Over the past few weeks I have been very busy at Torontoist helping to write a lot of endorsements – including our mayoral endorsement of Olivia Chow, as well as a bunch of other city council endorsements – as well as liveblogging debates and I will presumably be liveblogging election night as well.

All of this to see John Tory elected in a probable landslide seems like a lot of work for very little payoff, to be honest.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

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Our EXTRA-SIZED FINALE ISSUE continues on!

As always, you can also go to the dedicated Al’Rashad site.

Recently, a rumor popped up in Variety related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since it is, whether true or not, pretty spoiler-y, I’ll stick it behind a spoiler break–everything after the break will discuss future Marvel movies, so don’t click on it if you don’t want to discuss.

continue reading "NERRRRRD-raaaaaaaaage!"

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Our EXTRA-SIZED FINALE ISSUE continues on!

As always, you can also go to the dedicated Al’Rashad site.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

FLAPJACKS: Let’s make a survival horror video game!
MGK: I’ll bring the random assortment of dentist’s tools!
FLAPJACKS: I’ll bring the creepy doll’s heads!
MGK: Don’t forget to smash ninety percent of the light bulbs! But only ninety percent!
FLAPJACKS: Scary killers/monsters have to see too! It’s only polite!
MGK: Speaking of which, what type of scary killers or monsters do we want?
FLAPJACKS: Well, there are so many options. There are regular people who are grossly facially mutilated. There are body-dysmorphic horrors. And then there are body-dysmorphic horrors who are also grossly facially mutilated.
MGK: It is a smorgasbord of terror!
FLAPJACKS: The important thing is to make people go “ew” when they play our game!
MGK: Speaking of which, what type of protagonist should we have? I think we should have a protagonist whose family have died and who is still haunted by their deaths.
FLAPJACKS: Well I think we should have a protagonist whose family have disappeared and who is driven to find them, no matter how tragic an outcome may result!
MGK: Can we compromise and have a nameless non-entity who is defined only by his abilities which have been mapped onto the keyboard?
FLAPJACKS: My word, it’s like I’m surviving the game myself now! But we’re agreed it’s a dude, right?
MGK: Well of course.
FLAPJACKS: All those little convenient notes people leave behind will have so much more impact if I know my video-game self is a dude.
MGK: It’s only real survival horror if all the notes are in fact voice recordings. You know, as people do. Nobody writes things down any more! It’s the digital age! We talk into our talk-boxes! Voice diaries are a real important thing!
FLAPJACKS: Also with the voice diaries I think we need to give our hero supplies. That way he can fight the monsters. But only briefly, lest he be given some sense of agency! I think we should only give him single, individual bullets. People leave single, individual bullets around all the time! Think how scary it will be when he has only three bullets in his gun – and there are four monsters!
MGK: Bullets? Pffft, you’re not being ambitious enough. He should not have a gun. He should have a knife, which regularly gets dull when he stabs a monster with it, and he needs to find whetstones to sharpen the knife!
FLAPJACKS: He can carry up to four rocks at any time, and whenever he smashes a monster with a rock, it crumbles. He must constantly find additional rocks!
MGK: He doesn’t have a weapon at all, he just has a flashlight!
FLAPJACKS: And he needs to find batteries for the flashlight! Or else he won’t even be able to see!
MGK: What if we don’t give him anything at all?
FLAPJACKS: What if he needs to constantly find vitamins just to not die? Oh wait, I got it, our hero is diabetic and needs to take insulin every so often! He will have to search everywhere for insulin!
MGK: Which will be located in numerous desks, of course. It’s all coming together!
FLAPJACKS: But who will the big villain be? I think we should have it be a crazed scientist. He can make the awful murder monsters from people! All scientists know how to do that.
MGK: I would prefer a demon or maybe an evil ghost. That way the awful murder monsters don’t have to even conform to the slightest hint of scientific logic.
FLAPJACKS: I dunno. I think we want some degree of veracity to make players feel like this could really happen somehow. Otherwise we might as well be playing Mario Kart.
MGK: How about… it is the ghost of an evil scientist who was possessed by demons?
FLAPJACKS: Oooooh, that has some oomph to it.
MGK: Indeed! Who would not want to play this game?
FLAPJACKS: … actually I think I just want to play Mario Kart instead.
MGK: Yeah, me too. Let’s play that.

I did a lengthy fact check of a recent John Tory policy speech.

Really, the last month for me has been work and Torontoist municipal election stuff – a lot more is coming down the pike this week – and I will be so glad once the damn election is over, you have no idea.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist, and since I know people will ask: yes, the pilot for The Flash really is excellent.

Click on thumb to see full

Our EXTRA-SIZED FINALE ISSUE continues on!

As always, you can also go to the dedicated Al’Rashad site.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Click on thumb to see full

As always, you can also go to the dedicated Al’Rashad site.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Click on thumb to see full

As always, you can also go to the dedicated Al’Rashad site.

A few people over the past few weeks have asked me what I think about the Scottish independence vote and honestly, I think it’s a little facile for me to even have an opinion. I mean: I’m not Scottish. I’m not even Scottish by descent. I have basically no stake in this whatsoever, and it seems a little ridiculous for me to issue a proclamation one way or the other.

That having been said, although I don’t have an opinion one way or the other as to how Scots should vote, the pros and cons are fairly straightforward (or in some cases not):

PROS

• Self-determination, which given that Scotland and Scots are generally to the left of the rest of the UK is more than a little meaningful
• Full control over, and sole benefit from, Scotland’s oil reserves
• Likely return of major financial companies from London
• Never having to deal with David Cameron again
• Also letting David Cameron be “the Prime Minister who lost Scotland” for all time forever, which is really a fun thing to do
• That whole “national pride” thing
• Groundskeeper Willie is pro-independence

CONS

• Scottish oil reserves will likely be depleted in the next forty years so it’s not really a long-term benefit
• Scotland won’t have a currency of their own initially, and will either have to agree to use the pound or the euro (thus putting themselves in a position where they are a sovereign country ceding control of their currency to another) or will have to issue their own currency (which will be hell for issuing bonds for the first few years since it’s untested and therefore will probably mean huge interest rates)
• Scots would basically be telling poor people in the remaining UK to go screw, since the Tories will, you know, then screw them hard
• Never having to deal with David Cameron means realizing you now have to deal with Alex Salmond
• The Union Jack might be replaced with a flag that looks like a jar of smashed assholes
• John Oliver wants you to stay

Snark aside: I have no idea. The currency issue is a really huge one and it’s the element most ignored by the media (predictably enough), but it isn’t necessarily insurmountable (announce the “Scottish pound,” tie it to the British pound for a few years, then sever ties?). The oil issue is problematic, but then again most of the world has the oil issue to deal with and it’s not going to go away whether Scotland is independent or not; the question is really whether you think Scotland or the UK can better deal with Scottish transition to a post-oil economy. And I’m not gonna predict that one way or another – except to say that David Cameron and the Tories will botch it, but “the UK” does not necessarily mean David Cameron and the Tories.

In any event, Scottish participation in the election seems to be at fever pitch levels, and an involved electorate is good, so whatever the outcome, it’ll actually reflect the will of the people, and how is that not encouraging? So go vote, Scotland.