John C. Bunnell's page

Just to amplify a bit on the aforementioned review:

The word I'd use to describe Paladins is strange. It's not that it's a bad book, per se; the story, as a story, works well enough. But I'm a consistency wonk, and the clash of period-senses -- the Arthurian/medieval paladin setup crossed with a Pirates of the Caribbean swashbuckler, and done in a style awfully close to that of Randall Garrett's "Lord Darcy" stories -- tended to grate on my sensibilities.

By and large I like Rosenberg's work (anyone who has not sought out D'Shai is missing a good bet), and if you're a Rosenberg fan you may well like <b>Paladins</b> better than I did. That was the sentiment I was trying to convey in the original review, not that readers shouldn't buy the book.

(Trust me, you'll know if I think a book is sufficiently flawed that you ought not shell out the money for it. Come to think of it, I just turned in a review like that....)

And here McDuck and I disagree; there are some decent pieces in Shadows Over Baker Street (Steve Perry's is one I quite liked), but I was very underwhelmed by the Gaiman piece, which seemed to me a "trick story" with gimmicks used to better effect elsewhere. Two examples in particular -- for Cthulhu-entities in something like the Holmes universe, see Esther Friesner's highly entertaining Druid's Blood; for a clever and crisply executed use of the gimmick Gaiman uses, see Michael Kurland's novel The Infernal Device and its sequels.

I read a considerable amount of mystery fiction, concentrated largely in the area of historicals and the more moderate sectors of the "cozy" category, including Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Among my favorite mystery writers are Laurie R. King, Elizabeth Peters, Margaret Frazer, and Peter Tremayne, but there are lots of others I read from time to time, and I am currently catching up on the writings of Donna Andrews, one of whose series is arguably crossover SF/mystery because it features an AI detective.

[Sheesh. The messageboard software is really fighting me on this:

My longest-lasting TV favorite at present is Jackie Chan Adventures, airing on Kids' WB and the Cartoon Network.

Essentially, it's an Indiana Jones action premise executed with the comic sensibility of the original Muppet Show -- fast-paced, strongly plotted, chock-full of really funny shtick and jokes for both the kids and the grownups in the audience.

For instance: One of Jackie's signature lines is "Bad day! Bad day!", uttered whenever something looks like it's about to squash, slice, puree, or otherwise inflict permanent harm. But when Our Heroes are having an Old West experience, the line morphs and becomes "Bad day at Black Rock!" -- as the stagecoach, with Jackie aboard, is about to plunge over an inconvenient cliff.

The series can also be impressively subtle; in the same Old West adventure, it's established that Jackie and another Asian character are in the Old West because they are railroad workers -- which is, in fact, where a lot of Asian immigrants found themselves in that time and place. But we don't get this as "As you know, Jackie" dialogue or a lecture, it's just presented as the way it was. In the course of the series' run, we also get a look at Chinese opera, tunnels under San Francisco, Mexican lucha wrestling ("El Toro never removes his mask!"), and the legend of the Monkey King, among other things.

Of course, this is balanced by lots of very silly stuff, such as the occasional appearances of the plush superhero SuperMoose, the inscrutable Uncle's appetite for mung bean sandwiches, the legendary Monkey King's recipe for inducing volcanic eruptions, and the tendency of Jackie's niece Jade to turn up just about anywhere at any time.

Very, very highly recommended.

Thanks for the heads-up, John.

I believe this bug has now been squashed.

No such luck; the thread itself seems to be broken. Tried to post twice more this morning -- on the first try, the same error occurred as happened previously; on the second, clicking Add a New Post knocked me out to the main Paizo page without even giving me a post-window screen first.

edited to add:

Huh. And now the darn thing works -- or at least did when I hit "Reply" rather than "Add a New Post". Hmmm.

I'll take once as a glitch, but twice looks like a bug.

I've made two tries this afternoon at posting to the "What I'm Watching" thread in the AMAZING Television area, and in both cases, after clicking the Submit Post button, two things happened. One, I got kicked all the way out to the main Paizo page, and two, neither message actually showed up on the board so far as I can tell. (I note that Jenny Scott's attempt at a post in that thread seems to be a blank message, which might or might not be connected.)

I'm using a reasonably up-to-date IE6 setup, and have tried refereshing the pages to ensure that I'm not experiencing a cached-page problem. No luck.

Ergo, I sense a bug, but whether it's the thread or my system we won't know till I try to post this....