The Political Desk: The Replacements

 OK, on the local ballot there are only six things, so let's try to do them in one swell foop. The bulk of these are replacements - open positions due to the office-previous holder moving on.

King County Proposition No. 1 Parks, Recreation, Trails, and Open Space Levy. I like parks. You like parks. The Stranger and the Times like parks. No one has even submitted an argument against it. This is a replacement of existing levy on property taxes to maintain parks. Sure. Go with Approved.

King County Executive Long-term King County Exec Dow Constantine has stepped down to oversee Sound Transit, so this is an open slot without an incumbent.  The two front running candidates in the run are former Bellevue Mayor Claudia Balducci and Grimay Zhailay, of the King County Council, Both are impressive, both have endorsements, and both are on the progressive side of the spectrum. The candidate that is the better centrist moderate was John Wilson, who ran into legal trouble from stalking his ex-wife and has dropped out following his arrest. The rest include Amiya Ingram, an independent who writes a damned poetic Voters' Guide, Bill Hirt, a perennial who runs to point out the flaws in Sound Transit, Rebecca Williamson who tacks down the Socialist end of the spectrum, and Don L. Rivers, who is humbled to put forward his candidacy. There is also a gosh-honest endorsed Republican, Derek Chartrand, who wants to know why King County is wasting money when it could just build more jails.

I'd love to see a face-off between Claudia Balducci, who has the experience, and Grimay Zhailay, who is the new young hotness, but for the primary, I am going for Claudia Balducci,  

King County Council District 5. King County District 5 is squarish lump of real estate that encompasses Renton, Kent, Seatac, Normandy Park, Des Moines and the southern part of Tukwilla. This is another replacement election, in that previous councilperson Dave Upthegrove left to become State Commissioner of Public Lands. And the roster is very strong with individuals with backgrounds in unions, local politics, and NGOs. That's the good stuff.

The bad stuff is ... well, there's an elephant in the room. A real political elephant. Steffanie Fain, is married to Joe Fain, a former Republican State Rep who stepped down after a rape accusation (after stepping down, they stopped the investigation, which is maddening - so we don't know what happened). The Times ignored the situation in their endorsement. The Stranger touched base on it briefly, then decided to endorse someone else. Ms. Fain packs a lot of heavy hitters in the Moderate/Liberal part of Democrat spectrum as far as endorsements. I literally don't know enough to give a firm opinion on all this. here, but I need to put it on the record.

Of the rest, I look at their Voter's Guide and what I can dig up. Angela Henderson has a strong union backing. Ryan McIrvin is a Renton Councilmember, as was Kim Khanh Van. Peter Kwon was one for SeaTac. All have a pretty respectable amount of accomplishments and endorsements. Ahmad Corner comes out the grassroots side of the equation, and stakes his claim on affordability and safety. This is a hard call, even at the primary level, but I'm going to suggest Ryan McIrvin.

City of Kent Position No. 6 OK, now we are getting into the weeds. Most of the urban blogs and magazines don't get this far south, so we're pretty much relying on what gets said in the Voters' Pamphlet and on their web sites (and yes, I am judging you on your web skills). All was to make Kent safe, happy, and affordable. I'm looking out primarily for red flags and dog whistles. But, if you tend towards the Progressive end of our spectrum, check out the Progressive Voters Guide, where you can dial down to the School District level. It's actually kinda impressive. 

Anyway, City of Kent Position No. 6.  At this level, everyone is an amateur. And that's great. Some have some experience under their belts. Some are small businessfolk as their day job. Some have been living in Kent all their lives. Some are first-generation citizens, their parents having come to one of the most diverse towns in Washington State. And that's where the goo-goo part of my civics goes out to them (Goo-goo is a Chicago term, usually used disparately, for "good-government"). Sharn Shoker is an extremely strong candidate, but for the primary I'm going to suggest you look at School Board Director Andy Song. 

Kent School District No. 415 Director District No.4 This is the trailing end of the ballot, where no one but the Lovely Bride and a few friends will be paying attention. And we actually have someone running who is an incumbent! Well, kinda. Teresa Gregory was put into the position to replace Awale Farah. for just a little while. But, so far so good, so yeah, let's keep her. 

Kent School District No 415 Director District No. 5 is a choice between two Lauras - Laura Williams and Laura Jensen. I hope both of them will be on the November ballot, just for the confusion factor. I'd go with Laura Williams, but that's just me.

OK, that's it. We can now return you to your regularly-scheduled theater, book, and game reviews. 

More later, 

The Political Desk: A Small Primary

Yard signs have sprouted. The sage editorial boards have delivered endorsements. The ballots have arrived. The Primary season is upon us. And let me rant a bit before getting to the meat of the situation.

It's short ballot this year, with only six items on the Grubb Street version, and half of those are dealing with my community of Kent. I buck the current movement of trying to shove all the elections into an even-year cadence. I do this for two reasons. The first is that if you put EVERYTHING on the ballot, there is an informational overload, which reduces the number of people who actually want to vote (I vote regardless, but I understand that people can look at a slew of names and let out an exhausted sigh). Secondly, and more importantly, I prefer to turn the boat slowly. Which is to say, if we go the wrong way, we can course-correct as opposed to lurching back and fourth between political poles. 

Also, I've described my politics as being "Politely Left of Center", which has served me well for the past 25+ years. Though I've described myself to pollsters as an Independent, I lean heavily Democrat, particularly in my time in Wisconsin and Washington State. I've supported Republicans in the past, but usually in non-partisan positions where they aren't obligated to line up with their crazier partners. I'm sure that the local leadership on the Kent City Council includes Reps, but to be honest, they've done a good job, they've stayed away from the crazy, and that's really what I care about.

Currently the Democrats are still a big-tent operation, which means it swarms with factions and arguments. That's cool - that's sort of the way Democracy is supposed to work. But I can put them into four major groups.

 Moderates, also called Centrists. They pitch themselves as the safe, sensible, responsible people. Big business should be encouraged, even pampered. Will not march, but claim to reflect the wants of most people in their districts. Are concerned that conservatives will consider them too liberal. Aware about infrastructure. 

Liberals. They want change, but are good with making it incremental. Slow change is still change. Patient. Unionist. Thoughtful, with can sometimes seem inert. Big Business should be carefully guided to do the right thing. Will march if they have to. Worry about infrastructure.

Progressives. Get things done. Movement is good, even if there are unintended consequences. Will march and protest to show that there are a lot of folk that agree with them. Corporations should be watched and kept on a short leash to keep them from screwing up. Want to rebuild infrastructure

Leftists, often called Socialists, though the term is often used by the conservatives for anyone more liberal than Barry Goldwater. Will march, will get loud, will throw things. Corporations should be burned to the ground. We need to reset everything to redress years of injustice.

I'd put myself down on this spectrum as on the Liberal/Progressive line - in favor of change, but willing to be thoughtful about it. Good with regulation, but let's playtest it. Most of the fights in our chunk of the PNW are between the Moderate and Liberal wings of the parties. Seattle itself (which I can't vote in) has been in the hands of the moderates recently, who have been doing safe, moderate things, like more money for police and cameras, shorter hours for beaches and libraries, supporting landlords, putting electronic billboards on sidewalks, and trying to reduce ethical requirements for their positions. On the other hand, cars are no longer pushing through pedestrians on the cobble-stone street at Pike Place, so ... yay?

I suppose I should address the current Republican factions as well, even though they are a rare breed in Metropolitan King County. Here's an analogy, though  Take a plate, stand over a concrete sidewalk, hold the plate at an arm's length, and let go. 

It used to be that the GOP was pretty monolithic, but now its riven with all different flavors of conservative; Neo, Theo, Paleo, Tech-Bro, Isolationist, Anarcho, Maga, and Original Flavor Conservative (though a lot of those have drifted over to become Moderate Dems). They expect the other factions to line up with them, they have a deep dislike of each other, and a hatred of Dems of any stripe trying to make things better.

OK, enough of a rant. If I go on I'd have to post this on Twitter. Lemme tag you in on the other folk reporting in.

The very-valuable official King County Voter's Guide is here. The Seattle Times, representing the Moderate Wing, and their recommendations are here. The Stranger is under new management and tends to the Liberal/Progressive side with less snide remarks and can be found here (TLDR Cheat Sheet here). The Progressive Voter's Guide is, duh, progressive, but handles a lot of areas that the Times and Stranger miss. The Urbanist's Endorsements are here. KUOW discusses the candidates without coming right out and making recommendations here. But as always, check out your sources. Don't just take my word for it.

And then we move on. More later,

Recent Arrivals: A Calm Before the Storm

The recent arrivals at Grubb Street ...

So things have been trickling into Grubb Street for the past few months - gifts from friends, kickstarters fulfilling, and the odd store pickup. But I want to gather them all in one place because the Washington State Primary primary ballots have arrived and I feel obligated to slog through this off-off-year election.  So here we go with the fun stuff first. 

The Sassoon Files 2nd Edition by Jason Sheets, Damon Lang, Andrew Montgomery, and Jesse Covner, Sons of the Singularity 272 page hardbound, 2025. Kickstarter. This is the 2nd Edition, and I should note that the 1st edition had problems seeing print since doing a project about pre-communist China hit some push-back from printing in China. The setting is Shanghai, which is touched on all-too-briefly in the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep and gets a deeper look in The Nyarlathotep Companion. I was the Keeper on a long-running Masks campaign (Which I may someday bore the heck of everyone here by talking about it - unsurprisingly, I have things to say).

But anyway ...

Sassoon Files is really good, and attempts to capture the flavor of Shanghai in the pre-war era. It is at the time where the city is overseen by a bunch of Western powers that broke it up into rival fiefdoms, have native Chinese movements verging on a split between Communists and Nationalists in the wake of the death of Sun Yat-Sen, has a collection of local criminal organizations of varying levels of control, and is in general being a hub of intrigue and adventure in a historical sense. And add new mythos cults, deep ones, ancient mystic relics elevates the entire setting. On the down side, the timing of the adventures overlap with each other and with Masks, so the Keeper may have to do some re-orging to run everything, and while the players can throw in with gangsters or the communists, they always tend to come back to dealing with Victor Sassoon, a wealthy bon vivant with a eye towards protecting the city from Mythos threats. Hence the title.

Daggerheart Core Set by Spenser Stark et. al, Darrington Press, 266-page hardbound, boxed set of 280 cards, 2025, Midgard Comics and Games. This is the most recent of the declared "D&D-Killers" I've encountered over the years, and has an excellent pedigree with the Critical Role folk. The book is colorful, well-organized, and hits all the beats of traditional RPGs, though it adheres to the more free-form Powered by the Apocalypse/Blades in the Dark style of play (I have opinions, but that will wait for another day as well). I'm not sold on the plethora of cards that came with the rules, but that may just from previous experiences, and I'll see how well they fit into the game. So this one is under investigation. I got this from my local friendly comic shop, which has a small section of RPGs and discovered that customers were amazed they had it, since it had sold out in more traditional gaming venues. 

The Excellent Prismatic Spray Volume 1, Issue 2, 72-page squarebound, Pelgrane Press, 2001, from the collection of John Rateliff. John (known the blogosphere as Sacnoth) has been clearing out his collection, mostly on Ebay with the aid of Bill Webb, but occasionally something offers something up to the rest of the gang. This is the 'zine for The Dying Earth RPG, which is in the category of "Great RPGs I've read but will probably never play" - the gaming version of tsunduko. The game and 'zine both emulate the flowery, ornate, robust, superfluous language of Jack Vance's books perfectly, and to be frank, the game deserves to be featured in those podcasts where they talk about games that are no longer published. In addition, this particular volume contains a four-page essay by Gary Gygax on "Jack Vance & the D&D Game".

Curse of Candlelight Manor, by Heidi and Erik Gygax-Garland,  32-page self-covered digest booklet, 2023, Gaxland  Pooduction,  Shadows over Lake Geneva, A Sanguine Horror by Heidi and Erik Gygax-Garland, 32-page saddle-stitched booklet, 2023, both also from the collection of John Rateliff. Heidi is Gary Gygax's daughter, and she and her husband are continuing the family tradition. Curse is a wonderful, short, old-school style adventure written for 5E, and set in a haunted house. Sanguine is usable for both 1E and 5E, and is a modern adventure set in Lake Geneva of 1948, dealing with the old Oak Hill Sanitarium, which is one the site of now Colonial View Condos where I lived in the early 80s. I am really curious if the maps provided are based on the original Sanitarium. Both are volume 2s in a series, so I'm going to have to pick up the first volumes the next time I am at GaryCon.

Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games by Fred Van Lente, Tom Fowler, and Bill Crabtree, 112-page hardbound, Clover Press, 2025, Kickstarter. Fred Van Lente has done one of my favorite comic book series, Action Philosophers, so I was very interested in seeing what he did with the more recent history of RPGs. He covers the basics of history (sort of what you'd read in the first Playing at the World, traveling through Chess, miniatures, wargames, and the Braunsteins which birthed modern RPGs, as well as covering the more real-life salacious and scandalous adventures over the years (Dallas Eggbert, the FBI raid on Steve Jackson). But where it excels is when it starts talking about other, non-D&D RPG games, like Call of Cthulhu, West End's Star Wars and (ahem) the original Marvel Super Heroes by myself and Steve Winter. Its pretty good, though I have to note that liberties were taken in presentation (Yes, Lake Geneva had a Playboy Resort, No, there were no Playboy Bunnies at the first GenCon (At least in uniform)), and some of the stories are of the "yeah ... kinda", but its an excellent, entertaining look at our hobby and industry.

An Infinity of Ships by by Adam Good and Jamie Peters, Illustrated by Rob Turpin, 152-page digest hardcover, published by STATIONS, 2025, Kickstarter. I love the art and idea behind this one - the ability to create your own spaceships. But not a formulaic "Here is how many credits the astronavigation unit costs", but a more free-form "Here, roll on a huge number of tables and tell me what you and you players can make of it". It is more inspirational than instructive. The ships themselves range from mechanical to organic to beyond, and the AI ranges from simple servants to godlike commanders. The names are out of IMBanks novels.("for example, "This Could Have Been an Email"). It doesn't try the define the universe that these ships operate in, but in covering all types and options (and running light on operating systems), they portray a radically diverse and chaotic galaxy where there are few known constants. Still, worth hacking about with it. The Kickstarter included stickers, bookmarks, and 115 cards to randomly create ships on the fly.

... and one that arrived after I took the photo.

The Old Margrave by Matthew Corley et. al, 256-page hardbound, Kobold Press, 2025, Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide Pocket Edition by Celeste Conowitch et. al. 304-page softbound digest, Kobold Press, Tales of the Valliant Game Master's Map Folio, 6 24" by 36" double-sided maps, gift of the publisher. The Old Margrave is an ancient forest just to the East of Zobeck, the main city of Kobold's Midgard campaign setting. Its a wonderful forest location for adventure, and the book (for 5E and their Tales of the Valiant) has new heritages, lineages, spells, subclasses, and a huge adventure arc set in the forest. Speaking of Tales of the Valiant, the Pocket Edition of the ToV GM's Guide is a digest-sized reprint of the original book, in a handier and portable format. And while my current gaming style (sitting around a living room or online) does not use maps and miniatures, the Map Folio hosts a number of locations (Inn, Gate, Fort, Tower, Villa, Lighthouse) that can be ported into any adventure.

Ticket To Ride Legacy: Legends of the Old West by Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, and Alan Moon, Big box of a boardgame, Days of Wonder, 2023, Gift from Ed Stark, who was out here visiting for a wedding. The original Ticket To Ride has been a go-to game for our game days on Grubb Street, and a source of contention between the Lovely Bride and the mighty Stan! This version is a Legacy game, which means that as you play it, you modify the game materials that will affect future plays. In this case, you start with the Eastern Seaboard, and work west over time, with specialized rules as you add more pieces to the game. And ultimately you have a finished version for replay. Now we just have to find a regular gaming group to meet up with, since our own gaming groups are different and on different days. Ah, the challenges of game players.

And that's it for this round. Now I settle into the more boring stuff about very local politics. Its cool if you find something else to read. I'll understand. 

More Later, 

A Book and a Play: Golf Outing

 The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, William Morrow Paperback Edition, original publication 1923.

Murder on the Links by Steven Dietz,  Directed by Karen Lund, Taproot Theatre, Extended run through 30 August.

So John, who is Sacnoth and Janice, who is the Bride of Sacnoth, invited me to join them in an expedition in the Greenwood neighborhood for this Hercule Poirot mystery in Taproot's renovated main stage. The new/old digs are well-renovated, and the seating, while still tight, has been improved. In preparation for the play, I actually tracked down a copy of the original story at Page 2 books in Burien. It was an interesting search, in that while a lot of my regular haunts had all manner of Agatha Christie novels, they did not have this one. 

Anyway, long story short, I liked the play better than I liked the book. But I'll get to that. Lemme talk about the book first.

The Murder on the Links is the second Poirot novel. Poirot (for those who never got near PBS in their upbringing) is Agatha Christie's Belgian Detective, with his fastidious nature, distinctive moustache, flashing green eyes, and little grey cells that he uses to navigate through the mysteries. I had powered through a number of Poirot short stories, collected in Poirot Investigates, and he has the talent of targeting some small fact that blows up traditional theories about the case. 

Poirot's assistant and narrator of the tales is Captain Hastings, who is Watson to the Belgian Holmes. He is note quite the dullard of Nigel Bruce in the Sherlock Holmes movies of the 40s, but missteps regularly, concludes erroneously, and is often distracted by beautiful women (Poirot is, of course, immune to all feminine wiles).

So, the novel: Poirot and Hastings are summoned to France by a wealthy Brit named Renauld, who fears for his life because of an unstated "great secret". They arrive on the scene to find Renauld has been murdered, his body found in what would become a bunker in an adjoining golf course (this is the only mention of golf in the book). What follows is a torturous route with continual twists and revelations - hidden histories, changed wills, stolen evidence, secret romances, strange coincidences, exploded alibis, multiple confessions, acrobatic twins, another body, and a rival for Poirot in the form of Surete officer (seriously underused). There is a lot going on, stuffing it all into a relatively short novel. All of this is told with the dry, mannered, clockwork style of Christie, which, for all the murder involved, feels very temperate and bloodless. Having read a lot of Christie recently, I can see why Raymond Chandler really hated her work.

So that's the book, and on reading it I saw it would be a great challenge adapting it to the stage. There are a huge number of characters involved in the novel, including all the suspects, witnesses, and detectives. There is a lot of travel, from England to France with Poirot frequently dropping away from the narrative for some secretive mission in Paris or London. The book's plot turns on itself, with blind alleyways and false leads that are later revealed to be pertinent facts. Oh, and Hastings at one point does something lumpishly stupid and obvious that is then ignored by the author for several chapters. How to handle all that?

Well, writer Dietz does a pretty good job of it, and in addition, makes it a comedy.

Now, Christie lends itself well to comedy, particularly with sometimes overblown characters like Poirot. Check out Miss Marples in the 1960s movies, where the prim, elderly villager is overtaken by Dame Margaret Rutherford's more boisterous portrayal. And Dietz and the actors lean into the implausibility of the original text heavily. The accents are heavy, the actions are frenetic, and the lines are overblown. It actually lends a strong sense of fun to proceedings, and is frankly contagious. Dietz allows Hastings to be the narrator, and to fully narrate, piercing the veil between the fictional world and recognizing it as a play. Janice pointed out a similarity with The 39 Steps, and I heard another patron afterwards make the same comment. So yes, we can put his piece in the same wheelhouse as that one, making the original story a metatextual comment on the fact that this is a play. 

More importantly, the huge cast is cut down to a mere six. Nathan Brackett as a woosterish Hastings, Richard Ngyugen Stoniker (or perhaps understudy Mark Emerson - the moustache is that mesmerizing) is a solid Poirot. Everyone else in the play is portrayed by two men (Tyler Todd Kimmel and Jeff Allen Pierce) and two women (Betsy Mugavero and Claire Marx), which leads to situations where quick changes and transformations are required (and sometimes performed comically on-stage). And the players are in on the joke - this is a performance, and as the players move all the props about on the stage and pull together to make it all make some sort of narrative sense.

And as a play, it works so much better than as a novel. The linearity of moving the action forward makes clear the various plot points and revelations. I did not lose the thread. And even Hastings' bumbling in places makes better sense on the stage than it did on the printed page. Also, the play allows Brackett's Hasting to be more of the romantic hero he sees himself as, with his heart on his sleeve and his desire to protect young (and pretty) young women. And it gives Hasting not only a happy ending, but a lead-in to another Poirot mystery as an Easter Egg. Oh, and a scene actually takes place on a golf course.

All in all, it was an enjoyable way to spend and afternoon, and highly recommended. The cast is frantic and positively acrobatic in their portrayals, and leaves the audience exhausted and delighted. Worth seeing.

More later,