The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Although the title (and the basic plotline) make one expect an American Pie-style comedy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a surprisingly smart and clever comedy. Scratch that, a romantic comedy, which doesn’t work on paper, but which is surprisingly sweet and funny (and fairly wise).

A recommended viewing for fans of R-rated romantic comedy, of which this is one of only a small handful.

Battlestar Galactica (miniseries)

Somehow, I expected genocide to be a little more exciting.

Overall, the update to Battlestar Galactica (which I loved as an elementary schooler, even as I knew it wasn’t as good as Star Wars, back before anyone insisted it was actually called A New Hope) works, and works very well. For all the crying about how Dirk Benedict’s Starbuck character has been turned into a woman, it really ends up being a pretty smooth transition, at least in the miniseries. And that’s the way the remake goes overall: Competent, clever, with a few new twists along the way, but not necessarily selling the total package.

There are a few gaps in the storytelling — who dropped a note in the commander’s quarters without anyone spotting them, and how did they know what they knew? — but not any worse than most television series.

The only real knock against the BSG miniseries is how slow-paced it is. For a story telling of mankind being pushed to the edge of extinction in a matter of hours, it sure is casual about it. Other than one small mob (who were presumably waiting around in a field for a spaceship to land nearby) and some radio chatter, there’s nothing to suggest panic or urgency. In a post-9/11 world, we know what people look like when shook up by a major trauma and fear of what comes next, and little of it shows up on the screen.

Still, this is a strong basis for the new television series.

Recommended for curious fans of the original or those looking for an antidote to the strong-jawed optimism of the Star Trek universe.

Banned in Hesperia

Postmus orders library to remove art history book

By BEAU YARBROUGH
Staff Writer

Last Wednesday, First District Supervisor Bill Postmus ordered San Bernardino County libraries to remove a book on the history of Japanese manga comic books that included images of sex.

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Is Peter going on a date?

So, Peter is going to see a concert later this month with a male friend from high school, and his friend (extremely well-off) is paying for the VIP tickets. The tickets are $425 … each.

I’m saying that Peter and his single never-married male friend are going on a date and, with an evening that may well hit $1,000 before the night’s over, he’s going to have to put out.

Am I right?

Game of Life: Pirates of the Caribbean edition

Let’s be honest here: The Game of Life is sort of dorky.

I appreciate the basic concept — playing house in a boardgame context — but even as a child, the notion that you would win the game if you were married, had as many children as possible and as much cash as possible sat poorly with me. Brilliant artists, fulfilled social workers, poor-but-happy people in public service, they all lose the standard Game of Life.

I liked the little cars and 3-D board, though.

But the victory conditions work a lot better for the Disneyland/Disneyworld/Downtown Disney-only version of the game, The Game of Life: Pirates of the Caribbean edition. In it, you sail around a very attractive little board in die-cast metal boats (which do poorly on the sloped 3-D landscape, but that’s not a crippling issue) and acquire a historical captain (who determines how much booty you get whenever you cross a Share the Loot space), a ship (with which you can fight other players’ ships, in a mechanic almost identical to the way D&D works, in an amusing twist) and even one or two mascots (all of whom have some combination of eyepatches, peglegs and hooks for limbs). You acquire gold treasure through the course of the game, but don’t know what you’ve gotten until you reach Treasure Island at the end, where you can end up doubling the value of some pieces of treasure based on which mascots you picked up along the way.

We played it this weekend when Jenn and I visited my parents in Oakland. It was a little slower than it might have been at first because of reading through all the rules. While simple, there are a lot of them. A second run-through, with just Jenn and me, went lightning fast.

The game is a lot of fun, although a mechanic for playing either as a sailor or a deckhand (which my father pointed out is a false split to begin with) seems to be half-finished: There are a ton of benefits for playing as a deckhand, with more money coming in most times a player gets money and having to pay smaller fines at the times when a player has to pay a fine, as well as being able to get the two best captains (one of whom, Edward Teach, was better known as Blackbeard). The benefits to being a sailor: A few fewer spaces to travel to reach Treasure Island. Since we found ourselves picking the longer path to get to Treasure Island on the two times on the board you can choose directions at a fork in the path (the better to get more chances for loot and more chances to attack the other players), this isn’t much of a benefit, either. All I can think is that they meant for there to be more benefits for being a sailor, but they never made them into the final vesion of the game. When we play in future, it’ll be as all sailors, I think.

Although this version of the board is a Disney exclusive, it looks like it’s also a test run for a mass market version of the game: This summer, the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie will be accompanied by new versions of Life and Battleship with flavor taken from the new movie. I suspect, other than the addition of movie art and characters, the Life game will look a lot like the one I’ve got at home today.