.:Mafia Wars, Adventure Quest, MMA Pro...:.
I must admit, being occupied with all those games online has managed to kill my social life after work. But whaddaheck? I love it. :P
So if you happen to be on my Facebook, and you play Mafia Wars, do add me up. If you’re not playing that game, try playing MMA Pro as well. It’s awesome, and I need all the friends I could get to play the game. Heh. Just use the search bar on Facebook, and you’re bound to get it.
.:Getting Back Into The Groove Of Things:.
Had an interesting weekend filled with Magic: The Gathering tournaments. I played out a Legacy and Vintage tourney, and made a decent showing out of it, as I came in 16th in a field of 63 in Legacy, then made it into the top 4 in the Vintage tournament, bowing out to Lance, the eventual champion of the day, who was using Tezzeret.
All in all, it was a pretty good outing, and I hope to write a detailed tournament report if and when I find the time. I may forget some names and which deck I fought on which round, but it should be a pretty insightful look into how my thought processes generally work when playing.
In all honesty, I still feel very rusty and my play level isn’t at the same high level it used to be. Despite that, I’ve been re-learning my way around the tournament circles, and I’m hoping to find opportunities to really make a splash in the local meta once again.
.:89/365: The Bamboo Torture Device:.
As you can tell, a lot of Dixie Dooley’s escapes are mostly classic escape acts he has borrowed mainly from Harry Houdini, although I’m not fully certain that is the case with the Bamboo Torture Device.
The mechanics of the Bamboo Torture Device are a bit more complicated than average, which results in my displeasure with the routine: essentially, the escapologist is restrained via ropes looped through a piece of bamboo, and is held in place by two volunteers who will try to hold onto the ropes with all their might so as to prevent the escapologist from slipping out of the whole apparatus. Then, after a bit of a struggle, he manages to break free from the restraints, and the volunteers have no idea how he managed to get past the ropes and the bamboo.
I still don’t get why it’s called a bamboo “torture” device, in all honesty. There’s no semblance of torture involved even when you describe how the whole thing works, and it just seems patently silly to have to call it so if there is no amount of torture involved in the whole routine whatsoever. Furthermore, even by watching the routine, there seems to be very little room for drama or excitement, and it’s not something I would want to use without making some elaborately funny script about it meant to downplay the fact that out of all the escape acts we’ve shown or described so far this month, this one happens to be the least intimidating or at the very least interesting of them all.
I can’t tell you enough how underwhelming I find the bamboo torture device to be as an escape, although I do recognize that it has its uses, especially in the hands of a good performer, but on its own, the routine cannot get by without a lot of gravy from the escapologist, which I have seen from the likes of Herman Aquino in the past. If he just decided to do it without any flair, it becomes a very rote performance that could be replaced by something far more exciting, but then, this only goes to prove that while effects are important, it’s the performer who can ultimately determine how powerful the impact of a routine really is.
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