Theatre: Holiday Mood

 Snowed In (Again) by Corinne Park Buffelen, Music composed by David Taylor Gomes, Directed by Kelly Kitchens. Arts West through December 22.

Ah, with the first windstorm shaking the last leaves off the broadleaf maples and causing widespread power outages, the first holiday play of the season is now upon us, and just before Thanksgiving as well. Last year Arts West put together a revue centered around four actors (and a pianist) going to a cabin in the mountains to work on a Christmas Show and getting ... snowed in.

It was fun. And so we do it again this year. New cast, similar cabin, tasked with putting together a SEQUEL to the previous show. So we get a mixture of songs from the previous year ("Bonita the Sexiest Christmas Elf") with a few newcomers (Grampus" - a wonderful paen to family holiday gatherings with that Grinchic patriarch), along with interstitial material dealing with family traditions and paralyzing deadline pressure. And Olive (the Other Reindeer) makes a return as well.

And the cast is in fine voice and high spirits -  Lauren Drake, Ays Garcia, Alexander Kilian, and Brandon Reil as the "new kids" ensemble, Aaron Jin on the keyboard. And they are excellent, though competing with Sarah Russell's rendition of "I'm Happy Being Hosted" is a tough lift. That's one of the challenges of doing a sequel - comparison with the original flavor.  And the choreography was sharp and in places hilarious.  .This year's version had less nods to Seattle and more to the season, which is cool as well.

A nit? Sure, but just one. The blocking and set design had a seat for the actors directly in front us in the front row, so I had a case of looking at the back of the actor's heads. And butts. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And it was amusing to see Alexander Killan curled up in a fetal position from the sudden stress of creating an all-new show with the old material. So there's that.

The humor is broad, the actors are spirited, the feelings are grounded. No heavy stakes, no character arcs, no (major) lessons learned. It is very much a Holiday Revue, put together with heart and soul. Yeah, it was fun and a great way to enter the holiday season.

More later,

Bomb Cyclone

 So, I'm writing this from a friend's house, about 15 minutes south of Grubb Street. Because Grubb Street is currently without Internet. 

You may have heard that the Puget Sound was hit recently by a "Bomb Cyclone", which is a scary term and in real life is no picnic either. A Bomb Cyclone is a tropical depression that develops quickly (The Bomb part) over the ocean, creating high winds (The Cyclone) along its periphery. It is not a hurricane, though it can have hurricane-force winds. 

And what it does is pull in air from the surrounding area to power those winds. And in the Seattle area, this means that said winds get pulled through the mountain passes to the east of us. The passes are currently closing due to snowfall already, but the winds get HOV access. These winds get concentrated by the passes before blasting into the more settled foothills. 

And that's why its a bad thing for those living in the foothills. Whenever we get a bad windstorm, it's because the winds are coming out of the east, being pulled through the mountains. That's the case here.

Power went out at the height of the storm and stayed out for about 9 hours. The Lovely Bride had years ago (after the last outage) purchased a large cinder-block-sized battery and so got to hook up her CPAP machine there. I did not, and didn't want to take the chance of draining her battery too much. But we had some level of preparation. And we still had land-lines phones, functional cell phones, a gas stove in the bedroom and a gas stovetop in the kitchen. So we were not knocked down to "Little House on the Prairie" status. But a lot of folk (like, hundreds of thousands) lost power and a lot of them still don't have it restored, particularly in the valleys leading down from those windswept passes. 

Anyway, nine hours. Good work on the recovery from Puget Sound Energy. Our neighbors are on another line, and they are still out, but have an extension cord long enough to plug into our socket near the back yard, so their freezer is still running. 

But also, as the storm passed through, a large branch from one of the firs out front came down and neatly severed our Internet cable. So even when power got restored, we still were without Internet. So we called Comcast, and they sent out a guy. Guy shows up and explains that the area still does not have Internet service at large (something about a nearby Node being out), and until they repair the Node, they can't re-hook up the house. Something tells me that the "Node" may be on the same line as our unfortunate neighbors, so we'll have to wait until power comes back up for them, and then they can fix the node. And THEN they can come back an hook up the house again. 

No, Comcast has no idea when all this is going to happen. The guy's suggestion was to keep calling in to complain. Yay.

Anyway, we are Internet-less for the immediate future. A road crew from Kent came by the morning after the storm and cut up the fallen branch and hauled it away (just as I was coming out of the garage with a handsaw in hand and my face set with grim determination). So, good work Kent Road Crew.  And Wednesday morning consisted of cleaning up the mid-sized branches. Thursday is when we got the bad news that Comcast was neither as cool as Puget Sound Energy or the Kent Road Crew. And by Thursday afternoon I was already looking for a way to get back online.

Yahsee, my current gig (Senior Writer for Elder Scrolls Online - I don't know if I mentioned that), requires I get online to communicate with coworkers and put things into the engine. So no connectivity, no work. It was a forced vacation, and while I still had some PTO left for the year, I was planning on spending it elsewhere. And after two days of quietly reading in a warming waterbed, I was pretty much chomping at the bit to get back to it. 

So, I made some phone calls. Some friends were still without power at that point, but one had both power and connectivity, and I hauled my desktop down to his place and set up on his usually-unused dining room table. And then had to get a "wifi usb dongle" to hook everything up to the friend's Internet (at home I use a long Ethernet cable plugged directly into the router). But now I am back in business, such as it goes, for the foreseeable future. Just in time to lay down my tools for Thanksgiving.

I will update this when/if we get to the stage where I return to my former haunts. In the meantime, I am in a bit of exile here. But at least I can contact the outside world again.

More later, 

[The Updates: On Saturday our neighbors got their power and Internet back. Comcast's website said they could get to us by Wednesday. The Lovely Bride called them and got an appointment for the next day. Sunday morning a young man came out on his lonesome and hooked us back up. Good work, young man!]

Recent Arrivals: GameholeCon Swag

 So a few weeks back I wrapped up my final gaming convention of the year, Gamehole Con, in Madison, Wisconsin. I usually do only one or two conventions a year, but with the 50th anniversary of D&D, I ended up at five of them. For me, that's a lot of travel.

Oh, the name? Well, Gamehole Con is run by an attorney named Alex Kammer. He also owns a restaurant in Middleton called the Free House, built into a historic building. The stairs to the second floor were too steep to use for a restaurant, so it became his gaming group's hang-out - the Game Hole. In it Alex has collected a huge amount of old gaming material, including the original TSR Forgotten Realms map. And he oversees Gamehole Con, which has been in the Alliant Energy Center to the south of the city. It's a really good convention, incredibly well-run. High marks all around.

And one of the things I like about going to conventions is seeing what is out there as far as new games are concerned. While our local game stores are good, they don't always carry the depth and variety I see at conventions, in particular from small publishers. So I tend to go indulge in a bit of shopping therapy. Plus, you're often buying from the publisher and sometimes from the creator, so that's nice. 

Not everything here is from the convention. one is a local purchase and one from a kickstarter. But the bulk are from the convention, so let us start with those:

Gamehole Con swag: Program Book and a Rust Monster Plushie  The program book is a spartan and effective twenty pager, with ads from the supporting sponsors, maps of the site, policies, and a list of exhibitors and guests (no bios, which is fine).. The events themselves are online with QR Code, which creates a nice versatility (the site itself is very searchable as well). The plushie is a standard for GHC as well, and a freebie to guests (I still have the Mimic from several years ago). The traditional Monster Manual rust monster is this year's plushie. The Lovely Bride has already named him Palladium. 

[Note from the distant past - when the Rust Monster first appeared in D&D, there was no illo to go with it, so, since it showed up with various oozes, I assumed it was a pile of rust with Cookie Monster googley eyes. We didn't hear about the plastic toy until later.]

Wardens of the Eastern Marches, Alex Kammer with Josh Hoyt and Jason Knutson, Gamehole Publishing, 28 page saddle-stitched digest, 2024. Gamehole Publishing (Yes, connected with the Gamehole con) is launching its own organized play at the convention, and this was a free giveaway. The Eastern Marches are the setting for a bunch of adventures they've published over the years (see next entry). This tidy little booklet gives an overview of the world, as well as the basic ground rules for their organized play. All the information in the book can be found here, but it's nice to have a hard copy.

The Brain Gorger's Appetite by Alex Kammer,  Gamehole Publishing, 40-page softbound, 2016, GHC Purchase. Into the Deep Dark by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 46-page softbound, 2017, GHC Purchase, Trillium, City of Enchantment by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 62-page softbound, GHC Purchase,  2018 All three of these were published over the years by Gamehole Publishing, and sold at the convention. I meant to pick them up last time I was there, and finally did so this time. The three adventures are part of a larger arc, set in what is now the Eastern Marches (see above), and involve a mind flayer brain gorger named Marlipp. The trilogy starts in the small town of Okney's Hold, journeys into the Underdark Deep Dark, and ends up in the faction-ridden city of Trillium. It's old-school adventures wired up for 5E action. 

Lands of Runequest: Dragon Pass by Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford, and Jason Durall, 190-page hardback, GHC Purchase, Runequest doesn't get as much coverage out here in the local hobby stores, so I'm always glad to see it at conventions. Dragon Pass has its roots Waaaay back in the White Bear, Red Moon board game, and it is a highly diverse chunk of land at the crossroads of Glorantha. Lottsa sentient creatures, factions, and politics rolling around. Dragon Pass probably has the greatest weirdness-per-acre of any location in Glorantha. Nice to see the update.

No Time to Scream by B.W. Holland, Bridgett Jeffries with C.L.Werner  Chaosium, 104-page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase, Call of Cthulhu shows up in the local stores more often, but hey, I was there at the convention booth and they had a sale. No Time to Scream consists of three straight-forward one night-and-change adventures. Though aimed at novice Keepers/GMs with instructions and advice on how to play, the scenarios work well for pick-up games and (insanely) quiet evenings with more experienced players. Works best with pregens, which are provided and also available as an online download (which makes the assumption that the buyer has access both to a computer and a color printer (having a color printer readily at hand is one of the plus sides of the return-to-office push. That and free pens)).

The Order of the Stone by Jared Twing, Lynne Hardy, and Paul Fricker, Chaosium, 152 page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase. This one feels like an old-school CoC scenario - three chapters, ancient cult, entrapped eldritch god, world-ending threat, hiking distance from Arkham. At first glance, it looks pretty good, with a collection of Lovecraftian set-pieces - ghost ship, small port town, rural wilderness. It's really good to see Chaosium do new old-style adventures in addition to updating the classics for the new system. Player handouts available online, which still has the challenge of No Time to Scream.

Seeds of Decay by Darryl T. Jones, Splattered Ink Games, 436-page hardbound, 2004, Gift of the Author. A big adventure about tiny heroes. The Dobbers are a diminutive people living in the Alwaysgreen Forest, threatened by an eldritch evil that is spreading like rot. Set up specifically for Dobbers and other tiny-size creatures, its two parts cozy game and two parts heroic horror. This is the deluxe edition (gold-foil on the cover). The author is also the artist, so it is a very good-looking product. The hat on top of it is for an upcoming product A Time-Traveler's Guide to Dinosaur Hunting. Nice hat. 

Mazes by Chris O'Neill, 9th Level Games, 240-page hardbound digest, 2022, GHC Purchase. I mentioned Sentai and Sensibility in an earlier write-up, and I found the core mechanic (a single type of die tied to each character class) intriguing, but buried beneath a pile of setting-specific verbage. So when I discovered the system this was based on at GameHoleCon, I had to buy it. This is a revised edition, and is based on the original fantasy version of the game. It is much deeper than Sentai, and uses a number of interesting new systems. I'm currently digging through it. Its presentation is excellent, and it feels like a solid game. 

Scurvy Buggers by Irene Zelinski, 9th level games, 76-page softbound digest, 2024 GHC purchase from designer. I got this from the designer at the Con, and we chatted. This was a pirate (I'm sorry - PYRATE) version of the game system, and it may be that I was already reading the Mazes game, but the rules went down a lot smoother for me than for Sentai and Sensibility. This is very much Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death with genderfluid pyrates. Zelinski expands the one-type-of-dice per class mechanic to include ship types as well. Neat idea. 

Dead Man's Cove, by Tyler and Luke Stratton, Limithron, 1-page folder scenario, GHC Purchase, Buried in the Bahamas, by Luke Stratton, 22-page saddle-stitched digest, The Sinking of the Cthgan, Limithron, 8panel fold-out scenario, all GHC Purchases. It may occur to many readers that I am a sucker for pirates. Pirate Borg was a definitely superior evolution of the Mork Borg system, reshaped to fit the curves of the golden age of piracy. I have these in pdf from the kickstarter, but I really wanted to get hard copy as well. They are radically different in approach, and reflect very much a "maker" culture of craft where the presentation formats are elastic. I think I can keep them with my core book, which is a challenge when you have so many different physical approaches to the supplements. 

The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett, Del Rey, 592-page trade paperback, gift from the author. I met Peter doing a livestream dungeon adventure on Saturday night, and he gave me a copy of the book. Imagine a world where demons show up every night in a twisted version of the initial day of a Minecraft game. The only thing that keeps them at bay are magical wards, and humanity sort of lies low behind its magical walls in the darkness. The Warded Man is the guy who manages to incorporate and utilized the wards, challenging the demons on their own ground. Yeah, this goes on my TBR pile. 

Shadow of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment, 288-page hardbound and Secrets of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment LLC, 296-page hardbound, 2024 Kickstarter. About ten years ago, Rob Schwalb wrote the very excellent Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is an update to the system and a new world for that system. Demon Lord was very grimdark, while Weird Wizard is much more in the heroic mode - still a deadly world, but not a doomed one. Call it Greydark? Without too much digging (and yes, it rewards digging), it advances the design of Demon Lord just as Demon Lord advanced the design of D&D Third and Fourth Edition (and in a case of ironies, Demon Lord showed up around the same time as 5th edition, and Weird Wizard showed up with D24 (Yes, I'm still trying to make that a thing). Secrets is both the campaign setting and monster book, and takes the entire system out for a spin. The thing I can dun them for is that the tables use a light grey typeface that is hard on these old eyes. But a lot is going on here, and I'm going to be spending some time with it.

Godzilla The Encyclopedia by Shinji Nishiakawa, Titan Books, 216-page softbound, purchased at Midgard Comics. I bought of copy of this a while back, gave it to a friend who is a BIG Godzilla fan (we plowed through most of his DVDs from the Showa to Millennium era), then went back and bought a copy for myself. Titan is known primarily for their comic book collections, but this one started as a series of articles and just expanded from there. It's write-up of almost every monster in the Godzilla films, and every version of Godzilla, Missing are those that had an original version elsewhere (Rodan is there, but only appears here for when he first fought Godzilla), and the American versions. The writeups are two-page spreads, beautifully illustrated, that cover both in-world facts as well as design discussions of how the various Godzillas changed over the years. This is an incredibly excellent book if you're a Godzilla/Kaiju fan.

That wraps it for now. And more things have shown up while I was putting this together, but for the moment, more later. 

The Political Desk: Final Edition

 I usually wait for a few days for the dust to settle, but the vote margins most of these races are pretty decisive. Let's take a look

Yes to Initiative Measure No. 2066 - Protect the natural gas industry This is tight, and usually late ballots skew to the left. However, it has been pretty stable for the past few days. 

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2109 - Repeal the capital gains tax.

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2117 - Destroying carbon tax credits.

NO to Initiative Measure No 2124 - Bankrupt the state-run long-term care insurance.

President - Donny Trump and JD Vance. Hey, color me surprised.  For what its worth, Washington State generally pummeled the heck outta the GOP - it looks like none of his minions got close to the levers of power on this side of the state.

US Senator - Maria Cantwell

US Representative Congressional District No. 9 - Adam Smith

Governor - Bob Ferguson

Lieutenant Governor - Denny Heck

Secretary of State - Steve Hobbs

State Treasurer - Mike Pellicciotti

Attorney General - Nick Brown

Commissioner of Public Lands - Dave Upthegrove

Superintendent of Public Instruction - Chris Reykdal

Insurance Commissioner - Patty Kuderer

Legislative District No 11 State Senator -  Bob Hasegawa

Legislative District No 11State Representative Position 1  - David Hackney

Legislative District No 11 State Representative Position 2 - Steve Berquist

State Supreme Court Justice Position 2 - Sal Mungia  The other tight one, but the late ballots had it for Sal.

Superior Court Judge Position No 41 - Paul Crisalli

Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Capital Projects and Technology Levy - Yes, much to my surprise. This one is razor-thin, and could flip back as we move to fruition. 

Final thoughts before we cover the Political Desk with a tarp for the winter? Well, Washington State did a fine job protecting itself from Washington DC. And if the new/old administration does half the things that they promised to do, there's going to be a lot of buyer's regret for the rest of the country. But that's the nature of democracy (see Brexit). In the land of Ivar's, we'll keep clam and carry on.

More, as always, later. 

Theatre: In Rep We Trust

 Primary Trust by Eboni Booth Directed by Kaytlin McIntyre, Seattle REP, through November 24th

OK, after By the Skin Of Our Teeth, I was looking at redemption here. Not to bash on the Thornton Wilder play TOO much, but even the best reviews touted the actors and the stage settings, and not a one called out Thornton's words to praise (the general consensus was "Allegory!"). So I stand by my previous review, and looked at the Rep to pull out of a middling first showing.

And they did so. Primary Trust is a perfect little play, well acted and directed, and is the first play in a long time that made me say "Wow, I wish I had written that". Its a Pulitzer winner, which usually leaves me cautious, but it is really, really good.

Here's the summary - Kenneth (Stephen Tyrone Williams) is a lonely man. He works in a used book store. He drinks and eats dinner at a local Tiki bar. He doesn't have any close friends, except maybe Bert (Andrew Lee Creech). And Bert has his own challenges (no, I'm not going to do spoilers on this one. I go into these plays mostly blind, and I have no idea if I would have reacted differently if I knew what was going on before). Anyway, Kenneth is trapped in the routines of his life, and the story is how he gets untrapped.

And that's about all there is to it. It is a real simple, sweet story. And it is so well-written and well-presented.

Let me rave on the actors for the moment - Stephen Tyrone Williams is a kind, endearing Kenneth. He's well-intentioned and introverted and uncomfortable and a little broken and scared of the world around him. Williams has previously been in Rep productions - August Wilson's Fences and the Piano Lesson,  He captures the chaotic internal voice of Kenneth, turning on a dime from budding confidence to overwhelming panic attacks and back again, pulling the audience along. He's just really good in this role. 

Allyson Lee Brown matches him step for step as a cascade of waitstaff at Wally's Tiki Bar, a flood of customers that the bank that hires Kenneth (The Primary Trust of the title) and one waiter that helps Kenneth break out. She has the improv skill of morphing characters one after another, literally filling the town of Cranberry, New York. Andrew Lee Creech is Bert, Kenneth's only mental support network, and captures that nature of the bud who is always there for him. Rob Burgess is excellent both as the owner of the bookstore, and later as the bank manager, each with their own quirks. And Justin ("Lizard Boy") Huertas rounds out the cast ambient music throughout. 

This is a good cast, and hits that point I like to make about Repertory companies, that you get to know the actors, not just the characters they portray.  And they have good material to work with.

Eboni Booth is an incredible naturalist writer, and her characters emerge through their dialogue. The interrupt, they fill in each other sentences, they apologize, and they talk about nothing in an amazing realistic sense. She uses repetition to her advantage to show passage of time ("Welcome to Wally's!") and the nature of the community the play is set in (just about everyone says "Pardon My French" at least once). And the actors are up for it, their portrayals feel like real conversations. 

The Lovely Bride pointed out that all the characters were nice. And she's right, All of them. There is no bad guy in this play, except for Kenneth's own crippling insecurities and blocks. And we find out why Kenneth is broken, and not only the WHAT of Bert but the WHY of Bert as well.

The stagecraft was great and not intrusive onto the action itself, scenery floating in and out. The main set is a sort of "Our Town" street, but it becomes Wally's, the bank, a snooty restaurant, a street, and it does so without poking too hard at the reality of the play itself. No big puppets needed. 

This one falls into the "Go see" category, a pleasant way to spend the darkening, rainy afternoons and evenings. And sweet. Really sweet.

More later,.