"Spider-Man"

Spider-Man, Spider-Man
I did a guest blog about Spider-Man
It's not short, It's not long
Check it out if you have the time--
Hey man:
guest post about Spider-Man


So a friend of mine from High School has written a new book featuring a new Superhero of her own creation. Shadow on the Wall is the first book in a planned series featuring a Turkish, Muslim hero named The SandStorm that I'm really looking forward to reading. To celebrate she asked a bunch of cool people to write guest posts on who they thought the greatest superhero was and why. I still don't know why she asked me, but I chose Spider-Man. He's not my favorite, but damned if he isn't Great.  There are giveaways a plenty, so go check it out. Now for your listening pleasure I give you, the Ramones:

"When Irish Eyes are Smiling"

This past weekend, I celebrated a bit more Irish than I expected for two weeks before Saint Patrick's day. Saturday morning I joined a friend in Old Towne Alexandria for their St. Patrick's day parade. The streets were lined with people, many of whom were happy to repeat the answer to the question on everyone's mind: why so early? The answer is that if it was two weeks early, then Alexandria could book more bands to march in the parade. If that was the reason, it worked. There were at least 10 bagpipe groups marching, from MD, VA and the district. Police groups, fireman groups, local Irish American groups; you name it, they got together and played bagpipes. There were also several Irish Step Dance schools, a few Irish sports groups, a couple of boy scout groups, two accounting firms, and the local 501st showed up. That's stormtroopers for those of you not up on your expanded universe references. That's right, stormtroopers, and Boba Fett and Vader, many of whom were wearing green accesories.

I also ate corned beef this weekend. We roasted it in the oven. Much better than boiled. but not the best way. The best way to eat corned beef is smoked. It turns out much like pastrami. the smokey flavor and the saltiness from the corning process work so well together.  If you've got a smoker, I highly suggest you buy a corned beef when they go on sale later this month. then smoke that brisket like in 'aint no thang.

"Red Solo Cup"

Over on 1001 days of music I just recently posted my 200th review. I'm not going to link directly to the 200th post, because I didn't really like the song! Poor planing on my part I guess.

This past weekend some friends of mine got together and threw a last minute gaming weekend together. Last minute baby having plans for two of our group meant that we had no place to hang, and no long term D&D game to play. So after a little bit of organization, we officially organized Cabin-Con! Back in the early nineties my friends and I used to go over to the Big Yellow House near where Burke meets West Springfield, and play for days straight; we called it Gamestock. This was similar, but we did more board games and less role playing out at the cabin.

After driving to Rappahannock County, Kevin and I met up with the rest of the group at Griffin Tavern. Good food, funny waitress, and county karaoke. Except it wasn't really karaoke because everyone seemed to know the words and were performing without a lyrics sheet. Back at the cabin, we played two games of Dominion and a game of Apples to Apples. We also drank quite a bit and stayed awake until about 4:30am. The next morning we ate bacon and cinnamon rolls, which in case you were wondering, is a complete and nutritious breakfast when washed down with Mountain Dew.

After a quick trip to the corner store to get some coffee, we hooked up with the last member of our group and planned for the day. We decided to drive to Walmart to get lunch and dinner supplies. I sat in the back of the car and got a little sick, so I don't know where exactly we were; Culpeper maybe? The drive back was better, and I was feeling great by the time we got to the cabin. That day we played Settlers of Catan, Sour Apples to Apples, Cthulhu Gloom and a playset of Fiasco called Touring Rock Band. We had dinner, and drank some more before going to bed. Am I forgetting something?

Yes! I must experience BLJ! Sorry, bad joke. We played a Star Trek:The Next Generation interactive VCR board game. It was hilarious. It was exciting. It was challenging. It was infuriating. It was a good game. Do you have any old VCR games hanging around in your attic, or in your parents basement? Pull it out! It'll be more fun that you think.

"Immigrant Song"

So I watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with some friends on Tuesday. Let me say that it was a very good movie, I enjoyed the cast, and director David Fincher made a lot of great decisions that really made me feel for certain characters, and made me fear for others. He does tension very well. He also made decisions that make me very sure I can never watch the film again. The sexual abuse suffered and inflicted by the title character is so intense, and the camera just doesn't pan away. Good film, mostly great acting, but some of those scenes are just not going to leave me any time soon. The actress playing that main role really underwent a dramatic appearance change, it's outstanding how "in" the character she is. The song playing in most of the trailers, and over the title credits is a cover of Led Zeppelin's  Immigrant Song by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross with vocals by Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. When it finished, one of my friends leaned over and said, "now I really want a new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album". I said I wanted Reznor and friends to do a new version of Another Brick in the Wall (Part II). Oh, almost forgot: it will change the way you hear Orinoco Flow like American Psycho changed the way you heard Hip to Be Square.

"Because the Night"

Virgin Free Fest was last weekend and it was awesome, just like last year. I didn't get to go to as many concerts this summer as I did last summer, but I'm in a better place this summer, so you get details.

Once again, tickets were free (you could pay $50 to get a bag, with a poster, cups and other stuff; plus early entry) on the web or you could volunteer your time to get them. Kevin and I went last year, so we got first dibs on tickets this year and took advantage. Once again, like last year, no one wanted to go with us bad enough to volunteer, so we went just the two of us. The entry line was long, but once they opened it up it moved quickly. I had a pretty good sized bag with me because it was hot and sunny, but it had rained 3 days prior, and it was supposed to rain later that day; so I had extra shoes, rain gear, a jacket, a hat, water bottles etc. I was an Eagle Scout. When I got to the front of the line, bag open and ready to take 5 minutes with some gruff security guy checking every little zipper pocket, I was surprised to find a 18 year old kid checking us in on my row. No pat down and a glance towards my bag was all I got. I could have snuck in my half my weight in Turkish hash if I wanted to.

We walked the whole venue first off, noticing that the dance pavilion had moved since last time, and the the second stage smelled unmistakably of manure. We walked back to the main stage and sat down under the pavilion just in time to see Bombay Bicycle Club hit the stage. They are a four piece modern British guitar driven indie rock band. They were who we thought they were to steal a phrase, and after half way though their set, we walked back to the second stage to see Two Door Cinema Club. They are a three piece Irish guitar driven indie rock band. After joking with each other that they insisted upon being very upbeat we decided the stage area smelled really bad and so we went back to the pavilion stage. We decided to get under the actual pavilion and take a break from the sun. We sat down for Okkervil River with no expectations.

Holy crap they really hit a home run. "River" is a indie/alt-country band out of Austin Texas. They were a six piece band I think, and had a trumpet of all things. Really good sound out of all members, but special mention has to go to their guitar player. That woman can shred. Plus she whipped out a little slide guitar action on stage in a skirt no less. After their set, we were about ready to stand up and head for the other stage to hear Big Sean, but something awesome happened. Merriweather post pavilion began to live cast the other stage on the big screen TVs. We stayed put, listened to a few tracks, and realized we were better off staying where we were. That changed our whole concert experience. We moved to good seats with a clear view of the stage and didn't move for the rest of the day.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals are not a Wizard Rock band despite the fact that they sound like cousins of Harry and the Potters. Okkervil River were such a huge success in my head, the bar was set very high. Well Grace Potter leapt over that bar and turned a somersault over it just for fun. The band is hard to nail down completely. They have country influences, and real classic rock influences as well. Sometimes they sound like The Band, and sometimes they sound like Led Zepplin, but they always sound like they are fronted by Janis Joplin. They were rockin', they were funky, they were sweet, and everyone fell a little bit in love with them. After a straight up blistering set I looked at Kevin and told him I would pay good money for a Janis Joplin bio pic staring Grace, and The Nocturnals as Big Brother and the Holding Company. The big hits off the most recent albums have videos on YouTube. Do not watch them. They suck. they make her out to be the only member of the band (Gwen Stefani anyone?) and so vanilla. Like a county tinged Jessica Simpson or something. Just barely any hint of the awesome that this band is. check out Sugar, Goodbye Kiss, Medicine or anything they play live.

Patti Smith is a legend, and she had a lot of fans at the show. She is still a proud punk/social justice/spiritual person, and she can rile a crowd of teenagers-grandparents up like very few 60 somethings can. After Patti Smith, the venue put Cee-Lo Green on the TVs and he was not in any kind of costume, so once again, I feel like we made a good decision staying at the main pavilion.

Kevin had tried to introduce me to TV On The Radio for a few years and every time I liked them, but not enough to rush out and declare for them. This concert changed all of that. There were like 6 guys on stage, and they kept mentioning that the bass player was playing his first night with the band (their bass player died of lung cancer in April) but he sounded tight to me. The waves of sound were enough to push me back into my chair. And not like My Bloody Valentine or other shoegaze bands, but real depth with a lot going on. The crowd stood all concert long and the band filled us all with energy. The rocked hard and left everyone excited for closing act The Black Keys.

One of the best "moments" of the show was while waiting for The Black Keys to start they were playing old soul and blues over the pavilion sound system; they started playing The Beatles: I Want You. The entire pavilion, and I'm sure most of the lawn seats began to sing along. We were polite but clear. They should come out right now.

The Black Keys were amazing. They played like six songs from the as yet unreleased album due out near the end of the year. They played their biggest hits. Thy played a few covers. [Side note, more bands should play covers in concert. It makes everyone in the audience happy. That is all.] All in all, they were the hand-clappingist kick ass part of a great day.

We left without going to checkout Deadmou5 because we were rocked out, and because we are a little old. Judge us not too harshly, it was a long long day of awesome.

"1001"

As mentioned before in this space, I've been working on some new projects. I'm ready to share one of them today. So I started a new blog a month ago. I didn't say anything because I wanted to make sure that I was actually going to do it. So far, looking good.

1001 Days of Music is me taking a crack at the door-stopper 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die. At my current rate of one song reviewed every day it will take me 3 years give or take. I might not make it. I could die. The world could end and we could all die. I might start hating music. I might get depressed and not do anything for a while.

But for the time being, I have hope.

I started with the first five songs in the book chronologically. After listening to the advice of friends and family, I switched it up and now I am pulling songs basically randomly-ish. I have known most of the songs and most of the artists, but not all of them. I have liked most of the songs, but not quite all of them. I am leaving comments on for all previous posts for now, because I honestly expect very few readers, but I'm proud of something, so I'm sharing. I hope that I will have something else to share in another month.

"I Like Beer"

Last night there was a foray into beer country. Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington has literally hundreds of beers available at any given time. About a dozen or so on draft, another dozen "seasonal bottles" and so many many more bottles and cans in the coolers. You want to pick some up for home consumption? They can do that. You want a few short pours instead of pints off the taps so you can taste more? They can do that. They've got pizza, sandwiches, great french fries, and did I mention the beer? They've got wine too. Only thing I wouldn't order again is the onion rings, they were kind of limp, not really my style. The service was top shelf. Our server knew her beer, and only dropped in when it really looked like we needed another drink.

Four beers worth talking about that we tried last night. Franziskaner Weissbier is a German wheat beer. Really nice finish, good taste, solid summer beer. We tried two imperial stouts from Southern Tier Brewing Company: Jah*va and Mokah. You can guess that one is a coffee and the other a coffee and chocolate stout. They were both excellent; very tasty, low carbonation, and not overly sweet. You don't need a full pour of either, they were heavy. I also tried the Woodchuck cider Fall edition. It is like drinking cold mulled cider. I could drink a six and not know I was drinking alcohol until I tried to stand up. So glad to have found a new seasonal at the beginning of the season instead of at the end like I usually do.

Thanks to Kevin for helping me move a piece of office equipment for my boss, which is why we had money for drinking.

"Batdance"

About a hundred years ago, or last September depending on how you view the time-stream, friend Jeff issued a writing challenge. A few people accepted. In fact, a little bird told me that the first submitter has worked a novel out of their idea. Congrats! But I digress. I wrote a brief short that I liked and a few people read. Then I spent a little while trying to figure out how to turn it into a script. Then I tore my life apart. A few months ago, one of the pieces I decided to stitch back together was this Batman of the Middle East thing. Yesterday I finished my first draft of a "full script" of my story. It's 48 pages, and needs copious editing, but it's mine and damn it I love it.

"Wicked as it Seems"

Just finished a Christmas present book. Life, which is the autobiography of Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. It was wonderful. I like the brutal honesty you can find in an 'ography; I'm a Studs Terkel fan. This is really cut down to the bone honest. Yes, it's got colored glasses on such that if you are not a Mick fan you really wont be by the end of it, but I got so much more out of it. The early discussion of how Little Richard would get ready to perform is worth the price of admission. Keith's take on Marianne Faithful, the tax exile years, receiving knighthoods, the death of Brain Jones, Altamont, and more just give you more reasons to read it.

The stuff with Mick seemed like it got blown up out of proportion to me. Yes, he says, they don't talk anymore, and even collaborating on new music is done thru a 3rd party, and he lays a lot of it on Mick, even when he's blaming his own part of the problem on drugs, and then Mick taking advantage of that. But throughout all of it, he points out time and time again, that while they might not exactly be friends anymore, they're mates; brothers. They are about to celebrate 50 years of being in a band together. A band that has taken some breaks, suffered some losses, and may not have the same relevancy on popular culture as it used to, but still a Rock and Roll band of the old school.

"Kodachrome"

Nerdly 6 The Bonus Round:

I found some pictures that you might find interesting.

These were the nice people who's names I forgot that were playing Mythos Hunter Zero with Dave, Eric, Mark and myself. They are called John and Terry.



This is our bunk mate Dave, who put up with a lot of our noise, and as it happens, looks a lot like what I imagine my father looked like at that age.



This is Eric, our fearless leader. I don't know what exactly he's doing in the Kitchen. Looks like he's unpacking.



First game! Mark is in this picture playing some D&D. Can you find him? I'll give you a hint: He is not the girl.



Jeff at his first game of the weekend. Agon! Also, my ear is itchy.



Mark, swaggering about with his water bottle.



Jeff is doing that smile where you don't show anyone your bottom teeth.



The three of us, plus Clinton, listen to Jason as we prepare to murder Hitler.



BATTLE! I couldn't look less happy. In fact, all of us playing the game have a grim look. This is because it is awesome, and we do not want you to join in our awesome, because we are greedy. Go away Joshua Newman! You and your hat are unwanted here! Oh, wait, you're evil! I'm going to allow it. Newman can stay.



There we have it. Pictures from the weekend.

Of course, that was last weekend. The most recent weekend, my girlfriend's parents came up to visit and met my parents. There are no pictures of this occasion, but it went well. Hope you enjoyed the Nerdly updates. That should be it.

Don't forget to give the Depression quiz your best shot. There's only 12 questions!

"Closing Time"

Nerdly 5

I was remiss in my last Nerdly post. I did not mention the cobbler. I will not describe it here, to keep you, who were not there, from crying over not having tasted its splendor. Know this: it was there, it was magnificent, and now, it is gone.

So I mentioned that we were going to sleep late on Sunday morning, but alas, this was not to be.

We instead were awoken my an enthusiastic male voice (I think it was Eric) telling each cabin that it was breakfast time. Breakfast was supposed to be cold and simple, but lots of leftover fajitas meant that we were instead treated to breakfast burritos. By the time we got there they were almost gone, and cold, but delicious nonetheless.

Mark, Jeff and I had no real plans for the morning session. I was signed up to play In a Wicked Age, but I really wanted to do something with my buddies. The facilitator for Wicked asked if I was still interested in playing. I could see in her eyes that she had too many players, and so I told her that I would love to play, but that if she had need of my spot, I would gladly give it up. She politely said that she was over booked, but that since I signed up on the wiki, I was guaranteed a spot. I told her to take it, and wandered over to the board game table. During our late night Waffle House conversation we had mentioned playing the WWII game that Jeff and I had played. The board game table was fairly picked clean, and it turned out that Clinton had left already, so no chance to say so long, or play any of his awesome games. We three decided on a game none of us had played called Zendo. We had no clue what we were doing and were planning on talking through most of it.

Jeff has already said better than I could about what happened during Zendo, and he did it using both monkeys and poop, so I will not try to better that description here. I enjoyed myself, and when I stopped to look around and start cleaning at the approved time, I found that the cleaning was almost complete. Jeff and I did some last minute sweeps through the cabins, and in a short while we were saying our goodbyes, recording a few movies, and packing up to leave.

I'll be back next year. And while I can't promise to run anything like Jeff does (I might, just no promises) I do promise to do everything I can to roll deep. I will dedicate myself to getting more of my friends to show for this event.

"Flash"

Nerdly 4

So, last Nerdly update brought us to Dinner, and let me say that dinner was the finest meal yet.

(It helps, in this next line, if you were think of yourself as Willem Dafoe's character in The Boondock Saints. Are you ready? OK, here it is: )

THERE WAS FAJITAS!!

Really, they were quite epic for camp food. There were caramelized onions, peppers and onions, fresh guacamole, the most perfectly cooked chicken, tofu, cheese, sourcream, salsa... it was an experience. And no one went hungry. There was enough food for another 30 Owlbears. I was so fricken' glad I wasn't on cleanup that I had two more fajitas to celebrate. I proceeded to waddle over to the table where I was supposed to game.

Mythos Hunters Zero was a great game. I can't wait to play it again. I may not do it justice in my description, but to be sure, it was a good time. I must admit, that I forge the names of two of the people who were part of the team. I feel bad. They were nice, had creative ideas, and one of them was such an effective role player, that I felt the need to strangle his character on a regular basis. Also playing was Eric "top dog" Provost, and Dave, the bunk mate who had to put up with my terrible threesomes late night ways. He was a pleasure to game with, and I was disappointed that he lived in NJ, far outside of what could be considered easy driving for a quick game.

Let me try to describe the game for you. It's like X-men in the 30s. There, I think that does it. We were given pre-generated characters, and they ran the gamut as far as powers and abilities went. The system is designed for over the top combat and play, so we went with it. We had a ridiculously prim and proper lady, with magical powers at her command, who wanted to kill any other magus she met; an eleven year old who could summon things from beyond, just like her parents and grandparents had, before she was orphaned by a mysterious southern gentleman who wanted to adopt her; an immortal woman with a forgotten path, who may have been worshiped as a Sumerian goddess, but was now spending time on the American Carnival circus as a strong woman and psychic; and a young soldier who had undergone severe experimentation to become a clockwork tech cyborg. And then there was my character. I was an operative of a secret non governmental agency from the future. And by "the future" I mean new years eve 1999 when the place known as R'yleh arose from the Pacific, and the dread thing waiting there stopped dreaming. I went through a portal that sent me back to the 1920s. As a result of this, I founded the very organisation that would later employ me; and all of this was in the preamble!

The system was easy to learn. The bad guys were things even older than gods, and the people they dominated into working for them. My team was a powerful group, dedicated to making sure the earth was safe. Not quite as cool a mission statement as keeping the world strange, but it'll do in a pinch. Mark Causey was our GM, and he was on his toes the whole night. We stayed up late, and threw some creative things at us, and he threw some right back.

Our game ended after all of the others, but it was well worth staying to the end. The moon is a prison, the immortal woman seems to be related to the dark old ones, but on our side, and somehow, in another time skip, my character was destined to go further back in time, found another organization, and send my current past self a working patchwork computer. Is it any wonder that I had my character go by the nom de guerre Cable?

My only complaint was one of logistics. We set up in the mess hall, and within 15 minutes, the only other game in the mess hall set up... right next to us. Now, I understand, it was cold, and we were next to a fireplace, but still, the fun going on at the other game was a wee bit louder than our game, and kind of broke the mood a few times. But it was all good. It was fun sounds, and that was the point of the weekend.

So later that night, Mark, Jeff and I hit up the Waffle House again. The cook and servers were the same people. The service was less than half as good. Say La V.

We got back late, decided that since we had no chore and no game planed for Sunday that we would sleep in a little. Dave endured our clomping in late night one last time, and we slept the sleep of the victorious.

"Political Scientist"

Last night, hanging out at Denny's I was trying to talk to Mark, but the two tables near us were talking so loudly it was hard to hear. The were talking politics. I couldn't have had a bigger smile on my face.

I don't care what your politics are. No honestly I don't. I like to talk about politics with intelligent people who agree and disagree with me. Just ask my girlfriend, the right wing/wants to get married in the church/still talking about joining the military/daughter of a Coastie/granddaughter of a career Army officer/The Korean war is still ongoing/FDR was one of the worst things to happen to the US kind of conservative. Or you can talk to my best friend, the Obama loving/current president mocking/agnostic for socialised medicine.

Now the vast majority of you, my tiny tiny readership is currently based, or has been based in the DC area. Many of you have traveled, or are living elsewhere. Different cities, some in different countries... so really, I'm asking what you think about the level of political discourse where you are, or have been, compares with DC.

I lived in Richmond VA during the time period that Rudy McCollum was mayor. You may remember him as "that guy between current Governor Tim Kaine, and current Mayor and previous Governor Doug Wilder". You may also know him as "the four year mayor of Richmond with a smaller wikipeida entry than many swedish deathmetal albums released on independant labels and handed out in malls". Suffice to say, that Richmond, particularly at that time, was not too big on talking about national politics. Everyone I knew hated the PATRIOT ACT yet didn't care enough to do anything about it.

Here people talk politics on the Metro, around the water cooler, and obviously, at Denny's. It helps that our local sports teams are all choking dogs and we all know that if they make the playoffs, they ain't makin' in past the first round; so people rarely pay attention. Except the Washington football franchise. People would sell their children for the chance to sit on the 50 yard line and watch them lose. Which they do. A lot.

So politics becomes something that the local guy can talk about. The two free papers that are handed out on the Metro come from the Post and the Times. So everyone who walks past or uses a Metro station has no excuse not to be up to date.

Do you talk politics with your family? With your friends? Do people in your city/town talk local/state politics, or national politics; both, neither?

"Walkürenritt"

Nerdly part two.

Early on Saturday morning, Jeff's alarm went off. If was about 10 minutes before mine, so I wasn't upset or anything. Mark started hollering at me to shut it off. I told him it wasn't mine it was Jeff's. He crawled out of bed, turned it off and headed for the shower. A few minutes later, Jeff's alarm went off again, but he was already in the shower. While cursing his name, I got up, shur off the alarm for good and then got dressed and headed up for breakfast.

Again there was no skim milk. And again I began to question what kind of food planers we had. Then the rest of the food smells made me realise that cold cereal was not in the cards for me. We had oatmeal and omelets and bacon, and we had the greatest vegan muffins ever. The muffins were pineapple and blueberry, and they were so popular that Derek, our fearless chef, had to make an announcement to the vegans in the house that we were running low so get off your bony anemic asses and come get some. OK, I might have added the last part in my head.

Mark had cleanup duty Saturday morning and was the first of my little group to realise that the cleanup standards were being set very high. We had to wait around 20-30 minutes for him before we could start our next game:

Valkyrie was a play test of a game by Jason Morningstar. Clinton, Mark, Jeff, and I enjoyed a game of tense intrigue as we planned on assassinating Hitler. The game as written takes about two hours or so. It lacked a strong role playing element, and was in fact more of a strategy war board game without the board. I had fun, and Mark had fun. I don't really think it was Jeff's cup of tea, but he seemed to dig it well enough. The fact that it was only two hours really helped. Jason told us that his company was contacted by the marketing arm of the film and asked if they could do up a game. The film is in the can now, and they keep moving back the date, so who knows if the game will ever get to see the light of day. (Hours later at Nerdly, I was approached with the idea that Jason may have been pulling an elaborate prank on all of us, and that he was never contacted to work on a game for the film.)

Jason explained the rules clearly, and then stepped back and only facilitated as needed. The rule system seemed to be a little confusing, but they were in fact really simple, I just tend to need to read rules before completely understanding. Every round, each of the conspirators (us the players) could choose to 1.) erode the confidence of one of the groups of power (military, civilians, or elite) 2.) recruit a new conspirator 3.) get more resources or 4.) "pull the trigger" and kill Hitler. The game had a really interesting concept wherein whatever you decided to do, you could not help yourself with your hard fought resources. Your teammates had to help you. So we plotted and planned and then went into action. We lost at least 4 conspirators to the SS. And Frelling Eva Braun cost us a good man and a wealth of resources, plus she was still around to defend Hitler at the end. She was absolutely the nemeses of the crew. But in the end, we killed Hitler, and marshalled our forces to win the coup afterwords!

After we finished the game, I found Jeff and Clinton preparing to reenact the battle for the beaches at Normandy. I sided with Jeff, because he was zee Germans, and I was going to need practice playing the bad guy for my after lunch game.

A ridiculously well played match between an old hand and two noobs. The battle came down to the wire, with both sides needing just one more victory point. Clinton had a strategy, and we had nothing. The luck of the cards gave us air power enough to defeat one of his tank units, and victory was ours, by the skin of our teeth. Later upon closer reading of the rules we realised that we (Jeff and I) were playing at a disadvantage. So there was some snags in the rules that almost caused us to lose. Remember that would you, until my next Nerdly update!

"Bat Out of Hell"

This past weekend I attended Camp Nerdly. A 40-50 person camp out with a role playing game theme. So I'm going to devote a few posts to the weekend, the games, the food, and the whatnot.

Traffic down was bad. Nerdly was at Prince William Forest Park, so it should have been like 45 minutes tops and was more like 90 minutes. I'm not complaining really, because I think that means I spent less time on the road than anyone. Mark and I drove together, and arrived around 4pm. We signed in, set up our bunks and then had nothing to do for two hours. We ended up cleaning our cabin because the layer of tree pollen was so thick it was causing us both to sneeze with thunderous power and regularity.

By six o'clock there were enough people there to say hi to, and the vibe was very friendly. I got in on plenty of conversations by dropping Dave's name and/or smiling. Our friend Jeff showed later that evening, and the guy who drove him down (another Dave) ended up bunking in our little side of the cabin. I think he regretted his decision later in the night, but only because he was good people, and we are louts.

Food Friday night was a mildly disappointing spread of cold cuts, veggies and dip, hummus and pita, etc. I mean, logistically I understand: People were arriving all through the night, and a sit down dinner would have been poorly attended. But we arrived at 4:00 pm, and were supposed to arrive at 3:00. No real dinner at all was a wee bit lame. The late night oatmeal raisin cookies more than made up for it. The lack of any milk other than whole or half and half was an odd thing to see in 2008.

My first game was supposed to be AGONY, and super villain style "hack" of Agon. Instead, the GM cancelled with like two days notice, and then pulled a standard Agon game out of his hat at the last minute. It was great. Five players, some with lots of experience, and some with none. We played a escape from Hades campaign. As with almost all of the games I played this weekend, the GM was top notch, at least one of the players annoyed me to no end, and at least one of the players I wanted to take home and replace a member of my own crew. Remi had a fun game planned out, that we messed with and tried to make him change on the fly. He rolled with it like a champ. The only quibble I had was with a couple of his Greek mythology mistakes.

We had a huge idiot bruiser, a blind archer, a singer, an orator, and an old man. I played the old man who had been around the block. I was certainly not the leader, but my wits and tactics did keep some of the other players alive. Plus I was pretty good with a bow. That's not to far outside of my comfort zone, and I wish I had played something more challenging for me.

In the end, the player keeping track of the score had me in second while I had myself tied for first. Later detailed counting would revel that I was fully ahead on points, but that's not really important. The game was fun, we connected as a group of mostly strangers and trusted in each other to help provide a good time. It was a great game to start the weekend.

Later that evening Jeff, Mark and I went to Waffle House. Apparently we had crossed the mythic divide where Denny's cease to be the primary late night 24 hour coffee stop, and Waffle House is King. I knew it was in Virginia, I just didn't realize how close to the line I lived. We stayed up way to late catching up, and drove back at around 1:30 AM. Our fourth bunk mate was already asleep, and we tried to be quiet, but like I said, we were louts. At least one back pack got knocked over, all of our boots came off loudly, and the flashlights didn't quite go dim as quickly as they should have.

This hat is the best thing I bought for the weekend. Hands free flashlight all night long.

More to come soon!

"Bottle of Wine"

Back to the grape again!

In what will no doubt be a continuing trend on this blog, I bring you pictures of a trip to a winery. We went Saturday to the low mountains of Leesburg Virginia, and brought some friends. They were doing a fondue tasting event with The Melting Pot. The wine was alright, the place was packed and in general we all felt a little rushed.






As you can see below, the view was extraordinary.




Some @$$ wouldn't shut up out how pretty it was, dragging everyone down to look at the view



Seriously though, isn't it gorgeous?




Yeah, so that's me with the hat, and the beard, and the ponytail. I don't know exactly what you'd call my current style, but I think my Dad would describe it as "unemployable"


I love you Dad!

Here's a few of our friends, we're all getting a little hungry, and we lost one of the group, so we sent her Husband to go find her.















Found her!
















All together again, we decided to buy a few bottles, head for Wegmans and then home, for a little afternoon of food and wine. Plus we played with a crossbow. But that's not really part of this story.















What's that you say? You don't see the girl in the purple top and the black skirt? Why she's hiding behind my enormous gut! Also, pay close attention, I can't promise, but this might be the only time you can see my legs in a picture all year. I don't rock the short pants that often.

We'll probably go wine tasting again all during the rest of the Spring and Summer. I don't really like wine, but I do like hanging out with my friends in the outdoors. Plus picnics! I've already got at least one on my calender, and knowing my girlfriend, once she realizes there's a free, unscheduled weekend in June, she will fill it with a trip to a winery.

I think I need to start looking for a whatdoyoucall it... not a brewery... distillery! That's it! I've heard that Mount Vernon can now make and sell whisky based on George Washington's recipe. I should go try that out. It seems that as far as wine's go I have an interesting palate. I like really really bold reds. Spicy smoky, whatever, just so long as your average new wine drinker says "whoa nelly"; then that's the wine for me. But whiskey? Man I'll try anything once.

Here's to the weather being great for us all. Get outside! Walk around! It's Spring!

"Mad Dogs and Englishmen"

Steampunk Volume One: The stuff you know.


My friends Jeff and Dave have begun discussing Steampunk more often. Steampunk, for those of you that don't know, is a media genre. It shows up in TV, movies, novels, games, comics, and more. Basically you can describe it as science fiction set in the 19th century, but it is much more than that. Some purists will claim that in fact steam must play a role, or that the setting must be British, during the time of Queen Victoria. But as a genre I find to be more inclusive than dismissive. If you want to wear a bowler hat, a leather apron, and build musical instruments that run on the power provided by a bicycle; or strap on a jet pack and fight the Nazis; or build an airship and help Watson and Holmes then dammit, I say good on you. Steampunk can be set in the modern world, the future, or even farther in the past, before the steam engine.

One of the basic themes of the genre seems to be the triumph, or downfall, of man. That's lowercase on purpose. One man, whose life is changed by the Steampunk devices he creates/carries, faces off against adversaries, who normally outnumber him, and at least conventionally "out gun" him. These adversaries are almost always in a secret society who mean to keep mankind down. Our hero then faces off against them and depending on the story; triumphs, with the help of his own sweat and blood (and his raygun) or fails, crushed beneath the weight of the oppressive secret oligarchy. But in the epilogue, somehow manages to pass his secret knowledge, and possibly a treasured device, on to the next generation.

The works of H.G. Wells, and Lovecraft often find their way into the background, if not the foreground of many modern Steampunk stories. In fact, the unnamed Time Traveler, from H.G. Wells The Time Machine is about as perfect a template for a Steampunk "hero" as you can get. He is smart, an inventor or scientist, and yet still an amateur at such pursuits. He is impulsive, inquisitive, and likely to get in trouble for a woman. When he returns from his first adventure, he writes everything up, like a good scientist, and then, alone, but better prepared, he begins another adventure.

I dig on Steampunk, and have been thinking about it a lot this last week because of this post over at the Aviary. So without further ado, I give you, the first batch of links!

Of course, Wikipedia is a great source of information on Steampunk but I've also found...

Now Dave already mentioned this one in the comments of Jeff's post.

Some Steampunk enthusiasts like the technology side of a little more than the fashion. They have formed a different live journal community: The Clockworkers Guild.

Another handy group here at The Steampunk Workshop.

If you needed any ideas for the look of you robots, cars, or odd alien races, you could do a lot worse than to take a peek at Stephane Halleux and crib from the best!

A great overall blog, covering film, creations, art, and whatnot is Brass Goggles. He's looking for help running the site if anyone catches the bug!

I've got more for later, including some ray gun stuff, some alternate timeline stuff, and hopefully some more on the literature that started this trend in the first place.

BTW, the song title and picture today are a little more obscure than usual. I'll fill you in next Steampunk post.

"Summertime in England"

So, without fanfare, or explanation I return in some small way.

Why did I go away? Do I only post in Ordinary Time? Have the heartfelt expressions of interest from friends finally cracked my frozen exterior? Am I just really bored at work?

Oi! Didn't you read the clause in the first sentence that said no explanation!?

Today, or perhaps yesterday, Dave arrives in England. His wonderful family around him, I wish him the best. He'll be gone for a couple of years. Based on my understanding of my own future plans, I will not be in this area when he gets back. I love the Internet. Dave moves away, but I'll still read his blog, he'll still read mine, and gmail will always allow us to talk.

I guess this is a transitional period for my friends. Some are buying houses, some are moving, some are getting married. I feel like a caterpillar who realises that not only are his friends all butterflies already, but he kinda missed the boat on the whole chrysalis thing. Ah, too depressing to think about really.

Time to clear the dust out on this thing. I can feel the sunlight hitting corners. Let's see what she can do!

"Here for the Party"

Alright, sorry it took so long. These are from the Halloween party.

The party was at Mark and Lori's house



They had a good time decorating, and I got to help a little. I watched Mark carve a pumpkin and then helped set up a huge inflatable haunted castle thing. We didn't take a picture, but here's one I found online.




This Picture does not do it justice. The thing was over 10' tall and took us over an hour to set up. But it looked cool.










The party was a big success, with multiple floors of crazy happenings, and both the front a back porches getting plenty of use.

Two of the people in this picture are men.


That's Nathan as Maid Marion in the back, his falsies were one of the hits of the night. I think everyone managed to find an excuse to cop a feel.









So I told you my buddies from Richmond Kevin and Russell showed up:

Kevin came as "Kung Pow Chicken"

I know, I know....
















Russell could not stop posing all night. Either like this, or the classic hands on waist pose, or something like it. He said you couldn't help yourself.

Lot's of people grabbed his falsies too.















This was one of my favorite costumes of the night.






Really nice looking Jesus, with a collapsible cross.



















The cross was put to good use later in the night.












There were a lot of cool costumes.


Here's a crowd shot to give you an idea of a few of the various costumes.


While looking through the pictures I just noticed something.









See if you can spot the trend.













How 'bout now?













That's right, there was a lot of flannel in the house. Normally there is a lot of sexy in the house.

Well there was a stripper pole set up in the basement.

I don't know if you all are ready for this picture.

Are you sure?

Alright, don't say I didn't warn you:










Work that pole Mark!











Yes indeed, it was that kind of party.

















Woah!












Even Russell can't believe his eyes.













Check out these good looking sisters.




















Princess Leah made a lot of friends that night.




















Bad Jesus!













This was my favorite "accidental picture" of the night. I almost deleted it, until I realized how creepy it looked.



Right after this picture I took another of the zombie.












Patrick gonna die!!!!















Presidential candidate Stephen Colbert kept bothering this sweet young girl all night.

Eventually she took to pretending to pass out so she wouldn't have to speak to him. It didn't work, he just grabbed her and pulled her into every picture.






Alright, I promised you a picture of me.

Here we go, me and my girlfriend in the costumes we picked up at Target at the last minute and became a hit at two parties with.





I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I'll try to update a little more often from here on.

"You'll Have Time"

This weekend was a party. I will post more on the party itself once I get more pictures from the party sent my way.

So at this party, two of my good friends from Richmond showed up. My old roommate Kevin, and Russell. Between the three of us, we have more facial hair than any four of you. Also, our collective media collection will smother yours with its vastness. It is also fair to say, that we will actually make you pee your pants you will laugh so hard. That is to say, when we are all "on". This party was a little more hanging out for the three of us; rather than trying to entertain everyone. It was nice. I did a little time behind the bar, and walked around, but generally, I talked to my friends. I hadn't seen Russel in many months, and so we did a lot of catching up. It was good to talk to Russ. When I talk to most people up here about creative ideas, it mostly comes in the form of Role Playing games, mostly. When I talk to Russ, it could be a play, a comic, a series of novels, or a TV show.

Speaking of TV shows, I'm not sure ( OK, I am sure, but I want to hold out hope) but I'm fairly certain that none of you know anyone at CBS. This is too bad. Because if CBS wanted to throw money at people to do a show about vampires, Russel and I had a great idea that was not a direct rip off of Angel. I'm looking at you soon to be cancelled Moonlight! Plus it is set in Las Vegas, similarly to CBS's already cancelled Viva Laughlin. For the price of these two shows, Russ and I would have created a wicked sweet show. To bad CBS, I'm sure you'll throw good money after bad and let some other duo with things like "guild cards" and "a track record", and "already written scripts" take a chance instead of two barely employed nobodies from the East Coast with a great idea and half a pilot written.

I almost made Kevin cry with joy. This may have been due in some small part to the alcohol, but also because I gave him his birthday present. A wicked cool knife unlike any I had ever seen. Kevin named it one of the five greatest presents ever, which he had to scale back a bit after I reminded him that he had probably received sex as a present many times. So he then declared it in the five greatest non sexual gifts of all time and proceeded to hold it close to his bosom for the duration of the party

For those living in the Richmond area, I am afraid that I may have given him the impression that, like the blades in many video games, his will gain power when it sucks your soul. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. On the plus side, I did tell him that you had to take 5 souls in quick succession to activate the blade, so if you are traveling alone or in a small agile group, you should be fine. If you are part of a large slow moving band of travelers, well I've already apologized, nothing more I can really say.

What else happened this weekend? Well, I got to start my game, which went well. The players nearly died in what ended up revealing itself as a live fire exercise. I loved the reveal there. I made it through the entire weekend without a stomach pain attack. I had a real serious conversation with my girlfriend about religion, its place in our lives and on the lives of the children we have both talked about having one day. We were both raised Catholic and find ourselves lapsed, so you would think that we would have a lot of common ground, but we really don't. I swear if I didn't love this girl I don't even know if I could talk to her! We come from a different point of view on almost every subject, and yet we seem to be able to make things work. The Sox swept the series. Stupid Rockies! You were supposed to use a slingshot!

While I've been writing this, I received some pictures and promises of more, so tonight or tomorrow should be party picture time.