Movies, TV, Internet, Video Games, and E-Books
Hi! This is the personal website of Christopher Livingston, focused mainly on pop-culture: movies, television, and video games.
On the sidebar, you’ll also see features that have appeared previously on other, now-defunct websites I’ve had in the past.
I am also available for freelance work. Please e-mail me from the contact page if you’d like to get in touch.
Oh, hi.
I’m going to start writing for this blog again, after a long, work-induced hiatus. Not that my job has gotten any better or easier, but a writer needs to write and if I wait for my job to get less hectic I’d never put another word down until I retire at the age of 79.
So. Look for some updates later this week! In the meantime, I have been doing some writing for PC Gamer’s website. Back in 2007 I started a blog about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a massive adventure game I played with the goal of not having any adventures. It’s been limping along for years and has a bunch of nice, patient, loyal followers, who have been asking if I planned to do something similar with Oblivion’s sequel, Skyrim.
As it happens, the guys over at PC Gamer, who have given me freelance work for years, were wondering the same thing, and asked if I’d do a weekly diary for their website. The first entry is up now, and there will be new ones every Saturday. Hope you like it!
The American Horror Story ads had gimps coming down from the ceiling, so I had to give this one a go for the weirdness alone…and the fact that there are few things creepier than ghost twins.
If I were to sum up the first half of this season of Breaking Bad, it would go something like this:
Skyler buys a car wash, Jesse has a party, Walt sulks and scowls, and Walter Jr. is asked what he wants for breakfast.
The second half of the season got a bit more interesting, with Jesse working directly for Hitman Mike, the Mexican cartel repeatedly disrupting Gus’s meth distribution by whacking a number of his nameless goons, and Hank finally getting out of bed and starting to investigate Gus. Also, Walt sulked and scowled, and Walter Jr. was asked what he wants for breakfast.
I was watching some embarrassing program or other when I saw an ad for a show called Truck Stop Missouri. I figure if a show about a truck stop can get on the air, the powers that be must be looking for some terrible shows to air. Here are some that we’ve come up with.
I’ve been lucky enough to see Mr. Show’s “Hooray for America†when they came around in 2002, Louis C.K. in one of his very angry this-close to divorce shows circa 2008, Dave Attell right after they cancelled “Insomniacâ€, Doug Benson right after he had “made some very bad decisions pre-performanceâ€, Brian Regan when he filled up the Crest with just about everyone in Sacramento, Mitch Hedberg a few years before he died and the spectacularly funny Paul F. Tompkins twice while he was participating in the SF Comedy Sketchfest.
Remember that great game, Bioshock, where billionaire libertarian Andrew Ryan built an underwater city because he was tired of government interference, and it worked out really well for him, and it totally didn’t turn into a nightmarish leaking hellpit filled with screeching, drug-addled lunatics?
Well, we’re inching closer to that beautiful reality, as billionaire PayPal founder and libertarian Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, a group determined to build their own underwater city! (Technically, they plan to build their city above the ocean, but since they’ll be operating in international waters, free from the pesky, invasive government building codes, their city will be at the bottom of the ocean soon enough.)
I’ve been playing a cute little indie RPG dungeon-crawler called Dungeons of Dredmor. It’s a $5 game on Steam, with a charmingly retro look and some clever writing. At first glance it does not appear to be the type of game that would suck away great swaths of your life. But it is.
Now that TV is in re-run mode, I’ve started relying on the internet and my iPod touch for entertainment. I have a few categories that I like to cover on a daily basis.
Money App: Smarty Pig – This doesn’t actually do anything fancy. In fact, it doesn’t do much at all other than track the money I’m saving up for various goals. You can set up an account on the web for as little as $25, and then choose to automatically deduct whatever amount you choose for however long you choose to save up for whatever the heck you want. Admittedly, the interest on these accounts used to be much higher. However, it’s better than stuffing it in your mattress. Plus, they have a cute little piggy bank that tells you how far along you are with your goals.
So! The long, stupid summer of stupid summer movies is winding to a end, and we can now more or less officially close the book on our First Annual Summer Movie Fantasy League.
Heading into August, I only had about an $8 million box office lead over Kris, and we each had a movie left: I had Captain America, and she had Cowboys & Aliens. CA set a high mark with a $65 million domestic opening weekend, and C&A just couldn’t match it, coming in with a little over $36 million.