#michael malone

Sacramento Kings fired HC Mike Brown by phone as he was driving to the team plane for their flight to Los Angeles to play the Lakers. Doug Christie named interim coach.

I feel blessed that this is the Blair that I dreamed. It’s all there. It’s like, I guess, how people must have felt when they first saw Vivien Leigh do Scarlett O’Hara; every nuance is there: She’s not just a manipulative bitch, she’s not just a neurotic, hurt child, she’s not just an incredibly sexual, powerful, intelligent woman - she’s all of those things at once.

And what amazes me is the subtlety of that range. Kassie can both show you someone trying to hurt Marty, trying to lash out and make somebody feel awful, at the same time that you see in her face why Blair is doing it - her nervousness that Marty understands something about Todd that she doesn’t understand; that Todd admires Marty in some ways that he doesn’t admire her. You can see all that vulnerability and insecurity and that fight-back-any-way-you-can all going on in Kassie’s face at the same time. And she can do everything - from the most powerful kind of drama of someone who lost her baby and lost her husband, to the French farce of the David Vickers/Madeline Helmore plot.

That’s an enormous range for an actress to undertake… and to do it day after day. It’s not as if she has eight weeks to rehearse the comedy or eight weeks to get deeply into the tragedy. Kassie just has to walk on that set and do it - and look gorgeous! She does it all. If she doesn’t get some kind of acknowledgement from the Emmy’s, there’s just no justice in this world!

The eighth basic module is also one which kind of destroys one of the original distinctions between basic and expert D&D. While Basic, geared toward levels 1-3, usually consisted of introductory dungeons, Expert was usually bringing in Wilderness adventures. In fact the rules for adventuring in the wilderness are set out in the Expert set. Therefore it's a little surprising to see a Basic module which revolves around adventuring in the wilderness.

This also makes the module unique, however, which is a good thing because the main plotline is a pretty common one. A powerful wizard hires the party to investigate a mysterious place, the rock of the title, essentially a kind of fetch-quest that will win no prizes for originality, although it is by no means bad.

Another element is more uncommon, there are three possible paths to the titular rock, each with different encounters and rewards making the adventure pretty replayable (at least two more times after the first one, I suppose).