Recent Arrivals: The Gary Con Cache

 I was a guest last week back at Gary Con, a convention celebrating the life and works of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax. It was held in the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It is one of the best-run, most-fun conventions in gaming. For me it is a chance to game, meet new gamers, and hang out with old friends from TSR. And I pick up some interesting stuff in the process. Only one of the items shown at the right is from a Kickstarter. The rest come from my experiences in beautiful Lake Geneva (hey, it didn't snow this time). Here's what is in the photo:

Echoes from Fomalhaut by Gabor Lux and others, 5 issues, First Hungarian D20 Society, Various page length, 'Zine  digest format, 2018-2022. One of the joys of the Gary Con dealer's area is the Black Blade booth which carries OSR material that doesn't always show up at the local game store, like Dungeoneer 'zines, Judges Guild adventures and Empire of the Petal Throne reprints. I picked up issues #1-3 and issue #10 of Fomalhaut last time out, and really enjoyed them. They have that old-school flair of early D&D 'zines, with a booklet format and separate maps, tucked in a simple paper envelope. This time out I expanded my collection with Echoes from Fomalhaut #s 4, 5, and 8, In The Shadow of the City-God (cool name), and EMDT #100, A Journey to Fomalhaut (opened and shown here). Cool stuff. Thinking about running adventures in Shadowdark using this setting and dungeon (see below).

Various Shadowdark Products by Kelsey Dionne, Arcane Library, saddle-stitched digest-sized booklets, 2023-2025. Shadowdark is the new hotness, an Old School Revival pitching into a New School Revival for FRPGs. I picked up a copy last Gary Con out and was really, really impressed with the simplicity of the game, the new twist they added, and the clean b/w presentation. This time out I picked up a recent versions of their 'zine, Cursed Scroll (64-pages) and latched onto a copy of the adventure Raiders of the Hidden Temple (26-pages) at the dead dog party Sunday night. Looking forward to digging through this, and should mention they are doing a MASSIVE Kickstarter for a campaign setting. 

Secrets of Morocco: Eldritch Explorations in the Ancient Kingdom by William Jones et. al.  Chaosium had a booth at the con, celebrating 50 years of the company (their first project, the White Bear & Red Moon boardgame came out a year after D&D, and introduced everyone to the world of Glorantha that would host Runequest). And they brought some old stock they found in the warehouse. In my case, this worked out well, since I was struggling with The Blessed and the Blasphemous, which was set in Morocco about twenty years later (B&B also caused me to start reading Destination Casablanca, by Meredith Hindley, a rich, well-told history of the region in WWII). History overlaid with the Cthulhu Mythos. Looking forward to reading the Chaosium version.

Runequest Starter Set by Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard, Jason Durall and others, Boxed Set, Chaosium Inc. 2022. I've been impressed with what Chaosium has done with its starter sets such as Pendragon - they are heavy, meaty, affordable introductions to the game. This one is packed with four booklets (rules, campaign setting, solo adventure, adventure), character sheets, maps, and polyhedral dice. Runequest is a complex game set in a complex world, and this set pushes to make it accessible to newcomers.  

Wildspace Magazine issue #2 Elves of the Stars and #3 Groundlings' Guide to Spelljammer, Various authors, David Shepheard, Editor, Published by The Piazza, 2024. I'm delighted that people are still enthusiastically playing and expanding the original Spelljammer campaign setting. Last year I was presented with issue one, and this year with Pdf printouts of issues two and three. Issue two concentrates on the elves in the Spelljammer universe, which are pretty much the British Navy. Issue three is an excellent collection of articles on introducing Spelljammer to your groundling characters. These are free, well-done fanzines, clearly labors of love. Terry Hawkins, who gave me the copies, also gave me a draft copy of his adventure Race Across the Stars, a Spelljammer space race through a slew of Wildspace locations. As an aside, he's looking for someone to publish it. 

These mugs with those mugs

Game Lizard Mug. The first night before the convention officially started, colleague Ed Stark arranged a dinner at the Chophouse, which is the resort's upscale restaurant. Picture is to the left, and you may recognize some of the folk gathered around the table. Ed also invite Mark Jeranek, of the Order of the Owls, who run a large group  of fans continually through the convention. And Mark in turn brought some mugs he created, which are beautiful and have the original Greg Bell game lizard from TSR's early product on them (with permission of the artist). Really nice!

Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 200 ml. I'll be frank, I'm of mixed emotions about people giving gifts to the Dungeon Master. I mean, you paid to come to the convention and came all this way, you don't have to toss a coin to the GM. That said, I will not turn down a kindness from fans, and a small bottle of whiskey is greatly appreciated when I get back to rainy Seattle and the post-convention head cold. Thank you.

TSR Alumni totchies. Tim Calhoun puts together a gathering of old TSR employees every year, and his work is greatly appreciated. It is a chance to see old friends and catch up on what everyone has been doing (spoilers: We're all getting old). We had drinks. We had drink tokens. This year they were poker chips. They were so cool I forwent my normal third beer in order to keep this one. Also, former TSR colleague Kevin Melka does 3-D printing, and I snagged a black unicorn from him, which I gave to the Lovely Bride and is currently on her desk.

Orcus Dice Bag. I got this at the Gary Con Merch booth, which has a host of neat stuff - hats, tropical shirts, adventures, and yes, dice bags. This one features an truly old-school Orcus on it. I has been years since I got a new bag, and it pairs well with the whiskey to create my own Chivas Regal moment. 

Tower of Gygax, various authors, 50-page ringbound booklet, various years. A tradition at Gary Con is the Tower of Gygax. Oh, I'm sorry, it should be read TOWER! OF! GYGAX!  This is 2-hour public session where various DMs run players through a series of encounters, the bulk of which consist of an entrance, and exit, and something nasty and murderous in-between. I had the chance to run it with veteran designer Doug Niles at the other table, and we had a great time. My style of running, particularly in combat encounters, tends to be a bit ... flamboyant. If you get a chance at Gary Con, take it out for a spin. (Oh, and I got a button as well).

It belongs in a museum!

The Sanitariums of Lake Geneva by Sonja Arkright, Self-Published, 96 page square-bound digest 2024. OK, so this isn't from Gary Con proper, but rather found in the Lake Geneva Museum. Situated in the old Power & Light building where the lake's outlet creates the White River, the museum has a three major rooms - a hall that features typical furnishing and artifacts from the town's past, another vault of specific displays of local hisotry (like the old Playboy resort and the raising of the Lucius Newberry), and a room dedicated to Gary Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons. And one of the books I wrote (Manual of the Planes) is in the display. So now I have something in the museum. So I feel old.

ANYWAY, Lake Geneva was the site of several Sanitariums/rest homes/health resorts, the most impressive of which was Oakwood, a massive five-story brick structure just east of town. In fact, the apartments that the Lovely Bride and I lived in when we first moved to Lake Geneva (The Colonial View Condominiums) were built on the site of this sanitarium. I picked up the book for potential Call of Cthulhu history, but did not know this. Nifty little book.

Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme RPG (No it isn't!) by Brian Saliba and Craig Schaffer, Exalted Funeral/Crowbar Creative, 350-page Hardbound, 2024, Kickstarter. OK, This is the only non-Gary Con entry this time out, and is probably the weirdest game I've seen in the last decade (and I have one where you play vampires wanting to drink Hitler's blood). Saliba and Schaffer have cheerfully plundered the entire Python corpus to produce a huge volume in which no bit of the comedy group's work goes untouched. Dead parrots, spam, the Spanish Inquisition, the whole lot, all wrapped around the core of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. However, there is a REAL RPG underneath all this silliness. A step-level approach to damage. Pendragonesque character traits.  A host of character classes. Character Personas for the Gamemaster (sorry - the Head of Light Entertainment) who can over the course of play be sacked and replaced with a randomly-rolled NEW GM (Sorry, Head of Light Entertainment). I find this one fascinating in its mechanics, but am going to have to dig down through all the spam to find them. The Kickstarter came with a box of dice (including a boulderous 30-Sider, a sash for the HoLE and some plastic coconuts). No, they hit every base on this particular license, with a playable game. It's kinda frightening.

And that's if for this collection of loot/swag/totches/kickstarters. More later,

DC: The Week That Was

So, I spent the past week in Washington. The Other Washington, as we like to call it in our corner of the Lower 48. The DC version of Washington.

 We were there because the Lovely Bride was part of a group talking to the various offices of Senators and Representatives. The LB is an Enrolled Agent, a professional tax preparer who is certified and approved to deal with taxes and the IRS. She has been in the past a big wheel in local tax preparer organizations (former president for a couple), and she still is putting together conferences and teaching people about tax law. The National Association of Enrolled Agents were looking for people to come to Washington and talk to government leaders (well, their staffs) about professional tax preparers and why they are good things to have around.

Me? I tagged along as arm candy.

We flew out on Monday and got to the the conference motel, the Madison just off M Street, late in the evening. Tuesday the LB had a training session, and Wednesday they met with the government representatives. The LB's team was a mix of out-type-of-Washingtonians and South Carolingian. So they met with the offices of Patty Murphy, Kim Schrier, Ric Larsen, and Lindsey Graham. Only Ric Larsen was available to say hello, and then briefly. Lindsey's meeting was in a hallway.

What I can show you.

While the LB was hobnobbing with people who actually can see the levers of power (if not touch them), I used my Tuesday to take a trip up to Maryland to visit the offices of Zenimax Online Services, who are the makers of Elder Scrolls Online and my bosses. I took a tour of the facilities with my immediate superior, Bill Slavicsek, and had lunch with the other writers in the new cafe. It was a really nice cafe, and it was the first time all the writers were in the same room. After the tour, Bill and I watched Quantumania (which was pretty much a family adventure film), and went out with the talented Michelle Carter to dinner a local place (Tarks) which had excellent food (I had the duck). Long drive back to DC.

Teaching moment.

Wednesday the Lovely B visited lawmakers and I went to the National Galley of Art. The American rooms were closed for renovation and the Vermeers were in the Netherlands for a big Vermeer retrospective, but I had a good time taking in the museum at my leisure. Favorites were a hall filled with Rodins, a collection of Renoirs and Monets, and rooms full of Calders and Rothkos in the newer, weirder modern art annex. Joined the LB at a tax preparers' reception at the District Wharf, which is a new upscale office and restaurant district on the Potomac. As I said, I was the arm candy, fetching drinks and making small talk. Nice work if you can get it.

Thursday through Saturday the LB and I walked around Washington. Well, took a taxi down to the mall and walked about. Our hotel was a few blocks away from the metro, so we our aged legs relied on cabs and the occasional Lyft. And for once I had excellent luck with taxis - about 9 out of 10 times I found one easily. 

View from the
Botanical Gardens 

Anyway our agenda over the next three days included the Lincoln, Korea, WWI, and MLB memorials, with an attempt to visit the new African-American Arts and Culture museum, only to find it swarmed by school groups and individual tickets booked out to the next Wednesday. Instead we took in the Freer Museum with its Asian Art and Whistler's Peacock Room. That was the first day. The second day we slowed down a little, sleeping in and hitting smaller museums.  We did the Spy museum on Friday, a private museum that was recommended by at least five people, and was very good - we spent about four hours there. Saturday was the Botanical Gardens in the shadow of the Capitol Building, with a trip out to the  Kennelworth Aquatic Gardens, a marsh and former aquatic plant garden run by the National Park Service. Lots of photos of lilies. Sunday we were up way too early to return to our Washington.  

We feasted on hotel breakfasts in the morning, then one large meal in the early evening. Mandu on K Street was a intro for the LB for Korean cooking like mandu (dumplings) and  bulgogi. Nama was a sushi place nearby. Del Mar was a sumptuous and expensive restaurant at the District Wharf. and finally, 

Jaleo by Andre Jose, which had some excellent tapas. And sangia. Kool-Aide pitchers of sangria. The weather was great and we dined alfresco whenever we could manage it. Despite all the walking, I gained a couple pounds this trip. Go figure. 

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So that was Washington. There was a great trip, and I would go back if the Lovely Bride chooses to go. We missed a bunch of stuff, but avoided getting that Thousand-Yard-Museum-State that hits when you try to do everything. Memorial Day was proved to be quiet (The former house-mates, Anne and Sig, looked after the cats while we were gone and did some serious yardwork), and I still feel a little exhausted, but ready to go back to work.

More later, 

New York State of Mind

One of the things I've been doing other than blogging has been traveling, both to Los Angeles and New York City, on business. LA has become a frequent stop, so I slip in and out like a thief in the night. New York, on the other hand, I haven't been to in more than a decade. So here are some thoughts:

Messrs. Emerson, Grubb, and Khan.

It was 2007 when I was last in New York (and that was for potentially turning Guild Wars into an animated TV series - nothing came of it). Back in the days of TSR, I was in town, regularly, in February, for Toy Fair. Toy Fair is still a thing, but I'm not there this time. This timeI was in town for a recording session for a game we're working on. I was recording lines with the brilliant Michael Emerson (of "Lost" and "Person of Interest") and the extremely talented Kamal Khan.  I can't and won't give details, but both actors were fantastic.

But I've noticed some differences of the town from almost ten years ago. There are more children and families in Manhattan than I noticed previously, and less sirens in the night. People honk less (I didn't say they stopped - I said they honked LESS). The lullaby of Broadway of continual gridlock is still there, but with less aggression.

One thing I had forgotten about was salad with breakfast. The complimentary breakfast provided from the hotel was completely insufficient (three muffins), so I ended up ordering an omelette each morning, and it came with a salad. That worked out well for me.

It snowed when I was out there. I mean, New York in February, so of course it snowed. A couple inches, enough to paralyze Seattle. Here it was a nice dusting. Families were sledding and building snowmen in Central Park.

Bright Lights, Big City

We were quartered right off of Times Square. New York hotel rooms are just as  .... cozy ... as I remember. Times Square itself is America's Ginza district, and is amazing with its lights. In snow it is even brighter as each flake catches the light and reflects back. And yes, there were people everywhere, watching the snow.

We had some down time, and took the opportunity to sight-see a little. Caught an exhibit on Stonewall at the New York Public Library by accident (we were checking out the architecture) on the way to the Tolkien exhibit at the Morgan Library. The latter was a beautiful small jewel box of an exhibit, crammed with all manner of Tolkien's artwork, both the famous (some of it graced various editions of the books) and the mundane (designs on crossword puzzles, creatures created for his children). Highly recommended.

I have a niece (who works for the NY Public Library System) who lives in Brooklyn with her husband (who is working with a startup), and so I journeyed one evening by subway down to her neck of the woods. The slotst hat used to take tokens are gone, now. Brooklyn was pretty nice, and reminded me of the North Halstead neighborhood of Chicago - lot of brick, neighborhood corner stores, quiet streets, a variety of apartments and homes. We went to a place that offered Thai Street Food, with dished like pad cha, weeping tiger, and something with five syllables that sounded vaguely Klingon. Excellent food.

My niece had warned me that the subways changed schedules on the weekends. Despite this, I and a companion got on a train heading for the American Museum of Natural History (about 81st street) but ended up under 125th street (walking distance to the Apollo in Harlem). A very helpful old man (from Brooklyn - he lived on the street that used as an establishing shot in "Welcome Back Kotter") told us what we did wrong and helpfully directed us to another platform, which didn't have ANY trains running on it (because, weekend). Finally found a transit authority figure in an orange vest who was helping out confused travelers.

Oh, yeah, did I mention that I have "talk to me" written on my forehead? Because that's what keeps happening. In New York City. On the subway. No, you don't need to talk to me! You have phones! Oh, all right, fine, tell me about your nephew in Queens.

Serious skeletonage

First time at the American Museum of Natural History. I grew up with the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and loved the Field Museum in Chicago, and yet was very, very impressed. Their wildlife dioramas were amazing. The whale hanging over their Hall of Marine Life was great. I would give them the edge on the natural exhibits, but think the Field did better on exhibits on ethnography (other peoples). Parts were under renovation, it being February, including the Hall of the Pacific Northwest. Curious what they will do with it.

A necromancer's paradise.

Their top floor - the Halls of Vertebrate Evolution - where they keep the dinosaurs, are just amazing. I don't think I have been in a museum with as much textural density in years. Their presentation take no prisoners - you have to keep up with the Latin names and clades and synaptic openings and maniraptors. I could have spent a full day on that floor alone. I officially feel behind the times when confronted with both the traditional presentation of equine evolution and how more recent fossils blow a hole in that traditional view of evolution.

I went in search of a mural from my childhood, in some LIFE book on evolution. Could not find out, and now realize that it was in the Peabody Library at Yale. Ah. There were good murals of the mammals, though.

Strawberry Fields

Did not get to Ground Zero this time. It was hard enough to visit Strawberry Fields, which commemorates John Lennon. There was a young Asian woman playing Beatles tunes on a folk guitar and an artist selling "bad portraits" Yes, they were bad. Just being there was a bit of a hit to the stomach. I had to sit down on a snowy bench and pull myself together. Walking through Central Park was wonderful however, and I rewarded myself with a Nathan's Hotdog from a stand.

The New York food carts, by the way,  have a lot more neon signs these days. And there are flatscreens on the subway. It is a very advanced world.

All that said, 432 Park Avenue, one of the tallest buildings in New York, is as ugly as sin. It is the box should hold a mammoth toothbrush. No picture, because it is so ugly.

I got down to the Strand Bookstore, which was heavenly. If you like Powell's City of Books in Portland, you'll be at home in the Strand. Lots of books, used and new, lots of people sprawled everywhere. Looked for some Nero Wolfe (I read Rex Stout's mysteries on the plane) but left with a volume of Johannes Cabal (The Fear Institute) by Johnathan L. Howards. Pro tip - there are cash registers elsewhere in the shop - you don't have to get in the big line by the entrance.

Failed to hunt down the neighborhood of Nero's Wolfe's brownstone either, though I understand that the block was completely rebuilt when the Lincoln Tunnel was pushed through. Still, there is a plaque somewhere for that.

A round table, but not THE Round Table

The final evening I was on my own, and realized that my hotel was next door to the famous/infamous Algonquin Hotel, home of of the famous/infamous Algonquin Round Table. This was a daily lunch group of authors, editors, and other celebs that engaged in witty wordplay, logrolling, and mocking those who were not at the table. The restaurant has been renovated and the table itself is gone, but a portrait of the group does loom over a replacement table.

Took one of my producers out to New York Pizza. It is more than just a thin crust pizza - it is very good, and I am a fan of Chicago Pizza, so that's saying a lot.

I've said this before - New York City is a town that every American knows even if they have never been there. MAD Magazine, the New Yorker, Marvel comics, innumerable movies and TV shows. You know that location, and that building, and it all has a sense of familiarity about it. It is America's back-lot, and it is good to connect back to it again.

More later,

Notes from the Columbia

So, a couple weeks back, the Lovely Bride and the Lovely Bride's Mom (Nardi) and I headed south for a long-planned vacation to Ashland. And en route we chose drive up the Columbia to the Maryhill Museum and back, and take in a couple Confluence Project sites along the way.

The Confluence Project is a series of installations along the Columbia river created by Maya Lin, the artist responsible for the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC. In this case, she was commissioned to install seven pieces along the Columbia on the route that Lewis and Clark took at the turn of the 19th Century. We had tried to find these sites before, but no one seemed to know about them, even locally, which made them a sculptural scavenger hunt, this time aided by the net.

Land Bridge, with Lovely Bride

The first we visited was the Land Bridge, an overpass that crosses State Route 14 just before Interstate 5 crosses the Columbia into Oregon. Built at the site of the reconstructed Fort Vancouver, it was about what I expected from the artist - a large installation that brought the terrain into the structure itself, with three resting points for Land, People, and River. Done in sand-colored stones and concrete with dark metal accents, the installation gave a chance for meditation above the traffic. I also could give a view of the Columbia itself, though in our case it was blocked by a parked line of train cars along an adjacent rail line.

Being an overpass, it also allowed access from the Fort to the river itself, at the site of the Oldest Apple Tree in Washington, a sad ent  of a tree on life support, situated behind multiple fences, reinforced with guy wires and concrete, kept long beyond its lifespan.

Bird Blind

The second site was the Bird Blind at the Sandy River delta. This one is at the end of a long, dusty mile and a quarter hike in a dog park near Troutdale. The structure was simpler than the Land Bridge, a ramp leading up to a circular blind, with each slat of the blind a two-by-four dedicated to a creature that Lewis and Clark encountered and noted on their trip. Each had the date they mentioned it in their journals, what they called it, what the current name is, the scientific name, and its status (threatened, endangered, or extinct (only one is such)). While we hiking, dogwalkers stopped us and asked what we were doing (since we didn't have dogs). No one we spoke with knew about the installation. Sculptural scavenger hunt, indeed.

The third site was at Celilo Park, above the Dalles Dam. Before the dam was installed, the Dalles were a set of rapids and waterfalls, which made it both a site of salmon fishing and a hub for native trade. All of that is under the water now. The site, which dealt with the salmon fishing, was to be completed by fall of this year, but when we were the looked unbegun, a rough breakwater sticking out into the river, with a pair of local fishermen with numerous lines at the end.

Maryhill Museum

Maryhill Museum is a small museum just beyond that site, located on the bluffs overlooking the Columbia. Built by Sam Hill (the "good roads" Sam Hill, not the "What in the" Sam Hill), as a mansion which overlook his utopian community, it was turned into a museum after his wife booked out and his ideal community fizzled. As a result, it is an odd collection of material grounded in the turn of the 20th Century. Marie, the Queen of Romania came all the way west to dedicate it, so there is a large display of her regalia and furnishings. Her highness was in the mob that Hill ran with. Actually, that's a good description of Maryhill in general - stuff from the crowd Hill ran with. Sam Hill did the art patron thing with a number of Americans in France and Britain before the Great War, such as the dancer Loie Fuller, who was romantically involved with the sculptor Auguste Rodin, bought a lot of his works, got into financial trouble, sold her Rodins, convinced Hill to pick up her Rodins, and convinced Hill to turn his abandoned house into a museum. She was also in tight with the (you guessed it) Marie, the Queen of Romania. Which is why there are a large collection of Rodins on a bluff overlooking the Columbia in Washington State.

Rodin. Yeah, that guy.

The collection is interesting and eclectic. The Rodins are the big attraction center, but there is the Romanian regalia, and a large number of works from the collection, which they have increased over the passage of time. The have a large but unimpressive collection of Native American Art. They also have a hall on Fuller, who made her name as a dancer. The upper house is unchanged, but they have done a lot of extremely imaginative expansion on the cliff-side - most of it for things like a cafe and educational facility, but also expanding out the basement for more room for other works. Right now, the new acquisitions seem to be sculpture, and are pretty darn impressive.

Maryhill is near another Sam Hill project, the Stonehenge re-creation, which I've talked about before.

Back down the Columbia, evening at a snazzy hotel in Portland, then the long haul along the width of Oregon to Ashland. I've talked about Ashland before, so I will summarize for this trip - Anne Hathaway's is an excellent B&B (we stayed in the Annex a few doors down, which had a nice sense of privacy for us), recommended restaurants include Kobe (excellent sushi) and Beasleys (they bragged about the clam chowder, and yeah, it is worth bragging about). Great chocolate torte from Coquina down by the railroad track (so good we went back the next evening just for desert).

And now on to the plays. More on those later (I hope),

Notes from Europe

I suppose I need to write about one adventure before beginning the next.

So, Europe.

Doing stand-up in Stockholm

To promote the release of Guild Wars 2, I and Lead Character Artist Aaron Coberly were dispatched to Europe for a whirlwind promotional tour - four cities over the course of five days. The bulk of our tasks involved talking to the media about the game - ensconced in a venue with an introductory video, machines set up to one side to play the game, and Aaron and I available for interviews. It was very much a business trip, where we saw a lot more of airplanes, hotels, and restaurants than of the cities themselves. But here are some notes from the trip.

Overall, if I have to compare US security with that of Europe, I found the US model of huge queues with bellowing agents to be inferior to the polite but continual approach encountered in Europe (it only felt like I was being asked for my passport every five feet. In reality it was more like fifteen).

And this is sacriledge in Seattle, I know, but the Airbus interiors are superior to those of the Boeings. Even among the same airline, the difference between the two is noticeable in the amount of legroom the fully kitted-out Airbus provided. Sorry guys.

Surf Munich!

Anyway, Munich was the first stop, and I actually got in a day early, the better to accommodate the time shift (which did not work that well - I must be getting old). Munich itself was gripped in a heat wave, with a temperature of around 37 (98 for us Ammurikans). I had a chance to walk around, and I was impressed with the community's bike culture (everyone was pedaling) and surfing. Yeah, surfing. The English Garden, which is a huge park rivaling NYC's Central, has a powerful stream flowing through it. And where this stream issues from beneath a bridge, there are a set of hydraulics (standing waves), which wet-suited young Germans surf on. It is much more like watching a bucking bronco than a beach.

Also got a chance to get to the Neue Pinokothek, an art museum on covering 19th and early 20th Century art. Excellent Van Goughs, a version of Von Stuck's Sin that is also hanging at the Frye, and a lot of Greek-related art - did not know that for a time the son of the King of Bavaria was the King of Greece.

We stayed at a place called the Cocoon, which was a tidy traveler's hotel that felt like staying in an IKEA flat pack (and me without my Allen wrench). It was full of transformer parts (the bathroom door slid across the sink complex to be the shower door, the heavy curtains were also the closet doors, the shower overlooked the bedroom itself through a clear wall). An amusing place.

The venue for the Munich presentations itself was a bar/cafe/restaurant nearby, its windows open in an attempt to get some circulation in the oppressive heat. We did have some heat-related crashes, but Aaron and I had it easy in that the presentations themselves were in German and we were on hand for interviews and answering questions from the press.

Immediately after the presentations, we headed for Hamburg. Here's one of those traveler weirdnesses - In America, we boarded by row number or zone, and everyone milled around in an unruly mob until their number was called. In Germany they said "Everyone get on the plane" and, much to my surprise, everyone got on the plane. Amazing!

The last time we were in Hamburg (for another press tour), we went to this wonderful restaurant at a hotel called The East, which had fantastic sushi (Yes, sushi. Deal with it). It turns out we pulled up in front of the East as our hotel. Comparing to the spartan/smart/compact nature of the Coccoon, the East was a James Bond lair of huge beds, massive windows, and sinks made of false rock. The presentation was within the hotel itself (In a meeting room called The East Kitchen with a full kitchen), and they catered the operation with ... the sushi I spoke of. It was great, I ended up consuming a lot of wiesbier in the bar, and had probably my best steak in several trips to Europe, in a restaurant overlooking the one of the bays.

Two nights in Hamburg, then a quick bounce over to London. An afternoon off on arrival, which was nice. Got to the Tate Britain, which I had not been to before (partially closed, alas), and ended up drinking in a pub that Aaron had always passed when he lived here, but never stopped in. Much alcohol, you may notice, was consumed over the course of the trip. Aaron also insisted that we get some hummus at a local grocery - Waitrose which was fantastic (picture the two of us, leaning on a fence across from Hyde park, with crackers and hummus).

Not shown: Edna and Patsy

That evening, we were taken out to the Golden Oven, an Indian place in Soho. I am normally not of fan of Indian food, having suffered too many bad Indian buffets, but this was the platonic ideal of Indian food, of which all others were merely shadows. The hotel was just north of Hyde Park and we were packed into a tiny room that made the Cocoon seem like the East, but it was for a single night and by that time we were getting used to crashing completely.

The venue for presentations in London was different again - a penthouse flat that had been rented for the day from the owner overlooking Soho, done entirely in white - white walls, white floors, white furnishings (our white t-shirts actually provided camo in the building). A large buddha head dominated one glass wall, and the Guild Wars 2 art replaced the normal art, and fit well against it. It was strangely like working in an episode of AbFab.

There was a party there that evening, but we did not get a chance to partake - we were en route to Stockholm. We arrived after midnight (as was becoming a habit), and I remarked that Stockholm must be a very pretty city in the daylight. The hotel was "Western" style, which means that the ground floor was the 1st floor and they were putting a celebrity chef restaurant for Marcus Sammuelson. Aaron and I had it easy, by the way, because we did not need to do set-up, so we could at least sleep in.

Other than that, the interview went well.

I had the chance to do an interview on P3, which was the Swedish equivalent of the BBC. After getting lost in the vastness of that building, we found our way to the interview, which was marvelous. The hosts were knowledgeable and warm and made me feel very comfortable. Back to the hotel for more presentations and interviews, and then, to wrap up the trip, a presentation and a Q&A at Webhallen, a game store. We had maybe 400 people total, and it was a lot of fun.

And at last a late celebration dinner, in the restaurant district across the river. The front desk said it is a ten minute walk, and I pointed out that the front desk consisted of very athletic young people whose idea of a fun was to ski and shoot rifles at the same time, and could wrestle bears if they needed to. So half an hour later, my compatriots dragged this overweight, sleepy American to a delightful place, where he feasted on reindeer steak (and of course, had more beer). 

Then of course, up at Oh-God-Early and back to the airport to get home, our mission complete. As we were en route to the airport, back in Seattle, they threw the switch and Guild Wars 2 went live. As I write this, we  have just crested 2 million registrations, a number that leaves us blinking in the blinding glare of sudden importance. It all feels very strange, that after all the worldbuilding and after all the interviews, after talking on the phone and hosting people at the office and flying to foreign countries, that the game is now no longer just ours, just the mad project we have hidden behind the curtain. That now belongs to the greater world. It feels good, but also a little weird.

So naturally, I've left town again. This time, Ashland. More about that later.

Picasso

So Friday I took the day off from work, with the excuse to go see the Picasso Exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM for you non-locals). The SAM itself merits its own entry, so let me concentrate on the exhibit itself. And mention the crush of people who ALSO decided that that last Friday was the time to go. So there were a LOT of people, such that with timed ticket and two sets of lines, it was a crush of school kids, old folks, and bozos like me listening to the provided audio track (and kudos to the young woman who thought enough of others to park her stroller in the media room and carry her child, just like in the old days. You, my dear woman, rock).

So Picasso himself, I've had mixed emotion about. On one had he is Twentieth Century Art with a capital "A". On the other hand, the process of the art is such that it becomes unmoored from representational art and starts drifting, balloon like, into an emotional realm.

What that means is, that when it works, it works very, very well, and when it doesn't, you end up scratching the side of you head and asking "Is that a nose? Is that an idealization of a nose?" When I was young LIFE or LOOK magazine did an article on Picasso (this was in the 60s) and then two weeks later ran a series of letters, each one of which declared that their seven/six/five/four/three/two year old could paint better. Which is part of the point and nothing like the point.

This Picasso, he confuses me, and I think he wanted it that way.

The exhibition itself comes from the Musee National Piccaso in Paris and reflects works that the artist considered part of this legacy, and consists of finished works as well as sketches, studies, and uncompleted projects. That gives an idea of what lies behind the thinking, as well as minor or personal work. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is not here, but represented by similar works, and Guernica shows up as preliminaries and a photo-progression of the work shot by one of his lovers. Yet he has generated so much material, in so many different media and in so many different ways, that the entire experience is unexpectedly overwhelming. I overheard one patron say that he felt like he had just left a Thanksgiving dinner - he was overloaded on art.

And of the art, yes, the early Blue and Rose periods show him capable and establishing himself as an Artist-with-an-A. It is his cubist work that connects for me at the most basic level - I find the transformation of figure into planes and the creation of motion through angles to be exciting. This is the part that works. And yet after this, as it moves most fully into Picasso' style of teardrop shapes and morphable eyesockets that I lose a bit, that the excitement is not as present. It feels like he is doing art because that is what he does.

Massacre in Korea, Pablo Picasso, 1951

My greatest surprise was to find Massacre in Korea at the exhibit. A "sequel" to Guernica, inspired by Goya's The Third of May, 1808. I had thought its purported subject matter was part of the resistance to the work (it was supposedly critical of American involvement in Korea, and it easier to chastise fascists than Americans), but now dealing with the piece up close, I find that it is effectively a lesser work - clunky where Guernica was fluid, heavy-handed where Guernica was universal. The message is clear, but execution fumbles.

I guess that is where I come down to on one of the finest artists of the 20th Century. When inspired, when in action (ever with still lives and portraits), the artist Pablo Picasso was impossible to define except in terms of his own brilliance. He had the ability to reach into the heart of his subject without directly stating it - he was jazz in a visual media. And when it doesn't work, whether for limitations on the part of the artist or the viewer, it feels like a parody of his material, like the 60s comic artists (and yeah, you can see Bob Crumb in some of the work, or Basil Wolverton),

Sometimes he was pushing the envelope to see what lies next, and sometimes Pablo Picasso was following in the well-trod path of ... well, Pablo Picasso.

The exhibit is in town for only a week more, and worth cutting class to see it. Good luck with the crowds.

More later,

30 Days of Science

I'm always coming across stuff on the 'net that I think "Ooh, this would be interesting", but then I don't get around to posting it, or fifty-three other people post about it, and it gets forgotten.

But I want to make sure I mention THIS before I get carried away with other things. It is the chance to live in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for a month. IN the museum. This would be a dream opportunity for me. Heck, if I still worked for TSR up in Lake Geneva, I would see if I could arrange a leave of absence to pull this off.

If you ARE in the Chicago area, and are, as we say, "between gigs", I would strongly recommend applying. Go for it, guys!

More later,