Posts Tagged montreal blog

73 results.

Look At All My Sh*t – October Loot Crate “TIME”

by on October 27, 2015 at 8:57 am
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

We’ve got to back Marty! Back to the future! Your kids are basically assholes! I was pretty vocal in my disappointment in last month’s Loot Crate offering “SUMMON” since it was too focused on intellectual properties that I didn’t really care about. I imagine somewhere there’s like a parallel version of me who is super into Hearthstone and Pokemon who is looking at this month’s crate and going “what the hell is this crap?” with this month’s box. Not me though. I mentioned it over on r/lootcrate that they’d have a hard time messing this one up and by golly, they delivered. Going into this month’s crate I felt pretty confident we were going to see Bill and Ted, Back to the Future and Doctor Who and the Loot People did not disappoint. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got in the little box of time travel.

Loot Time 1

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Small Screen Horror – Penny Dreadful and Scream

by on October 20, 2015 at 5:18 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Halloween is only two weeks away, and I’ll be the first to admit that for some reason or another I’m just not as in the spirit of the season the way I usually am. Maybe it’s because Sarah and I haven’t been planning our costumes since July (which is usually the case) because we’re planning for a wedding. Or maybe it’s because Halloween is basically a massive drunken party holiday and as I get older I find that less and less appealing?

I’m just kidding, I totally will get drunk and party, even if that means getting drunk and partying by myself watching horror movies. Or, horror TV shows.

There haven’t been a ton of horror television shows that I can think of before 4 or 5 years ago. Sure, shows like X-Files and Outer Limits often had horror elements, but most of them were also pretty deeply science fiction influenced too. And there was Buffy and Angel, but they were more like “horror adventure” with very little actually creepy or scary going on. But now, there’s more and more horror coming to us in episodic format. I think that’s a good thing. Since I love horror. So this week and probably next week we’ll be talking about a few shows that have actually nailed (in different ways) it when it comes to bringing horror to the small screen. We’re going to start it off with two shows that, depending on what streaming services you’ve got you can totally binge right now between now and Halloween, Penny Dreadful and Scream. Scream is available right now on Netflix and the first season of Penny Dreadful is on Crave TV.

penny-dreadful-season-1-dvd-cover-11Penny Dreadful

So here’s a fun little story. Listeners to 9to5 Entertainment System will know that I played me some tabletop and live action role playing games in my time. Specifically, I spent quite time playing in a Vampire role playing game set in Victorian England. I played a foppish Toreador who was really into throwing lavish house parties. If you don’t know what a Toreador vampire is you should probably look it up. You might think less of me if you do. Don’t you judge me.

Anyways. long story short I think that Victorian era horror is amazing. Penny Dreadful does a similar thing that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen does which is to re-purpose classic literary figures for new, untold stories. It might seem like a tough sell that Dorian Grey, Victor Frakenstein, Mina Harker and vampires, pyschics and werewolves are all running around at the same time, but it pulls it off. I pretty much gave up True Blood because it became a jumbled mess. Penny Dreadful on the other hand (at least, in the first season) doesn’t get bogged down at any given point.

It does this by sticking to a core story of Malcolm Murray (played by Timothy Dalton) obsessing over tracking down his missing daughter who was abducted by a vampire. To do this he enlists psychic Vanessa Ives (who he’s known since she was a wee girl), an American sharpshooter (played by Josh Hartnett) and Doctor Frankenstein. By not wavering too much from the core story-line it weaves a pretty coherent through line across all 8 episodes. It is much more plot driven than something like American Horror Story but also leaves a lot of room for character development. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Games as Geek Gateways: The Game (IDW)

by on October 6, 2015 at 4:25 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

thegame1So far in this little series I’ve reviewed a very geeky, complex game that draws from the lore of H.P. Lovecraft (Arkham Horror) and a worker placement European style game that draws from the lore of Dungeons and Dragons (Lords of Waterdeep). If you’re able to get your non-geeky friends into Arkham Horror then good on you. The rules are dense, gameplay is very fiddly and there’s a lot of text to read through each and every time you play. Lords of Waterdeep might be an easier sell once you establish that the mechanics are pretty simple and that no knowledge of D&D is necessary.

However, if you’re trying to build up a gaming group that’s less than open minded about geeky intellectual properties and wants something a little more approachable, you might need to set your sights a little lower.

Like it or not, a lot of people still think Scrabble and Monopoly when they hear that you’re organizing a game night. But it’s 2015 and limiting yourself to the Hasbro/Parker Brothers offerings is for suckers. If you ever want to get people into the more interesting games I would personally recommend starting small. Possibly with a card game they’ve never heard of. It’s a much smaller step to get someone to play a simple little game they’ve never played before than it is to drop a 20 page rulebook on their heads and hope for the best.

Enter a game like The Game. Ignore the fact that it’s incredibly difficult to ever Google this game for obvious reasons (pro tip, add “IDW” into your search if you’re looking for an English copy, the publisher is supposed to be bringing The Game to North America this month). If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that picks up foreign copies of board games I can vouch for the fact that there’s no text on the cards whatsoever. So, as you might be able to see in that picture I’m holding a French copy from publisher OYA. I found an English copy of the rules from the original publisher NSV and I was on my way. So if you can find a copy in some other language, you can easily pick it up without worry.

So now I’m playing The Game. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Look At All My Sh*t – September SUMMON Loot Crate

by on September 29, 2015 at 4:02 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

It’s that time of the month again you guys. No, not that time of the month. It’s Loot Crate time of the month, after the enjoyable double-header last time we’re back down to just one box full o’ Loot.

This month’s theme was SUMMON, which presumably meant it would be full of things you could summon? Or things that summoner’s could use? Or like, summon special in your life, a lil’ summon summon? I had seen the preview image for the crate so I knew that there was going to be something Pokemon related in here, which I wasn’t too excited about. I’m not a tween and haven’t played Pokemon since I was a tween. However, I can see how it would be exciting for lots and lots of people. Anyhow, all that to say I started off early with a few reservations.LootSummonOverview

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People Having Kids to Make Hilarious Gifs – Perspicacious Geek

by on September 22, 2015 at 3:42 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

So it seems more and more common for people in this modern world to opt out of having children. Many are choosing to pursue their careers or passions instead of devoting the vast majority of their lives to guiding the transformation of a tiny person who doesn’t know anything into a grown up asshole who thinks they know everything. Or, in Japan some people are marrying virtual people. I don’t want to be to presumptuous here but, unless there’s been some really big advancements that I haven’t read about in the past 5 minutes, those relationships are probably not going to make a child. Well, they’re not going to make a biological child. They might make a virtual one. But is that really the same as having a child with a human woman? We’re getting to some Blade Runner/Ghost in the Shell territory about the value of artificial life here guys, which is some pretty heavy shit for what was supposed to be a funny article.

Where was I? People not having kids because they’re too obsessed with their own lives. Well, it seems that there has been a steady rise in the number of children born to social media conscious parents.  Everyone’s favorite literary genius/crazy person Brett Easton Ellis said the following in his opinion piece for Vanity Fair:

If there doesn’t seem to be an economic way of elevating yourself then the currency of popularity is just the norm now and so this is why you want to have thousands and thousands of people liking you on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler—and you try desperately to be liked. The only way to elevate yourself in society is through your brand, your profile, your social media presence.

These savvy parents are tapping the veritable gold mine of having children for likes, upvotes, retweets and clicks more effectively than ever before. Just ask that family that releases those videos where they’re all singing and stuff, the “Eh Bee Family” over on Youtube. You think that if Sarah and I just started singing Disney songs half decently we’d have over 700,000 Youtube subscribers? No. We wouldn’t. What’s the difference? They’ve got kids. And they’re capitalizing on it. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Happy One Year Anniversary To Me, The Perspicacious Geek (Best Of)

by on September 15, 2015 at 6:53 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

On September 2nd, 2014 you and I embarked on a journey together. The journey of a weekly blog where I wrote about whatever popped into my head in whatever style I felt was appropriate. Over the course of the past 378 days, on every single Tuesday I was here for you, whether you liked it or not. Like a nagging cough or an annoying neighbour who you see on the bus and have to make polite conversation with. That’s me. Your nagging annoying, coughing neihbour.

Anyways, it may not matter to you a whole lot, but I feel pretty good about having maintained a steady output of blogs for an entire year. When I officially “launched” as the Perspicacious Geek, I had 10 articles written as a buffer to make sure I could keep going weekly at least for a month and a half. That little buffer finally got completely used up a couple weeks ago, and 10 articles has become over 50. To celebrate, I am going to share with you my favorite entries of the past year. I don’t even know if these are the best ones or not, these are just the ones I had the most fun writing. These are in chronological order by the way, not in any other order.

Fuck that website

Fuck that website

Fighting On The Internet Is Stupider Than You Think ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Head to the Back of the Bus, There’s Room There – Perspicacious Geek

by on June 16, 2015 at 8:13 am
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek
There is one person on this bus, where are they? All the way at the front.

There is one person on this bus, where are they? All the way at the front.

I ride the bus nearly every day to work and  on my way home. I’ve been on buses in many other major North American cities. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a bus expert but I do like to think of myself as least an experienced bus goer. If you’ve never been on a bus I feel the need to warn you that I’ll be using some very bus-specific terminology in this piece and maybe you should brush up on your bus lingo (or “busingo” as we say in the bus biz). Complex bus words like “driver”, “seat” and “the back” will be popping up all over this article and if you’re not familiar you might miss out on some of the nuances of what I’m trying to get across.

What I’m here to write about today is general bus behavior when you get on the bus.

Here’s how I understand the process is supposed to work.

  1. Get on the bus.
  2. Pay your fare and nod to the driver.
  3. Move as far back as you can since there are people behind you, if there aren’t people behind you, more people might get on later.
    1. This doesn’t just apply to sitting, even if all the seats are full, you still move all the way to the back to stand.
    2. No, this doesn’t mean to the steps at the back, it means all the way back.
    3. Listen, if you can get to the back of the bus, that is where you should be going.
    4. Oh, you’re near the back door and you want to stop? Keep moving, there’s still a bunch of space at the back.
    5. No seriously, there is space at that back what is wrong with you?

You might (especially as a non-bus traveler) think that the 5 sub-points of step 3 are excessive but if you’ve ever been on a crowded bus, you know that those sub-rules exist for a reason and even with 5 clear clarifications about moving all the way to the back, many people on the bus will just get on the bus, look to see if there are any seats and if there isn’t, they will just stand there. Near the front of the bus. Everyone who gets on after them will have to push past them to try and get further into the bus. Most of the people that make it past will stop somewhere in the middle anyways, too tired from pushing past the people in the entrance of the bus to to make it all the way to the back. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Look At All My Sh*t – May Loot Crate “UNITE”

by on June 2, 2015 at 9:46 am
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

It’s that time of the month again, new Loot Crate!

Following up a pretty stellar (in my opinion) FANTASY crate in April, this month’s theme was UNITE. I really didn’t know what to expect with this particular theme, but I was guessing that teamups and the like would be focused. Overall I was pretty happy with the gear this month, but I will not hide my disappointment that there was nothing from Captain Planet. Your theme is UNITE but you don’t have anything from the show about people combining their powers to summon a green-haired super man. Poorly played Loot Crate. Let’s see what we got. Oh, and I apologize for those weird purple spots on the photos, my camera is a jerkbag.maycrate3 ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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New Music That You Should Listen To – Perspicacious Geek

by on May 26, 2015 at 11:49 am
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Ok, so due to a conglomeration of factors this week is going to be short and sweet. It’s also going to be about music. New music though, so there’s that. Here are a few of the albums that have come out in the past few weeks that I’ve been listening to a lot. There’s something geeky about listening to music that isn’t really on the radio, and I think I’ve covered some pretty great new albums for you to enjoy this summer. Bam.

Hot_Chip_-_Why_Make_SenseHot Chip – Why Make Sense?

Hot Chip is one of those bands that for some reason I’m always a little amazed are still together. I started listening to them when I was getting out of punk and ska and into more electronic music. Due to the unpredictable nature of most of the bands I got into at the time (DFA 1979 broke up for nearly a decade, LCD Soundsystem broke up, Crystal Castles broke up, Does it Offend You, Yeah? broke up, MGMT made a garbage second release) I always sort of thought that Hot Chip had stopped making music. I couldn’t be more wrong and I’m always happily surprised when a new album gets released. In fact, they’ve brought out 6 full length albums since 2004, so basically every 2 years they bring out a new album. They’re also more or less the original lineup. This makes me think that they’re just a good group of dudes who like making bleepy-bloopy music.

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