2012

I was in a movie theatre for the end of the world. For me it came on Saturday morning, November 28, 2009, but the film claimed it was December 2012.

You may have seen disaster movies before, but you have to see this one. I went to see it for laughs, but let’s ignore all the impossibilities and ask ourselves if it was a good movie. The answer is yes. You get to know and care about the characters in it. I was on the edge of my seat, eyes glued to the screen for the last two hours of the film.

As disasters go, the cause of the problem in 2012 is almost believable. Almost. I liked it when the scientist/hero learned that neutrinos were causing the earth’s core to overheat, and said that was impossible. I liked it when the researchers who discovered the effect just pointed to the equipment. Are we really so sure what’s possible and what isn’t? An enormous increase in solar activity (solar activity is increasing as we read this) causes the earth’s molten core to heat up. This causes intense volcanic activity all over the world, and earthquakes of gigantic proportions. The earthquakes cause tidal waves big enough to sweep over continents. If the shaking and the explosions, and the deadly gases released into the atmosphere don’t kill you, the floods will.

The movie follows the efforts of one heroic man, a wannabe science fiction writer who is really a chauffer for a rich Russian billionaire. He learns that the end is near, and that there is supposedly a safe place to go, and decides to save his family–even though his wife has divorced him and his son resents him. He learns all this in Yellowstone, which is probably one of the first places that would erupt–partly from government scientists who are monitoring the site, and partly from a crazy radio announcer  (Woody Harrelson does over-the-top crazy characters in film better than any other American actor, IMHO) who has put all the clues together–and there have been plenty of clues in the last three years. He not only gets back to Los Angeles in time to get his family out, but also returns to Yellowstone to try and rescue the nutso announcer and get the map showing where the arks are being built. This is the ludicrous part of the film, and I laughed all the way through the sinking of California and the eruption of Yellowstone. But, the special effects were great. If you like celluloid destruction, the effects were beyond awesome. The movie trailers only hint at the incredible escalating catastrophe. I haven’t been this blown away by a movie’s special effects since opening day of Star Wars back in 1977.

The scientific speculation in 2012 is interesting. If the Earth’s core got hotter, it would cause more volcanic activity. If you were building arks to ride out such a storm, you’d probably want to put them in either the Himalayas or the Andes. If the world was coming to an end, and the government knew about it, they’d save government officials/employees and the rich who could help finance the work. They probably would kill everyone who figured it out and tried to spill the beans.

There is some great acting in the movie. It comes mostly from the bit players. The kids are all excellent. I love watching child actors. They really get into the story. Woody Harrelson as the crazy Yellowstone disk jockey is worth the price of the movie by himself. His internet web page about the end of the world is priceless, brilliant satire of the web in general.

When it was over, I got to wondering. If governments knew the end was coming soon, would they help make such movies with financing and influence on the sly just to prepare the people for the end? Call me paranoid, but it seems like just the sort of thing our U.S. government would do.  They’d probably take a share of the money the movie made too.

 I have seen the end of the world as we know it, and I wouldn’t live through it. Neither would you. Neither would the stars of this movie. They should have died a dozen times or more, but if they die, there’s no movie, so I’ll accept all the impossibilities that kept them alive. The end of the world will be a time for heroes, and 2012 gives us heroes we can all identify with.

I could say a lot more for 2012. The movie gives us all a lot to think about, and it does it by laying all the messages between the lines. The big theme is the end of the world. Great special effects–laughed all the way through that. What makes the movie worth seeing is the many vignettes that talk about what it means to be human. The movie is best when you see a child fighting to save his father, when you see a nerd protesting that he’s not a pilot (but he has to be or they will all die), when you see a woman risking her life to save her dog, when you see a disk jockey broadcasting live from the lip of an erupting volcano. 

I thought I was going to 2012 just to spend time with son and friends and get a few laughs. I wound up really enjoying the film. Ignore the impossibilities–just watch the people. I guarantee a good time.

End

(I meant to put a still from the film in here, but this uploading pictures doesn’t work nearly as smoothly as it should. I guess I need more practice. But if you wanna see pictures, you know how to use Google. Look it up. There are pictures enough from the film for those who care to look.)

Monster Hunter International

Correia, Larry. Monster Hunter International. New York, Baen, c. 2009. 713 p. $7.99

Modern urban fantasy is the thing these days, and it permeates all genres of fiction. Vampires, werewolves, and ickier things that go bump in the night are everywhere you look. If I had a brain, I’d jump on the bandwagon with Charlaine Harris, and Janice Davidson, and Emma Bull, and Charles de Lint, and Jim Butcher, and Larry Correia. They are all terrific writers, and I’ve even met a couple of them, which convinces me that they are also terrific people. Maybe I should get over to the Poisoned Pen book store in Scottsdale tomorrow night and meet Larry, too. Coincidence that I decide to write this review and then find out he’s in Phoenix this week? Raise your hand if you believe in coincidences.

My copy of MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL is pretty beaten up. I would like to add it to the Phoenix Public Library collection–a fate that befalls many of the books that come my way, but I have just used it too hard. We don’t add books that have creased spines, stained edges, and a front cover that is curling back on itself. It’s not about content in the library–these days it’s all about looking good. That’s what happens to a 700 page book when it gets read. It takes a while to finish it. In the process the book gets handled, opened, dropped, folded, mutilated and it winds up looking like its hero–a big tough ugly galoot. So, I was going to donate it to the Friends (of the Century Branch Library)–some other fantasy reader would find it in the book sale corner and enjoy it, maybe as much as I enjoyed it. Then I thought, what the heck? I liked the book a lot. Let’s write a review before giving it away.

Owen Z. Pitt begins his career as a monster hunter by getting attacked by a werewolf. Unlike most people who get attacked by werewolves, he doesn’t die. In fact he manages to kill the thing before succumbing to his own wounds. Ordinary people die, but heroes have a way of surviving when ordinary people die, and make no mistake, Owen is destined to be an epic hero. For one thing, he’s a goon. Six foot ten, four hundred pounds of bone and muscle, smart–Owen walks around with a .357 magnum concealed on his person–even when he’s going to his day job as an accountant. Something about being a goon  is a big help in also being a hero.

Would you believe that all those monsters that you don’t believe in do really exist? Would you believe that they are causisng havoc all over the world, and that there are both government agencies and private corporations dedicated to fighting and killing them? Of course you would. You believe in aliens and the Men in Black, don’t you? After he recovers from being mauled by a werewolf, Owen gets recruited by Monster Hunters International (and also by an old Jewish ghost of a monster killer from a previous generation).

The allure of fighting monsters for fun and bounties might have been enough to sign him up, but he also meets Julie Shackleford, a beautiful gun-toting Amazon. Throw in the prospect of true love, and his fate is pre-ordained. (Turns out that is truer than I thought when I coined the phrase–must be nice to be born the Chosen One of Prophecy!) Before he knows it Owen is fighting for his life against vampires, gargoyles, wraiths and other-dimensional horrors. He meets elves, orcs, and ghostly guardians. He winds up trying to save the world from the Cursed One and the Old Ones who come from another plane of existence.

Neither H.P. Lovecraft nor Yog-Sothoth is mentioned by name, but you know this book falls right into the Mythos tradition. H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard were penpals. MHI is Lovecraftian horror as written by Conan’s scribe, with a touch of Bram Stoker thrown in. Vampires really are the in thing in modern fantasy!

What I really liked about Monster Hunter was the fight scenes. Correia, who according to the biographical note in the back of the book is a real-life gun nut and combat instructor writes the best battle scenes since Howard died. He takes you into the whirlwind of battle, and while you are reading those scenes, it’s almost like an out-of-body experience. You, the reader, will feel that heart-pounding excitement that only comes during the most intense combat or sports experience. If you’ve never actually been in a fight that mattered, you won’t know what I’m talking about–how the world narrows down to the next swing of your fist, or pull on the trigger. Or maybe you do, if you’re the kind of person who goes to action thrillers and loses yourself in the over-the-top combat scenes the movies can produce these days.

But, read MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL and you will get some idea what those experiences are like. It’s a hell of a tale, and if Correia can keep writing like this, he may become the Robert E. Howard of the 21st century.

–Ken St. Andre, Phoenix Public Library

Clouds Amuse Me

A challenge came my way today to write a poem about clouds. This is what came out. I tried to post it to Facebook, but FB lost the formatting, so I’m putting it here instead.

 

Clouds Amuse Me

Clouds amuse me.

They take so many shapes.

Some look like dragons.

Some look like apes.

Some of them just sit there,

The same spot in the sky.

Some move like arrows

And just go zipping by.

Clouds can make me gloomy.

The black ones make me sad,

But when they’re playing cloud charades,

They always make me glad.

–Ken St. Andre

November 16, 2009

The Fourth Alignment

 Last Saturday was a busy day for me–an expensive day, but a good day. It started with me going to Uhaul and renting a pickup truck, The truck was a beauty, and a pure pleasure to drive–just being in it took me back mentally 40 years to the days when I drove light trucks and did delivery work. I drove to Avondale, picked up an exercise machine, took it home, turned the truck back in. It cost me about $70, but I got an exercise machine, and I’m starting to work out. (very, very lightly–I am so horribly out of shape.) You know how some people like to run, or work out? Well, I like to drive, especially in a really nice vehicle. That Uhaul truck was fine–had less than 5000 miles on it.

But, I’m not talking about wheel alignment–just trying to give you some idea of how busy my day was.

I have been talking to a man named Richard Porter for a couple months now. Richard is a computer security expert, and a Tunnels and Trolls fan. About 11 a.m. he came over to see me. We had computer issues to explore. He brought his wife, Wendy, and beautiful daughter, Kate. We did lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen–yum–that’s upscale for me, downscale for him. The food is good. Thank you, Richard, for buying me lunch.

After lunch, we were talking about how Trollhalla (trollhalla.com) needs a wizard to help manage the site. He volunteered. Trollhalla is a site that provides services to its members, and it’s full of links and databases that need constant supervision. I was stressing the fact that any wizard had to be totally reliable. Wendy supported her husband by saying he was definitely Lawful Good. (We’re all gamers–we know what that means.) That started a mini-discussion about what alignments the rest of us fell into. Richard tried to claim that Wendy was Chaotic Good, but she denied it.

She asserted that her alignment was Female. It seemed to fit. We (and that’s the royal We) have encountered characters of that alignment before. The normal adjectives do not seem to apply to the Female Alignment. Good, Neutral, Evil–most Females pass through all those phases every day.

The most plausible modifier for the Female alignment seems to be Variable. Other qualifiers that could be applied: Moody, Loving, Beautiful, Witchy, Snarky–in fact the list is as infinite as the behavior of the female of the species.

Female is, of course, the most dangerous alignment of all.

Writing a Novel

November is National Novel Writing Month–NaNoWriMo.  In 2007 I particpated in the novel-writing frenzy, and I produced Griffin Feathers.  Check it out on Amazon.com.  I’m really proud of it.

This year I’m doing it again.  My working title is simply Rose, and my main character is someone who’s an idealized version of someone very special to me. 

It will be a Tunnels and Trolls novel, and there are good reasons for that.  I know Trollworld.  I made it, with a lot of help from my friends.  I know where the monsters live, and I know how, and I know why.  I know where strange things can pop up.  And they will pop up–what’s the fun of creating a new story if you don’t put new things into it?

And, it has to be a fantasy.  I obsess over fantasy. Trapped in a world of relentless science, I crave fantasy–wizards, monsters, and magic.  Here on 21st century Earth I can have a fantasy of fantasy, but not the real thing.  Law and Science rule our world.  Those who think otherwise delude themselves.

I prepared  myself for this literary sprint. I made a long drive out to Tempe, Arizona last month to attend a free talk about writing fast and writing well given by my friend Michael Stackpole.  Michael is an enormously prolific author.  He’s smart, and he’s good, and it burns my soul that I haven’t accomplished what he’s accomplished as a writer. 

It’s not that I haven’t heard his advice before.  It’s more like I need to hear it again.

Mike told me, and 30 other would-be writers, to let the characters drive the story.  That’s one of my goals this month.  Spend more time on character.  That’s hard.  It’s especially hard if you try to avoid caricature.  I don’t want the reader to say, oh, he’s a typical fighting dwarf.  So, I’ve changed that character to a fighting dwarf female.  And she’s getting kind of old, grumpy, and forgetful.  How will that affect my story?  I don’t know. 

Another thing Mike told me is don’t go back and revise until you’re done.  Your goal is 1700 words a day.  If you spend much time editing yourself as you go–and that is something I normally do–you won’t get your 1700 words done.  Fix it later.  Make notes.  Change things later.  Elaborate later if you have to.  But don’t stop.  Don’t go back.  Let the words flow and devil take the editing.  That’s hard.

A third thing he mentioned was to print out what you’ve written every day and put it in a binder.  I work on a computer–in a sense I’m online whenever I’m on a computer, and when you’re online you can be interrupted.  Print it out.  When you want to edit, edit offline.  Mark up your manuscript.  When November is over I can go back and use that marked up draft to improve my computer files version of the novel.  I have 8 pages printed out so far, and even though I know they’re full of errors, they look good to me.  I can hardly wait to have 40 or 100 pages printed out.

I’m off to a good start.  I’ve done two chapters, about 3100 words in the first two days.  I’m barely starting to introduce my characters and my world.  Two days down, twenty-eight to go.  Wish me will power.  Egg me on!  Challenge me to finish.

I have challenged myself this year by telling everyone I’m going to do this thing.  I’ll feel pretty stupid if I don’t do it.  But you guys can also crack the whip.  God keep me from distractions until I’ve done my 1500 words or more per day.

And, if you’re also writing for NaNoWriMo, then take this as encouragement.  I’m really a very lazy guy.  If I can do it, you can do it.  Let’s encourage each other, and see who has the longer, stronger, better manuscript when the month is over.

End

Greyhounds Aren’t Grey

I got together with an old friend last night and did something new.  It was Frank Denton (and his gracious wife Anna Jo) who were in Phoenix the last few days to enjoy some horse racing, some art at the Heard Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum and some dog racing.  I’ve known Frank since 1968 when he was the first to ever publish any St. Andre fiction in his fanzine–Ashwing.  (Ashwing was an owl, and owls have always been Frank’s totem.)

He lives in Seattle, and I live in Phoenix, and the chance to see him and talk to him doesn’t come very often, so I was happy to go out to supper with him on Tuesday night.  I introduced him to one of my favorite dives (I mean restaurants)–the Knock-Kneed Lobster at 32nd Street and Washington.  It was either that or the Big Apple, but I craved sea food instead of hamburger.  Frank and Anna ate catfish, something they apparently can’t get in the Pacific northwest.  I just had cod and shrimp.  (and deep-fried zucchini–yum)  It was a jumbo shrimp, roughly the length of my forearm.  We ate.  We talked.  Life was good.

After supper we went over to Phoenix’s own greyhound racing park–oddly enough called Greyhound Park.  It has been at 38th Street and Washington for all my life, and although I’ve been in the parking lot–which doubles as Arizona’s biggest flea market on weekends–dozens of times, I had never gone into the actual dog-racing stadium.  Tonight was the first time I’ve ever entered there.

Something about me–I have no heritage of horse racing, dog racing, auto racing, gold, football, baseball, etc.  My family never went to any kind of sporting events when I was a kid.  When I grew up, I never went to any sporting events either.  I attended maybe 4 football games while I was in college.  Arizona has had the Cardinals NFL football team for about 20 years now.  I have never gone to a professional game.   I just don’t go to sports very often.

So this was something new for me, and as such, a bit of an adventure.  It turned out to be easier than I thought.  Parking was free.  Admission was free.  Apparently they make all their money on gambling and on food and drink concessions.  Great!  I like to go places that are free.  There aren’t that many such places around any more.

The stadium was/is beautiful–clean, spacious, comfortable.  There were only about 20 cars in the parking lot, and I doubt if there were more than 30 people inside it.  There was seating for a couple hundred people, each with its own television monitor.  If you couldn’t see the track, you could watch the whole race on tv.  In fact, I did.  Being near-sighted as a bat, I couldn’t really tell how the dogs were doing a quarter of a mile away on the racetrack.

Anna Jo got programs for us.  What a marvelous thing those programs are–packed with information about every dog , every race.  That was when I learned that greyhounds aren’t grey.  I saw brown dogs, white dogs, black dogs, brindled dogs–didn’t see a single grey dog.

In case you know as much about greyhound racing as I did when we showed up, let me tell you something about how it works.  There’s a dirt track just like the one around your high school football field.  There is a set of gates, really just little boxes that the dogs start in.  There’s a rail around the inside of the track, and attached to that rail is a mechanical rabbit that can zoom around the track at speeds no real rabbit ever attained.  The dogs run about 550 yards–just over 1/4 of a mile.  They do it in about 35 seconds or less.  Each race consists of eight dogs, numbered 1 through 8.  Each wears a light blanket of a different color.

The dogs are rated by class.  AA is the best, and I think C is the worst.  Dogs only run against other dogs in the same class.  If a dog does well, it moves up to higher classes; if it does poorly, it moves down.  Thus, it’s always a “fair” race.  Handicappers rate the dogs and try to predict the winners.  As far as I could tell, they had no more clue than the spectators did.  In fact, I wondered if the handicapper picks weren’t there to mislead you into betting on the wrong dogs.

During the course of the evening I came up with half a dozen theories on how to pick winners.  I got lucky at the very beginning.  Frank and I liked the same dogs–I was judging by names and blanket colors–he went by the numbers in the program, which I didn’t yet understand.  But we got lucky right at the start–picked winning exacta bids for the first 2 races, and won about 40 dollars–20 for him, 20 for me.  Pure beginner’s luck.  After that, my luck ran out, and my picks all quit happening.  Before all my money was gone, I quite betting–that’s why i came away with a profit.  I managed to pick one more race correctly, the penultimate one, but by that time I wasn’t betting.  Frank won another $20 on that one–all I got was moral satisfaction.

All in all, it was a very satisfactory evening all around.  Frank bought me supper–yum.  We won at the racetrack–which doesn’t happen all that often according to him–and we got to talk for another couple of hours.  I regaled them with my youthful misadventures in Tahiti; they told me about walking around the coast of Britain.  We talked about books we’ve read, and authors we know in common (like Bob Vardeman) and other topics like medicine, health, Buddhism, family.  I told them a little bit about Tunnels and Trolls, my adventures and exploits as a gamer and author.  It was almost 1 a.m. before I said good night and went home.

When I mentioned I’d be going to the dog races, everyone was quick to tell me that Greyhound Park was closing this year–probably in December.  I could see why.  A place designed for hundreds of fans had a couple dozen people in it.  They had to be losing money by just having the lights on.  Dog racing does not appear to be a big money business.  The winning dog might make $300 for its stable.  That’s a shame.  Perhaps our culture has moved on.  Perhaps having Las Vegas style gambling at Indian casinos just outside of town has stolen away all the gamblers that used to make dog racing big business.  Whatever the cause, it’s obviously a dying sport–at least here in Phoenix.

I was glad to see my friend again, and glad to get the chance to experience dog racing. I barely scratched the surface of that subculture, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot.

Epilog: greyhound racing is a business–racing dogs are young and strong.  When they start to lose their speed, they are sold, given away, or put to sleep (and by that I mean killed).  The deaths of so many beautiful animals is a real crime that the dog stables practice–and they do it not because they like killing dogs, but simply because it’s a business and dogs need to pay their way to stay in it.  There are greyhound rescue services, and many big-hearted dog lovers adopt greyhounds once they are past their racing prime.  I’d like to do that myself (and I’d like a black one please), but there is no room in my house for a dog right now.  As dogs go, greyhounds are friendly, intelligent, and very fast.  They make great pets.  And they do love to run.

End

 

Pathfinder

I played my first game of D & D Pathfinder yesterday.  And, I had a good time, but that was probably more because I was roleplaying an outrageous barbarian than because the rules or setting were anything special.

Some of you may know that I don’t normally play Dungeons and Dragons, or normally have anything to do with the game.  That’s not because I really have anything against D & D.  It’s just because the game is so damn slow.  And it was slow yesterday too.  At 2:30 Corencio and I said we’d play.  At 4;30 we finally had characters that were ready to go.  Partly that was because Jake, our GM, was so enthusiastic about the game that he went off into D & D stories on practically every attribute and skill, and partly it was because there’s just a heckuva lotta stuff to look up and write down.  The players’ manual was a 400 page book, and a lot of it was in small print.   And everybody took it so seriously–you’d think the world might come to an end if I didn’t have the right defense bonus.  I’m an old roleplayer, and I do mean old.  The older I get, the less important the numbers are, and the more important the roleplaying.  To some extent I was able to speed things up by joking and force of personality, but it still took 2  hours to get ready to play.

By the time the game started I was running short of time.  Jake, bless his heart, was running this game on the fly just for my son and I, altho his regular gaming group was also meeting and joining in.  You could almost hear his mental cogwheels grinding as  he tried to come up with a good introductory adventure for us.  In a short time the seven of us set off to capture a bandit chieftain, alive or dead.  Halfway to the destination, we ran into a group of dragons.  I could see everybody gearing up for an epic fight.  But, I didn’t have time for an hour-long battle with dragons.  We could see they were brass dragons, supposedly good, so we recruited them.  We had a pretty high level party–7th level and up, and two guys could speak dragon.  With some high sounding phrases like justice and outlaws, we soon had them on our side.

On to the town.  The bad guys had dragons too.  Oh good!  Something for our dragons to do.  We had a magical tank with adamantium armor–told you it was a high level game.  We crashed the front gates with it.  My barbarian stood on top of it, and the used the momentum to catapult himself up onto the walls.  It took an acrobatics feat.  I made it.  Once there i found myself being rushed by three orcish barbarians.  Being outnumbered is a good way to get killed, so I decided to recruit them as well.  Tried intimidation.  Failed.  Cut that orc in half with my battleaxe.  Tried intimidation again on the next two.  That worked just fine.  They turned to fight for me, and Kennan the barbarian was soon clearing the walls of defenders with a combination of recruiting and slaughter that seemed to be working very well indeed.

And then I ran out of time and had to go.  We turned in our characters and left them to be run as npcs by the GM.  Jake’s a friend of mine–even if he is 42 years younger than me–who lives 2 houses over.  I’ll find out what happened to Kennan and Corencio the Pathfinder characters later this week.

I’ve always maintained that it is the GM and the players that make any roleplaying game fun.  We had a good group of players at Samurai Comics in Phoenix Wednesday afternoon.  It wasn’t the worst D & D session I’ve ever been in.  I’d play again if I got a chance.

But, I tell you now, there’s a market out there for pre-generated characters.  Taking 2 hours to get the characters ready to play is almost always going to be a deal-breaker for me.

And advice to GMs who are trying to run quick adventures on the fly–advice straight from John Wick, mi amigo.  Let the players help you with the creative work.  You don’t have to invent things for us players.  Given half a chance the players will make your game deeper, richer, and more fun than you can.  Jake rolled a random encounter and came up with dragons.  After a bit of bluster on my part, they turned into good dragons, and gave him an excuse for the bad guys to have dragons also.  GMs you can use your players’ imaginations if you just give them a hint and let them roll with it.  And everyone will have a good time.

end

Rocking at RinCon

I have a good weekend every once in a while.  I had one on the 10th and 11th of October, when I left the trollcave in Phoenix behind, and traveled with my son Corencio to the remote southern city of Tucson to attend the second annual RinCon game convention.

S.A.G.A., the Southern Arizona Gamers Association, hosted RinCon.  I didn’t attend the first one last year, but I thought this might be a good opportunity to go down, meet some gamers, and have some fun.  I packed a bag full of T & T stuff that would allow me to run several games if I got the chance, gassed up the car, and was on the road by 7:30 Saturday morning.

My plan was to meet up with Head Buffalo, Rick Loomis, who would be flying the flag as a vendor down there.  We could share a hotel room, at the Arizona Hotel, and I’d be there to help him with the Flying Buffalo booth if it got busy, or he needed a break.  In fact, I did help with the booth, once on Saturday when I guarded it for about 15 minutes while he went out to the lobby to buy some lunch, and again on Sunday afternoon when he had to go get his car to pack up his goods and go back to his Buffalo Castle in Scottsdale.  Let me go on record now as saying that if you ever want to attend a gaming convention as a game company minion, Rick is a fine patron.  He has often paid my air fare and hotel bills and has supported my efforts to promote Tunnels and Trolls in all parts of the country.  He sometimes needs help–there’s a lot of work involved in running a booth at a game convention–and I can’t always be there for him, but it’s always a good deal to be his minion.

RinCon had 6 large rooms available for the convention, and took up the first floor of the Tucson Convention Center.  It was close to the freeway, and only about a block from the Con Hotel.  I parked in the hotel garage and walked back and forth between the two locations many times over the two days.  The rooms available were: an open gaming lobby, a panel/seminar room, a meeting place for Larpers, a computer gaming room, and two programmed gaming rooms, one for board games, and the other for role-playing and miniatures.  Rick’s table was in the board games room.

Rick had dealer badges for himself and me, but I had to buy an attendee’s badge for Corencio.  That was $20, and that’s a very good price for full membership in a convention these days.  SAGA was so organized that they had the ticket seller who worked for the convention center selling admissions and badges–thus no hassle with a registration table and volunteers.  Slick.  But it wouldn’t have worked for a larger gathering.

Our room at the Arizona Hotel was 1118–a nice enough room, but very small.  The two queen-sized beds were really about princess-sized.  Rick did ok with a whole bed to himself, but son and I shared the other bed and there was barely room to turn over.  Still, you don’t want to spend that much time at a convention sleeping, and if you’re tired enough, you could sleep on the floor.  (Thank God I’m well past the stage of sleeping on floors!)  There was parking in the hotel garage, and the car stayed in one place for the two days I was there.

The gaming action started with a demo game of Castle Panic–a fun little board game where goblins, orcs, and trolls try to rush out of the forest and destroy the castle with its human defenders.  It’s a cooperative game where all the players work together to beat the monsters.  It’s a well-balanced game with elements of luck, strategy, and diplomacy all intermingled.  A good fun party game!  It got played a lot at the Con, and I played it again Sunday afternoon.

At 2 p.m. it was time for a Mutants and Masterminds session of Adventures into Darkness.  What if H.P. Lovecraft had lived and become a comic book writer?  Then he might have created stories like the one Corencio and I played Saturday afternoon.  For 4 hours Berin Kinsman put 6 of us through our paces as we faced ghouls, deep ones, night gaunts and ungodly wizards.  Still, the forces of good triumphed, as the brainpower of Dream Master Randolph Carter, and the superhuman might of Captain Future were more than enough to defeat the forces of Darkness.  Let me just throw in a word of praise–Berin is an uncommonly good-natured and flexible G.M., and he made the adventure fun and memorable for all of us.

From 6 to 10 p.m. it was my turn to run a Tunnels and Trolls adventure for about 5 players.  I did my favorite for quick con adventuresg.  I sent a Hunting Party into the wilderness to find and slay monsters.  I randomly chose monsters from the Monstrum Codex volume 1 to send against them.  First, they found a colony of bapomoz, small dog-headed, rat-tailed, goblin-like creatures who lived underground in sizeable colonies–like nests of rats.  The Bapomoz, however, have level one magic users, and that proved to be enough to take Berin’s character to the edge of death, and to drive away all the others.  The hunt guide healed Berin once they dragged him back out of the caves.  That evening they were attacked by a giant 3-headed ettin, but Corencio, playing a wizard, was able to stop it cold with Hold that pose spells while the fighters cut it down to nothing.  Took them 4 combat turns to dispatch a monster that couldn’t fight back.  Lastly, they ran into some peaceful but hideous farmers, and one of them fought when she should have run.  ugh. Dwarf puree.  However, four of them did survive and get back to town, with enough reward money to pay their debts and throw a good party in honor of their deceased comrade.

By the time the game ended it was late.  No way was I gonna start another game at 10 p.m.  Corencio and I made our way back to the hotel.  I phoned out for pizza, and got a good one for $12.  We watched the end of Men in Black with Rick and finally went to bed around midnight.

Sunday wasn’t quite as interesting.  I played another game of Castle Panic.  Corencio won it.  He won a lot, including a dozen games of Magic against me.  I listened to Mike Stackpole explain his favorite subject, how to make it in the internet world–and he’s right.  There are things that can be done.  Podcasting, books on Kindle, internet store on your web page, plenty of things one can do to make money on the internet.  I just can’t do them.  Corencio spent a lot of time Sunday in the video room, bouncing around to
Dance Dance Revolution, and playing in a Rock Band.  I drifted around aimlessly watching 5 minutes of game here, and 5 minutes there.  I never did find Will Wheaton’s Dwarf Delve for D & D 4.0.  He was the big star at the convention, and I don’t think I even saw him.

In the afternoon I ducked into John Wick’s seminar on how to be a good game master.  He gives good advice, including the advice to “train your players.”  The idea, according to John, is to work with the players to produce a fascinating story where the characters look good.  He talked about using style points in larps.  He talked about not letting the dice control all the action.  I got in a few comments of my own.  It was a good talk, and the game masters in the room seemed to enjoy it.

After that it was time to go.  I came within a foot of Jess Hartley at one time, but I was playing a game, and I didn’t know it was her until she walked away.  So, I never met her.  I saw James Ernest, and the Steve Jackson crew, but didn’t game with them.  I chatted with quite a few people, and signed a few autographs (5).  And I was back home in Phoenix by 6:30 p.m.

Verdict: it was a fun weekend, but the highpoint was the 8 hours I spent gaming with Berin Kinsman.  I’m not sure I’d make the effort to go back down to Tucson again.

end

Slow week

There is not very much entertainment to report on this week.  Today I read a copy of Tangent: Superman’s Reign–it’s about half a graphic novel featuring a crossover between Tangent Earth and DC Earth superheroes.  Many years ago DC had a brief fling of publishing an alternate set of superheroes and villains–same names, different appearance and origins.  Thus, the Flash is neither Barry Allen nor Wally West, it’s Lia Nelson, and she’s hot.  That series of books went over like a lead balloon and vanished in less than a year, but nothing is ever really dead in comics.  Somehow, the latest multi-universal crises has connected our mainstream heroes with their forgotten heroes.  The story is weak, rushed, and unlikely in the extreme, but it is a  good excuse to redraw all the old Tangent characters again.

I have finished THE RETURN OF THE BLACK COMPANY.  The second book SHE IS THE DARKNESS leaves our heroes in a very bad place, magically imprisoned for eternity.  Of course I expect them to get out of that by the time WATER SLEEPS gets started.  That reminds me–I should look up the last two Black Company books and see if they’re available here at the library.  I don’t have to wait for Tor Books to send me freebies.

I have finished reading ENEMIES & ALLIES by Kevin J. Anderson.  This is a tale of Superman, Batman, and Lex Luthor, set in 1958.  It seems strange to see Anderson writing such a book.  Superman and Batman are still popular, but who wants to read about their adventures in the 50s at the beginning of their careers.  D.C. has completely changed the universe at least 3 times since them.  Also, Anderson has chosen to write the whole book at about the 6th grade reading level, but it was published as an adult novel.  It wasn’t very adult at all.  It wasn’t a bad story.  Anderson is a terrific writer, but I have to wonder what they were thinking, or who they were writing for.

WotC has released a new expansion set for Magic ™ called Zendikar.  On Friday my son and I each bought an expansion deck for it and tried them out.  He got the Vampires, and I got some blue/green Sphynx deck.  Needless to say, the Vampires just eat me up.  With a few additions and changes he has made it into a very good deck.  He has a 2 card combination that is an automatic win.  You have to pray you have a counterspell in your hand when the first of those two cards comes out–if you don’t, you lose.  I’ve built a deck with plenty of counterspells, but I’m still losing.

Sunday, James and I went to see Woody Harrelson’s new movie ZOMBIELAND.  The movie is played for laughs, and it succeeds at that.  It’s also a coming-of-age for a teenage nerd movie.  Teenage nerds are easy to laugh at and with–so many of us went through that stage ourselves that we identify with the poor shmoe.  Bill Murray has a terrific cameo appearance as himself.  Best part of the movie is the 32 Rules for Survival in Zombieland.  Number 1: cardio–you had better be able to run when there are zombies around.  Number 2: stay out of bathrooms–too easy to be trapped in there.  Rule 3: get a gun, learn how to use it.  Rule 32: Enjoy the Little Things.  All 32 rules are not given, so you can make up a few of your own.  My rule: Always carry an axe.  I have to say, I think ZOMBIELAND is the best zombie move I’ve ever seen.  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was the scariest.  SHAWN OF THE DEAD was the campiest.  This is the funniest.  It could have been a better movie if the film makers didn’t try so hard to make you throw up between laughs.

I’m looking forward to going off to RinCon in Tucson this weekend, selling some T & T and maybe playing a few games.

Ugh.

Cool Things Happen All The Time

A cool thing just happened.  I work at a library, and cool things happen at libraries all the time, so I shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not, but I am pleased.  People often donate books and other media items–cds, dvds, magazines, videotapes, and even games to the library.  Somebody donated Trivial Pursuit DVD Saturday Night Live Edition board game to the library.  And inside the box are the playing pieces–8 members of the SNL cast as mini-plastic figurines.  I don’t even recognize them all–the likenesses aren’t very good, but I do recognize John Belushi’s samurai and Beldar the Conehead and the Land Shark.  The schoolgirl with glasses has got to be Gilda Radnor.  The guy in the Superman pose might be Chevy Chase.  I very seldom watched SNL, but I remember it fondly.  It was the very best reason for staying up late on Saturday night. 

That isn’t the only cool thing that has happened this week.  Thursday night I went to a sneak preview of the movie Surrogates and took my son James along. Father/Son bonding. Very cool.  Enjoyed the movie too.  Saw a friend there and had a fine long conversation with him.  I haven’t been able to go to a sneak preview for years, although the occasional ticket has been available.  It was just plain fun.

Thursday afternoon I came  home to find my dungeon design masterpiece–Gristlegrim–the random card dungeon that is never the same–had arrived from publisher Jim Shipman.  If you are an author who has seen your work in print, then you must know what a joy it is to see something of yours finally manifested in a finished product, especially if it’s something you’re really proud of.  If you’ve never  had this pleasure, all I can say is that I’m sorry for you, and hope someday you can experience it. 

Wednesday I picked up the Conan the Cimmrian #14 comic and discovered that it had the first ever Joe Kubert illustrated Conan story in it.  Joe is one of the most awesome fantasy artists of our time, and to have him do a Conan story, although actually his story was about Conan’s tough old mother and a Cimmerian boy named Kulin, was just a treat for an old fantasy fan like me.   

Those are just a few of the really cool things that have happened to me this week.  There are others that are too private to talk about.  There are some that are too mundane to mention, like that fabulous egg burrito I had for breakfast this mornng. 

You know, the saying is “Shit happens!”, and it does.  There are plenty of bad things going on in the world, including the fact that my body just flat out hurts all the time, but you know what, I don’t care.  Don’t drag me down, folks.  Cool things happen all the time! 

If something genuinely cool has happened to you recently, why don’t you  mention it in a comment down below?  I’d love to celebrate it with you.

end.