"Of all the fantasy games on all the web sites in all the world ..."

Would that I had posted about this game earlier, some of you may have been able to join in, but alas I've been slow to post here lately. I blame...Blockbuster! Yes, that evil movie rental chain that we all know and loathe so well. You see, earlier this week I went in to rent some movies and found three to my liking.

When I got to the check-out, the guy was like, "You know, you can get five movies and it's the same price."

I blinked. Five movies?! Here I thought I was over-extending myself with three, but they do have 7-day rentals down here...

"Well all right then, thanks. I'll just leave these here and pick another two then."

It took some searching as I really was pretty happy with the three I had chosen. They were The Out-of-Towners, starring Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn and John Cleese (written by Neil Simon, a personal favorite); The Andromeda Strain, starring nobody-you'd-know, based on an excellent Michael Crichton novel that hyped fears we'd all die from strange bacteria from the Moon (released in 1969, just prior to our manned mission to said satellite); and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, starring two of my favorite actors, Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow.

I scoured the sections again but just couldn't find anything in Comedy or New Releases that I hadn't seen or would never see, so I headed back to Sci-Fi. This section was relegated to a sad little corner of the shop, with only three shelves offering a paltry selection. One entire shelf had Star Trek and Star Wars movies, and I do like those, but I've seen them all already. Not too many Kiwis go for the sci-fi, it would seem. The War section always has the good ones checked out, so I went back to Horror, giving Drama a wide berth. Here I found two movies I'd meant to rent at some point but wasn't particularly in the mood for at this point: American Psycho and Insomnia.

I'd heard good things about them, and both films boast solid casts so I knew I was at least going to have a chance of liking these. Plus, Chloe Sevigny (rrrowrr) was in American Psycho. Trouble was, I wasn't really in the mood this week for any movies about psychotic serial killers or small-town murder mysteries. But, I had to honor the "5 for the price of 3" deal the guy was giving me, and anyways I was starting to take too long drifting amongst the stacks of movies in the shop.

So that's why I haven't posted in a week, you see. I've spent ALL of my free time watching these movies. And if you believe that one, I've got this bridge down here for sale you should see ...

But the original intent of this post was to mention the movie game, Fantasy Moguls. It's one of those fantasy league type games wherein you sign up to compete against your friends or the public at large. You draft movies onto your roster based on how well you think they'll do at the box office. This also includes how you think they'll rate with the critics and audiences in general, so it really tests your ability to predict Hollywood's success at the box office, or lack thereof.

I love movies, they're a big hobby of mine, so it's only natural that I'd want to engage myself in a game where I pretend to be a big studio boss and clobber my friends into submission by having the best roster of them all. Mwahahaha!

It's actually a lot of fun and my passion for this thing all started back when E! Channel used to run a great online game called Studio Boss. I played that a total of five times, winning it three times (my league of ten players, that is). While playing that great game (which has long since been discontinued - bastards!), I frequented the message boards there and have made some friends that I keep in touch with to this day. There are about a dozen or so of us ex-Studio Bosses that still congregate on our own message board over on ezboard. Many of us have even met 'in real life' at one time or another, and I myself was fortunate enough to meet several other players once upon a time a few years ago. It was a great time and we'll hopefully all be able to get together again. I remember much drinking and funny stories and after that... more drinking.

In the meantime, we fortunately now have found Fantasy Moguls to keep our movie-picking chops in order and I can't wait to get playing. Sadly, thanks to the huge time zone difference between me here in NZ and my friends back home playing, I won't be able to make the opening draft round tomorrow. I've put my good friend Todd up to the task, even though he's a fellow competitor, but I know he won't let me down. If he can't do it, the game should automatically pick my movies for me, and then I can always trade them around later on.

It doesn't matter anyways, I don't care if I win or lose, it's just fun playing. Oh, stuff that. I want to WIN, dammit!

Sorry again there's not been a post for a week, but I did postpone watching that fifth movie just so I could get on here and write something. You know how much free time those movies can take up.