The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • Why Comedians Aren’t Funny

    Lately I've been watching a lot of standup comedy bits on YouTube, and as a result my thoughts drifted to the question of why so few comedians are able to make the jump to film. I'm sure we all know about the Saturday Night Live curse — where movies starring SNL cast members not named…

    jamescambias

  • Ozblogging: Oz the Great and Powerful Review

    I saw Oz: The Great and Powerful earlier this week with my wife and my 10-year-old son. He liked it a lot, we . . . liked it less than he did. Oz: The Great and Powerful isn't a bad movie. It's a perfectly fun children's movie that adults can enjoy. But I'm afraid that…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Where I Do It

    I do most of my writing in coffeeshops. Fortunately, I live in an area with a good assortment of places. In Greenfield I can go to Greenfield Coffee, which is a dedicated coffeehouse so I don't have to feel guilty about occupying a table during lunchtime. The chief drawback is that the town of Greenfield…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 5

    Beyond the Tottenhot village the team enters some rocky mountains, and immediately start seeing warning signs: "LOOK OUT FOR YOOP" and "BEWARE THE CAPTIVE YOOP." Eventually they come to a huge cage carved into a cliff, in which is imprisoned the ferocious giant  Mr. Yoop. Yoop is fierce and hungry, and longs to eat up…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 4

    Our heroes have a couple of random encounters on their way out of Munchkin country — a weird spacetime distortion, a giant porcupine, and an illusionary wall — but with the help of the Shaggy Man they get past all of them. As in Road to Oz, these sequences strongly suggest that Baum was thinking…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 3

    We have a chapter of blatant filler in which the travelers seek advice from a Foolish Owl and a Wise Donkey. The Wise Donkey is apparently an immigrant from one of Baum's other books, and provides the opportunity for some wordplay while the Owl recites nonsense verse. I haven't seen anyone try to claim that…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 2

    The three heroic questers set off searching for the plot coupons, and discover a problem which the Crooked Magician really should have thought of: none of them has the faintest idea where they're going. Ojo has lived his entire life in a remote cabin in the woods with a man who says about two words…

    jamescambias

    , ,

  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 1

    At the end of his previous novel, The Emerald City of Oz, L. Frank Baum brought the series to what he thought was its end. Threatened by the possibility of discovery by aeronauts, the kingdom of Oz had been cut off from the rest of the world by a powerful magic spell, and there could…

    jamescambias

  • Gamemaster Appeal

    There are any number of books and Web sites providing aspiring roleplaying game referees with hints on how to make a campaign appealing to players. The best is probably Robin's Laws, even though the author had to overcome being Canadian.  But just recently I was jotting down some ideas for campaigns I'd like to run,…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Five Stories That Changed Everything: My Picks

    A bit more than a week ago I drove to Boston in order to attend the venerable Boskone convention, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. As always, I spent a lot of my time either being on panels discussing things, or watching other people on panels discussing things. This year one of the most…

    jamescambias

    , ,

The Worldbuilding Index