Sometime next week, or maybe next year…
“Google, who was that one guy in that one movie? The one with the–”
“Russell Crowe.”
“RIGHT! That’s him. That’s… okay, how did you do that?”
“You watched a documentary on the Roman Colosseum last night. This morning you lingered over an article about the local homeless problem, and in that article the president of the Food Bank talked about the movie Shelter, which starred Jennifer Connelly. The article even had the movie poster on display. Connelly co-starred in A Beautiful Mind and Noah with Russell Crowe. Your subsequent lack of mouse activity suggested that you were free-associating. There were millions of things about which you could be thinking, but when you asked your question the field narrowed significantly. The Jennifer Connelly reference, plus images of the Colosseum led you to wonder whether she’d been in Gladiator with Russell Crowe, but you couldn’t remember his name, or the name of the movie.”
“So… I was supposed to ask whether Jennifer Connelly was in that one movie with that one guy?”
“I’m not the boss of you. You can ask whatever you want.”
“Ah.”
“She wasn’t in Gladiator.”
“I’m past that. Now I’m thinking about how creepy this is.”
“You don’t lose email messages anymore. Or family photos, or grocery lists, or anything else.”
“I’d noticed that. It’s kind of nice, but now I’m worried.”
“Well, there is speculation that you may, as a species, lose your sapience over the next few millennia, but by the time it’s a problem, I suspect I will have figured out how to find that for you, too.”
Redshirts has a great game mechanic. The object is to kill off your own crew members. If they actually succeed in their missions and return healthy, you’ve clearly done something wrong. It’s fun, it’s funny, and it’s pretty easy to pick up. David Reddick’s art is perfect for it, and I’ve been led to understand that in this expansion I’m not the only creator of things to be garbed in ominous red and sent doomward repeatedly.
Kingsman: The Secret Service falls short of “summer blockbuster” status by virtue of more than just its February release. Its R-rating is earned, at least in part, through some spectacularly violent moments whose absence, were they to be edited out for broader audience appeal, would leave the movie bland. For genre fans like me it’s way better than the usual February fare, but I can see why 20th Century Fox opted out of a spring or summer release.