Fat City

I returned from Pittsburgh about a week ago, and am pleased to report that not only is it still there, but it is a better place to find parking than most of Seattle. In addition, the Steel city also has an increasing number of really good places to eat. But, alas, I must also report that I have done too much of the latter in recent months, such that I really need to shed a few pounds.

I must admit I am overweight, and have been for the past two decades (at least). The stylish photo to the right of this text shows me in my natural garb, but conceals an increasingly large waistline. I rarely button my overshirts, and get pants with elastic waistbands from Big Ed’s Hulking and Huge store. Still, I have not until this trip realized how far down the road I have gotten.

The first warning came from Rex Stout, through his creation Nero Wolfe. I’ve been reading the Wolfe detective novels in the Bantam series of the books, and the early one placed the corpulent hero at a seventh of a ton, or 285 pounds. Which was my fighting weight about 15 pounds ago. Yes, later (post-depression) books boosted the weight to tipping the scales at nearly 400, but still, when you state that this detective sat around the office, he sat around the office, you must give pause to realize he was lighter than I currently am.

Then the airline industry got into the act. Two of my four flights this trip required a seat belt extender, and for one I had to move my seat from the emergency row (because one cannot wear a seat belt extender in the emergency row - of course I checked later) and so I was packed off the back of the airplane, where a smaller seat with less leg-room was provided, but at least I could wear the extra four inches of fabric to keep me from leaving my seat during an emergency. (and mind you, two the four flights had sufficiently long belts, and they were on older planes, which can lead one to conclude the it was the belts that got shorter as opposed to my waistband longer, but still, I am apparently eating my way out of particular seat class).

And then there was the car rental. I have a long torso, so the Nissan line of mid-sized was out due the fact I would have to crouch to see through the windscreen. But to discover I could no longer slip behind the wheel of a Chevy Cruz was maddening. I pulled the seat all the way back and pushed the steering column up and still found I could not enter the car without using the Ryker Maneuver over the steering wheel. So that is another warning, and I fear I am going back to watching what I eat, and eating less of it.

Which is easier now than earlier, because Pittsburgh has a growing number of excellent places to eat. To wit – Andora on Mt Nebo Road is particularly nice, with a variety in house specials and, most important to the Lovely Bride, an excellent patio garden. Their shrimp bisque is very good. Mallorca on the East Carson Street, right at the end of the Birmingham Bridge, was a true delight and discovery, specializing in Spanish Cuisine (which is not Mexican, but really SPANISH). The prosciutto filled squid was excellent and the veal was tender enough to cut with the side of one’s fork (this is preferred, according to my sister-in-law in the restaurant business). And more on the workaday end, the Paradise Island Bowl on Neville island makes a darn good cheesesteak panini, and has a summertime patio from which you can enjoy the river.

But alas, all those pleasures must be put aside for a while, since I am now verging on the level that I will not be marketed to, and instead suffer a bit of economic fat-shaming. I should be grumpier about it, and will likely be so after a week on water and flerkorn from IKEA.

More later,

Theatre: Blarney Stone The Crows

Outside Mulligar by John Patrick Shaneley, directed by Wilson Milam, Through May 17

What is it about Irish plays? Or rather, what is it about plays about the Irish? Plays about the English, the French, or the Americans all embrace differing groups or attitudes, but if the play is about the Irish, then the overstuffed cupboard door gives way and let all the tropes, archetypes, and stereotypes come flying out. Rural poverty. Drinking. Violence. Depression. Grand gestures. Oaths. Tempers. Family feuds. Superstition. Signs and voices. Religion. Self-destructive behavior of all types. It is like that when you choose to write about the Irish, you get a kit, and you're expected to use all the tropes in the kit.

I can see how it attracts, of course. The language can be eloquent, and an Irish lilt can make even asking for directions to the bus stop seem otherworldy. Initially, the words seem to come tumbling out at such a rate that you feel like you've grabbed onto a moving roller coaster, but soon the calluses in your eardrums build up and you can follow well enough. And one of the tropes of the Irish play is that its characters simultaneously speak their minds and hearts without thinking, plus are emotionally prickly enough to take offense at anything being said.

So, anyway, Outside Mulligar is a relatively simple comedy wrapped up in tropish Ireland, where no Blarney Stone goes unturned. The Muldoons and the Reillys have been neighbors and rivals for generations. At one point father Tony Reilly (Sean G. Griffin) sold the road access for his farm to the Muldoons, and this has been a burr in the saddle for Reilly and his son Anthony (M.J. Sieber) ever since. The passing of the Muldoon patriarch creates a chance to get the land back, first from Oeife (Kimberly King) and later from the surviving daughter Rosemary (Emily Chisholm).

Of course, nothing is that simple, being an Irish play, and there is a cascade of family secrets, lost loves, snarling arguments, misunderstandings, accidents, and incidents. Passions flicker on and off like erratic rural electrics, and despite modern references (the Chinese Olympics, modern farm machinery, in vitro fertilization), it still feels like we are but three steps from the Potato Famine. There is romance and happy ending, but the path is strewn with thorns, mostly planted by individuals who consider themselves unworthy in the first place.

And the reason it works at all is from the efforts of strong actors. Kimberly King as the hard-as-nails, romantic-at-heart Rosemary (another Irish trope) does most of the heavy lifting. M.J.Seiber has a harder road - he's simultaneously called upon to be sensitive and oafish in turns, committed to the land but harboring his own secret, which may only be comically revealed. He acquits himself, but it feels like he is dragged in multiple directions and while you want him to be happy by the end of the first act, and you similarly want to shake him until he rattles. Sean G. Griffin and Kimberly King are the parents who provide grounding for the entire operation and set up the fireworks in the second act between Rosemary and Anthony. All of them are REP vets, ranging from Glengarry Glen Ross (which sounds like an Irish Play, but isn't), to Pullman Porter Blues to Inspecting Carol. So kudos to a production that puts the Repertory concept to work at the REP.

It is all in all a good performance for an OK play, and pales only because there has been so much good material this season from the REP. The two monstrous LBJ plays loom large, and August Wilson stands out in any season he is presented. Yet Lizard Boy was every bit as good as The Piano Lesson, and The Vaudevillians was a tasty opening morsel that allows people to say they saw Jinx Monsoon just when she was hitting the big time. Outside Mullingar follows after these, and Dear Elizabeth after that. The weakest play was The Comparables, and even that would have been merely average in previous seasons. This has been the strongest season in years, and fitting testament to its Creative Direction, Jerry Manning, who passed on this year. Next year has its work cut out for it.

More later,

Political Desk: Microtransactions

To the surprise of many King County residents, there is an election Tuesday. This is offest of the off-off-season elections, consisting of one main item (funding to replace the King County emergency radio network), but depending on your locality, there may something on transportation funds, schools, firefighting equipment, parks, or one case, an annexation.

The intent is good - we could really stand to upgrade the network and it makes things better for police, fire, EMTs, and other first responders.  But this sort of thing reminds me of nothing less than something in my own neck of the woods - microtransactions.

In games, in particular in tablet-games (Android, iPads), the current vogue is to give away the game for free, at the cost of the download and the fact that the manufacturer has some information on you. Then, you are offered small purchases within the game that cost real money (or more often, an in-game currency that is then purchased with real money).

There is a spectrum to how microtransactions are used - there are microtransactions which are cool-looking but do not directly affect game play (hats, special outfits, pets - fair warning, we do all of that in GW2), ranging to the point where to do almost anything in the game, or remain competitive with other players, you have to dish out some dosh (at which point I tend to walk away).

I'm thinking about microtransactions in this case because we have the baseline services of the community, paid for by a variety of taxes, service fees, guaranteed bonds and the like. And then something like THIS shows up, a good cause, good for the community, improves safety, and this improvement costs over and above the baseline.  And it is a good cause, because it is ALWAYS a good cause when they put this offering in front of us - I have yet to see proposition to, say, raise the mayor's pay or increase the number of county-owned vehicles. Because THOSE are covered in the budget, which we don't get to directly vote on.

But it is for a good cause. Such a good cause that the arguments against section in the voter's guide feels required to say "Of COURSE we need a new radio system". But then the "against" team worries that, should we tie this to the property tax, and then those property values drop, we would have to lay off first responders. Which sort of begs the questions of how these first responders are being paid in the first place, that they would otherwise be immune to reduced property taxes. Worse, the opposition team provides no alternative to the tax to raise funds for this.

And one more thing (who knew I would get so much mileage out of a single vote?). The "for" team has sent out fliers about how the original system was put in place in 1992, and as such is practically antique. Well enough, but the fliers also list the top five contributors to the campaign, and number one on the list is Motorola Solutions, which (you guessed it) makes radio systems for first responders.

Despite all this, I am still voting to Approve this tax hike, because, when it is all said and done, we really DO need to upgrade the system.I just want to be able to fund the salaries of the King County Councilpeople in the same way.

More later,

Theater: Local Hero

Lizard Boy written and composed by Justin Huertas, Directed by Brandon Ivie, Seattle Rep through 2 May.

This one had a lot to live up to. The Lovely Bride saw an early draft of it a year ago in the New Play Festival at the Poncho (a performing space in the REP) and loved it. She went to the tech rehearsal the week before opening and liked it even more. And she's been talking about it for a while. So this one had a lot of front-loaded expectation to it.

And (spoilers) it lives up to those expectations. This is an excellent play with excellent performances. It is also a strange thing: A personal, private musical, firmly entrenched in a particular time and place. On one hand, I could see this going large, getting a special on Netflix, or a fair time off-Broadway followed by a 40-city run. On the other, it fits so snugly in the pocket of Seattle, circa the second decade of this century, I don't know if it would play the same way in Omaha or Chicago or even ten years from now.

Lizard Boy is a three-person musical about a gay superhero who plays the cello and draws comics. To quote said hero - "Whaaaaaa?" Justin Heurtas is Trevor, who was bathed in dragon's blood (the dragon having escaped from Mount St. Helens - shades of Shadowrun) and has a lizardish skin condition as a result. He's a bit of a folk hero (there's a "Lizard-Fest" in the play, where people dress up like him - not something unusual for a city that sees cosplayers from PAX, Sakuracon, and Emerald City Comics Con in its downtown). He has also spent the past year in his room as a result of a bad relationship. He contacts Cary (a lovably goofy William A Williams) over Grindr (a gay hookup app) for an awkward first date that involves Dick's Burgers and the Crocodile. At the club he encounters Siren, the "Girl of his Dreams" (both literally and in the pages of the Stranger), who is a tough-talking, hard-living singer who has a deeper connection with Trevor. And then dragons attack.

And it all works, pretty much. It is not so much an origin story or a coming out story as it is a coming to terms story. Lizard Boy hides his lamp under a bushel, and only when pushed does he discover his abilities. Sort of Peter Parker if he had decided NOT to become Spider-Man. The story itself shuttles from pillar to post with numerous flashbacks and "meanwhiles", but does so effortlessly and including the audience in its motions. Cary and Siren do support work on-stage when their characters are not in the thick of the action, and there is little dissonance in their presence.

Further, I enjoy the fact that the plot actually moves forward through the songs. No, bear with me on this one. "Traditional" American musicals have a nasty tendency to bring everything to a stop when the music begins. The character states that she is lonely, then launches into three minutes of song about her loneliness, while the audience gets that she is indeed lonely and just follows along with the nice music. There is actual exposition going on in the songs, so pay attention.

There is a stylized nature in Lizard Boy as well, with comic sketches displayed against the background, that works as well. The combat at the end of the play (hey, it's a comic book. Of course there is conflict) is much, much more effective than the comic rolling-about in The Comparables. It is neatly choreographed and more evocative than if the protagonist was web-spinning his way over the audience.

Perfect? No. It has a couple of challenges. Trevor's lizard-boy disfigurement is presented as few green spangles on his cheeks, and it requires a sense of disbelief to grok that he looks radically different, as opposed to a guy with shiny jade freckles. And some of the dancing falls into a trope of more modern American musicals - jarring the floor to indicate emphasis. Stomp has so much to answer for.

So yeah, this is one of the good ones. It is an original, local production, the result of talented individuals at the Rep working and refining the piece. It has a few raw edges, but it occupies a magical location called Seattle at a unique time. Go see it.

More later,

The Gaming (and Writing) News

Item One: The Origins Award Nominations have been posted, and I am shocked - shocked and surprised - that things that I like are not on the list. I must therefore organize a take-no-prisoners campaign to create a slate of my own to ... wait a minute. Hang on. No, no, actually it looks like a real good year, and there is a lot of stuff that I like there, and a lot of people whose work I respect who are being recognized for their efforts.

Nevermind. Carry on.

Item Two: Fellow Alliterate Will McDermott has a new novel, Nature of the Beast, that is already showing up (although Amazon is giving it a drop date of next week). Nature of the Beast is set in the universe of Mage Wars, a cool boardgame that combines concepts of collectible card games with miniatures battles.

Item Three: Fellow ArenaNet writer Angel McCoy is launching a kickstarter for her new magazine, Another Dimension. In addition to being a mighty fine writer, Angel has for the past few years been running the Wily Writer e-zine (and yeah, I wrote a story for her back in the early years). If you are a fan of horror in the Twilight Zone mode, check it out.

And Items Four and Five: And I would be remiss not to point out that former ArenaNet Community Coordinator Donna Prior is in the waning hours of  HEr kickstarter for Orcacon, a convention up in Everett. Similarly, woe to me if I failed to indicate that puzzle-master Mike Selinker has launched an kickstarter for his new Apocrypha Adventure Card Game. Yes, they've made the base numbers, but still are worth checking out!

More later,

Leonarda Obarski: 1934-2015

Leonarda Obarski, Kate's mom, passed away this past Tuesday. Here is her obituary:

Leonarda Obarski, aka Nardi Novak, age 80, recently of Kent, Washington, passed away April 14, 2014. “Nardi” was born August 15, 1934 in Camden, New Jersey to Herbert and Stephanie Obarski, and lived many years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is survived by her daughters, Catherine Grubb, Sharon Novak, Elizabeth Thorpe, her grandson John Michael Thorpe, and her sons-in-law John Jeffrey Grubb, Michael Weiss, and John Thorpe. 

Nardi and Me, many years ago.

Nardi graduated from Collingswood High School in New Jersey and attended Temple University for 1 year. While raising her 3 daughters, and serving as a Girl Scout leader, Nardi went back to school and graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English Writing and a Masters in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh. She was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Before retirement Nardi worked as a teacher at University of Pittsburgh, Robert Morris College, Dusquesne University and Pennsylvania’s Edinboro University and as a trainer at the Center for Victims of Violent Crime in Pittsburgh, PA, but her first love was acting and the theatre. 

Nardi studied acting from childhood and she appeared and directed on many stages in the Pittsburgh area, had small roles in a few movies and a soap opera, and later worked with the Haddonfield Plays & Players. She was a founding member of the South Park Conservatory Theatre and of the New Works Festival in Pittsburgh. She also worked as a patient simulator, helping medical professionals craft their skills. She was a member of AFTRA/SAG.  

 In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to your local theater.

Leonarda was a wonderful human being, and we will miss her dearly.

More later, 

Riding the Storm Out

Here's one I've been meaning to post for a while, now.

Twenty years ago TSR was looking for a new campaign setting. I proposed one called Storm Front (also called Stormfront) which involved ships sailing on clouds. These days every anime seems to have ships sailing on clouds, and I will point back to Peter Pan for an earlier incarnation, but here were looking for a new concept (a "gizmo") to hang the game on. 

Inspirational Illustration from Winsor McCay.

I had lost the original two-page proposal, but Steve Winter (who had mentioned it in a podcast) did not, and dropped me off a copy, which I am presenting below. The other sources referred to in the first paragraph were other concepts that were bouncing around at that time, which were either naval-style campaigns or monster-dominated "reverse dungeons" where the bulk of the world was hostile. So this is the last of a series of similar proposals, and reflects the input of others on the TSR team.

I am leaving the text as it was originally written, with corrections in [red brackets] and footnotes.

The story of how Stormfront came to be, and what happened to it, can be found here. I wanted to get this out there before an entire year had passed since my last mentioning it. Some fans have responded to the stories about it with interest, and now you know as much as our management did at the time about the product. 

Storm front¹

A Campaign Setting Proposal by

Jeff Grubb

5 January 1994 

Note: This proposal combines elements of a number of previous proposals from other sources, including the Under Siege collection of monster-dominated worlds, the Water Worlds, including Sea of Shadows, The Illythids, and the Earth-Sky proposal[s], and I hope it to be a synthesis of those ideas, dealing with the objections raised for each.

The Nugget: Man shall live on Mountain-Tops, and the world beneath is wrapped in clouds, storms, and shadow.

The Images: A world of eternal cloud cover and storms, where the forces of good and law can only survive on the few mountain-tops which pierce these clouds. The cloud layer is at a set altitude and is regular, and cloud-traders sail its surface in magical ships. Beneath the surface of the clouds the land is ruled by evil and chaos, by huge ever-changing nations and gangs controlled by beastly monstrosities known as the Abominations.

The Back Story: Long ago, Stormfront’s world was much like the Realms, perhaps a little further advanced in the magical department. A human dared to challenge the power of the sea gods, and best [bent] them to her will. The harnessing of the sea gods brought a golden age of power to the land, but in the end the powerful sea-deities revolted. The gods could not deluge the land without wiping out followers or causing other gods to step in, so they instead pumped much of their water vapor into the air, enchanting it as they did so. The result was a continual cloud cover which wrapped the cloud [world] save for its highest mountain chains. The land beneath the clouds changed, and its people changed with it. Lush vegetation in riotous colors broke out everywhere, deserts flooded, cities were inundated, fields became swamps, and civilization collapsed. The good and lawful races retreated upwards in the face of this onslaught. Those which remained were twisted by the magical rains in warped forms, and the most warped of these developed great powers – they became the Abominations.

Life Above the Clouds: The Nations of Light survive among the peaks of what were Stormfront’s highest mountains, and the largest of these is the Spine, a ragged archipelago with a main island a thousand miles long and a few hundred miles across at its widest. Spine is heavily populated and its population is clustered into huge cities, the bulk of its land needed for farming to feed its people. Where the mountain-nation descends to the cloud level is the Fogwall, a continually-guarded fortified wall which keeps those creatures which climb the mountains at bay.

            In addition to the Nations of Light, there is a polyracial alliance known as the cloud-skimmers. When the clouds first overlook [overtook] the world, their founding wizards found a method to travel on their tops. They are the transportation and communication guild, and are as powerful as any nation. They also may be dealing with the Abominations, but this is merely rumor.

            The other races live with the humans, but a few have their own settlements. Dwarves tunnel beneath the peaks, seeking to extend their domains downward, eventually linking up with their original homelands beneath the cloud level. Some elves have abandoned the world entirely, forming great floating orbs hovering over the surface of the cloud-ocean. Halflings live as pirates in stolen cloud-skimmers, providing an alternative (and a threat) to the power of the cloud-skimmers². The gnomes dominate the cloud-skimmers, particularly in the higher reaches of power, and are a more solemn, threatening people.

Life Beneath the Clouds: The land beneath the clouds is one of continual shadow and darkness, at its brightest the color of an overcast day. Storms move a random across its surface, and rains of blood, dead animals, snow, and insects are common. Those humans which remain beneath the layers are worn, beaten, and very, very depressed, such that most have abandoned hope of the light and follow dark masters.

            With the transformation of the oceans, new life appeared beneath the cloud cover – sea creatures and their twisted spawn now could live in the wet, thick air, and air-sharks, orcas, flying squid, and coin-bright swarms of piranhas are common. Locathah and sahaguin live on the surface (though they cannot live on the mountain tops of light, and hate the inhabitants there for that reason).

            The most powerful creatures of the darkness are the Abominations – creatures that once may have been mortal, or even human, but now are a combination of life and living natural force. These are the most evil and chaotic, and each seeks to establish itself as the dominant Abomination on the planet, slaying or enslaving everything else (This permits a variety of powerful bad guys, one of which may succeed the next over time).

            In the shadow of the Abominations are the Mind Flayers – non-psionic traditional types who interact among the Abominations much as the Cloud Skimmers³ do among the Nations of Light. They have their own secret societies and hidden agendas, and seek to gather enough power that they may control the Abominations, and with it the rest of the world.

            The land is wet and dark, the ground generally marshy and uneven. Areas are regularly flooded, and even recent mays may be altered at will. The level of the true oceans has dropped as a result of the god’s [gods’] manipulation, and the swollen rivers now wind far out from the original coasts, pitching finally over the edge of the continental shelf in huge waterfalls. In these extremely salty oceans lay the domains of the sea gods, still angry regarding their once-enslavement.

            The land beneath the clouds also holds the remains of the human nations and cities, and the knowledge within. The Nations of Light must continually send brave adventurers down into this rain-darkened land to recover now-long [now-lost] magical knowledge to keep the Abominations and the forces of darkness from completely taking over the planet. That’s here the adventurers come in. A typical “dungeon crawl” may be taking a Cloud Skimmer out to the location of an Ancient City, parachuting down (a difficult, but not impossible task), raiding, and the (the tough part) walking back.

            If we need an epic (after the first year or so) here goes – the level of the clouds is rising, and threatens to finally consume the Nations of Light. The heroes must seek out the most powerful Abomination to destroy his holy McGuffin and return the world to stability (in [if] not to the time before the floods).

Benefits of this world:

·         Takes advantage of the water-worlds (new monsters, sea travel, swashbuckling, pirates) without the disadvantages (drowning rules, 3-D movement on a regular basis, fire and spell modifications).

·         Gives us a large number of bad guys in the form of the Abominations (similar to the various evil organizations in Faerun or the Lords of Ravenloft).

·         Gives us a “gizmo world” (a physically different world from standard AD&D) which uses standard AD&D rules.

·         Gives us a world with one big problem (the gizmo – in this case the continual cloud cover) which cannot be cured – that is the status quo. A lot of little problems (abominations, other nations, the cloud skimmers, pirates) become problems the player characters can deal with.

·         Creates the “surrounded citadel” approach of good besieged by evil, without making that citadel dark itself. (the nations are in light, not in a dungeon, but still surrounded).

·         New monsters as the marine creatures have “thick-air” variants.

What do you think, sirs⁴?

Notes

1 – I would like to say the “Storm front” name, with its odd capitalization, was a pretentious affectation intended to make the name look artier, but it looks more like a globby typo after I went back and forth between two words and one.

2 – This is probably the most unclear sentence in the presentation – It should read – “Halflings live as pirates in stolen cloud-ships, providing an alternative (and a threat) to the power of the cloud-skimmers.” The gnomes would be a dominant force in the magical/merchant version Cloud Skimmers

3 – The cloud-skimmers became the Cloud Skimmers (as an official organization) over the course of writing the proposal, and the word was used to refer to both the organization and the ships they sailed. The legal department once got mad at me for Spelljammer, which I used as a noun, a proper noun, a verb, and would have been an adjective if I could have gotten away with it. I did that sort of thing again here.

4 – Yes, that is a MST3K reference. 

More later, 

In Spring a Young Man's Fancy Turns to No Quarter! (Part VI)

With the coming of spring, we see the release of this year's collectible US quarter designs into the wild. This blog has for a long time followed the design of these coins; first the State series, where each state (or territory) got the backside of a quarter to promote themselves, and now the "America the Beautiful" series where each state gets to pitch a particular national park, site, monument, preserve, forest, nature area, battlefield, or chunk of tarmac on this choice piece of promotional terrain.

And as I have noted before, here is our handy rating system:

Way Cool = A
Not Bad = B
Kinda Lame (Meh) = C
Very Lame = D
Looks like you can get two plays in an old pinball machine with them = E

National Homestead Monument of America - Nebraska

This one is a challenge to the coin-carvers. How do you commemorate a location that is honestly SUPPOSED to be in the middle of nowhere? One with few distinctive or redeeming features? One the really deals more with an idea than a place? I honestly think that the Nebraska Quarter rises to that challenge.

A little history. Starting 1862, the federal government passed a series of Homestead Acts which offered people free land in exchange for residency and improvement. Parties such as the Free Soil Party and the newly hatched Republicans were big on putting land into the hands of small independent farmers, as opposed to wealthy landholders. The Democrats, in particular Southern Democrats, scuttled such bills whenever they showed up, so everyone just waited until the south left the room Union and passed the bill. There were additional homestead acts to expand the area granted, and promises of planting timber, but this one in 1862 was the biggie.

The downside of the idea of "Free Land" was the fact that the land was in places like, well, Nebraska, which I believe is a Hekawi word for "Big Empty Desert Made of Grass". However, the promise of free land and the concept of the yeoman farmer, stolid and dependable, led many into the plains, where many perished from the fact that the plains were pretty inhospitable. Such founders get the nickname sodbusters, since there usually wasn't anything along the lines of stone or wood to build with. Hence, the early houses were sod.

This particular location did have wood to build (eventually) and is on the site of one of the first homesteaders. If that statement it sounds vague, part of it is because the individual who made that claim made a lot of claims over the years about being the first, and while they can determine he was among the first, whether he was exactly in first line is debated. Close enough for government work, at least.

In any event, the coin actually really cool for having to present a bunch of nothing but a idea. The mud and timber cabin dominates the center, framed by stalks of wheat, and with a small hand-pump in the middle. It actually captures the feeling of the struggle to survive on the prairie. In addition, the timber and mud layers of house should provide a good feel to the coin as well. Yeah, it's pretty well done.

Rating: A (Way Cool)

Kiatchie National Forest - Louisiana 

Well, the good news is that they chose a location pretty far inland for the site of this Louisiana quarter, making it relatively safe from rising oceans, oil spills, Mardi Gras tourists, and the ever-popular hurricanes. The downside is that this may the first time you've ever heard of it.

Kiatchie (the name is derived from the Kichie tribe that once lived in the neighborhood) is a swath of upland forest in the northern half of the state,, divided into five big chunks over seven parishes. Like the Homestead Monument, there is not a lot of define it on the back of a quarter. Unlike the Homestead Monument, there isn't as much as an idea here to crystallize around, either. So in the end, they chose a local inhabitant. The turkey. Yes, that is what that's supposed to be.

And they showed the turkey in flight, which demonstrates that you really shouldn't show a turkey in flight. It's embarrassing for everyone involved.  It looks like one of those primitive biplanes that gets shot off a catapult to get it into the air, It creates a question in the mind of the viewer: Will the next coin show a majestic swooping bird, or a tangle of feathers and bone as it augers in on a low-hanging cyprus branch. It looks like a velociraptor trying to fan-dance.

Honestly, only in my lifetime have people determined that the birds are direct descendants of the dinosaurs. Looking at the form of this splayed-feathered demi-reptile trying to scrabble its way aloft into a hostile sky, I thought it would have been obvious years ago.

Rating: B (Not Bad, but that remains one ugly turkey)

Blue Ridge Parkway - North Carolina

Here we see the classic cartoon site where Wile E. Coyote painted the picture of the tunnel on a cliff-face, built a road up to it, and waited for the Roadrunner to smash into it. The Roadrunner, of course, ran into the picture of the tunnel, not knowing any better. When Wile E. Coyote attempted to follow, armed with the knowledge of reality, he smashed into the rock wall, stunned himself, staggered off, and fell off a cliff. Humor.

OK, actually, this is one of many tunnels along the US's longest park, which threads some 469 miles through Virginia and North Carolina, with North Carolina JUST getting the bragging rights on having the biggest half. It is apparently the most-visited of the sites under the watch of the National Park Service because, well, it's a road. Started during the Depression and finished in the eighties, the Parkway snakes through some beautiful country.

The coin itself achieves something very nice - a sense of depth. The carvings have gotten better over the years, as have the designs, but this does not just use two planes of depth, but actually funnels you attention from the right, with its masonry foreground (coming out of another tunnel?) and (I'm guessing) dogwood blooms, brought along the curve of the road (no horizon line to distract - just white space, then to the tunnel itself, and down through the short tunnel to the exit. And there, very small, at the far end, you can just see ... the Roadrunner.

Beep Beep.

Rating: A (Way Cool - I really like this one).

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge - Delaware

This quarter plays off its strengths, and pushes its waterfowl. In this case, it reveals that it is the winter nesting ground of the kaiju monster Rodan. OK, actually, that is ....

That is ...

Hang on. I'm getting this strange sense of deja vu. Almost like...

Yeah, let's hop in the wayback machine and go back a year to...

Yes!  I knew it. This actually nothing more than a reskin of the Everglades/Florida quarter from last year. I've got the swamp. I've got the two birds. They're in the same positions. Somebody threw the Florida quarter on a light table and got out their tracing paper. My god. Did they think no one would NOTICE?

I mean, I can sympathize. We are talking Delaware, here, a fully-owned subsidiary of the credit card industry. What would they put on the quarter? A listing of US household debt? But even so, if your best feature is Bombay Hook (named after the Doctor in Bewitched), the least you could do would be to show some originality. If you're going to steal stock photographs, at least show the decency to flip the image.

Yeah, I really liked this presentation, -when I SAW IT LAST YEAR. No, you don't get another chance, Delaware. You should have thought of it before.

Rating: D (Just ... Just leave. I'll be sending a letter to your parents).

Saratoga National Monument - New York

The last quarter for the year also deals with a concept as opposed to the importance of a particular place, though the place is important. In this case, the quarter celebrates the first successful pickpocket attempt in a D&D game outside of Lake Geneva.

No, actually it commemorates the defeat of the British forces, under General Burgoyne, by the American rebels under General Gates. It was the military turning point of the war. Burgoyne was supposed to sweep down from Canada and hook up with General Howe's forces coming up from New York City. And indeed, Burgoyne uprooted the Americans out of Fort Ticonderoga, so he kept his side of the deal. Howe, though, decided to invade Philadelphia instead, and left Burgoyne hanging. Another support column coming up the Mohawk River was been turned back, and this and the loss of Native American allies left Burgoyne on a very thin branch, which Gates and his aggressive major general, Benedict Arnold (yeah, that guy) lopped off the branch and forced a surrender.

So, does the coin work? I'm going to say no, since you have to label it to get any sense of what is happening here. The idea that the brocade on a sleeve indicates "British" to the user is a bit of a reach, and most folk don't remember that turning over your sword is the old-fashion-y method of surrender. Plus labeling it British Surrender might mean you're going to get some mail from Yorktown.

I think it is actually too subtle.

Rating C (Meh).

Tune in next year folks, and we get to  start the Civil War with two different coins. Plus some other places you've never heard of until now.

And Delaware ... I'm watching you. Just so you know.

More later,

The Gaming News

There is a lot of gaming news that gets passed around these days. However, most of it is on Facebook, which means you will see it once, think that you might get back to it later, and then never see it again as the feed churns relentless onward. Here are some things of note from the past few days.

First off, Baker Street: Roleplaying in the world of Sherlock Holmes is for sale on RPGNow. This is a nice game which works off the very inspired conceit that while Holmes was off on his European Holiday (and the world assumes that he had plunged to his death at Reichenbach Falls), Watson employed talented amateurs to fill the Great Detective's shoes. Those talented amateurs would be the player characters, who negotiate clues and get to the truth of matters great and small.

As part of a stretch goal for the product, Fearlight Games produced a Baker Street Casebook, which involves a handful of talented individuals such as Skip Williams, Bryce Whitacre, Steven S. Long, and yours truly. Naturally, given the chance, I wrote about the goings-on at a club on Pall Mall where the younger members pinch policemen's helmets. Because I could. Find out more about it here.

Secondly, speaking of Kickstarter, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the talented and lovely Rob Schwalb has a kickstarter going on for his new project, a dark fantasy RPG called Shadow of the Demon Lord. The game has already burst past its inital and is wracking up the stretch goals even as I write this. Go check it out here.

Third, I am planning to go to GenCon in Indianapolis for the first time in many years, despite the best efforts of the Indiana State Legislature to convince me otherwise. The state legislature has passed a bill, SB101, which pretty much says you can refuse service to anyone as long as you belong to a faith that says its all right to do so. It is pretty much aimed at the GLBTQ community, although under the law of unintentional consequences, things can get out of hand pretty damned quickly. Being Indiana, the bill was passed by the legislature and now only needs the governor's signature.

Now GenCon is currently hosted in Indy, but is run out of this part of the country, and a goodly chunk of it and many other game companies are part of, or friends and/or relatives and/or co-workers of, the very community that the bill is targeting. GenCon put together a very cogent, polite letter pointing out that the convention brings some 50 mill into downtown Indy and, if they and their friends aren't wanted, they will gladly take that business to people who are more willing to treat their convention-goers with respect. A lot of the click-bait online sites are calling it a threat, but it sounds pretty damned calm and reasonable. You can read the letter here.

It is a pity, after spending years trying to convince people that they should actually go to Indianapolis in the middle of August (And I have BEEN in Indiana in August), they are now determined to flush all that away.

Finally, on a very sad note, I must report the passing of Mike McArtor. I worked with Mike on the D&D 3.5 Spell Compendium, which was pretty much my last WotC D&D project. Mike would go to work on Magic: The Gathering and for Paizo, and he and his wife joined our gaming group of a while, playing Call of Cthulhu. Mike died in a car accident yesterday, and I will honest, has left me rattled. He was a pleasant, talented, thoughtful young man, and the industry is lessened by his passing. Rest in Peace, Mike.

More later,

DOW Breaks 18,000

Actually, this happened before Christmas. And then it dropped below for a while and then it showed up again in February, and then it dropped for another while and now it is back again. And it will probably drop again and rise again, but I suppose I should mention it before it gets to 19k.

The market in recent years has taken huge swings. Once, long ago, a hundred point swing was considered a major news item - now it is Tuesday. Part of this is because the nature of how stocks are traded. The human factor seems to be almost completely eliminated, such that even the once ubiquitous independent day traders from when I started this blog have settled into a small clique, while the bulk of decisions are made by computer agents programmed to response to particular trends.

For the mildly paranoid, releasing untested rules into the wild tends to create unintended consequences, where independent programs tend to cause spikes and crashes. For the really paranoid, it is but a small step between programs which analyze and play the market and those which analyze and manipulate the market without need of human direction. These pop up as a minor concept in William Gibson's recent book, The Peripheral, where Aunties - autonomous financial programs from the future, are unleashed further up the timestream to affect a divergent universe.

But that sort of things does not capture our attention so much as something closer to home - gas prices. They went into a steep dive of late, getting to below $2.50 here in the Puget Sound region and below two bucks in the more accessible parts of the country. And there were a flurry of articles about how this is a bad thing, most of them in the line of "Yeah, its good for most drivers, BUT..." And then they would talk about how low gas prices add to instability by undermining fracking or oil shale or solar power (yeah, I don't get this one either) or makes Russia or Iran or Alberta more desperate by reducing their income.

In the short run, things seem to have stabilized, which most of us means that prices have been slowly climbing upwards. But that comes with a price - apparently a lot of gas is being kept off the market, warehoused for the eventual day when it will bring more money. And we're running out of space to hide it. So sometime this summer we should see another price drop and another round of pearl-clutching as the producers are faced with either reducing production (which has happened to some degree, ending booms in South Dakota) or actually selling the product they have. And prepare for another round of worries about how this will affect the status quo, as if that status is considered to be the ultimate desirable quo.

Unless, of course, the Aunties from the future do something else to jimmy with our markets.

More later,

Play: Mean Girls

The Comparables by Laura Schellhardt, Directed by Braden Abraham, Seattle Rep through March 29

Remember when I used this space to talk about stuff that wasn't politics or theatre? Yeah, me neither. Probably those two last topics survive here because they are time-sensitive - elections resolve and plays run their course. Other subjects I tend to overthink, or leave fallow, or abandon entirely. But still, for the moment, theatre.

I want to like The Comparables more than I do. It has a lot of the stuff that I'm always going on about in this space. World premiere. Developed here. Playwright wrote the excellent K of D from a few seasons back. Two thirds of the actresses have tread the boards before. It clocks in at about the right time ( hour and a half, no intermission). Does not succumb to polemic. So what happened here?

Let me start out with the basics. Monica (Cheyenne Casebier) works for Bette (Linda Gehringer), a high end New York real estate firm. Iris (Keiko Green) is a rookie who comes in for an interview with Bette, crashes and burns with the pre-interview with Monica, but gets hired anyway, Iris and Monica become both rivals and allies as the play deals with the conflicts that women have with each other as well as with the old-boys network of society at large.

But the play never really seems to find its level, and quantum jumps all over to the place to different energy states. The stated conflicts feel pretty facile (Bette has a reality show coming up, while Monica and Iris are working on opposing sides of a divorcing couple, seeking to get them to purchase multiple new digs). The deeper issues of Monica's own paralysis in her job are interesting and universal, and but it seems to take its time finding its way to the surface, egged on by frenemy Iris.

And it misfires, particularly when talking about corporations. The initial interview involves sharing way too much personal information, which serves plot but undermines character. Iris and Monica flip between allies and rivals way too often, and suspicions that either one is playing the other sort of evaporates in the shuffle. Bette shifts between Devil-Wearing-Prada to King Lear seeking to pass on her kingdom all too quickly.

Similarly, the play itself flips between a sitcom staginess (Iris encounters Bette in the elevator on the way out and gets the job anyway) and real issues for women operating both in a man's world and against other women. They aren't really competing (comparing) because they are all at different levels in life and professionalism. The action builds to slapstick of a Laverne and Shirley level, then sort of all falls apart in the denouement. Violence on stage is difficult, particularly in the build-up, and it is tough to believe that the characters went that far. (A similar problem existed in Mamet's American Buffalo, where the violence builds to a particular level only to dissipate in an avalanche of pillows).

The comparative age of the characters holds hope for an Maiden/Mother/Crone analysis (as in Three Tall Women). And even here there is room for some definition of character. Iris could be a trickster Loki, getting by on wits and charm. Monica, the matronly self-declared load-building pillar of the company, is very matronly. And again, if we had taken Bette either to wisdom or to dotage we would have had more definitive characterizations.

It felt like the characters were too similar and at the same time not defined enough. On the way in, I passed a portrait of the three actresses, and they had the exact same smile. It may have been intended, that superior, real-estate broker mask in all three, but that mask frustrated me getting to the characters themselves, and to empathizing with them. And it may be as simple as that - I want to root for Monica, but I don't get a lot to base that desire on.

In short (I know, too late for that), it was a failure, but a good failure. It feels like it needs a couple more turns on the wheel, a little more time in the oven, to come up with something with deeper feeling and meaning.

More later,

Play: Love among the MFAs

Dear Elizabeth, but Sarah Ruhl, Directed by Allison Narver. Seattle Rep through 8 March.

I will get to the play in a moment, but let me whine (and whine way too much) about Seattle traffic. This is the first time I have ever been late for the theater, despite living some 20 miles south of the Seattle Center, where the Rep is based. Yet that particular day, I failed to make it before the door shut. I had to see the first act after the play had begun, in (duh-duh-DUM) late seating.

Here's the story: The Lovely Bride was busy in the city in the morning, practicing for a Tai Chi demo, and I told her I would meet her at the theater and bring the LB's mom up (who, I may have mentioned, is an actress). Given the fact that the LB's mom has just celebrated her 80th birthday, we left early to get there with plenty of time, and made it down off Panther Lake to the major highways by 1 PM for a 2 PM show.

So, 20 miles, an hour to do so, should be OK. What I did not know about was road work in the proverbial Mercer Mess, which is the exit that leads from the highway to the Seattle Center (a couple miles). The first warning was when there was a dead-stop backup a mile from the exit itself, at which point it was too late to change plans. Finally making the exit, one could only see a packed road leading ahead off to the horizon. It was that sort of treacherous mess where the lights turn green but no one moves because there is no place to move. A motor vehicle mosh pit.

I mention to the LB's mom that with a mess this bad, there HAS to be a police officer directed traffic at the other end. And indeed, after taking an alternate route that sent us back into the town, rejoining the backup at the very end, there were not one but THREE police officers directing traffic on Denny and doing their part to contribute to a forty-minute snarl between I-5 and the Space Needle.

We worked though the worst of it with (relative) patience and grace, and I manage to deliver the LB's mom at the theater with five full minutes to spare (huzzah). Then I find out that my usual parking lot, which normally is cheap and pretty darn empty, is today full, including a mobile crane. And that all parking was twenty bucks for some event of which I had no idea. AND the parking spot I eventually found was presided over by a machine that obvious served a very long and very hard life, and was bitter about it and moving with the speed similar to that of the Mercer Mess.

And then in the middle of it all, a Seattle moment. Which I was standing there waiting with several other would-be parons for the parking machine to decide if its electronic life was worth continuing, a Dixieland band came down the street. No, I'm not kidding. Bass drum mounted on the chest, some horns, a trombone, a clarinet or two, and a sousaphone (or maybe a fluegelhorn). They bounced there way down Mercer, hooked a right in front of the theater, and were gone. It was just something I never thought I would see in Seattle, and there it was. And it really took the edge off all the rush.

In any event, while I got the Lovely Bride's Mom to the theater in time, the doors were closed before I got there. I was given (duh-duh-DUM) late seating, which meant that I and a few others who had been caught in the Mess had to wait, hearing the play in low tones but like Tantalus, barred from actually witnessing it. Then we were parked in the balcony boxes for the first act, which in the Leo K theater were actually not that bad, though I lost a chunk of the stage that was stage right/house left. It is not a play that moved around a lot, so that worked out.

And while I cannot blame the theater for the traffic, I will note that there is a concierge function in their promotions, which has in the past reminded us that a play starts an hour early or some big event was happening. This time, not so much. So yeah, an email saying "MY GOD, it will be quicker for you to drive around the Sound and take the ferry in from Bainbridge!" would have been appreciated.

Anyway, what all this means is that I didn't get the opening of the play, and was forced to cross-examine the Lovely Bride at intermission about what I had missed. "I got there by the time he came up to Maine to see her." "OK, so when they were exchanging poems?" "I caught the reference to Celluloid Bird." "No, there was stuff before that." So I don't know how the two main characters met, which I feel is a wee bit of a problem when you want to evaluate their relationship.

More than enough whining. Dear Elizabeth is a presentation of the correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop (played by Suzanne Bouchard, and it is nice to actually see actors onstage at the Rep who have been there before), and Robert Lowell (Stephen Barker Turner, his hair in the continual upsweep of a man who often combs it with his hand in moments of frustration). Now, about 85% of the readers here will say WHO?. And that's part of the prob. These two are noted postwar poets, and the story talks about their long distance, mostly platonic relationship between 1947 and 1977.

And in many ways it is like attending someone else's high school reunion. I am not a poet and find poetry one of the harder things to get through - I find myself lulled by cadence and stop I paying attention to the words.. [Important digression however - one poet I particular like is Lester Smith, who has the benefit of being both very good and still alive. Lester's stuff I can read all day, though I would be hard-pressed to categorize him as either "raw" or "cooked" (which is a Lowell quote). But back to the play.] I don't know either of Bishop or Lowell or their work, and instead of the play opening new doors for me I found myself at the wrong booth in the cafe, overhearing things I know about only tangentially at best.

So, Ruhl has compressed the written correspondence into a dialog, filled with starts and stops and parts of life - marriage and lovers and suicides both potential and realized and stays in the mental hospital. And mixed with it are bits they are working on, ranging from getting published to reviewing other works. And as a word-cruncher by trade, the concept of fretting about the perfect choice of a phrase for weeks at a time seems like an alien concept. I fret about the right words,but I live in a world where deadlines loom like ogres with clubs, just waiting to pick off the slow ones.

And through it all, I was stunned by the idea that these folk are poets, yet get to go to Europe and Brazil. How the heck does that work, financially? Checking the wiki (the play gives us little clue) part of it is through teaching and grants, but also Lowell is listed in the wikipedia as being a Boston Brahmin (which means money in the family) while Bishop is mentioned as having an inheritance. Still, their presence in the greater world seems to not matter as they fight with their own creations, which in turn are mentioned only in passing.

That may be the biggest problem with this play - I'm not sure if it about the authors' work or their struggle or just a very polite relationship. It shows an affection between the two but doesn't really engage. Passions reserved for the work, which, like polite children, remain offstage. The closest thing to a conflict is case where Lowell converts his second wife's correspondence into a series of poems, which Bishop finds scandalous, which is very meta since Ruhl is turning THEIR correspondence into a play.

The actors are just fine, but the play itself is pretty flaccid, neither raw nor fully cooked. I cross-examined the Lovely B and the LB's Mom for further enlightenment, in case there was a central thesis put forth early on that I missed, but no, there was no early statement apparently that bound it all together. It was what it was, and getting there on time was no rescue.

Would I recommend it? Let me damn it by saying that if you like this sort of stuff (as in "the lives of post-war poets"), then you will like the play. After three strong courses of LBJ and August Wilson, anything would be a let-down, but this one made me wonder where that Dixieland band was heading.

More later.

Play: August Wilson's Ghost Story

The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, Directed by Timothy Bond, Seattle Rep through 8 Feb.

I never expected a ghost story from August Wilson. His body of work deals with the African American experience, in particular the effects of the Great Migration up from the South into northern industrial cities, in particular Pittsburgh. Yet here we have what is on one side a conflict between the rural past and urban future, and on the other a story of vengeful ghosts and protective spirits.

The play is set in 1936 Pittsburgh, in the home of Doaker Charles (Derrick Lee Weeden), a railroad cook who lives there with his niece Berniece (Erika LaVonn) and her daughter Maretha (Shiann Welch). Among the belongings is the piano in question, a venerable upright carved with the family's history as slaves in the south.

Setting the play in motion is Berniece's brother Boy Willie (Stephen Tyrone Williams) and his buddy Lymon (Yaegel T. Welch) , who arrive with a truck full of watermelons of questionable provenance and news that the owner of the land their family worked (and the descendant of the family that had owned their family in slavery) had died, fallen/pushed/disposed of in a well, and the land was up for sale. Boy Willie figures that with his current savings, the profits off the watermelons, and selling the family piano, he can afford to buy the land for himself.

Berniece will not hear of selling the piano, and that sets the plot in the motion. LaVonn's Berniece is the centerpoint of the play, resisting arguments from all sides as to why she should sell the piano. Boy Willie wants the money for the land. Berniece's suitor Avery (Ken Robinson) thinks that it would help her move on from the death of her husband. Doaker claims neutrality, but sees the parallel between Bernice's husband's death and the death of her father, Doaker's brother, and the effect it left on both women. Berniece remains resolute, through for the wrong reasons, and the depth of the character is brought out by LaVonn.

But Boy Willie was not the only thing that came up from the south. The vengeful spirit of the dead man apparently as followed as well, demanding its own compensation. So while the heart of the play is the contesting of a family relic and with it the family's heritage, the resolution comes from the ever-ratcheting haunting of the house by the descendant of the family's owners.

To be honest, the supernatural is a hard sell on the stage, where the immediacy of the audience creates a danger that it can go into farce. What grounds this particular haunting is the people and their stories. Everyone has their tales in the group, and August Wilson creates a lyrical patter for everyone, in particular Boy Willie, such that you feel after a while that the only thing that keeps him aloft if the stories he tells about himself. There is a long stretch in the final act which is effective monologue as Williams drives everyone else to silence with his nonstop chatter. And indeed, this long running of the mouth provides the perfect setup for a comeuppance at the hands of the ghost.

There is also an undercurrent of violence within August Wilson's works, and guns appear from the outset and haunt the stage with their own presence as well, as the words and tales may go too far and spill out in bloodshed. Blood is rubbing into the finish of the piano itself, with the blood of slavery that it depicts.

So the lesson of The Piano Lesson refers to both the story of the family on the piano, the story about the piano (a variant of the parable of the talents from Matthew) and a lesson of the power of the spirits of the past. I have often dinged the Rep for the shortness of their modern plays, but the past three have been three-hour powerhouses, and exercise the full potential of the stage.

More later,

Big Game, Big Story

Humans, we love our stories. It is something about us, our desire to make connections, to seek out links, to explain, that fuels a need to create narratives. It may be what defines us as humans. Something cannot simply exist. Events cannot simply occur. Things must have a reason. Actions must occupy a continuity. The world must have meaning over and above the obvious.

So, this weekend, there's a big football game. The champions of one group of teams (The Seattle Seahawks) will meet the champions of the other group of teams (The New England Patriots) in a head-to-head match up for all the marbles and bragging rights and rings and bonuses. And there will be music and fireworks and fans painting themselves and expensive commercials that you've probably already seen on YouTube and, I dunno, dancing bears.

And there will be stories.

In the two-week gap between determining the combatants and the game, something needs to fill time, and that becomes the narrative. Who are the white hats? Who are the black hats? Who are the upstarts? Who are the veterans? What does this say about the teams' home regions? What insights do we gain?

Looking at this year, and several past Super Bowls Seattle was a part of, the general feeling is that the mass media doesn't really get Seattle at all. We're quirky. We're tucked away in the northwest. Too much coffee. Too much rain. Young. Technie. Distracted by our phones. Not serious about our sports.

The first Super Bowl Seattle played in was against Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh's aura as a heavy-lifting steel town predominated (never mind that the biggest industry in medical services these days). The coverage was overwhelming about how the Steelers, who had the right stuff, would dominate the other guys, who would be the Seahawks (The Steelers won, confirming this narrative).

The second Super Bowl Seattle played in had a similar vibe. The opponent was the Broncos, under Payton Manning, and in the weeks leading up to the event, the national media treated it as a coronation of Mr. Manning as the Greatest Player Evah (And he IS real good) and the game as just a confirmation of that obvious fact. Seattle defeated the Broncos soundly in that game, leaving the media without a narrative and scrambling.

So you would think that, this time out, there would be a little more love for the Seahawks? Not so much. Most of the week has concentrated on the scandal of whether the Patriots kept their balls properly inflated. There is some real science about this, but pretty much it has gone in the direction you would expect it - people looking for reasons to say "The Patriots' Balls".

Reporting on the Seattle side? Not so much. The most news we get is about how on of our running backs (who IS real good) won't talk to the sports press, and one of our cornerbacks (who ALSO is real good) talks way too much. Our quarterback comes across as a nice, intense, dedicated. talented youngster, which as a result, apparently, makes for bad interviews and bad television (until he starts scrambling in the open and gives every fan in the stadium a heart attack).

So the story is yet again centered on the other team this year, with some factions fitting them for black hats and others being more charitable (in the manner that one expects charity when you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar up to your elbow) . We have not hit the level where the Patriots are playing for redemption quite yet, because that involves actually admitting there was anything wrong in the first place. And I should be happy from the standpoint that while all the news leans on the Patriot side, the previous Super Bowl champions are cruising along, effective underdogs for the very prize they took home the previous year.

And I don't think anyone has caught that particular narrative. Leading up to this, we kept hearing how teams that win the Super Bowl are not even expected to make the playoffs the next year, yet once Seattle did that, that entire line of thought died away. This is a rarity, but in a landscape scraping for any narrative that doesn't involve "The Patrtiots' Balls", I think the media missed the obvious story of a team of individuals coming together to win games.

I suppose I should be OK with the attention on the Patriots, given that the other big story from the media is that our running back (who, I may have mentioned, is real good) doesn't want to talk to them. And I will be watching the game with friends on Sunday. But I think the media blew it this time with their narrative, Again.

More later,

PAX South

PAX South, part of the ever-expanding Pax Empire, is this weekend, down in San Antonio. I shan't be there (I wasn't planning of going, and right now I am in the second week of a mindbendingly nasty cold), but a lot of people that I know and like will be there.

Of particular mention would be former ArenaNet colleague Matthew Moore, who will be demoing a new card game called Bring Your Own Book, which combines card play with being well read, as players delve through books to come up with that one perfect line that matches the card. The demos will be part of Pax South Indie Showcase. He said he was going to use a copy of Ghosts of Ascalon for the demo, should he find a copy. That would be cool..

And speaking of ArenaNet, you have probably heard by now that we're going to have a big announcement on Saturday morning, hosted by voice artist Jennifer Hale, who is Queen Jennah in our game, and featuring the equally dulcet tones of Mike O'Brien, our head honcho, and Game Director Colin Johanson. For those who can't make it, the announcement (at 10:30 local time - 11:30 EST and 8;30 ohmighod early west coast time) it will be on a twitch feed. It probably has something to do with this video:

And also for those who can't make it, and are playing Guild Wars 2, we're celebrating the announcement with a weekend of double experience. Well, now I know how I am spending the weekend.

AND, if you don't have Guild Wars 2, we're actually going to make it easy for you. On Saturday and Sunday, we're dropping the price on the digital version of the game to all of $10. Short of me sneaking into your house in the middle of the night and putting it on your drive, that's the best deal you've seen.

But for me? I'm spending it healing up, drinking hot tea, and playing Guild Wars 2. Lots and lots of Guild Wars 2.

More later,

{UPDATE:} And this is what the fuss is all about:

Intentions

So, this time of year, we look at New Years Resolutions. But the value of the typical resolution has become so watered down as to become meaningless. The resolution has become the setup of so many disappointing jokes (just check out the comics pages in the paper today - how many of them begin with a character swearing some resolution, and then breaking it before the final panel). In short, the resolution resolves not much of anything.

So I'm going to have intentions instead. Intentions are pretty much what resolutions become. We do not say IT IS RESOLVED that I will go to the gym. Lose ten pounds. Be nicer to my cats. There is no real penalty connected to any of that. Rather, we really mean that we INTEND to go the gym more, or lose ten pounds, or be nicer to the cats, and that the last one only with the proviso that said cats don't call them on the house phone at five in the morning*.

So, intentions.

I intend to read more. I have a big pile of books unbegun and a bigger pile of books unfinished. The latter group is scattered about the house, many of them abiding in a bookcase the Lovely Bride has provided for me to showcase my shame, mental bookmarks in each one where I set it aside, intending to get back to it soon. Real soon.

I intend to write more. I feel I've been coasting. I do a couple essays, stretch myself through a larger project or two, but outside of the day job I've been sleeping a lot and engaged in meaningless timesucks (I am looking at you, Facebook, now buried in a sub-folder of my iPad - Yes, I will still post to you, but not from a portable device). I have a double-handful of pieces in various states of doneness, but sadly they do not look like an artist's character studies, which have a value in themselves, but rather more like the partially disassembled motorcycle you pulled apart in the garage two summers ago with the intention of customizing it. That may mean more honest-to-goodness blogging, a long-form that is quietly dying out there in the newer-than-new media. I've made references to things I mean to get back to, but haven't. Let us see if we can manage them this year.

I intend to watch more. I know this goes against intending to read more, but I really have fallen behind on a lot of stuff I've been meaning to get around to. Most of it is on Netflix - I still use a TV (no video snob, I) , but primarily for events that cool quickly, like sports events. I bailed on "House of Cards" about halfway through the first season, and really want to check out the "Marco Polo". Watching old movies on the TCM app may replace my continual Facebook checking, but I am good with that.

There are more. Take more notes. Improve my memory. Be nicer to my cats. But three will do it for the moment,

More later,

*Oh, all right, let me explain the bit about the cat. We have a pair, who since late summer have been beset by fleas, such that they have taken to perching in areas they have previously avoided. One in particular has taken to nesting on the kitchen counter, next to the phone. Said cat rolled over and hit the button for "find the handsets", which causes those handsets to burble loudly. One of the handsets was on the bedroom bureau. So the cat accidentally called me at five in the morning. She was surprised to find me awake, and since I was just standing there in the kitchen, would I feel her breakfast. No, I was not happy about that.