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.

If you know Game of Thrones you will love this.....

 

This is pretty funny. You have to know the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the Game of Thrones to know how funny this really is.

Whose that bookmark?

Here is a quiz? What do all of these bookmarks mean in the "Game of Thrones" books by George MM Martin? Whose that bookmark.

When bad things happen to good characters.

So two major characters in my favorite TV shows were killed off last night. We call it the Cartwright effect or the Red shirt syndrome in one case. And it's about fuckin' time in the second.

Detective Carter was killed in "Person of Interest." She was one of the main characters in the show as the straight NYPD cop who started out hunting Reese the man in the suit who then became his accomplice. She finally crossed the line. You see she kissed Reese and she had to die. It is the "Cartwright" effect which is when a woman would get involved with one of the boys on the Ponderosa they would immediately get run over by a horse or something. Plus she is black so that falls under the "Red Shirt" on Star Trek rule where the black security guy who beamed down with Spock, Kirk and McCoy gets turned into a pillar of salt. Being a black woman who was going to be involved with the lead meant that she had to die.

Then Clay Morrow on "Sons of Anarchy" was shot last night. Finally. He had to go. The dude had been shot, stabbed and beaten half to death for the past two season. Jax Teller has been saying he was going to kill him for two seasons and he finally did it. Now he was the third featured character in the show so it was a bit of a surprise. Especially when it was not the final episode of the season. The last couple of seasons all revolved around the conflict between Clay and Jax for control of the club. Now they will have to move to something else.

A bunch of people are citing "Game of Thrones" as the impetus behind these developments. You see on "Thrones" one of the main characters Ned Stark was killed in the first season. Plus last season another bunch of big characters were killed just like in the book. It shouldn't be such a big deal. If you are talented you can just right new characters. That's what George Martin did in this series of books. It gets old when the same characters get out of jams every week without a scratch. That is not the way it happens in real life. So it is kind of refreshing when regular episodic TV takes that route.

A new Poll for all youse guys!

What is going to come first?

Santa Claus down the Chimney.
The Zombie Apocalypse
The Anti-Christ
Winter
The Return of the Althouse comments section

Extra points if you can figure the one thing that doesn't belong in that group.

Just sayin'

Winters coming!

In the spring.

Season Two of Game of thrones starts Sunday night. It covers book two and three of the series by George RR Martin. There will be several  new characters. Stannis Baratheon. The Red Witch, Melisandre.

And you old favorites. Tyrion. Jamie.Renly. Joffery. Cersi. Jon Snow. Samwell Tarly. All the the characters that made the first season so great.

Check it out from the beginning. It is great TV.

If Winter is coming as slow as the next "Game of Thrones Book" I would still be wearing my Hawaiian shirt and speedo's

George R.R. Martin has posted one chapter of his next installment of the Game of Thrones series on his website. It was six years between books the last time and who knows how long we are going to have to wait for the new book called "The Winds of Winter." With the HBO series going into the second season it looks like he will be even more distracted. And we will be waiting again.

At least SM Stirling and Eric Flint are fair with us. They give us free chapters and snippets to wet our appetite but they publish pretty much one book a year. Martin has got to be kidding me.

Somebody said in reference to this long wait between books "George Martin is not your bitch."

Well he might not be my bitch but he definitely is a bitch.

Did any of these actors read the new book?

Cause if they did I don't know if they will want to continue.

Especially Queen Cersi. I don't think she is gonna wanna do what happens to her in "A Dance with Dragons."

I won't spoil it for you but I guess they don't look that far a head.

Goading the Muse

this man used to be an
interesting writer,
he was able to say brisk and
refreshing things.
at the time
I suggested to the editors and
the critics that he was one to
be watched
and also that he had hardly yet been
noticed
and that he certainly should now be
noticed.
this writer used some of my
remarks as blurbs for his
books, which I didn't
mind.
all of his publications were little
chapbooks, 16 to 32
pages,
mimeographed.
they came out at a
rapid rate,
perhaps three or four a
year.
the problem was that each
chapbook seemed a little weaker
than the one that preceded
it
but he continued to use my old
blurbs.
my wife noticed the change
in his writing
too.
'what's happened to his
writing?' she asked me.
'he's doing too much of it, he's
pushing it out, forcing it.'
'this stuff is bad, you ought to
tell him to stop using your
blurbs.'
'I can't do that, I just wish he
wouldn't publish so much.'
'well, you publish all the
time too.'
'with me,' I told her, 'it's
different.'

yesterday I received another of his
little chapbooks
with his delicate dedication scrawled
on the title page.
this latest effort was totally
flat.
the words just fell off the
page,
dead on
arrival.

where had he gone?

too much ambition?
too much just doing it for the sake
of doing it?
just not waiting for the words to
pile up inside and then
explode of their own
volition?

I decided then I should take a whole week
off,
be on the safe side,
just shut the computer down,
forget the whole damned silly
business
for awhile.

as I said, that was
yesterday.

I love my Kindle

I downloaded the new book in the "Game of Thrones" series and I enjoyed reading it at the pool. I would cover almost every inch of skin and have a cocktail ready and spend a couple of hours in the cool breeze and the sun enjoying the trials and tribulations of all my favorite characters in the Seven Kingdoms.

The book is great so far and I know what the problem will be. I will finish it by tomorrows and have to wait ten more years for the next one.

The only downside with a Kindle is you don't really know how much is left in the book when you are reading it. But I know it will be all too short.

Game of Thrones- as heard by the wife

So we watched the first episode of Game of Thrones last night. Now I got in a lot of trouble with my last post about this. I want to be clear. My wife is a very intelligent woman. She built her own business and is a designer and has a million things on her mind. Of course she can follow a road runner cartoon. I was just joking. Since she never reads my blog I usually get away with it but she read it this time and was not amused.

So to be clear. She does not have ADD. Just "Symptoms of ADD."

Anyway we are watching the show and every once in a while I would have to pause it to explain the action. There is this one scene where the king rides into Winterfel with his whole court to talk to Ned Stark. She says to me "Why is he going all that way to visit him in his castle." I go "Well he is asking him to be the Hand of the King." She goes "Why does he want him to be the Ed McMahon of the King."

So you see. Just symptoms of ADD.

Winter is coming!

So one of the few prerogatives as a man that really means anything to me is that I get to control the remote control. And peeing standing up but that's another discussion.

Anywho I have to control the remote because if the wife gets control of it we end up watching some stupid chick movie with Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts or some shit like that there. Now don't get me wrong. Our viewing schedule is heavy with stuff like Justified and Sons of Anarchy and Hard Core Pawn but we watch stuff she likes such as all the Housewife shows and Army Wives and Desperate Housewives and any fucking show with Wives in the title. I watch them cheerfully or at least I try not to snore too loudly. Although last night I started to snore through the Biography channel special about Frank Niti. I have been very tired.

So I have been trying to lay the ground work for the HBO series "Game of Thrones" based on one of George RR Martins novels. It is a very complicated plot and if you have not read the book you have no chance of following it. Which is a problem because the wife is so ADD she has trouble paying attention to the Road Runner cartoons I love to put on. I often have to pause the show to explain who is who and what is what. That was a big pain in the ass in "Boardwalk Empire" and she was interested in that since some people who worked on it shop in the store. So I have careful to try to get her interested in "Game of Thrones."

Now HBO has helped because it has set up a bunch of little snippets explaining the various "houses" and characters and the setting and what not. So we have seen them all and I have explained how they fit into the show. And they took a page out of the current style of Science fiction writers and put up the first 15 minutes of the first show. Sort of like SM Stirling's or Eric Flint printing chapters or snippets of their newest book.

Well we watch the whole thing and it is great. Outstanding photography. Great action. Scary shit with supernatural forces and stuff. Obviously a multi-million dollar production of one of the most popular fantasy series of the last two decades based on a series of best sellars. And after all of that the wife turned to me and said:

"I don't like it. Their hair is too dirty. I can't watch a series where everybody has dirty hair."