions and millions of visitor a day! How about that for a 4% decrease?!  (via Reddit)

"Bill Simmons and HBO are making a Game of Thrones recap show"

"The first show to emerge from Bill Simmons' partnership with HBO is After the Thrones, a weekly Game of Thrones recap show that's going to premiere on HBO Now alongsideThrones' sixth season later this month. It's not clear when After the Thrones will air on HBO proper — a HBO press release claims air dates will be announced "as they are confirmed" — but it'll debut on HBO Now and HBO Go on Monday, April 25th, one day after Game of Thrones returns on April 24th. Chris Ryan (executive editor of The Ringer, Simmons' forthcoming website) and former Grantland TV critic Andy Greenwald are set to host, and Simmons and Eric Wasserman are serving as co-executive producers."

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/4/11362712/game-of-thrones-recap-show-hbo-now-bill-simmons-the-ringer

Queen Elizabeth visits Game of Thrones set

Love this RT @ninagarcia RT @WSJ: Queen Elizabeth visited the #GameofThrones set... http://t.co/KeBeZJbvnI pic.twitter.com/DyNimhTHfd
— Monica Crowley (@MonicaCrowley) June 24, 2014

Game of Thrones

Pop-up book by Matthew Reinhart and Michael Komarck.

Apparently Reinhart is an unstoppable force. His recent Transformers book, itself a tour de force, is a departure from the form that he and Sabuda and have developed over years. That book involved a lot more pull tabs than ever, mechanisms activated by pulling the whole page into a new configuration, the power coming from your fingers pulling the tab. Until then all the mechanisms in all of the books work one way or another by simply opening the page and that is what I like about them.

It's like origami in the sense of self-imposed rule. It restricts but it also forces creativity by strict adherence to canon. Outside that, you're just messing around. I made that up. I don't know. Origami paper is square, I noticed. Rectangular paper will not do. If you use a dollar, then the rectangular shape makes it automatically something else. Something like origami in all respects except its shape of origin, it not being square, so not legal, a bastard origami. That's how I feel about pop-ups that do not work by themselves by the card or the page being opened.

With this new book here again, another departure, the pages do not open as a book but rather as a map of the whole mythologic Game of Thrones space,  So it will take the whole table or whole living room floor to open to full spread. Individual discrete mechanisms positioned on each page that work by you opening the insert, as if a new tiny page built onto its flap portion of the extended map.

I'm not digging the cost, $65.00. Etaiyo!

That's "ouch" in Japanese.  Good thing it's really only $41.00. Phew, a  savings of $24.00. But that's still getting up there, way up there, almost 1/3 of the way up to the cost of a college text book. Preorder for March 25th.