willow

20: Retro Rewind Podcast, Tolkien, and Geeks in Media

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Geek at Arms returns with our 20th episode. Bryan kicks off Geek Out by sharing his excitement about interviews with the Retro Rewind and Min/Max podcasts. James and Mike promptly die of envy. James then shares his likes and dislikes about the book Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View and how much he’s looking forward to reading JRR Tolkien: A Biography. Mike continues the trip into Middle Earth in his review of the biopic Tolkien and describes how much he’s enjoyed Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. Finally, he leads a discussion about how geeks are portrayed in media: from Steve Urkel to The Big Bang Theory to The Gamers: Dorkness Rising and more!

Errata: Bryan said “Lone Star” when he clearly meant Bravestarr. Come on, Bryan, get it together!

           

19: Cowboy Bebop, Steven Universe and the 7th Voyage of Sinbad

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Welcome back to another new episode of Geek at Arms! James kicks off Geek Out with details on his families latest trip to the Scarborough Renaissance Festival. He then shares his recent interest and research into what languages Jesus might have spoken during the time of His ministry. Next, Bryan kindly shares a spoiler-free review of Endgame and discusses his re-watch of the fantastic anime series Cowboy Bebop. Mike talks about how much he enjoyed the cartoon Steven Universe and his experience with the game Batman: The Animated Series – Gotham Under Siege. Then, it’s back to the Film Club as the guys review the 1958 Ray Harryhausen film that helped launch a whole new era of special effects, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (beginning at 00:51:00).

A brief linguistic note: Over the course of Ptolemaic rule, the Egyptian language had evolved into Demotic, which was itself not widely used by the time of Christ, having been replaced by Latin and Greek. Demotic, as you know, was one of the three languages on the Rosetta Stone, the other two being Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Demotic itself continued to evolve, becoming Coptic, which was in turn supplanted in common use by Arabic dialects, but has held on as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church, much as Latin has done among Roman Catholics. So there is a chance that Jesus might have picked up a smattering of Demotic, but it’s equally likely that the only languages he heard in Egypt were Greek and Latin.

Discussed in this episode:



17: City on a Hill Gaming and Willow

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Bryan, Mike and James return for yet another super-sized episode! Mike shares his enjoyment at reading The Fellowship of the Ring to his children for the first time and how he barely contained his Geekiness at meeting author and fencing master Ken Mondschein. Next, Bryan talks about how much he’s been enjoying the new Voltron: Legendary Defender and My Hero Academia. Both he and James express how much they’re looking forward to actually gaming in an upcoming RPG session with the City on a Hill Gaming Podcast. James keeps the gaming talk going by detailing a hopeful upcoming Monster of The Week campaign, and how happy he was at finally finishing The Last Duel and playing Biblios. Finally, we see the return of the Geek at Arms Film Club! Shifting from sci-fi to fantasy, the guys delve into the George Lucas written, Ron Howard directed 1988 epic Willow.

Special caution: During the show I recommended the series Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Although the first book, Midnight Riot, was fairly tame, book 2, Body Work, has some rather explicit naughty parts.

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content warning: there’s some explicit naughty stuff in book 2