On occasion, when the mood hits me, I start considering things and enjoy putting them to (virtual) paper. If you are looking for my thoughts on games, life, family, pets, my reviews, and pretty much anything else, you will find them here.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
I have worked at my current job for nearly 12 years, but before I got all professional, I was a bit of a vagabond...and that is putting it semi lightly. I am often told that I have lots of great stories. I don't know if I actually do have more, but when I look back at my life from the age of 18 to around 30, I do realize that I crammed a lot of living in there, and recently, my father told me that I should start writing some of this stuff down, before I couldn't remember it anymore, so here goes.
At one point in my life, I was working around 5 jobs. I delivered pizzas, I worked at a hockey rink, I was an umpire and referee for the local sports leagues, I worked at a video store/music store, and...I worked security for a local concert promoter.
You know those guys in the matching shirts that stand in front of the stage, or by the back door to the theater, maybe with a little earpiece and a radio? That was me. Now I could regale you with the day to day grind or the job, and some of the colorful people that I worked with, but that would be really boring. What I will tell you, however, is my dealings with the many, many different bands and personalities I was able to meet and interact with - mainly because I was in charge of keeping them from getting mobbed by their fans.
Insane Clown Posse - Let's start this off with a big splash, shall we? This was the very first band (and I use that term loosely) that I was hired to work security for, and I almost quit my job over it. I will be completely honest, at the time of this concert, I knew next to nothing about this group and their act, but I did have one semi-friend that was huge into them - he was a juggalo before it was [sarcasm]cool[/sarcasm] - and he told me that they were an amazing heavy metal rap band that I just HAD to listen to, so I was mildly looking forward to the performance.
I still owe that guy a punch in the mouth.
Before the concert even started, my job was to walk the perimeter of the auditorium, inside and out, and just make sure that no one was trying to sneak in, make sure that the various doors that led outside were shut and locked, and other various security measures. On one of my circuits, I saw this stocky gentleman with bleached blonde hair on a pay phone (this was about 15 or more years ago) and he was currently telling whoever was on the other side of the conversation that they were a m-----f-----g n-word and that if he didn't get his m-----f-----g money soon, he was going to beat some f-----g a--. When he saw me looking at him he gave me one of those little "hey" nods and then went back to berating whoever they were talking to.
This guy turned out to be Violent J without his makeup and costume, one of the members of ICP.
The night devolved from that moment and never really recovered. I was placed center stage and my job was to keep people from killing themselves when they went crowd surfing. Let me take a quick break from this story to say this:
If you are at a concert, and you are thinking about crowd surfing, just don't. You are putting yourself at a lot of risk, and more importantly, the guys working security hate you. I am serious, we hate you. Nothing is more dangerous for us than what you are up to. We need to reach into the crowd and grab some flailing moron who is probably wearing boots, a watch, multiple items of jewelry, and who knows what else. All of those items hurt like hell when they hit you in the face, which happens at least a half dozen times while you are trying to make sure that this nimrod doesn't get upended and crack his skull open on the concrete floor. In nearly ten years of working about 200 or so concerts, I got injured maybe seven or eight times, and nearly every time it was because I was catching someone that was crowd surfing. I know a lot of you might say, if you don't like it, don't work the concert, and my response to that is that I wish I had just let you crack your head open.
Anyway - this was a horrible concert, in every sense of the word horrible. The music was awful, the performers were full of themselves, and the actual "act" was atrocious. If you are unfamiliar with ICP, they have this weird fascination with a soda brand called Faygo. They have a bunch of different flavors, kind of like Shasta, and it is a local brand from where ICP is from. They apparently truck in a giant pallet of 2-liters of the stuff and proceed to shake up the bottles and spray the crowd, which means I was getting sprayed with it constantly. For two hours I listened to horrible song after horrible song, catching crowd surfers and made sure no "fans" made it to the stage, which seems to happen at least a couple of times every show. For my efforts, I (along with the rest of the security team) got to be called a f----t who liked to have sex with his own mother, who was probably racist and liked to beat up n-words. Violent J and his band mate Shaggy 2 Dope also took great pleasure in purposefully dumping soda on our heads while we tried to protect their fans. When all was said and done, I was covered in soda head to toe, my eyes stung from the sugar and what have you that constantly dripped onto my face from my hair, and I still had to hang out for a few more hours to help with the shutdown and pack up before I could get paid. To be fair, the promoter took pity on us and gave us all a bonus for putting up with the craziness, but the cash in my pocket barely made it worth it. Looking back, I figure I must have really needed the money when they called me up for work the next time, because I cannot believe I went back to do it again.
Sevendust - Classy guys, each and every one of them. Their band manager was also one of the coolest people I have ever met in my life. This would normally be a very pedestrian entry, however they had just released their first album and people were starting to take notice of the band. They wanted to do a "meet and greet" at a local record store (that I worked at) and I was asked to stand around and work crowd control for the occasion. While they got a ton of people to show up, everyone was very respectful and orderly, so I spent most of my time just hanging out and talking to their manager. After we wrapped up, he mentioned that if I was going to be at the show that night I should hang out with the band before and after the concert. I mentioned that I would be doing security so he asked the promoter if I could be "their guy" for watching their bus, the dressing room, and so forth - basically the cushy job. I hung out with the band until the wee hours of the morning, watched silly groupy girls throw themselves at the members with varied success, and was formally asked by the manager to come to Minneapolis with them in a few days to do it all again.
A few days later I took them up on their offer and got to impress the heck out of the girl I was seeing at the time by being able to walk in the building in front of the line because my name was on "the list". We got to go backstage and hangout, we got free drinks, and got to party with the band afterwards as well. As an added bonus, one of my favorite bands, Clutch, was playing that night, and I got to meet them too.
All in all, the whole group was top notch and a pleasure to deal with. I have followed them ever since, and while they have had their ups and downs, they remain one of my favorite bands.
Bob Mould - Probably the most boring concert I have ever worked. Mould's fans are so non-rowdy we may as well have been in a church. I don't fault his musicianship, he is a talented guy, but it just wasn't my thing. This is what we would call an "EZ Cash" concert. You show up, stand around, shoot the breeze with the other security guys for a few hours and collect your money.
On a side note - this concert was right after Mould's band Sugar broke up, but all of his gear and what have you were still emblazoned with the bands logo, so a lot of people asked him if Sugar was reforming. It should also be noted, that Bob seemed to be cripplingly shy. He would answer the questions asked of him with one or two word answers, and mostly just seemed incredibly uncomfortable with his after show interactions he had with his fans. As soon as he was able he dashed into his bus and left.
White Zombie - One of two concerts that I worked where I actually got into an altercation and had to subdue a concert goer who desperately needed to be ejected from the premises. I won't bore you with this story since the other one I will tell is SOOO much better. I will say this, I felt really awful about what happened because by nature I am a pacifist, and I think the guy got hurt pretty bad judging from the amount of blood that got on me as we were wrestling him out of the arena.
Anyway, the band: They were very, very cool. This was just as they were hitting their zenith. The AstroCreep 2000 album had been out for a few months and "More Human than a Human" was being played every 20 minutes on some radio station in town. This was the show where I ended up drinking beers with Sean Yseault after the show, and I instantly, and permanently, fell in love. She was smart, funny, and absolutely stunning in person. Still remains as one of the coolest evenings of my life.
For his part Rob Zombie was kind of distant and out of it, but I think he was just exhausted (and a little bit drunk). He was nice enough to sign my CD covers and smiled when I got my picture taken, but other than a few mumbles and single word answers, he was pretty much off in his own little world.
I might add - this was one of the best live shows I ever saw.
Marilyn Manson - They opened for White Zombie. I don't have too much to comment here other than the fact that this was at the very beginning of his career, and during White Zombies set, we were asked if anyone had seen him in the building as he had vanished from the backstage area. We found him wandering around the building concourse, blasted out of his mind on some combination of chemicals, surrounded by fans with little to no ability to interact with other human beings. We got some of his personal security to come over and grab him, which they did, and he vanished into his tour bus, never to be seen again.
Looking back, it might very well have been an act, but it was pretty convincing. Kudos to him if he put one over on us.
Dick Dale - There are a few people/bands listed here that I am glad I got to meet and talk to, and Dick Dale is one of them. If you get the chance to see him live, I highly suggest you do so. His skill with the guitar goes so far beyond the "surf" genre I am sure you know him for, and he shows off all those abilities, on several different instruments, over a couple of hours that seem to last about 20 minutes. He intersperses his songs with stories from his career, great anecdotes such as how he and Elvis used to be neighbors and would hang out all the time, stuff like that.
At the end of his show, while we were helping clean up the place and get the people out the door, I noticed that he had sat down at the front of the stage, legs hanging over the side, and he announced that anyone who wanted an autograph could get in line and he would sign whatever the liked. I noticed quickly that a lot of people didn't have a lot for him to sign, but instead, they would just get up there and BS with him for awhile, about pretty much anything. One guy talked to him about piloting, and the different planes that he owned. He did this for 3 hours. I know this because I was told to stand near the stage and just make sure no one did anything ridiculous or dangerous. He sat there, at the edge of the stage, and talked to each and every one of the people that wanted to say hi. I asked one of his stage techs if this was normal for him, and the guy looked at me, smiled, and said "He does this at every show. Sometimes we are in the bus and sleeping before he gets done."
Very classy guy.
Cinderella - A bunch of aging jerks. This was one of those shows in the late 90's where a hair band from the 80's was trying to cash in on nostalgia and grasping at whatever they possibly can before their star finally burns out. After the show, one of the guys in the band actually asked a couple of security guys to go out in the crowd and see if there were any girls out there that were willing to sleep with him. As they stood there, not sure if he was serious, he also mentioned that if they could make sure they were skinny and preferably a teenager that "would be great".
This was also one of the shows that I realized that the promoter that I was working for might be a bit of an a-hole, as he oversold the concert by about 500 tickets, so we had people crammed into this auditorium, watching this horrible band, and we were selling alcohol like it was going out of style. Take a bunch of people about a decade or so removed from high school, then give them a bunch of beer, and everyone is going to start remembering how tough they (thought they) were back in the day, and fights are going to break out. I personally broke up about 5 fights and ejected about 8 people from the concert, and the worst was yet to come. This was the story I was alluding to before.
So Cinderella had come out for their second(!) encore, and were full into whatever song had made them semi-famous during their prime, and I see the tell tale sign that a fight has broken out on the floor - people scattering away from something and a circle forming. I jumped over the barricade and ran towards the circle...and I found a guy getting the tar beaten out of him by two girls. To be fair, these were not small dainty women - and from the looks of him he had gotten kicked by their spiky boots more than a couple of times. One of them was straddling him, and punching him while he crawled into a fetal position. The other one was currently trying to kick him as hard as she could with the afore-mentioned boots with spikey heels and toes.
I ran over and grabbed the one that was on top of him and hauled her off of him. I totally misjudged how much she weighed, plus I tripped over the guys legs so we both fell in a big pile on the concert floor - I can still remember the smell of sweat, perfume, and hair spray. While I struggled to get up, my vision exploded in stars and I realized that someone had just nailed me right in the nose. I got up on my feet (I could feel the blood starting to flow already) and I saw that the other girl (the one I hadn't grabbed) had taken off one of her boots and had hit me with it. She was winding up for another swing but I just walked up to her and grabbed it out of her hands and then picked her up fireman carry style and started walking towards the door. Another one of my buddies had snagged the girl off the ground and some other guys were helping the dude to his feet and taking him aside to see if he needed treatment.
Once we got the ladies off the concert floor, they were your standard drunk concert goers. Apparently the guy was the boyfriend of one of them, and some sort of argument had happened about something and (now this is where it got even more crazy) it came out that the dude was having "fun times" with both the girlfriend and the other girl that was there with them...the one that had hit me in the face with the boot. Now why they had teamed up to beat the hell out of the guy, I have no idea, all I knew was that I had a bloody nose and a black eye and I was throwing all of them out of the show. They begged and pleaded to be allowed to stay, even offered to pay us to be let back in, and maybe if I wasn't bleeding I would have let them, but out the door they went. The promoter took one look at me and got scared (we all worked for cash, and we never signed W-2's or anything, so if I got seriously hurt I could theoretically hammer him for a lot of money) so he paid me my money then and there, plus a hefty bonus, "hazard pay" he joked, and let me go home early.
Pantera - I only mention this because this was one of the last concerts I worked and it was during their Reinventing the Steel tour. Pretty much all of them were jerks to one degree or another, and at one point Phil Anselmo called out the crowd as being worthless and undeserving of the performance they were watching. I wish I could say that "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott was really cool since this was just a few years before he was murdered, but he wasn't, at least not to the security people.
Actually, if memory serves, Rex Brown (the bassist) was probably the most personable of them all.
True to form, their drinking was quite excessive. I lost track of the number of whiskey bottles and beer cans strewn about the stage and prep area. These guys were of my favorite bands during my "metal" days and it was a bit of a letdown to see them in person as being angry drunks, but it wasn't really surprising.
Musically speaking, they still put on a pretty good show. Glad I got to see them before they broke up.
Less Than Jake - Had very little interaction with the band itself, though they seemed to be nice people. They certainly were able to get the crowd going, but then again, when you are a Ska-Punk band, the people that are coming to see you are probably your fans, so to get them up and rocking is probably fairly easy.
I really only mention this one because this was the one and only time I ever was able to use my status as a security guy to get a kiss (or anything else) from a girl. I was working the stage area, catching crowd surfers, when some cute little thing started yelling up at the band that she wanted to come up and dance with them. The lead singer agreed to let her, but only if she gave "this big security guy" <pointing at me> a big, wet sloppy kiss. She hopped the barrier, planted one on me before I could really react (to the woop! of the crowd) and then I hoisted her up onto the stage.
I still remember what that girl tasted/smelled/looked like. Funny how things like that stick in your head.
Vanilla Ice - Ridiculously polite and decent to each and every one of the security guys. Asked us our names, shook our hands, and asked us, kindly, to watch over him. The only time I had ever had a single performer say or do anything like this. It should be noted that this was later in his music career, when he was trying to re-invent himself as a rock-rapper, and he seemed very humble and down to Earth, and I can only assume that his "fall from grace" had taught him a thing or two.
After the show (which truth be told, was pretty good) there was a meet and greet session planned for a handful of concert goers that had won VIP tickets to the show. We had them line up off to the side of the stage, and one by one we let them go back and hang out with Rob (his real name). He signed autographs, took pictures, and generally was very gracious and patient with their requests. At one point, he asked me if there were still a lot of people outside. I said that there was only about five or six people left in line. He asked if there was still a big crowd in the auditorium, to which I said about a hundred or so people. He grinned a bit and told me to go tell everyone that if they wanted to get autographs, they could get in line, VIP tickets or not. He then did the same thing again for everyone, and continued to be patient and courteous with each and every one of them.
A really nice guy - I might not be a fan of his music, but I am a fan of him as a person.
R.L. Burnside - Another dude that I am glad I got to see before he died. This was after he got signed to Fat Possum records and he had a little bit of a rebirth in the blues arena. I had been turned on to his musical style when I had heard him on a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion album, so when I heard that he was coming to town, I specifically asked to work security for his concert. It was held in a small theater, which was the perfect venue for him, and it was nothing less than awesome. He died of a heart attack a few years later at the ripe old age of 78.
I am happy to report that after the concert, I was able to get him to sign some of my albums, and that I was able to go out to a local bar and buy him a shot of whiskey and a beer. One of the best nights of my life. If you are a Pandora person, take a second to pull up his name sometime and just listen to some of his music - really, really good.
Voodoo Glow Skulls - I just heard you say "who?". Back in the mid 90's there was a bit of a ska-punk explosion, and this was a band that was riding that wave. I wouldn't even mention them, but I can honestly say that I never met a bigger group of assholes in my life, and I do apologize for my language, but they deserve that and a heck of a lot more.
Just the biggest group of dinks I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Constantly told the crowd that they were worthless and "pieces of ****" and then would wonder why they weren't getting more applause. Towards the end of their set, they told the whole crowd that they could "suck their *****" and walked off the stage to a strong chorus of boos. They then canceled their meet and greet (big surprise) and went and got into their bus while their equipment got packed up. They came outside every once in awhile to tell everyone to hurry up so they could get out of town, and called most of us who were packing their stuff a bunch of ridiculously offensive things.
Just a giant bag of d----s. I sold off their albums that I owned the next day.
Ani DiFranco - This was one of the oddest concerts I ever worked. This was, I think, in 1998 and right after she had gotten married, much to the consternation of her lesbian fan base. Nonetheless, the crowd was about 90% female, and they were kind, respectable, and just a pleasure to deal with. They were quiet during each song, with maybe a little singing along, but for the most part, the women just seemed to rock back and forth with their eyes closed and their hands in the air - it was almost cult like.
To my great delight, I pulled backstage/dressing room duty, so I was able to win big points with my girlfriend at the time who was a huge fan of Difranco's work and feminist icon status.
I have to say, she was extremely nice, respectful, and absolutely beautiful. I asked her if she had a few minutes to talk to my girlfriend after the show, and she was more than agreeable to the idea. She signed a ton of stuff for her, took some photos, and even gave us both hugs as she was leaving to get on her bus.
From what I could hear, the show was pretty dang good as well.
The Violent Femmes - Great music, bunch of jerks. I don't remember anything in particular, but this was during the down swing of their fame, and they were grumpy, tired, and drunk.
The Reverend Horton Heat - Possible the best live show I have ever seen. If you have no idea who this guy is, take it from me, take a listen to his work - perhaps even buy his album "The Full Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat" - and just rock out to his rockabilly punk style.
That guy could drink more than anyone too. I personally watched him finish off two bottles of Jägermeister during the first HOUR of one of his shows. He was pretty liberal in sharing his drinks with the crowd and security as well.
Nice guy. His bassist, Jimbo, is also one the most decent dudes I ever had the pleasure of dealing with as well. I simply cannot say enough nice things about them.
Metallica - So I saved probably the biggest act I ever worked for, for last. This was the tour that was towards the end of 1999 (I think) where they had the multiple circle stages where the band could walk around the whole area, and in the middle there was this "cage" where a few lucky fans got to stand and be right in the middle of the show. This was also the show where they made it seem like the stage had mechanical failures during their last encore, and after a flurry of sparks shot off one of the lighting rigs, a stuntman would be set on fire and he would run across the stage in full roadie outfit and dive off stage.
I guess it would have been pretty neat if we hadn't been told about the whole thing.
Now I had seen Metallica in person several times as a fan prior to this show, so I was excited to see them in a "behind the scenes" sort of way, but they were actually just very normal, private people. Lars and James joked around with some of us prior to the show, and they were more than happy to shake hands and take pictures with us, but I definitely got the feeling of "been there done that" with their dealings with us, and rightfully so as they had been together for 20 years or so and this was probably old hat to them. The whole band DID sign this one guys arms for him so he could go and get their signatures tattooed on him the next day, so I guess that was kind of cool.
If anything, this concert REALLY made me realize that these guys, while talented, full of energy, playing their hearts out, and entertaining thousands of people, were just doing a job. It was a completely different job than I did, but to them, it was just like going to work and clocking in. Get dressed, grab your guitar, head out to the stage, and play your set. I am certain that they got some sort of happiness out of what they did, but it was a sort of professional happiness in my opinion. A feeling of a "job well done" if you will. Maybe they still got jazzed up about getting the crowd on its feet, but I just didn't feel it.
The more I thought about that show (after it was done), the more I wished I had worked the concerts they had performed in the 80's during their Justice for All tour. Back then, they just seemed to care more about what they were doing - it didn't feel forced in any way. Then again, what do I know?
Ultimately, from a security guys standpoint, they were respectful and even helpful in some situations. They told the guys assigned to them (they had bodyguards but some of us were considered extra bodies to get between them and the crowd) personally what they expected from them. They asked us to keep everyone out of their way after the show, and that they would decide when and if they would allow anyone backstage when they were ready. Instead of making everyone mill around for a long time, they cleaned up, told us to go out and get about 50 people at a time, and then we lined them up for autographs and pictures. After about 200 people or so got this treatment, they said thanks but no thanks to the rest of the people waiting and went on their way.
Like I said, very professional.
I am glad I got to work this concert for a ton of reasons, and the fact that Metallica is on of my favorite bands is certainly one of them, but to see the other side of the looking glass, while maybe a little bit of a letdown, was very cool in its own right, and looking back, a welcome eye opener to the music business.
I don't remember why I stopped doing this work. I think I just got tired of it. The last show I ever worked was a heavy metal concert for the band Gwar. I pulled back door/bus duty for that one and I guess I should be thankful from the looks of the crowd after the show and the sound of the music DURING the show. Around that time I actually managed to find a real job in an office where I had to dress up and be respectable - along with making a decent amount of money so I didn't have to work 5 jobs to make ends meet. The next time I got a call to work a concert, I politely declined, knowing full well I probably wouldn't get another call from the promoter. I was right.
Looking back it was a fun little job to have. I met a lot of people, and worked WAY more shows than I listed off here - these were just the ones that stood out in my mind.
I have to say though, it was NOT as much fun as I thought it would be. Every night that I got done, the amount of money I made never seemed to be enough in comparison the bruises and the beatings that I took working the pit, or the abuse I took dealing with some of the personalities and egos I had to manage working backstage. I am glad I took the job though, if for no other reason that I got to share my stories in this blog today.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
The Con of the North is the closest thing I have to a "real" convention. Now mind you, I consider it to be a real convention in every definition of the word, but the people who attend GenCon or Origins every year would most likely turn their nose up at even a minor comparison. Held at the Holiday Inn in St. Paul Minnesota every year, it is three days of solid gaming, gaming, and more gaming of all shapes and sizes. The emphasis for many years has been on RPG's and Miniature Warfare, but this year I, along with my friend Zack, got the powers that be to give us an entire room for just boardgames, and we RAN with it.
Now I usually have done a geeklist for this sort of thing in the past, but instead, I am just going to give you some highlights here on my blog along with some average to poor pics (camera phone quality) of some of the games I played.
Best thing about the convention - Meeting some of the coolest people ever
I am not going to list off each and every person that took the time to game with me, shake my hand, or even joke around on the elevator, but you all made my convention. Fairly quickly, there was a core group of people that simply handed in their assigned tickets for events and declared this convention to be "open gaming time" and we played many, many games together. I wish my wife could have made it this year so she could have met you all because I am sure she would have had a blast, but as long as you drag your butts to the Con next year, we should be able to remedy this situation.
Not the best game I played all weekend, but the most fun - Dragon Rampage
There is no way I am going to be able to really explain this one. If you were there, and you played it with me, you know exactly what I am talking about. I am giggling right now as I write this. For those of you who took part, I will leave you with these following comments - "Magic Blade", "Trip", and "The Most Inept Barbarian Ever".
A truly fun time.
Hands down geekiest guy I met - The guy who said he could talk in binary
This situation literally happened.
Waiting for the elevator to go up to my room and grab some snacks, I am situated next to this bank of computers that are wired together to play some age old maze game with smiley faces that has been there for as many years as I have gone to the convention. There are two guys currently playing it. One of them is currently regaling the other one with the declaration that he has taught himself binary to the point that he thinks in it and he sometimes just slips into it during normal conversation.
At this point I just say, "No you don't."
The guy looks up at me and says "Yes I do! It's like in the Fantastic Four movie when Reed Richards..."
The bell dings telling me my elevator is waiting for me, and I cut him off as I step in by saying, "No you don't. No one does that."
The elevator door closed on his further explanations.
Further proof that I am truly horrible at games - Record at the convention, 2 and 14 (I think)
I won my first two games right out of the gate - Dungeon Petz and Eclipse. After that it was all downhill, finishing off with a horrible and complete drubbing in a game of Urban Sprawl. I sincerely don't think I am bad at games, I just think everyone is that much better. I guess I had a second place finish in a game of Belfort at some point, but other than that there were many, many last place finishes.
Still had fun though!
The group that had the most fun playing anything - The two girls playing Der schwarze Pirat with their dad
I own this game and my daughter loves it, and so do I, but this family was having a blast at seriously mammoth proportions. There is nothing I love more than the obvious ecstatic cheers over defeating ones opponent, and these two girls ganged up on their dad and beat him soundly. To his credit, he played the role of lovable loser well, and even though I am pretty sure the guys trying to play D&D next to them were happy when they were done, I saw more than a few smiles on their faces as they looked at a family having a blast playing a boardgame with little wooden boats and a suction ball.
Sorry if you were hoping to have a long, blow by blow explanation of the good times I had this past weekend - I simply don't have the time to write about everything. However, I would strongly suggest to anyone that is within reasonable driving range to consider the Con of the North as a great gaming weekend every February, and I would once again thank all of my old friends for meeting up with me, and the great new friends that I made for making my weekend an amazing, great time.
I may have forgotten one or two in there somewhere...
Also, I picked up a barely used (only two character sheets gone) and complete copy of HeroQuest for a decent price. I was particularly pleased to see that none of the figures had been painted in anyway. I had lost my copy years ago and I plan on playing this with my daughter (and son when he gets older) to introduce her to the wonders of D&D.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
First off - do not worry, this will not take the place of my Top Ten Games of the year video, that will be done shortly.
I am just going to split this up into categories, with really no rhyme or reason to them. A lot of these were ideas I had to do complete blog entries earlier in the year, but for whatever reason the interest waned or I found myself at a loss for words when it came time to put my thoughts to virtual paper. Anyway, without any further rambling, let's dive into my highlights of the year gone by, shall we?
Being married every single day in a calender year
I had quite a few trials and tribulations in the past 12 months, thankfully I had a rock of a relationship to balance them on. I mention Becca in my writings and my videos many, many times, and I am sure some of you have managed to track down the few photos of her I have uploaded here onto this site. (Let it be known that I have asked her several times to take part in my videos - she has flatly declined all requests) Regardless, she remains my silent partner in this goofy passion of mine, and I am thankful that she puts up with it, as she rarely understands it, and many times is at a loss as to how I can sit in front of my computer for hours at a time, just READING about games.
Between putting up with my tomfoolery, Becca spent the last year working, going to college, raising our daughter (I helped!), being put on medical bedrest, taking care of our pets, cleaning our house, and somehow managed to squeeze in bringing another life into this world, my beautiful son Caleb.
She is my soul mate, my life, and my love. She is the embodiment of my passion, my heart, and my spirit. A smile from her can drag me out of whatever depression I might feel, and a hug and a kiss can quicken my pulse and make me feel like I am 18 all over again. My grandfather once told me "Everyone has three great love affairs in their life, just you wait and see."
I don't know if that is true, but even if it isn't, Becca is one of them.
My son, Caleb
Well how can this not be here? I have a son! A son! This might not sound like a big deal, but my last name, as you may well know, is Myxter. It's German/Norwegian, and there are about a dozen of us left in the world. My father picked up the slack and had 4 sons, but it is up to us to keep our spot in this world going, and now I have, something my father happily pointed out after he got to hold my little dude for the first time.
I won't reiterate what I have already chronicled about the joyous occasion of his birth here on the geek already in this blog, but let me just say that I could not be a more proud father. He is fattening up, smiles at me whenever I change him out of his poopy pants, and loves chewing on the stuffed animal giraffe his sister picked out for him. I love holding him as he drifts off to sleep, and I cry little tiny tears of happiness as I watch him yawn and giggle through his little baby dreams.
I have said it before, and I will say it again - Being a dad is the coolest best thing I have ever done in my life, and that will never, ever change.
Rilyn
Ah man, what can I say about my daughter? My wife may be my rock and my love, but my daughter is my unbridled sense of wonder and imagination. I watch her grow and see her personality start to form, and I (like every parent I am sure) think she is an absolute miracle of perfection. She is sassy, head strong, and the funniest person I know. The other day, she had a couple of my friends rolling at the gaming table, prompting one of them to seriously exclaim "Your daughter could headline at the Apollo!".
Most of all, with all apologies to my wife, she is my favorite person in the entire world. I realize that I shouldn't pick anyone in my family to be my favorite, but she really is. When she asks me to play a new game she has made up (Yesterday it was us pretending we were dragons searching for buried treasure that was hidden by pirate ghosts on a sunken submarine. Totally serious. She made that game up and even gave us dinosaur names. Mine was Spiky Spoon Dino and I was a stegosaur.) my heart wants to explode with joy. She brought me a card that she made last week and it was me and her, walking our dogs, (something we do whenever we can) and I asked her what it was, and she said "This is the best time I ever have, hanging out with you." When she asked me why I was crying I had a hard time explaining it to her.
She is the twinkle in my eye, the originator of my smiles, and the embodiment, for me, of all that is right and good and beautiful in this world. I know there will come a day when she won't think I am "the coolest guy in the world" anymore, but until then, I am going to ride this awesome crazy rollercoaster for as long as this world lets me.
For your enjoyment, and for proof as to just how awesome this little girl is, here she is singing the theme song to the Godzilla cartoon that she watches on Netflix whenever she can. Notice that she is doing this, for the most part, without her even knowing that I am watching her, she just decided stomping around the entryway of our house, pretending she was Godzilla was a good way to spend some time.
Reconnecting with my father
Now before you roll your eyes, this is not going to some sort of after school special thing here - just bear with me.
My parents got divorced when I was 4 years old. I don't really remember much about what was going on. I remember one day I just no longer lived with my dad. My mother moved into an apartment building and I lived there with her, my brother, and my sister. I remember one day I was with my mom while my siblings were at school and she had to go see my dad for whatever reason. She drove me to our old house and left me in the station wagon while she went to talk to him. One of the neighborhood kids came over to the car and started talking to me and they asked my why my parents were divorced. I remember tell them "they fight all the time" and that was that. The funny thing is, I don't remember them fighting all the time (they probably did) but I remember TELLING someone that they did. Memories are weird that way.
Anyway, I spent the next 14 years of my life living with my mom, and my dad spent the same amount of time living in the same town as I did, but after I stopped going to his house every other weekend in junior high, I pretty much never talked to him unless I needed something from him. That is a horrible thing to say, but it is true. Couldn't pay my rent because I had spent all my money on beer and pizza? Call my dad. My car broke down and I need someone to help me fix it? Call my dad. Whenever I had a problem, I called my dad and asked him to bail me out, and every single time he did.
My older brother really hated him for a long time. He was old enough to see what was going on I guess when my parents were having problems. If I had to be honest, I think my dad wasn't all that fond of his first born son either. They avoided each other as much as they could, and when they were forced to be around each other (holidays and so forth) the relations were icy at best, at least until they both had a couple of beers.
But my dad just kept chugging along in his life. He got remarried, and then his second wife died of cancer. (In an extremely odd "small world" situation, my wife's best friend's, mom's boyfriend is my dad's deceased second wife's brother) He got remarried again, and had two more sons, my two younger half-brothers who are amazing individuals. While it was never said, I always felt like I was that "fifth wheel" when it came to family outings. I would go to holiday dinners with my father's family, and there would be this giant group of people, thirty or more, and I was the one person there that was from, in some respects, that "other world" that was from my father's past. But he still bailed me out when I needed help, even when we would go months without talking to each other.
For awhile there, I think he was extremely disappointed in me, and to be honest, I felt the same way about myself. I was doing nothing with my intelligence, delivering pizzas at night and working at a record store during the day. I drank pretty much every night at the same dive bar that was down the road from me. Somehow, I managed to keep myself out of the majority of trouble that could have landed in my lap, but I was, for the most part, directionless. Of course, this is me looking back at that time of my life and I can be honest about it. At the time, I was disgusted with my father for not being more a part of my life, never mind the fact that I never bothered to call him as much as he didn't call me.
So now we fast forward to me being married, and having a daughter, and having another little dude on the way, and I needed to finish my basement to make room for the new arrival. My daughter had some very distinct requests for her room and I called in my dad, who is a fine carpenter in his own right, to help out. We spent the next 5 months working together every afternoon. We put up the framework, wired in the rooms, threw the sheet rock on the walls, and pretty much added 4 rooms to my house.
We also got the chance to sit down and talk.
And not just talk about politics, or sports, or the weather, but actually talk. We told each other jokes and complained about aspects of our lives. He told me stories about his old construction crew that he worked with in the summer, and I told him some of the more bizarre jobs I had had in the ten odd years after college. He told me that he had always appreciated my insight into the world, and that he wished he had gotten to know me better sooner. I told him about the time that I had heard him giving me a compliment to someone else at his father's wake, and how it had meant the world to me.
Ultimately, I got to finally feel like I had a dad again.
I also got to see him interact with my daughter, and I watched her wrap him around her finger. He played her games without complaint, laughed at her jokes, and brought her ice cream when he came over. For the most part I just sat and watched him do this, and I realized, I was seeing what he must have done with me when I was younger, and it made me feel good.
I realize this has gone on a little long, so let me wrap this up with a final anecdote. I recently turned 40 years old, and I went out to eat with my dad and his wife. He gave me a card with a handwritten note, and in it he praised me for what I had done with my life, and that he was unabashedly proud of the fact that he had a part in raising, what he thought, was the best father he had ever known.
That may be the finest compliment I have ever received in my entire life.
Board Games - a very polarizing year
I will go into this more in my wrap up video at the end of the year (currently being worked on!) but this was a very down year for me for games that "snagged" me and made me sit up and pay attention. Maybe I am getting to the point in my life where I have played so many games that the "sameness" of a few of them is starting to get to me, but I remember as recently as a year ago I was able to point out 10-15 games that I had played in the preceding 12 months that I was fanatical about. This year, not so much.
Most of the games that I reviewed this year were good games. There was nothing altogether bad about them, but nothing about them gave me that spark. Now that is a bit vague, but for me, I realize that a game is special when I get that "click" in my head when the mechanics of the game drop away and I stop and realize - "Wow, this game is pretty freaking awesome!". There were games this year that did this for me. Games like Urban Sprawl, Space Empires 4X (review coming on that one - please be patient), Olympos, and Eclipse, but for each one of those there were several games like Eminent Domain, Quarriors, and Blood Bowl Team Manager that were fine games, very good games in fact, but they didn't make me stand up and take notice like I had hoped they would.
Perhaps it isn't the games so much as it is ME. I alluded to this a paragraph or so earlier, but I think I have gotten to the point in my boardgaming life where it is tough for me to get excited about an impending release like I used to - and maybe that is a good thing. Always a good idea to keep yourself grounded - it makes the really awesome stuff that much more awesome.
Before I move on, it should be noted that there are several games I have in my collection right now that I haven't had hit the table yet due to time constraints that may very well be awesome and amazing (Bios Megafauna, Outpost, Core Worlds, Eruption, and Belfort to name a couple) so time may prove to make a fool out of me. I assure you I will print a retraction the moment I am proven wrong.
Pathfinder's awesomeness brings RPG's back into my life
This one isn't exactly a huge deal since I have been playing Pathfinder since it came out, but the system really is the perfect fantasy rule set, especially for fans of D&D 3.5. I am now involved in two seperate campaigns, play nearly every weekend, and I am having a blast.
There is simply no better time spent with friends than sitting at a table with 3 or 4 of them and yucking it up for a few hours over the imagined exploits of your pencil and paper creation. This past weekend, my mage, Jasper the Magnificent, slowly edged from his alignment of True Neutral, to True Neutral with Evil tendencies when it came to blasting an evil NPC party into oblivion with a combination of Fireballs and Ice Storms while disregarding their pleas for mercy. To be fair, they were evil themselves, and they were getting in his way...
I have said it before and I will say it again - boardgames are great, and I love them dearly, but a good RPG session will outshine a great boardgame session every single time.
Finally seeing the entirety of Lost
Talk about being a few years late...
I began watching Lost when it first came out. I would come home from work in the evening and if it was a night where Lost had been on TV, I would log into my favorite Torrent site, download the episode, and watch it on my computer screen while I ate my dinner. I did this for every single episode for almost four years, and the show really knocked me on my seat. For whatever reason, my interest wained. I think I may have missed an episode or two at some point, or maybe it was the writer's strike, but I just stopped watching it. I always thought I would get back to it at some point, but I never did. Then, one day, I saw that it was on Netflix, so my wife and I sat down and watched every single episode together while she was on bedrest.
Now then - here are my thoughts on the show after all was said and done. There are some spoilers here, so you have been warned.
1. Amazing soundtrack - I could listen to the score for this show all day long, and sometimes I do. Makes for pretty decent background music while we play our RPG's as well.
2. Surprisingly well acted from top to bottom. There were some weak links (Evangeline Lilly and Maggie Grace come to mind) but the powerhouses (Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson, and others) kept things moving and kept my interest.
3. The show was good, and it had a good story, but as the "mystery" slowly got explained, the show got worse. While I think that this was an inevitable outcome for a show like this, I wish that the last few seasons had kept my interest and excitement like the first couple of years. I mean, let's be honest, if you were watching the show, there was nothing more exciting than what could possibly be INSIDE the hatch, and the NEED to know what was in there was almost palpable, so much so that any revelation would ultimately disappoint.
4. Like a lot of people, Locke was my favorite character, and to realize at the end of the show that he pretty much got completely and totally screwed over was a very bitter pill for me to swallow. Nearly ruined the show for me.
5. After literally YEARS of the creators/writers declaring that there was no chance, no way, no possibility that the characters of Lost were dead or in purgatory, or in some sort of Limbo, they completely change gears and do just that, having two story lines, one where the people are alive, and the other where they are dead and slowly but surely remembering their time on the island so they can achieve some sort of final awakening. Now then, never mind the fact that Sayeed was supposedly in love with his childhood Iraqi friend and that was his soulmate but when he gets to "Heaven", it is Shannon that he is with (one of the biggest WTF moments for me for the series) or that apparently Aaron just gets to be reborn in the afterlife as a baby and not get to grow up (huh?) this just seemed to me to be a big middle finger from the writers to the die hard fans of the show.
6. Abandoned plot points that were never revisited really, really bugged me. Who were the people shooting at them from the other canoe during the time slips? Why did we just do nothing with Walt? Why was it so important for the people on the island to have babies when they could just leave, have the babies in the real world, then come back? Countless others I won't bother redoing here.
7. I did think the ending with Jack dying in the jungle with Vincent laying down next to him, basically book ending the show, was a nice touch. It was downright sad though.
8. The show made me tear up on more than one occasion. Charlie remembering Claire and Aaron in the afterlife was especially poignant, as well as Desmond FINALLY getting to talk to Penny after being apart from her for years - very moving - and who didn't saw "aww" when they heard Desmond call his baby son Charlie?
All in all, it was an amazing bit of Television, and it might have ended a little later than it should (thankfully it didn't hangout and stink up the room for a couple of seasons like X-Files) but it was a very impressive bit of story-telling, and being a semi-creative writer myself, I can appreciate that. Definitely one of my top five shows of all time. along with, in no certain order, Boston Legal, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Venture Brothers, and Arrested Development. (List of top 5 shows of all time subject to change at any given moment)
Coming up with a list of reasonable resolutions
Nothing crazy, but some things that I should do.
1. Just get out and spend more time outside of my house. I have been feeling a bit like a trapped rat in my house the last few months, with the new baby, work, and what not. I don't care what it is - walking the dogs, grabbing a beer downtown, or going to the bookstore - I am going to get out of the house more often.
2. Turning my cell phone off after I get home. I did this by accident the other day and I was stunned how little I cared. It was also nice not to have my phone going off every 10-15 minutes alerting me to a message, or an email, or whatever. Very peaceful actually.
3. Being more patient with pretty much everyone I know. I am normally pretty laid back, but lately I have had a bit of a short fuse. I just need to remember that taking 2 or 3 seconds and listening to the person who is talking to me can work wonders for the both of us.
4. For that matter, just practice being NICE to people.
5. Never refusing a request from my daughter to play one of her games, give her a piggy back ride, read her a story, carrying her up the stairs, or dancing and singing along with one of her favorite songs. All too soon, she will be old enough to realize that hanging out with Dad isn't cool anymore.
6. Remembering that the reason I am married is that I am my wife's best friend, and she is mine, and making sure that neither of us forget that.
7. Get back on track and actually doing a Review a Week, as that is the title of the little thing I do.
8. Actually PLAYING more games, even if it is solo. Also, if it is a game that has been sitting on my shelf for awhile, sell it, trade it, or give it away. My collection is getting out of hand again, I think I need to get it down to at least 250 or so games.
9. Find at least a half hour at some point, on an given morning, afternoon, or evening, and just daydream some time away. I have gotten far too busy lately.
10. Overall, just take better care of myself. Be more active, eat less crappy food, and, now that I am 40, actually schedule that checkup and face the fact that a dude with a rubber glove on is going to be checking my prostate. I have a 25 year old wife and two kids under 5 that are counting on me hanging out on this planet for another 40 years or so, and I don't want to disappoint them.
OK, let's wrap this up...
Anyway, there you go, 2011 for me in a nutshell. A bit of a disclaimer here, as I am going to be a little preachy, but I do this from time to time. If you are going to be offended, just skip this part and pretend it isn't here.
OK then, this is just some random thoughts and feelings that I have about existence and life and relationships, and every now and then, a bug bites my ass and I feel like I need to express these things. This is nothing mind blowing, and nothing you probably haven't heard or even thought yourself, but here goes.
Call your grandparents as often as you can, even if it is just for 5 minutes. It means the world to them to hear from you. I don't have any left, and it makes me sad every time I realize it.
For that matter call your parents. Tell your mom you are doing great because she wants to brag about you to her friends. Let your dad go off on the government, or big business, or whatever has been bugging him lately. Agree with him (for the most part) and let him vent off his frustrations.
While we are at it, if you have siblings, call them too. They were the first friends you ever had, and they will always be there for you in the future.
Hug your kids as often as they will let you.
Recognize the fact that opinions are just that, opinions, and they can't really hurt you. Don't let someone else's ideas and beliefs ruin your day. Just smile, nod, and move on.
If you have a dog, spend a good half hour with them sitting in your lap, while you scratch their ears and rub their belly. I firmly believe that they will let you into heaven no matter how bad your are as long as you are nice to dogs.
If you own a cat - well - I dunno, point a laser at the wall and watch them go crazy. I do that with my cat and it entertains me.
Finally, while giving Fred Rogers complete and total credit for this, just try and remember to do this, every singe day. Even if you do not believe in prayer, or a God, or a higher purpose, at some point, take 1 minute to yourself, and just think about the people that contributed in some way to make you who are, and how proud they must be of each and every one of your accomplishments, and how happy they must be to see you happy, and how much they care about you, and love you. Now take those good feelings and let them spur you on through your day, treating people the way they should be treated, with honesty, respect, and love.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” - Aesop
I have made many friends here on this little corner of the internet, and I have met about 1 percent of you in real life, but that has not stopped the vast majority of them from enriching my life beyond calculation. To everyone that has taken the time to write me an email, respond to a post, watch one of my videos, given me a thumb, tipped me some geek gold, or just simply sat in front of their computer and thought "that big hairy guy is kind of cool", thank you, from the bottom of my soul.
God bless you all! May your holidays be peaceful and full of happiness, and may we all have a fabulous new year!
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
Just let me start out by saying that there will be little if anything posted on this entry that has anything to do with gaming. If you are tuning in here to get my thoughts on the newest boardgame or the state of the hobby, you will be sadly disappointed. Instead, this entry is going to deal with (primarily) the newest, biggest, most life altering moment to my existence, the birth of my son, Caleb.
You may or may not know that the track record for pregnancies in my household, but it has not been good. My first child was born at 27 weeks, and this last pregnancy put my wife on bedrest for 6+ months with a stay in the hospital thrown in for good measure. Regardless, through the wonders of modern science and chemicals, we were able to defy the odds and the expectancies of our doctor and Becca made it to 38 weeks. She was seriously sick of being pregnant, and wanted the baby out and into the world. She read up on everything that she could find to spur herself into action, and she tried nearly everything. I have no idea if the combination of food, walking, prayer, and jumping jacks had any effect, but I was awoken at 2 am on October 7th, and told, in these exact words, “I don’t want you to get too excited or worried, but I think I am going into labor”.
So off we went to the hospital, and then we proceeded to sit around for the next four hours in a “holding room” while they tried to figure out whether or not we would be having a child that day. We walked up and down the halls until I could tell you the colors of each and every tile on the floor, and finally, they decided that, yes, you are probably going to have a kid at some point. We gathered up our stuff, made the necessary phone calls, and proceeded to wait.
I won’t bore you (or gross you out) with the moment by moment recollection of the events that led up to the birth of my son, but I will give you the following notes. If you have never been present for childbirth, this might be useful for you, and if you have been there for it, this might bring back some good memories.
First, Becca and I never went to a single childbirthing class. Sure, we read some stuff on the internet, and I paged through one of the 15 books that we had at the house that covered it, but I have to admit that I had no idea what was going to happen when I got in there. I remember watching a movie of it in health class back in the late 80’s, and I was present for my daughter’s birth, but since she was born super premature, that was more terrifying than anything. Basically, I went into this situation flying completely blind.
Secondly, when the baby decides, hey, its time to do this…you pretty much have to do it! I don’t know why I was so clueless, maybe it was the whole “hurry up and wait” situation we had going on since early that morning, but I always felt like “we got plenty of time…no worries”. How clueless was I? When the nurse pointed out the fact that I could see the HEAD of my son, I still thought we had plenty of time. I mean, no one was going crazy, there no super excitement…I was just about to witness a human being, a human being I MADE come into the world, and I was still thinking we had plenty of time before it would actually happen. I don’t know if I had some sort of weird mental thought that I was going to step out and grab a sandwich or something, but I just didn’t feel any sort of immediate urgency to the situation at all.
Thirdly, if your wife is thinking about getting drugged up for the procedure, urge her to make up her mind quickly. Becca eventually decided to go the epidural route, but by the time the anesthesiologist made their way to the room, she already had a baby in her arms.
Now then, I had told everyone who asked me “do you want a boy or a girl?” the same exact answer – “I don’t care, as long as the baby is healthy”. However, I really, really wanted a boy. Chances are, we are not going to have another child. With all the issues we had with Rilyn, and the hell of bedrest that Becca went through for our son, I think we are done, as in I need to pick a good urologist to get me snipped done. This baby was most likely my last chance to have a little dude in my house (every single living thing in my house, prior to Caleb’s birth, has been female). When I got my first glimpse of my son, he had his backside facing me, and I had this wonderfully anxious moment as they flipped him over and I got to see what we had, and of course, as you know, it was a boy. I cannot describe the relief and happiness I felt at that point, and I have to admit that I feel a bit ashamed of it as well. I think I will wonder for the rest of my life if I would have been sad if it had turned out that we had had another girl. I am sure it would have been momentary at best, but it would have still been there.
Now then, I am a big guy, and I can be tough as nails when I need to be, but truth be told, I am a pretty big softy. I cry at sad movies, and get that horrible pit in my stomach when I read a horrible news story, and recently, I shed a tear over hearing about someone putting their dog to sleep, even though I didn’t know them or their pet five minutes before hearing about it. I tell you this, because I had often heard of people crying tears of joy, but I seriously had no idea what they were talking about. All of my tears in my life had come due to heartache and stubbed toes.
Not anymore.
When my son, Caleb, came into the world, took his first big deep breaths, and let out his little yelps, I was completely overcome. Big giant sloppy tears poured out my eyes as I hugged my wife, hugged my son, and cut his umbilical cord. Seriously, if you must know, it is even getting a little dusty at my desk right now as I type this out. As he snuggled with Becca, and almost immediately stopped crying and began clutching at her finger, all I could think was just how absolutely awesome this moment in my life was, and how I was almost sure there would never be anything that would even come close to equaling it. We had done it. We had gone to 30+ doctor visits to check on his progress. Becca had been put on bedrest for nearly seven months to make sure he stayed put. She had spent 8 days in the hospital at around 30 weeks because they thought she was going to give birth literally “any minute.” Her doctor gave her a 5% chance to successfully carry her baby to term.
But we did it – and now my son sleeps, eats, and poops – which is technically his job right now – and he keeps me up at night, and eats up my spare time, and has put me about three weeks behind in my reviews – and I love him for it. When I hold him, and he looks at me with his big thoughtful eyes, I know he isn’t thinking “daddy”, but one day he will. He, like his sister, has changed my life irrevocably. The thought of raising another child is both exciting and terrifying at the same time, but I wouldn't want it any other way. So much of our lives is scripted out, and static. Inviting another living breathing human being into this world and then taking charge of their upbringing is a huge undertaking, but millions of people do it every year. I know that in the grand scheme of things, what Becca and I did isn’t really anything amazing.
But when I look at my son, it is really hard to think that he is anything but just that.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
It has been awhile since I have updated anything on my blog here, but when the name of my blog has “randomly updated” in its title, I reserve the right to write these things whenever I like and whenever the mood strikes me. To be honest, my life has been so exceedingly busy lately, I haven’t really had the chance to do anything as far as “creative writing” goes, but the other day I was sitting in my basement, literally watching the paint dry so I could install a ceiling fan, and a bit of inspiration hit me.
I was thinking about my gaming past, and how my gaming group has evolved over the years, and (as you may have heard/read before) how lucky I am that my gaming group has stayed (for the most part) the same over the years. I still sit down and play D&D (ok, Pathfinder now) every other weekend with the same four or five guys that I have been playing with for nearly twenty-five years. Now then, there used to be several people that showed up week after week, and played with us, but for whatever reason, they no longer are a part of our gatherings. Some of them moved away, some of them moved on, and in one case, one of them is simply no longer with us. I decided to share this list of people with you to show you (yet another) glimpse into my gaming past, mostly to entertain you, but also for my own personal pleasure of walking down memory lane once again.
Alright, enough pre-amble…let’s get this list started, shall we?
Note: I have omitted the last names for the obvious purpose of identity protection, in the off chance that somewhere, somehow, someone will use this blog entry for some ridiculous bit of identity theft
Jeff
Background - I went to junior high and high school with Jeff, and without a doubt, for a few good years there, he was my best friend. We hung out after school pretty much every day and did pretty much everything teenage guys do – played video games, watched movies, and talked about anything and everything. He is the guy that got me into heavy metal music, opening my eyes and ears to bands that I had never even heard of, like Metallica, Queensryche, Megadeth, and Ministry. He was also an absolute master when it came to making and running RPG games. He had a run in there where everything he wanted to play was GURPS related, which wasn’t a horrible system mind you, it was just limiting to say the least. He enjoyed playing off the wall games like Toon! and his own creation called Freakshow, where we were encouraged to make the craziest characters possible, and he in turn made the craziest conglomeration of situations to put us in. If I remember correctly, our group of adventurers comprised of a giant amoeba, a ghoul with a magical table leg, a brain in a jar, and The Pope. It was quite a bit of fun – at one point we were loading Debbie Gibson and Tiffany CD’s into bazookas and shooting them at zeppelins. After high school he stayed in town and went to the local state college, as did I. We didn’t see as much of each other but we did connect for gaming on a semi-regular basis, though at this point our group was mostly playing miniature combat games like Battletech and Car Wars. It should be noted that I always thought of Jeff as being the most creative of our gaming group, and he had several weapon and car designs published by Steve Jackson games as part of their auto compendiums and rule sets.
What happened – As what often can happen to your close friends, you lose them to a girl. Jeff started dating a girl in his early twenties as pretty much vanished into thin air. He popped up every once in awhile when we would play basketball or get together for a beer or two, but that slowly faded away. Eventually I would run into him from time to time at the grocery store or wherever, and then nothing. I heard a rumor at some point that his mom and dad had moved to Utah or something like that, and then after he had a falling out with the girl, he moved out there, but then I would hear that he was still living in town, still working at his job at an insurance company, and still milling about town.
Where are they now – I have no idea. None. I suppose I could try and track him down on Facebook or something but I don’t really have the inclination to do so. For all I know, he lives down the street from me and I pass by his house every single day of my life.
David
Background – David moved to town from western North Dakota when he was 13 years old. Through chance, he and I were in the exact same classes the first 5 periods of junior high and after we interacted a few times, became fast friends. Turns out he was heavily into the RPG thing as well, and loved to dungeon master, something none of us really enjoyed (at the time). I introduced him to the rest of us, we created characters, and proceeded to play the heck out his campaign world for next few years. In high school we ended up having a bit of a falling out (his girlfriend detested me for some reason, probably because I was dating her best friend) but we still managed to spend a fair amount of time together. I will always remember him for his love of british comedies, his off the wall sense of humor, and his easy going mentality.
What happened – He went away to college – Stanford to be exact. He came back the first summer and reconnected but after that he stayed gone and found work over the summer on the west coast. He eventually got a job doing something incredibly complicated and computer related with some company in California, and I think he still lives there. From time to time, he will come back to town, but he doesn’t make it a point to track down his old friends much – he mostly just does it to see his parents. In all honesty, I have more interaction with his father now, who is good friends with my dad. In fact, the last time I ever heard anything about David was when I was drinking Kokanee beer in a fishing boat on Snowshoe Lake in Ontario and his dad and I ended up trolling for walleye on the same sandbar.
Where are they now – 95% sure he is still in California, making scads of cash and living with his very charming and lovely wife. Last time we talked, he mentioned that he had no interest in having children, and I can only assume that mentality has continued. He is a good guy – I am certain that life is treating him well – karma and all that.
Dennis
Background – Dennis, or as he preferred to be called, Skip, was a very cool guy who lived with his divorced mom who was hands down one of the funniest people I knew in junior high. He loved playing Car Wars and Battletech and enjoyed the idea of playing RPG’s, but always got bored of them. He was the person who would always try and come up with some idea and see if it work in D&D, or GURPS, or whatever we were playing. Some of his less successful creations were a blind “staff-master” and an Indiana Jones rip-off for a Cthulhu campaign. After we got to high school, he kind of fell of the radar. He was the first person in our little group to find himself with a girlfriend, and also the first guy to have his own car. Subsequently, he was absent from our weekend gaming sessions, but I was under the impression he didn’t care all that much. I actually hung out with him more than anyone, but only because the girl I was dating was good friends with his girlfriend.
What happened? - After high school, he went off to college to pursue his dream of becoming a Zoo Veterinarian. I honestly have no idea what school he went to – I assume a good one because he was a pretty smart guy. He came back to town once that I heard of, but I have not seen him, or talked to him in any way, in over 20 years. I actually reference this a little in my DungeonQuest review as this is the Dennis that borrowed my old copy of the game but never gave it back.
Where are they now? – This one warms my heart a little. For as long as I knew him, Dennis always said that he wanted to be a Zoo Veterinarian. It was the one career and job that he wanted to do, and he wanted to do it more than anything in the world. About 7 years ago, I opened the Sunday paper and was paging through the “lifestyles” section, and there was this huge article, front and back pages in full color, or an interview with Dennis and his job in Africa as a wildlife preservationist and, you guessed it, exotic animal veterinarian. Good for him.
Brandon
Background – In every group of geeks and nerds, there is one guy who is the biggest geek or nerd, and that would be Brandon. Brandon was also scary level intelligent, like, thinking 7 levels above everyone he talks to, including pretty much all the high school teachers intelligent. Brandon also loved pretty much everything there was to do with gaming. He was the one who went out and got Call of Cthulhu when he decided that the stuff we played wasn’t “hardcore” enough. The walls of his room were covered in Battletech schematics. He played Ogre solo hundreds of times, marking his progress and results each time. I used to love when he would let us all know that he had finished another campaign, which meant I was going to have a complete blast playing in it for the next few months – and I think he dug running his campaigns more than anyone enjoyed playing them.
What happened? – College. Brandon was a genius and got a full ride scholarship to Boston College and never came back except to visit his mother from time to time. Another one of our geeky but non-gaming friends also went to the same school, and they ended up getting an apartment together and staying out there. I haven’t seen him in at least 18 or 19 years.
Where are they now? - I heard from David that he was living with some girl in New York and might be married, but who knows? Once again, if I really cared, I could probably track him down, but I just don’t have the inclination. I am sure he is incredibly successful and happy though.
Brent
Background – A failed attempt at adding an outsider to our RPG group – this is the story of Brent. Brent was a nice enough guy, but a bit of a gaming snob, enough to the point that myself and a few others would refer to him as “Brent Something – Rules Lawyer” in jest. The something was due to the fact that we had no idea what his last name was. He worked with a couple of our friends and mentioned to them that he enjoyed D&D and so they asked him to play.
Where are they now? – I think he still works with my friend Jason, but I have no idea. It has been over 8 or 9 years since I have seen him so I doubt I would even recognize him if I walked past him on the street.
Dakota
Background – Guy we went to high school with that was, without a doubt, the biggest Star Trek nerd I have ever met in my entire life. He was the guy in our group that spoke Klingon and knew the episodes of the original series by heart. He could debate anyone about why Star Trek was better than Star Wars and win. He maintained a Star Trek RPG campaign for over 6 years, even when he was down to one player and him GM’ing, they still met, every two weeks, to plot out their progress and keep playing. He even created and ran a Star Trek PBM game that we all enjoyed for a good year or so.
What happened? – He went to college and put his big creative brain to work on solving the world’s problems instead of just his own. He came back to town just long enough to court and marry the sister of his best friend and then he promptly vanished again. When I had a big gaming event at my house last year, he stopped by and I was amazed that he really hadn’t changed at all.
Where are they now? – He works for Obama in Washington. Not even joking. When I said he was using his big brain to try and solve the world’s problems that is exactly what he is doing.
Mike
Background – The first good friend I ever had. I met him in kindergarten and when he brought his stuffed animal Snoopy to show and tell he let me sleep with it during nap time. He was a complete and total goofball, able to both confound and amaze at the same time. He loved playing any sort of game, be it RPG, board, or computer, and even though he was probably not the best player, no one had more fun than him. Incredibly creative, his mind just worked on a different level than the rest of us. He wrote poetry, something that nearly anyone would get made fun of in high school, and would show it to us unabashedly for praise or criticism. He played trombone, loved reading non-fiction books by Isaac Asimov, was a pretty good artist, and was my absolute best friend in high school. We planned on attending the same college and being roommates after we graduated.
What happened? – Mike died of testicular cancer in his senior year of high school. Up until I had to watch my newborn daughter struggle in the NICU for three months, that was probably the toughest thing I ever had to deal with in my life. I miss him every single day, and every time I sit down at my gaming table, or make a video, or log into BGG, I think to myself “Mike would absolutely love this stuff”.
Where are they now? – If there is any justice, he is in Heaven, playing D&D with Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax.
I could probably list off another 10 people if I chose to - the guys I knew in college that came and went, the various girls who tried to play the game to show that they were just as geeky as us but soon realized that it wasn't for them, or even the guy named Justin who I think is serving a stretch of time in a Federal Penitentiary, but these are the ones that stuck in my head, and the ones that are the most vivid in my memory. I hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as I enjoyed writing this, and I invite you to add your own stories of gaming friends that for whatever reason don't sit down at your gaming table any longer.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
This particular entry was previously posted over at RPGGeek on 9/20/10. It appears here with very slight alterations.
I was recently chosen as Geek of the Week for the boardgame world of this site. While it was fun to be the focus of attention, and it was even more fun to discuss the merits of several of my favorite boardgames, it reminded me of the fact that, all things being equal, I would much rather be playing a role playing game over a boardgame any day. Now the reasons for this are several (the main one, I think, is due to fact that the story telling aspect largely absent from boardgames) but after a lengthy discussion with another person in my gaming group, I realize now that it is nothing short of miraculous that a group of 4-6 people can sit around a table for 5+ hours at a time and willfully engage in make believe.
Now that my thesis paragraph is done, I may or may not have you on the hook, so to possible keep you reading, let me share a quirky anecdote from my early D&D days. Back when I was 8 or 9, I owned the basic red box for D&D and I was the unanimous choice to be the Dungeon Master for my small group of friends. The turnover rate for adventurers was quite high, as you all can well remember, however, my friend Joe Giefer had managed to keep his thief alive long enough to reach third level (the max for the basic set) and was closing in on the XP needed for fourth. Now this was a problem, since I did not have the money to purchase the blue box with the “Expert” rules as of yet, and no amount of begging had convinced my mother to buy it for me (yet). As circumstance would have it, a “camp-out” sleepover had been planned for Joe’s backyard, complete with a giant 10 man tent. A ridiculously long D&D game was planned, and everyone was looking forward to it, especially Joe, since fourth level was just a few combats away from being achieved.
I, of course, had other plans.
The party went chasing after whatever mission that had been given to them, and along the way, they made sure to rob people blind, and attack the various wagon train they encountered for gold. Even at a young age we knew it was more fun to be the villain than to be the hero. Eventually they reached their goal, a ruined castle in a swamp. I don’t remember the particulars, but when they walked out with their swag, I had the resident black dragon swoop down and demand their treasure. They of course refused so he breathed acid and killed the lot of them in one fell swoop. This was a forgone conclusion – if they had given up their treasure he was going to kill them anyway – it was my solution to the “4th level thief problem”, and while it may have been drastic, it worked. A few weeks later everyone made new characters and we played “The Keep on the Borderlands” for the 10th straight time.
The point of that story is to be humorous, and to provide me with a bit of nostalgia, but the true purpose behind that story is to demonstrate the earliest memory I have of purposefully constructing the destiny of the PC’s, and the people running said PC’s being completely fine with it. They were sitting down to play a game where the end result was inevitable, and nobody cared. Can you think of another gaming hobby involving several people where predestination is acceptable? Am I the only one that finds this exceedingly preposterous?
Let me continue. I am blessed, let me repeat that, blessed that I have the gaming group that I do, When I got to junior high, I had a ragtag group of friends that played RPG’s on a very sporadic basis. Through trial and error (and moving on to senior high) that group of people slowly formed itself into a gang of 7 or 8 of us (down from about 12-15) that could be counted on to take our RPG’s seriously. One of my best friends, a guy named Jeff Roberts, was nothing short of brilliant when it came to crafting and running GURPS campaigns. You name it, he ran it – Horror, Space, Fantasy, anything that happened to interest him at that moment. He typed out each of these adventures out on his dad’s Apple IIe and kept them all saved on 5.25” discs. Another friend, Dave Engberg, loved D&D more than anything in the world. He had crafted his own “world” over the course of 2 years. He had a spiral notebook with no less than 50 maps and the scrawled notes and stats for well over 100 NPC’s. (as a footnote, Dave moved to the east coast, married a brilliant and beautiful woman, and makes scads of cash working as a consultant for software companies. Jeff met a girl in our neighborhood, moved in with her, and promptly vanished off the face of the Earth. He could live on my street and I would have no idea)
Once high school was over, people vanished (see footnote above) and gaming died off, so I won’t bore you with any anecdotes for that time, but once people were back from college, and made their careers back home, I was left with a core of 6 people (including myself) that I still game with today. These same 5 people have been coming to my house every other weekend for my D&D campaign (well we converted to Pathfinder a bit ago) that has been going on for almost three years now. To put it into perspective (for myself more than you) my campaign is almost as old as my daughter. These 5 people show up at my door at noon on Saturday’s and sit at my kitchen table for 6 hours, play out my storyline and leave (for the most part) entertained.
Never mind the fact that no matter what they do, this campaign is going to end in the way that I scripted it out about four years ago. They are all fully aware of this too, it isn’t like I keep it a secret from them. Well I should say, that I believe there is an inherent known but unsaid feeling, that the PC’s will eventually win the day, they shall defeat the great evil and save the world. The characters will be retired and put in a place of honor for my gameworld (much like Dave Engberg, my homebrew world of Talas is extensive and well known by my players. It is the only setting I have used for almost 20 years) to be maybe brought back as NPC’s in future campaigns. For some reason, if my players run into their “former” selves at some point, they take this to be a reward of great honor.
So – what brings them back, time and time again to sit at my table? Well the obvious answer is that it is just fun to play the part, much like an actor in a play. You know how King Lear ends, but you still want to belt out your lines to the applause of the audience. But just playing the game is not enough. I think avid players of RPG’s need that continuance from one session to the next, the prolonging of the story, for the game to be engaging and interesting.
But maybe it isn’t the story of the campaign that needs to be told, instead, perhaps it is the story of the PC’s themselves.
I once ran a 3.0 campaign and for the first session, I took a pre-made module (Nemoren’s Vault – very excellent old school feel) and stole from it very liberally. Without telling a long story, it was a disaster for the party. They were hunted down, one by one, by a large band of hobgoblins and finished off with great malice. Since we had just started off, everyone re-rolled their characters and they trudged back into the dungeon to have at it once again. Nearly every single player made the exact same thing – race, class, etc. Only the names and attributes were different. The most obvious reason for doing this was the fact that is was easiest, but I think the greater and more personal reason is that when those first characters had been created, they had already had their lives scripted for them by the people that made them. The dwarf warrior seeking glory to bring fame to his clan, the human wizard aspiring to become an arch-wizard, the half-elf druid looking to find her place in all of nature – these goals were lofty, but put in place, and the idea of attaining those goals had already taken root in the minds of the players. Those goals could not be abandoned, so they were merely transferred to the next creation to come off the assembly line.
This, I propose, is where the true magic of role playing begins, and where the roots of an epic campaign begin to form. The dungeon master creates their epic story of sorcery, action, and intrigue, and great players will make characters that go beyond the stats on the page. They have dreams and desires that will put the pulse in the story, and breath life into the game. As a dungeon master, I have seen my friends become emotional enough about what is happening that when they succeed, you can feel the joy radiate from them, and when they fail, their disgust and disappointment is palpable. At those moments, I know I am doing my job.
This, at least for me, is why boardgames will never be as enjoyable to me as RPG’s. No one ever got super upset over losing a game of Dominion (ok, maybe somebody did somewhere, but no one would take them seriously) but I have lost count how many times someone has gotten annoyed (at the very least) over some sort of detriment experienced by their PC. As fun as boardgames are, I have never been kept up at night trying to script out strategies for Runewars or Agricola. I have, however, lain awake on my bed for hours while contemplating the plotline of my campaign, usually because my players have done something completely out of the ordinary that I could not have possible planned for.
It is incomprehensible for me to consider my life without the time and effort I have put into my RPG’s. I still get a little smile on my face when I start creating another dungeon level, placing traps, deciding which monster goes where. I love creating new NPC’s with interesting little quirks and I can’t help but chuckle a bit thinking about how my friends will react to them. Most of all, I look forward to revealing the next piece of the puzzle, the furthering of my plotline, all leading up to the end of several years of work that has been a labor of love for myself and five of the best friends a guy could have.
No box full of cardboard, plastic, and wood will ever be able to compete with that.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
OK, bear with me, this one might take awhile to get to the point. Then again, if you have been reading these posts, you probably are already fully aware of my sub-referencing. Also, this post will have nothing to do with boardgames – you have been warned and I don’t want to hear any whining.
So back in high school, I played bass trombone in both band and jazz band, and if I might say so, was pretty damn good at it. Somewhere in my parents’ basement, my trombone sits in its maroon case, wondering if I am ever going to pull it out and play it again. Now then, as good as I think I was, there are always those few kids who are REALLY good when it comes to music (just like anything I suppose) and one of those kids that was REALLY good was a girl by the name of Sara Conyers. I don’t remember much about her, other than the fact that she played the saxophone and wore bright red or pink lipstick every day, and she really lacquered it on, so much that all of her saxophone reeds were permanently stained the color of her lips.
Sara was first chair tenor sax in both bands, and she was an amazing soloist. She planned on attending school for a music degree of some sort and for all I know she did, and for all I know she is in some touring jazz band full of master musicians, touring the globe and playing for sold out audiences wherever they stop. I remember nothing else about her except for one memory that is still fresh in my mind. Every once in awhile, our band would take a school trip for one reason or another, usually because we would go to a jazz festival. On one such outing, we were able to attend a symphonic concert being performed by some large, 100 person orchestra – I have no memory of the location, the music, or the prowess of the performers in question. I do remember thinking the guy playing the tympanis was pretty amazing and into it though. Anyway, I remember at one moment I stretched and happened to look down the row I was in and I saw Sara sitting on the end, enraptured in the music she was listening to, and just bawling. Not the kind of tears where you just found out your puppy got run over, just those big giant tears that well out of your eyes when you are watching or hearing something so wonderful you are just overcome by the sheer magnificence of the situation. What added to (what I realize now) how cool this was, was that she just didn’t give two shits if anyone noticed, she was just that into the experience, and remember, this was high school, where any sort of oddity or weakness would be mocked and ridiculed for the sheer delight and enjoyment at your pain and suffering. She sat there and blubbered in her seat, and when the symphony was done, she was the first to stand up and applaud like crazy for the performance. That’s literally my only memory of Sara Conyers.
So fast forward a bit here. My sister lives in San Francisco with her common law husband who may or may not be in the mafia. I say this half jokingly. If I ever meet you I can tell you stories about my brother-in-law Paul (or Pauly as he likes to be called) and you can decide for yourself, but this blog entry is not about my sister’s full blooded Italian husband who used to live in Chicago until his family moved him out west to work in their business of “shipping” who still has to go home to the Windy City every once in awhile to “take care of a few things” for his dad and brother. Honestly though, the guy is a complete and total gentleman and he treats my sister with love and respect, and he dotes on her constantly, and he when I see him, he gives me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and calls me his brother, and when he tells me he loves me, he means it. He is just an awesome, awesome guy, but I am not going to tell you a story about Pauly right now, I was going to tell you something about my sister.
My sister is one of the kindest most gentle souls I have ever known in my life. She is smart, funny, and embraces life twice as hard as the normal person. She has, in my estimation, crammed 80 years of life in her 42 years on this planet. She calls me once a week, just to say hello, and always…ALWAYS does that one super special thing that comes out of nowhere to just blow you away. Case and point: I used to call my sister’s cell phone late at night when I was driving home from being out with my friends, knowing that she always turned off the ringer and I wouldn’t wake her up. I would leave her lengthy messages in what was probably the WORST Christopher Walken impersonation of all time – usually about needing to get a hold of her to tell her about how awesome her kid brother was. She found these absolutely hilarious which only made me want to do them more. When I got married last year, my sister of course came to my wedding, and when she got there, she handed me a letter. It just had my name on it and nothing else. She had this big smile on her face and asked me to open it. Inside the letter was a letter. A hand written letter. All it said was – “Lance – please allow me to congratulate you on this most joyous day. I wish you and Rebecca a long life together, filled with happiness and health. Yours – Christopher Walken” That’s right. My sister tracked down Christopher Walken’s agent, and somehow managed to convince them to convince him to write this little letter to give to me. Now, there is no way I can know if it is genuine or not, but this is my sister, and I have never known her to lie in her life, plus this is my sister, and she just DOES stuff like this.
Now then – I am getting to the point here, just hold on – the other day a package showed up at my house, which by itself is not that out of the ordinary since I am always getting packages, but this one was tiny and it was from Amazon. I opened it up and there was a CD inside (which is crazy since I haven’t bought a CD in years) and on the Amazon invoice there was a little note that said – “I think you will really like this. Listen to it with Becca. Love – Sis”. The CD was Mumford & Sons – a band I had never heard of. (I have since discovered that they are ridiculously popular so please don’t jump up and down and ask me why I don’t know anything about them) Later that day, the family had an outing to go to so I threw the CD into the stereo and we listened to the opening track, and I thought it was pretty cool, and then I started thinking about music in general, and I started remembering stuff…
So back in the day, I was crazy for music – loved it, loved it, loved it. I bought albums, and tapes, made mix tapes for my friends, and when CD technology came about, I was one of the first people amongst my friends to own a CD player. I was also one of the first people I KNEW who owned a DiscMan. As with anyone, my music tastes changed as I grew older. In high school I listened to a lot of alternative college radio stuff. When I got to college, I was a really awful college radio DJ, but I got to listen to tons of new bands that I had never heard of. I still remember the day we got a CD from some obscure band called “Nirvana” but when we listened to it, we really thought that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” song was pretty awesome, so we put it on our playlist. About a month later you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing it everywhere in the world. (And yes that does mean that I was cooler than you because I knew about them first – except for the 12 of you who owned their album Bleach before they made it big. You have bragging rights over me) After college I worked for a LOT of pizza places, delivering food around Fargo. I would listen to CD’s in my car constantly. It helped that I had a part time job at a local music store that bought used CD’s, so I was able to get my hands on cheap music all the time – mainly because I would tell whoever came in that while the store could give them three bucks for the CD (for which we would then charge $9 when we sold it) I would give them four bucks as long as they kept it between the two of us. I must have bought about 100 CD’s from Chuck Klosterman back in the day (you may know him now as a semi-famous author and columnist) and I even got an offhand mention in one of his essays that is in one of his books that is in print now. Yay! Go me!
At some point around this time I got a job working security for concerts. It was one of those friend of a friend type things. They asked me if I wanted to make $100 cash for working an Insane Clown Posse concert of all things, and I agreed. After the show, I was covered in Fay-go, bruised and beaten from catching around 300 crowd surfers, and my ears would not stop ringing. Despite all that, I kept coming back for more, and the promoter actually liked the fact that I wasn’t a drunk and didn’t try to let my friends in for free. I lost track of the sheer number of different acts I got to meet in person, but it wasn’t all punk rockers and heavy metal heads, I also got to meet extremely cool people like Bob Mould, R. L. Burnside, Ani DiFranco, Dick Dale, The Violent Femmes, and Henry Rollins. Eventually, I came to realize that even if I was getting $100 for my trouble, it was for 7 or 8 hours of work, and the amount of cash I got was completely dependant on how well the show went. Once, the punk band Voodoo Glow Skulls came to town and we held a show that had a turn out of around 150 people. The five $10 bills in my pocket did not adequately pay for my time, and the band was so annoyed by the size of the crowd, they did half a set and were complete jerks to the help. For more stories about this illustrious period of my life, just wait a little while, I will post a geek list or something.
So, in my mid to late 20’s I listened to tons of punk rock and heavy metal. I don’t know why this was the genre that appealed to me, but for me, the louder and the faster it was, the better. I would drive around town, the seat next to me filled with pizza for hungry Fargo residents, while bands like NOFX, Pantera, Social Distortion, Corrosion of Conformity, Slayer, Bad Religion, Millencolin, and, of course, Metallica, blasted out of my car speakers at deafening volumes. I grew my hair long and grew a really bad beard. I wore a lot of black clothes and went to every concert I could possible attend. I had approximately 2000 CD’s at one point, all jammed into my homemade shelves on my walls. I searched out imports and bootlegs, argued with my friends constantly about things that now seem ridiculous (Was Ministry a metal band or an Industrial one? Was Nine Inch Nails just a watered down version of KMFDM?) and would hang out with those same friends for hours, drinking beer, and not saying a single word to each other for hours at a time as we just listened to loud music coming out of our stereo speakers, and having the best sound system was point of pride. One group of my buddies actually rented a house that was way out of their price range, for the expressed spoken purpose of just being able to “play their music as loud as they want and no one can complain”. They didn’t realize that if you play death metal at a volume level loud enough to shake your windows at 3 am, the cops will STILL come to your house and tell you to keep it quiet. This is of course completely dependant upon you actually being able to hear them knock on your front door. (true story – that actually happened. My friends got drunk and fell asleep with Slayer’s Reign in Blood album playing on repeat and didn’t hear the cops knocking on their door at the wee hours in the morning after the noise complaint was called in. They ended up breaking the door down since they could see inside the windows and it appeared that they had been drinking to the point where they could very well have killed themselves with alcohol poisoning. They lamented the fact that they not only had to pay the fine for the noise, but also pay to replace their front door)
I listened to music anywhere I could, and when I couldn’t listen to music at home, I would just get into my car and drive around town, the windows rolled down (if it was summer) and just listen to my music. My on again, off again girlfriend at the time would join me as long as she wasn’t working (this was “Jessica” if you have happened to read a certain geeklist about my ex-girlfriends) and we would barely talk. We would trade off who got to listen to what, and we would put up with each other’s interests. It is odd, but I don’t think that relationship would have lasted as long as it did, if it hadn’t been for music. We constantly went to concerts together, burned CD compilations, and just laid in bed and listened to music as the sun went down. (Of course, this sounds way more nostalgic than it deserves to be. I probably would have been better off if we had never listened to music at all so the first break up would have been the last…)
Eventually my love affair with music came to pass, and I can point out a singular reason for it happening – I no longer delivered pizzas. I went from spending 30+ hours a week, stuck in a box on wheels with a $600 sound system to working behind a desk, twiddling at a computer. I had a small CD player of course, but listening to Meshuggah at low volumes really doesn’t do it justice. I tried listening to some of my more “acceptable” stuff, but eventually I just scrapped it and went to listening to talk radio, NPR, or the one classical music station we have in town. I went from buying a couple of CD’s a week (at least) to pretty much nothing. Slowly but surely I lost track of the bands that I used to follow, and I lost track of the “new hot thing” when it came to the up and coming groups that appealed to me. Eventually, I would walk down the music aisle at Best Buy and I would not recognize half of the bands I saw. Nowadays, I am lucky if I know one in ten. At some point, I gathered up all my music, separated out the 100 or so CD’s I wanted to keep, and hauled the rest down to my old job to sell off. They couldn’t accept the mountain of discs that I had all at once, so I sold them off a bit at a time, but eventually I ditched them all, and to be honest, I don’t really miss them at all.
Big secret time. I am a big softy. OK, maybe that isn’t a huge secret if you have read some of the stuff I have posted on this site, but I am a pretty emotional guy. If I happen to read something fairly poignant, it can get a bit misty in the room. If I watch one of those videos of the mom or dad surprising their kids by coming home from being in Iraq I need a tissue. I am constantly surprised and amazed at the beauty of this world, and it continually knocks me on my ass and humbles me before its greatness. I cannot watch the first 10 minutes of the movie UP unless you want a blubbering mess on your hands – the same goes for the last 10 minutes of the move Field of Dreams. My daughter can turn me to mush in her hands with a simple request, like the other night when she asked me to hold her hand while she watched Blue’s Clues, and when I think of just how much I am in love with Becca, I can hardly handle it. I wish I had a better memory of her in her wedding dress, walking down the aisle towards me, but if I had looked at her the whole time, and not the ceiling, she would have gotten her wish to see me cry at the altar. Why am I telling you this? Well it is time to bring things, as they say, to a full circle.
So after my family and I got done with our errands, I left the Mumford & Sons CD in the stereo, and about an hour or so later I had to go and do something, or pick some milk, or some random errand for whatever reason. I got into my truck and sped off with the music playing in the background. A portion of the music grabbed my attention and I turned it up. I rolled down the window and just let the day full of tension and stress flow away as the music thumped through my skin. Eventually, I stopped hearing the music, and then I listened to it, and then I heard this lyric:
Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, It will set you free Be more like the man you were made to be. There is a design, An alignment to cry, Of my heart to see, The beauty of love as it was made to be
And the words and the music did what I think all songs aspire to do, they made me think, and they made me apply their idea to myself, and my own life, and they made me think of my wife, and my daughter, and my child that is on its way, and how that love that they give me, and the love that I give them has made me so much more than I ever was before, and just how absolutely glorious that is, and just how damn lucky I am to be who I am, and to have what I have, and just how amazing and beautiful this existence that I get to live each and every day.
And then this big, giant, hairy guy started crying in his truck. Big giant happy drops of salty tears, pouring down my face as I drove down the road.
And maybe, just maybe, somewhere out there in this big old world, Sara Conyers was doing the exact same thing.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
Wow…look at this! You are getting two blog entries in relatively short succession! What a treat!
(sarcasm and self deprecating humor should be quite evident in the preceding sentence)
Anyway – let me tell you a history of sorts about the trials and tribulations my hometown has had with maintaining a working environment in which an FLGS can survive. Notice that I didn’t use the word “thrive” in any way, shape, or form.
Back when I was a young pup, and my whole world (when it came to gaming) was Dungeons and Dragons, I had one glorious location that I would frequent, and that was a small little chunk of the Moorhead Center Mall called “The Hobby Hut”. While it was more aimed at the model enthusiast (tons of trains, rockets, and kits all along the walls) it had a row of the store geared completely and totally towards the gamer. Rack upon rack of RPG books were on hand, along with the occasional Steve Jackson game. This is where I found Car Wars for the first time, which was absolutely amazing. It is also where, for some reason, I decided to buy a copy of Kings and Things for some odd reason, a game that still sits on my shelf and gets played about once a year. The guy running the place was nice enough, but really didn’t know anything about the stuff I was interested in. I mainly went there to check out the new GURPS source books (and get excited when I would see my name in the play tester portion. Seriously. If you happen to have an old copy of GURPS Bestiary lying around you will find my name on there. Some other books as well, though I forget which. I don’t even remember what all I did to get the recognition but I did) and pick up paints for my giant box of miniatures that never seemed to get finished.
The one thing that kept me going to this place was the fact that it was in Minnesota, and I lived in North Dakota. And this was back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and North Dakota was one of the last states to actually let businesses be open on Sundays. I realize the idea that and entire state would just not allow people to work on a certain day for a quasi-religious purposes just seems kind of nuts, but this was 30 some years ago, and (by saying this it makes me feel old) it was a different time then. Anyway, come Sunday, I wouldn’t have anything to do, and I lived in Fargo, which was right on the border of North Dakota and Minnesota, so after church, I would get on my bike and make the 30-45 minute trip to the Moorhead Center Mall to look stuff over, and if I had scraped enough cash together, I would maybe even buy something. I remember picking up most of the old TSR games in the Ziploc bags (Revolt on Antares and Vampyre remembered off hand) and every single black box creation from Steve Jackson Games that I could get my grubby little mits on. (It should be noted that my copies of Ogre, G.E.V., Car Wars, Sunday Driver, Truck Stop, Battlesuit, Necromancer, and Raid on Iran along with the aforementioned TSR releases have all long since been lost and offered up to the gaming gods in the hopes that I will have greater success in my gaming exploits in the years to come. It is also my belief that when the day comes that I will need to go through my parents’ house, some if not all of these treasures will find their way back into my hands) What I find absolutely remarkable about this situation is that my mother had no issued with me vanishing out of the house for three or four hours to make this trip, on my bike, with no way to contact me or track me down if she wanted to find me. I get scared about the idea of my daughter playing with her cousins at her uncle’s house for more than an hour without me being present to watch over her. Either I am extremely over protective, or once again, this was just a different time.
Eventually, not only did the law keeping businesses closed on Sunday get repealed, but Fargo managed to get its very own Comic/Gaming store. Lantern Comics was situated in the downtown area and it was a relatively bike ride for me after school. I was heavily into the comic book scene as well as gaming so this place was heaven. My mother (bless her heart) invested heavily into my interests and would take me to this place when it got bitterly cold in the winter. The owner was an affable guy by the name of Kevin who genuinely cared about the interests and passions of his customers. He had lived in Duluth, Minnesota and had actually dressed up as a superhero from time to time for some wacky reason or another and had gone by the unoriginal name of “Captain Duluth”. Regardless, the guy loved comics, had a fair bit of interest in gaming, and for some weird reason liked to chat up my mother while I wandered around his store. I think in some weird way she enjoyed the attention, plus he liked to give her free comics, which would then be given to me, so it was a win-win situation. I purchased quite a few games from the guy, including my beloved Dueltrack expansion for Car Wars, but the vast majority of business he got from me was comic books. A few years ago, I read in the paper that he was finally closing up shop. My mother and I made one final trip to the place. Even though I hadn’t seen him in over 10 years, he did a double take when he saw me, and all but jumped over the counter to shake my hand and give my mom a hug. They say down to talk about what they had been doing in their lives for the last 15 years or so, and I got to breeze down the aisles one last time, and for one last time, my mother got to buy my comics for me when I got to the register.
Now I jumped ahead a few years there to have a nice summation to my Lantern Comics story, so let’s backtrack a bit and talk about the last TRUE game store that existed in my hometown – Omni Hobby. Omni Hobby was run by a gay couple that absolutely loved games. They had met in college because of their love of D&D, and when they graduated from school, they moved in together and opened up a store based on their mutual love of the gaming hobby. The two of them could not have been more diverse. Scott was gregarious, friendly, and had an opinion and a story about everything. He could talk about religion, politics, natural sciences, astronomy, military history – anything, and seemed genuinely interested in finding out what your feelings were about the subject matter. He was extremely intelligent, and very well read. I have several books on my shelf that are there from his suggestion, and each one of them was an excellent choice. Getting two words out of Ken, however, was like pulling teeth. It wasn’t like it was impossible, I had several discussions with the guy about his favorite role playing system and the trials and tribulations about being a small business owner, but that was only because I saw the guy once a week and he eventually became comfortable around me. They had three black labs that they kept in their store who were just about the most mild mannered animals you could ever meet. The whole place just felt comfortable. They ended up moving locations a few times, but that feeling of being “at home” never changed. Racks of RPG books, shelves dedicated to boardgames, and several tables available for gaming at any time – it really was a gamer’s dream. Sadly, being such a specialized retailer in the relatively small area of Fargo saw their business slowly decline. Eventually, Scott had to take a job outside of the business to supplement their income, and provide medical insurance for the two of them. In my opinion, that ended up being the final nail in the coffin for the place. When you go from having one guy interacting with every single person who walks in the door to a guy who can’t be bothered to look up from playing a game of solitaire on his computer unless you bring something up to the cash register, people are going to notice the change, and they are going to stop showing up. The last thing I ever bought at the store were my core books for the 3.5 rules for D&D. Every time I look at them on my shelf it makes me a little sad.
So, let me try and get to my point. Currently in my area I have very few venues in which to purchase games locally. This doesn’t bother me all that much since 90% of my gaming money is spent at Boards & Bits, and their Ohio warehouse gets me my games in a couple of days. However, on the odd happenstance that I need to get something quickly (which is what happened recently – more on this in just a bit) these are my options.
There is a local Ebay seller that also sells games here on the marketplace that actually lives in the town of West Fargo, which I am sure most of you have guessed, is west of my hometown of Fargo. When I was younger, there were large fields of untilled land between the two cities. Slowly but surely, this area was developed, and now the towns flow seamlessly into each other to the point where you can’t really tell where one begins and the other ends. In fact, some people who live in Fargo actually have to send their kids to West Fargo schools because they are zoned for them. Anyway, when I was just starting to think about getting into the hobby, the first game I thought I had to try was Arkham Horror. I had read tons of information about the game and it seemed to be the right kind of game for me. Looking back, I realize that that might have been a pretty poor idea since I don’t think anyone in their right minds would ever consider Arkham Horror a “gateway” game, but my mind was set. I looked on Ebay to see if I could find a cheap copy, and I happened to see that one of the sellers was located nearby. I sent them an email asking if I could do local pickup and avoid shipping, they said it was completely fine, and I have since purchased several games from this very nice married couple. It can be a little frustrating to get a hold of them sometimes (phone calls and email can sometimes remain unanswered for a few days at a time) but by and large they do right by me, and since they don’t have a true “store”, I get a very fair discount on the games that I buy – comparable to anything you would find online.
My second option is Hobby Hut – the same store I mentioned at the very beginning of this narrative. Somehow, this place remains open and just keeps chugging along. I think it has more to do with the fact that 90% of the work hours that the store is open, it is manned by the owner, and the fact that the location has since moved out of the mall and it is now located in an ancient strip of retail stores out in the boonies. All of these locations probably owe whatever success they have to the fact that Walmart was kind enough to plop down one of their stores within spitting distance of them. The guy who runs the place is as goofy and nice as ever, and he continues to be my go to place for all my paints and brushes. He loves talking Twins baseball, and always has amusing stories about the customers that he deals with. The last time I was in his store, I was stunned to see that he had converted a small portion of the back into a gaming area, and a couple of guys were going at it with their Warhammer armies, having a blast. That same visit, a young girl had come in and asked about “this game I played with my boyfriend…it had a bunch of cards and you draw cards out of your own deck, and then you buy more cards from the middle of the table, and then you put those in your deck, and you try and buy these green cards with points on them…do you know what that is?”. He looked a bit perplexed and then glanced in my direction. I of course told the girl the game was Race for the Galaxy and that she should order all the expansions. Okay, okay, I didn’t do that. I told them the game was Dominion and she put in an order for Intrigue, Seaside, and Alchemy right then and there. The owner was cool enough to offer me a free bottle of paint for helping me out, but I declined, since I had known the guy for so long and his store had given me so many great gaming moments, it was only right to pay him back a little.
Now the final place I can go is called Paradox Comics. Paradox Comics sprang from a couple of workers that had once been friends of Kevin (from Lantern Comics) and that had worked for him. At some point, for some unknown reason that has been much debated for some time by the inner geek council in my area, there was a horrific clash of personalities and ideas (or something) and the spurned friends/employees branched off to do their own thing. It has been open for quite a while now…I would guess 12 years or so…maybe more…and I rarely touch the place. When I was buying comics like a madman, I went to a wonderful place called Comic Junction that started in one guys garage and blossomed out into a full fledged comic shop above a tattoo parlor and Chinese restaurant (I am digressing here – sorry – I will tell my comic stories at a later time) and I guess I always felt a sort of loyalty to Kevin that didn’t allow me to spend my money at Paradox. I would wager that I have spent maybe $200 total at their store in the last decade or so they that have existed. The loyalty I mentioned was one reason, the second being that the atmosphere within the store is so classicly juvenile and stereotypical that it makes my inner geek cringe to be in its presence.
I will give the owners credit – they knew how to make money. They realized that Magic was going to be huge and immediately started hosting official tournaments within their confines. They offered discounted subscriptions to comics for people willing to spend the money up front, figuring that if they could keep you coming in the door you would spend more money once you were there. The owners were willing and able to discuss anything geeky with anyone, and if I had proof that the creators of the Simpsons had ever visited the store, I would swear that Comic Book Guy was based on them. On any given day…ANY given day…that I stopped by their store, there would be no less than four or five Magic players sitting in the back, screaming and hooting and hollering while they indulged their insanity. I recall one afternoon, when I saw a lad that could not have been older than 14, playing 3 separate games at once, surrounded by no less than 5 empty liter bottles of Mountain Dew, with three more in a cooler at his feet, waiting to be opened. The place smelled like a sweaty sock that had managed to be wedged behind the washer for the last 4 months, the people in charge dispensed abuse and disdain, and, for whatever reason, they kept a steady flow of customers that maintain a fanatical following for their business.
In recent years, the place has cleaned itself up quite a bit. They maintain two separate gaming areas, and have several boardgames available to be played at any time. The Magic players are still about, and they still hold tournaments, but they seem to have installed some sort of body odor rule and the place actually smells quite pleasant when you step inside. Most recently I noticed that they had held a Warhammer 40K tournament which had drawn quite the turnout. The owners rarely work the counters anymore, turning that job over to a few loyal underlings who lack any real customer service ability, but do know the ins and outs of Magic like it was imprinted on their brains at birth. At any given time, one of them will be regaling their counterpart about their most recent deck build and how they had sent their opponents home crying with their mastering of their abilities.
However, with all the improvements, I am still loathe to enter the place, if only because I feel like I am completely out of my element. They have a large selection of boardgames, so that is good, but none of the people that work there really know anything about any of them other than “That Munchkin game is really fun. We were screaming and yelling at each other all night the other weekend when we played it”. For all the Dungeons and Dragons products they carry, not a single one actively plays it, which I suppose might be a good thing since I really don’t want to hear another person tell me that “4th edition is the best thing EVER!” ever again for the rest of my life. I may be a geek, but I am not their “kind” of geek.
But I stepped through their doors anyway the other day, and while I perused their shelves and saw comics that I used to read, I listened to the THREE workers discussing why some guy’s Blue Deck was both completely awesome and completely bogus. A loud argument was won by the guy who was able to be louder than the other two combined, who matter of factly stated that he didn’t care if that guy’s deck was as good as they said since his deck that he was working on was going to blow everyone else’s out of the water, “just you wait and see!”. I was mildly annoyed that they had moved the boardgame shelves right next to the counter, so I had to be within 5 feet of this inane argument. I was the only customer in the whole place, and I had been inside for a good 20 minutes without one of them even looking at me. Eventually, another guy walked in and headed over to their Warhammer section and started perusing their ample selection, and one of them finally noticed that they had customers inside their store. He asked me if I needed help with anything and I inquired as to whether or not they could order me a copy of Battleship Galaxies. He looked at me with a dull expression and asked me what it was. After a bit of explanation, one of the other guys (the loud one who won the argument) stated that he had no idea what the game was but the owner could order it for me, but the owner was out, so they would tell him to do it when he got back. I figured that considering the audience I had, that was the best I could do, and I gave them my info and hoped for the best.
A couple of hours later I got a phone call from the owner and he said he would have the game in the store the next afternoon. He thanked me for my business, and mentioned that he was glad that I had ordered the game because he thought it looked pretty cool and that he was going to get a copy for in store use as well. I talked to him for maybe three minutes and it was like a breath of fresh air compared to the people he had employed. I told him as much, and he chuckled a bit, and offered up an apology but remarked that in a business like his, his options for his worker base were limited at best. We shared a couple of laughs and parted ways, and in a few short hours I am going to give him $70 of my hard earned money and pay full price for a game, something I haven’t done in a long, long time – but after talking to him, I am kind of glad I am. If he was somehow able to take his years of wisdom and knowledge and customer service, and implant it into his employee’s he would probably get a lot more of my money in the future.
I am both glad and a little sad that this hasn’t happened. I miss the fun and wonder of walking into a game store that I used to feel when I was younger, but buying everything online has definitely been kind to my wallet. I know lots of people champion the FLGS, and I get why they do, but as everyone says, they need to offer me something more to get me in the door. Right now they are offering to get a game for me that I really want in my hands right away instead of waiting until next week for it to hit my grubby little paws. Other than that, there really isn’t anything they can give me, and you know what – they don’t have to. Their bread and butter is comics and CCG’s, and the employees they have pander to that market, and do that job very well.
Becca often asks me hypothetical questions, and one of her favorites is the age old “what would you do if we won the lottery?” – which is funny because we have never purchased a lottery ticket in our lives. I always tell her that I would open my very own comic book/gamestore, with several different levels, one for comics, another for board games, another for CCG’s, and so on. I tell her that I would sit there all day long and shoot the breeze with every single customer that walked in the door, while discussing the merits of the Green Arrow versus Hawkeye (Green Arrow) and whether or not the world needs yet another Arkham Horror expansion (yes, it does). I would only hire people that I could count on not being complete arrogant jerks and that they read comics and played the games that they were required to sell. I would keep late hours so people would have access to their geeky passions at the odd times that they were awake, and I would have easy access to snacks and sodas at all times. Sounds pretty cool right? But it is a total pipe dream – unless there is a rich investor out there somewhere that wants to float me a no interest loan to make my dream come alive.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
There are several people on this website whose opinions and ideas I respect greatly. Come to think of it, it would be easier for me to list off the people whose opinions I didn’t respect than to do the latter, but then I would probably be asked to stop posting here for a few days if not altogether. Getting back on point, I have several people that I have geekbuddied, for one reason or another, and from time to time I will read what they have to say and see what they have been posting or commenting on.
It’s a form of stalking, sure, but it’s out of love and respect – so it’s not creepy.
Anyway, I read a comment from a user that said, paraphrasing here, “when I start looking at a new game, and then someone says it’s a lot like Stone Age (a game I enjoy) I think, well if it is like Stone Age, why would I bother playing this when I can go home and play Stone Age?”
Now for him, this was probably just rhetoric – a throw away comment he made in passing for his amusement, but for whatever reason, it has been stuck in my head for awhile. I find the idea that this person has this ONE game that they prefer to play over everything else – this ONE game is more enjoyable than any other option that they can put on the table. The more I think of this, the more ludicrous this idea becomes. Then I start thinking…wait…this isn’t all that odd actually…
My step-father loves playing cards – any kind of cards. He will play Hearts, Pinochle, Gin, Spades, anything. He just loves the whole process of playing the game. The shuffling, the taking of turns, the conversations – everything. But there is one game that he would play all day long and never stop, and that is Cribbage. For awhile, he collected Cribbage boards. He has a stack of them about 8 feet high in his house. He loves the game so much that he organized a club at our church back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. He played it three times a week for a good three or four hours every night. He read books on it, discussed strategies, and subscribed to magazines that covered the game. I may have played about 50 games of Cribbage with him in my lifetime, and I have never won a single game. He is almost 70 years old now, and I love the man dearly, and there are a thousand reasons why I think as highly of him as I do (he is probably among the greatest grandpas in the history of the world) but there is something about the unmitigated joy he gets out of playing a good game of Cribbage, and I love to see that twinkle in his eye when he plays. He still manages a game or two every week, and when my sister comes to town, they will sit down one evening and play for a good 4 or 5 hours straight (she is actually pretty good at the game too) and I hope that he retires soon, if only so he can enjoy his passions more often.
But there you go – someone who loves a game so much that they would prefer to play it over anything else – and I am sure there are more people like that in this world. People that love Poker, or Bridge, or perhaps Chess, or Go. But, and you knew there would be a but…
This behavior seems to be non-existent when it comes to “our” hobby. No one I know ever bought something like Agricola or Puerto Rico and then said, “I never need to own another game – this one is perfect.” No one I know has ever decided to devote themselves to something like Twilight Struggle and decided to research every possible nuance of the game in the attempt of mastering the game. I am sure there are people that fit both of those examples, but they would be few and far between. So why is it that the more mainstream a game gets, the more fanatical some of their enthusiasts become?
The obvious answer would be that when you are able to expose something to a larger and larger group of people, the possibility of finding a person in that group that will devote their recreational time to that game (and only that game) increases, but I would contend that the underlying reason would be that the boardgames that make up “our” hobby lend themselves to being gateways to other games - in essence, what I am saying is that modern boardgames, be they Euro or Ameritrash, are all “gateway” games. Much like the people at Lay’s would like us to believe about their potato chips, we can’t stop at just one.
Now admittedly, even if someone is an avid player of bridge or chess, they had to start somewhere. They probably didn’t just dive into those particular games from the start. The difference is that once they got to the plateau that is their passion, they just feel no need to keep expanding their horizons. Now this troubles me for a reason. Is it because that particular game is just THAT good that it simply cannot be improved upon? Are my beloved “top ten” boardgames (if I had a top ten) just not as good as these all encompassing pursuits? I have played many of these games (Chess, Go, Bridge, etc) and I have found them fun, but they don’t click with me like they do with their fans. Does this mean that I just don’t get it? What am I missing out on?
Ultimately – I know the real answer. We play what we want to play. We enjoy what we enjoy. If playing 10,000 games of bridge over the course of 15 years is what one person believes to be the best and greatest use of their leisure time, then who am I to tell them that they are wrong. I have friends who adamantly state, without a shred of doubt in their souls, that 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons is the greatest edition of the game, and the greatest roleplaying system ever designed. While I know that these people are obviously insane and completely misguided, I see no reason to jump up and down on their table, regaling them with my perceived faults of their choice. Rather, I take wonder at their stories of their sessions, and I marvel at their ability to enjoy the heck out of what I consider to be a stinking turd of a game, and I realize, if anyone is at fault, it is myself, because I can’t find the fun in something that obviously brings joy to many, many people.
So I will never own just one game. I will never play just one game. I doubt that I will ever truly have a “favorite game” of all time – though I must admit that Arkham Horror comes very close. I won’t understand why someone would only want to play Stone Age, or will only play abstracts, or thinks Euros are god awful, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?
I do think we can all agree on something however. We all need to sit down and play more games, no matter how varied our selection may be.
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
It's been a month or so since my last entry - and I will be honest, I have been having a lot of trouble coming up with anything to really write about. It isn't so much that nothing interesting is happening to me in my life – heck, I probably have TOO much going on right now – it is just that the things going on in my life, and especially in my gaming life, have hit a holding pattern so to speak.
I think we all get to this point with all of our interests at one time or another. Back before Becca wasn’t my wife, or even my girlfriend for that matter, and she was just this cute 19 year old brunette that worked down the hallway from me, I lived a very methodical existence. I worked, I dinked around on my computer, and I slept, and that was about it. You will notice that I did not say “played a lot of boardgames” in that sentence. Big reveal time (well not really a big reveal since I have mentioned this several times before) – I didn’t really get heavily into this hobby until about three years ago.
Oh sure, I played them, even owned a handful, but they were mostly stuff I had had for years (see my recent Fortress America review for example) or things I had picked up on a whim for one reason or another. They were scattered in my hall closet of my modest one bedroom apartment and they got taken out once every three months or so when I had enough friends over to play them, but not enough to people (or money) to play poker. No, at this time my “extra money” went into two things – graphic novels and my aquariums. At some point I will talk about those hobbies, but suffice it to say that in the basement of my house I have about 20 boxes that contain around 1000 graphic novels and trade paperbacks and in my shed I have 5 aquariums ranging from 10 gallons all the way up to a 200 gallon monster. For both of these hobbies, I spent next to all of my free time either reading comics or reading about them, or reading about fish, fish care, and aquarium maintenance. Those interests, whether good or bad, defined me.
Now I have almost nothing to do with either of them. The aquarium store I visited twice a week hasn’t seen me walk through its doors in years. The same can be said for my beloved comic book store that still resides above the tattoo parlor where I got all my “ink”. The only connection I have with either hobby anymore is a 20 inch long plecostomus that still lives and resides in my mother’s aquarium at her house (I affectionately named him Roger for some unknown reason) and the occasional trade paperback I read at the local library when I take my daughter there on our weekly excursion.
Now then – where am I going with this you may ask.
As I mentioned earlier, my life is in a bit of a holding pattern right now. Between finishing my basement to make room for the birth of our upcoming child, and taking care of my entire family since my wife has been put on bedrest, my energy to get excited about gaming has been drastically reduced. A year ago, I can remember cruising BGG, checking out the new releases, reading about the hype, updating my wishlist, commenting on this forum and that picture – you know, being a geek for all things related to boardgames. Now, I find myself less and less interested in not so much the hobby, but the superfluous “extras” that surround it. I remember thinking about how I just HAD to own these 15 or so games that are coming out soon, and now I can barely muster any interest about one or two of them.
I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. I just sometimes wonder if I will get to that point in my life where I simply won’t really care about boardgames anymore. I don’t honestly see that as a possibility, but then again, if you asked me 5 or 6 years ago if I was going to stop buying/reading comics, I would have said “no chance!” and laughed at you – and then a couple of years later when I was a dad, owned a house, and was planning my wedding, you could have walked up to me as I was elbow deep in a diaper and shoved my words in my face.
In a purely objective sense, I KNOW the reason why I don’t read comics or have a wall full of aquariums anymore is because I simply did not have the time or resources to devote my passion to those hobbies anymore. The bigger question is “Would I have given them up if I hadn’t met Becca and had a child with her?” And to that, I have no answer, just as I have no idea if I will ever get bored of playing boardgames. Right now, my answer is “No freaking way!” but then…well we have been over this.
When I talk to people on the ‘Geek that have been passionate about this hobby for decades, I cannot help but marvel at their ability to remain so focused on something for such a long period of time, and I must admit that I am envious of their ability to remain a devout follower of this past time that we all enjoy so much, but in my heart, I know it is a road I will probably not travel.
At some point in the future, some event will probably occur that will alter the way I spend the (hopefully many) remaining years of my life, and that change may directly influence the continued impact that boardgames have on my time. The boxes of games will sit on my shelves, gathering dust, and I will occasionally glance at them and wonder “what the heck was I thinking?” before continuing down the hallway to do whatever will be interesting me at that phase in my life. Eventually I will sell them all off, or (more likely) I will box them all up and put them in my basement, next to the comics, pulp science fiction novels, and piles of various hand made hemp jewelry/clothing, and the stuff that doesn’t fit will go in the shed next to the aquariums and discarded video game systems.
All I know is my kids are going to have some pretty awesome stuff to dig through once they finally put me in a home.
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
