Zombie; [sic] a madness

Note, this is the rough draft for a review I wrote for BuyZombie.com. Please go ahead and read the final draft over there. It's a great website and source for zombie news.

This book is difficult for me to explain. You see, I tend to find faults even with books I like, and I have to hold myself back sometimes to make sure I'm not criticizing something that really doesn't need to be criticized. Part of it is my training as an editor and part of it is me being a critical person in general. It really helps me a lot if I'm getting paid to help someone improve their work. Not so much when I'm reading a book for the sake of it. Before I talk about this book, I need to explain a few things about writing and publishing.

Munchkin Zombies

Note: This is the rough draft of a review I wrote for BuyZombie.com. Please go ahead and see the final draft over there. It's a great website and resource for zombie news.


The Munchkin franchise by Steve Jackson Games is one of the most venerable in gaming today. It doesn't have the lengthy history of D&D or even Magic: the Gathering, but it wouldn't exist without them. The whole point of the game is that you are a munchkin... That is, you are a role-player who doesn't view RPGs as fun games and an exercise in improvisational acting, but rather as fun games where you kill monsters and take their stuff by maximizing your stats and dice rolls. There are quite a few versions of the game. The most well-known version is the original fantasy version, but there are versions for science fiction, kung-fu movies, the Cthulhu mythos, the Axe Cop webcomic, and more. However in all of those sets you play as the "heroes" killing monsters. Munchkin Zombies is a more recent set where instead of playing as a human survivor in the zombie apocalypse, you play as the zombies, hunting down humans so you can eat their brains.

Apologies once again.

Sorry. I doubt anyone is reading this blog anymore, but just in case... What started out as a short delay has turned into a death of anything, mostly due to real life rearing it's ugly head. I'm not sure when I'll get back on my weekly review schedule. I will be posting stuff up sporadically in the next little bit, but I'm just not sure how dedicated I can be to this blog for now. Which is a funny and kind of silly thing to say in the first place. Seeing as how I made this blog for myself as practice and nothing else... I dunno, it seems strange to apologize to anyone other than myself. Oh, well. We'll see what happens. Until something does though, well, you'll know that my circumstances remain stressful.

Pink Panther remake

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from the movie when I first saw it, I mean, it's got quite the pedigree to live up to, ya know? But I also had to consider: Did I really want to see an exact clone of the original movie?

I was happy that Steve Martin played the part of Clouseau. I felt that if there was only one guy who could pull of this movie, it was him. I'm not sure if he did pull it off, though. Years later, and my jury is still out on that subject. I hasn't too happy about Beyonce, since she was obviously only added for sex appeal (and I personally don't find simply not wearing clothes to be all that "sexy," not to mention the fact that I don't think she's nearly as pretty as everyone seems to think she is. Oh well, to half-remember a quote from Ringworld: the minority is always insane.)
Anyway... moving on...

Casshern

Casshern is a Japanese action flick, supposedly. However there's very little action. I've seen the anime OAV that it's based on, so I was expecting a strait-up, mindless, blow-up-robots-with-your-bare-hands action movie. What I got was... weird. I mean... the best word I have to describe the movie is "weird." There was so much that happened in the movie that made no sense whatsoever to me. Even after everything was said and done and everyone's motives were revealed and all the secrets in the open, it still made almost no sense. And the amount of robot-destruction was at a minimum. I spent most of the movie scratching my head and being disappointed at how little action there was. I'm not against non-action flicks, but I had certain expectations, you see, and those expectations were not met.

Yet, despite that, I think I really loved the movie.

Mall of Horror board game

Note: This is just the rough draft of a review that I wrote for buyzombie.com. Please check out the polished article here: http://www.buyzombie.com/2012/03/05/reviews-of-zombie-related-things/mall-of-horror-review/


If the Zombie Apocalypse has taught us anything, it’s that a shopping mall is just about the worst place to be in the event of the breakdown of society caused by hordes of the flesh-eating undead. Mall of Horrors wants to make sure it’s a lesson you never, ever forget.

Mall of horrors is a board game for 3 to 6 players where each player takes control of a group of survivors competing with the other groups of survivors for, well... survival. Eventually rescue will arrive, but not until only a small fraction of the starting survivors remain.

Puss In Boots: The Three Diablos

So, as you know, i enjoyed the Puss In Boots stand along movie. My wife enjoyed it much more than I did, however, and as one of her birthday presents, I got it for us on DVD. Since it was only a couple of bucks more, I spent the extra money to get the pack with the new "The Three Diablos" DVD short. was it worth the extra money? Well...