Hey! A comment!

Thanks for the visit, Joe.  Reminds me I'm not alone here.  I'll have to stop hanging out at my blog in my boxers from now on....

For better or for worse, I'm starting a new game tomorrow.  It is likely a one shot.  Two of the three couples playing have an infant, and I've been killing myself just getting material for one adventure together.  Part of that is I love to keep things open ended and sandboxy, so I actually have three possible adventures they might embark on.  Likely they will finish none of them, but it made me happy for a bit, nonetheless.  I couldn't have even cobbled together the effort I did manage without a lot of work I did on a world prior to this while I was inactive before Lily was born. 

I don't think there's anyway I can get back into world building until Lily is much older.  I barely got my minis and maps together between feedings, changing, and entertaining a bored 5 month old (she's peacefully sleeping now, so I've got about 20 minutes).

Lily's baptism was just two weeks ago (for any of you not there in person).  It was truly lovely.  Lots of friends I hadn't seen for months (some of them decades) showed up, and my cousin flew in from Los Angeles to be Lily's godmother.  It really was a perfect day, including Lily's three hour tantrum right up to (and some during) the church service.  Thanks to all who came.  I don't thank my friends enough for all they do for us.

That's all for now.

My thoughts on GURPS

(After reading the basic ruleset for 3rd edition)

I like it!  I'll never find anybody to play it!  I found the basic ruleset for $6 at a used book store.  I think it's an ingenious system, in that each new genre is a potential sale for the game designer.  Wanna play a Cthutlu campaign?  There's a book for that.  Like space opera?  There's a book for that.  Wanna start a campaign with the diseased offspring of Kermit and Miss Piggy called Muppet Rabies?  Okay, that hasn't been written yet, but there's no reason you couldn't write it yourself using this system. 

That being said, I think the mechanics, being that they are streamlined to fit many different possible genres, are a bit too simplistic for my taste.  Granted, this is based purely on a single reading of the rules and a few other sourcebooks, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.  But it seems like combat has far fewer options than, say, a game like Pathfinder.  Now, I'm sure that options multiply with each supplement I buy (or a compendium, were I inclined to pick one up), but I'm talking about pure mechanics in play during battle, not the number of weapons, skills, vehicles, spells or powers I might utilize with a given character.  I think I like variety in my dice and in my rolling options. 

One of the things I've heard proponents of GURPS tout is its vaunted realism.  'Realism' in this case seems to refer to player mortality.  This could potentially appeal to the OSR crowd, possibly, if they weren't busy churning out their own retro clone kickstarter projects at the moment.  While I do applaud the fact that a fall of 50 ft would kill the average, or even considerably above average player, it's simply not my own style of play, nor would it have appealed to the group I was playing with up until Lily was born.  Although the way things are going now, I may be looking at waiting until Lily's of gaming age before I get to bust out my DM'ing skills again.

In conclusion, I think my previous group is a  bunch of poo-heads for not asking me to DM for them by now even though I'd have to tell them I'm much too busy at the moment.  What?  Oh, GURPS, right.  Good game.  Wish I'd get the chance to put it into practice.

The Dark Knight Mumbles

Due to the graciousness of my parents’ babysitting service, the wife and I went out to dinner and a movie on a fine August weeknight.  We watched the ‘final’ (meaning ‘give us two years for the release of the next reboot’) installment of this Batman franchise at the Stoughton Cinema Café, where you can stuff yourself on pizza or lasagna whilst watching costumed heroes eviscerate one another with high tech gadgets of destruction.

            I am ambivalent about the film still as I ruminate upon it the following day.  There is much to be liked in the film.  There are numerous nods to the comic book mythology, and just as many areas where it breaks from tradition entirely.  This is a radically different take on Batman/Bruce Wayne than I’ve seen before.  This is a Dark Knight on the skids, physically and financially.  The Wayne Empire has crumbled due to neglect.  The Batman has disappeared since the death of Harvey Dent (whose death was blamed on the Bat in the last film).  Bruce Wayne is a limping recluse who refuses to visit his own dinner guests at a party honoring the deceased Dent.  All this in the first 20 minutes!

This is a difficult movie for me to review because there is much I could spoil for anyone even more wrapped in baby-induced lethargy than myself who hasn’t seen the film yet.  I think I can safely say without spoiling anything that it was painful for me to stay awake throughout the 2 hour and 40 minute film.  This is only partially the film’s fault, as I’ve just started meds that cause drowsiness and my daughter is still only 3 months old.  I felt that the film does drag a bit, and I lay the blame at the feet, or rather the mouth guard, of Batman’s main nemesis in this film:  Bane.  Tom Hardy is perhaps hamstrung by the loss of his face.  With no expressions available to him except a hundred-yard-stare and an accent that at times stuck me as Scottish (?) Bane makes the movie more than a little dull.  I think the film could have been pared down to under 2 hours if his monologues were cut, and little of the plot would have been sacrificed.

            But I did say I was ambivalent, not antipathetic toward the film.  There were parts of it I thought were beautiful.  There are genuine surprises woven into the film with such subtlety I missed them entirely until thinking about it after the fact.  One big one:  not once in the entire film is the Selena Kyle character (played with an understated grace by Anne Hathaway) referred to as Catwoman.  Go ahead, watch the film.  They never once call her that.  They didn’t have to.  It’s assumed, it’s implied, and it’s a corny and unnecessary name, so director Christopher Nolan does away with the reference entirely.  And I didn’t even notice until I was walking home digesting my theatrical and gustatory repasts.

            I loved the ending (or one of the endings).  Batman seems to truly be laid to rest once and for all, and for me it was in a satisfying fashion.  I can forgive any mess that ends well.  There’s a lot I could have wished for out of Bane.  In the comic book rendition he’s the villain who not only bests Batman physically and shatters his spine, but breaks him mentally and spiritually as well. (Something of a spoiler ahead!) Batman’s recovery takes a whole series.  In the movie, Batman is broken in a single scene, and his recovery is handled pretty much in a single montage of push ups, sit ups, oh, and some guy pushing a vertebrae back in place with his fingers.

            But wait, I was talking about the stuff I liked about the film and I’m getting sidetracked again.  Bale is competent and did not break immersion for me, which is impressive to me since I was so ready to hate him this time around.  Oldman is practically cuddly, but I can’t think of a film I’ve seen him in that I haven’t liked.  Joseph Gordon Levitt steals the show as a rookie cop, perhaps by Nolan’s design even.  It’s an ambitious film, and I don’t believe it’s successful on all counts, but I’m glad to have seen it in the theater instead of on the DVD rebound.  I’m the son of the guy who publishes this newsletter, and I support this film.

The Monk Above

... Is Thomas Merton.  I chose him, and the name, forgetting that Merton died by accidentally electrocuting himself by knocking a fan into his bathwater.  Some may speculate it was suicide.  I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was indeed an accident.  Better to be clumsy than to be hopeless.  'The Hopeless Monk' would be a different blog entirely.  I may have written just such a blog in my teens, back when I wore a black trench coat and scowled a lot.  Well... at least the trench coat is gone... and my penchant for reading Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

Merton is worth looking up, I think, if you're not already familiar with his work.  He was a brilliant writer and his perspective is unique and worth investigation IMO.  I was introduced to him by one of my atheist friends in the 90's.  I've been a Catholic my whole life, but for some reason or other my friends always seem to be predominantly atheist.  (This has become a problem recently when I started thinking about the baptism of my 2 month old daughter, as the Church frowns upon non-Catholic God-parents... actually, their stance is that non-Catholics as God-parents are right out, and you can't get baptized without one.)

I've never screened my friends (likely anyone who does doesn't have any friends to begin with), and from time to I've wondered why I tend to gravitate towards people who have such disparate world-views from my own.  It could mean I'm ambivalent at heart, or just an outright bad theist. I rejected elements of faith that I found inconvenient when I was younger, but never could shake the feeling that there was Something - a Something very different than what was proclaimed to be worshiped at the churches I attended in my youth.  I thought the Gospels attested to this, for the church in the time of Christ was at odds with Him as well.  I thought the people who went to church were hypocrites, who very demonstrably did not practice what was preached in the edifices they attended every Sunday.  Most priests struck me as loveless and perfunctory, while the ones who did seem sincere seemed on a plane I could never reach even if I wanted to.

I finally realized one day that I was never going to be any better than the hypocrites I was rejecting.  I believe in Love, but ask me on any given day if I've managed it to practice it consistently.  Maybe on a good day I'll say yes.  I work at it.  Loving friends and family is easy.  I trust them to forgive me despite what pains I may give them, for they have forgiven me time and time again in the past.  And I forgive them as well, for I am greedy and unwilling to part the joy that they bring me.  But loving those who slap me in the face with a look or cutting words?   That's a different story. 

I'm rambling now, and I'm not sure where I was going in the first place.  Full disclosure, I guess.  I've erased a lot of similar posts from this blog.  I'm not erasing this one.  One of my favorite pieces from This American Life on NPR came from Dan Savage.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/379/return-to-the-scene-of-the-crime

He proclaims at the end that he is not capable of belief.  He talks about his mom on her death bed.  I think it's such a beautiful piece for the honesty and the love that is present in his words and his voice, even as he says he cannot believe.  That's exactly what the God of my understanding is made of - honesty and love, and I find Him everywhere....

Anniversary

5 Years ago today, my wife foolishly signed a contract without reading the small print.  Actually, she married me willingly and I didn't even have to trick her.  We planned on going to Hawaii for our honeymoon, until we looked at prices and went to San Diego instead (which was amazing).  We promised ourselves we'd go to Hawaii on our 5th anniversary....

Well, our 5th has rolled around and we had the cash this year, but that plan was torpedoed by the arrival of our 6 week old, Lily (who is amazing).

I'm just one more guy who's the luckiest guy on Earth.

Tales from the Founderland

“Old Three-Fingered Rub”

(Pt. I)

 As told by Jezzrik Toeman

Regular patron at the Copper Kettle Inn

            “You’re not from around here I can see, so I’ll give you a bit of local lore for nothing (or for an ale if you’re the generous type).  Here it is, strangers:  Three fingers is bad luck, as anyone in the Founderland can tell you.  Hold up three fingers on any street in Coddleton and men will turn their heads and spit.  Just ask Old Rub if it’s unlucky, though he’s like to throw you out of his pub if you do.  Lost all five of his sons to the Deadcliff Caverns, he did, or so the tale is told.

            “Old Rub was a blacksmith from the Old Lands just West of here.  You probably don't need my telling you that Dwarves are renowned as fine smiths, and their work is coveted by all, but most dwarves don’t take to a big city like Coddleton.  So he ran a good bit of business as a smith and a tavern owner and did quite well for himself.  His wife gave him 5 sons while he dwelt here among men, but she died with the last.  Rub’s made a fortune making weapons for the gladiators of the Arena and exotic armors for the fighting animals at Tyson’s Farm. 

“You’ve… you’ve never heard of Tyson’s farm?  Never you mind, that’s another tale, and Old Rub’s tale is already long enough.  Anyhow, Old Rub had 5 sons (which is an exceptional brood for a dwarf - Old Rub had the fire, that's for certain, but never mind that). They grew up as strong and stout as Rub himself, working the forge with him day in and out.  But the sons had their father’s hot blood in them as well.  See, Rub was a warrior in the Old Lands before he settled down, and whenever dwarves come East to visit our fair city they’d pay a visit to Rub’s Tavern (‘Old Rub’s Brew Pub', that is – fine ale but a sad place, as you'll soon learn).  They’d drink enough to drown a stable full of horses and tell all the things Old Rub had done in his youth.  Well, the sons, they heard all this, and they got the idea in their heads one night to make their own name for themselves as adventurers.  They bought climbing gear with the wages Rub gave them and girded themselves for battle and then made their way by moonlight to the Deadcliff Caverns.

“If you've never even heard of Tyson's Farm, you won’t have heard of the Caverns as well,  I wager.  Well you won’t hear of them from me, either.  Men come from miles around seeking them out, hoping to find some artifact or bit of treasure not looted by the hundreds who came before them.  It’s said the Caverns were home to an ancient people, dead before the Founders ever set foot in these lands – I know, I know, it’s a tired tale told of many places, but that’s what the Caverns are, a tired tale set in the cliffs to the North of Coddleton.  That’s where Rub’s eldest three went that night, Jonquil, Haddock and Tate, there heads dancing with all the wealth they’d bring back and the monsters they’d slay with their mighty arms.  Their arms and necks were thick, and so were their wits.  All I can say is, well, perhaps you've been young yourself once.

“The next day, Rub was running all about town asking if anyone had seen his three boys.  When he found the man who’d sold them climbing gear, he beat that man senseless and toothless.  The next morning, Rub and his friends srearched and they found his boys alright - found them at the bottom of the Cliffs, their ropes cut and their bodies crushed by the fall.  Old Rub, he doesn’t howl or even shed a tear; he just binds them up in sheets, lays them gently on his cart, and takes them back to town to prepare them for burial.  Paid to have them all shipped to the Old Lands, he did to be laid in his family’s tomb.  Didn’t say a word of it to anyone, though many told him how sorry they were for his loss.  Rub was well liked about town, you see, even if he was an old dwarf.

             “Now everyone knows the Birdmen live in dwellings above the entrance to the Caverns, and everyone knows they’ll make trouble for all comers if they’re able.  Oh, they’re a cowardly lot to the last, and bear no arms save beak and claw, but a man or dwarf scaling the cliff - well, it’s hard to fight and climb at the same time.  The birdmen cut their ropes, you can be sure of that.  Think of that before you decide to go treasure hunting yourselves, and think whether a fall from 500’ suits your fancy.

(cont.)

A Night of Mario Van Peebles

I am a new dad, and as such I have been spending more time watching television between the hours of 1 and 5am than I have since... well ever.  My infant daughter hardly wakes for her 3 feedings/diaper changes during my shift, and I'm left holding the bottle and staring at the screen (which is muted) in the dark.  Last night was a rare treat - a Mario Van Peebles double feature.  This event was not planned either by myself or the networks who aired an old episode of the Outer Limits (staring Mario) and the early 80’s film “Exterminator II” (in which Peebles plays a well-muscled villain who leads an evil street gang that leaves a big ‘X’ on all their victims).  This type of fortune cannot occur through the planning of executive bigwigs but rather is the perfect concordance of luck, sleep deprivation, and the fact that Mr. Van Peebles had to pay the bills somehow at both ends of his carrer.

Now, my knowledge of the plot of either of these delicacies is going to be very limited since the volume was muted and for some reason no one thought either of these gems was worth closed captioning.  The first feature I saw was the Outer Limits episode (the 90’s remake, not the black and white original although I have the option of viewing that every night as well).  I learned through Google that this was titled “Bodies of Evidence” and first aired in June of 1997.  Jennifer Beals costars as a lawyer charged with defending Peebles who is accused of murdering three of his subordinates while serving on the space station Meridian.  Peebles was already a bit past his prime at this point, and the contrast between old 90’s Peebles and early 80’s Peebles had me wondering at first if they could really be the same guy (thanks again Google).

Anyhoo, I really dig the 90’s Outer Limits.  There’s always a bit of a mystery to unravel, even if it’s ineptly presented more often than not, and I’m a sucker for all things fantasy and sci-fi.  The mystery in this episode (and the unfolding of events aboard the Meridian in reverse throughout the trial) is whether or not Peebles was driven crazy by ‘space psychosis’ (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this is not a real disease) and killed the crew himself, or if, in fact he is telling the truth when he states that a shape-shifting alien with psychic abilities tricked them all into killing themselves.  I’m going to go ahead and spoil everything for you because unless you are an insomniac who just had their cable shut off you are never, ever going to see this episode.  If you bet on shape-shifting alien being the whodunit, you win a kewpie doll.  This is not revealed until after Peebles is exonerated of all crimes but then committed to a mental institution for his insistence on the existence of aliens when the alien in question shows up at his cell to give him the raspberry as Peebles is dragged away in a straight jacket.

The second film (the silent version on my TV) got all of one and a half stars in the IMDb database (and worthy of every half-star in my opinion) and stars John Eastland (never heard of him, not going to Google him) as a garbage man or possibly and out-of-work steel worker who confronts a New York drug lord (Peebles).   Peebles has one expression throughout the film, which I interpreted as wide-eyed and crazed contempt for anyone watching network television this late at night.  Eastland is a blue collar type who's had enough and welds a bulldozer blade and several machine guns onto a garbage truck to turn a street gang into an instant barbecue.  If I am any judge of a film from which I never heard a single syllable of dialogue, the writers drew heavily from Taxi Driver and Mad Max.  De Nero and Gibson could only wish for the body count Eastland achieves with grit, a little elbow grease, and lots and lots of flamethrowers and bazookas.  (Another spoiler ahead, so please avert your eyes if you are masochistic enough to still want to view this film in its entirety.)  Peebles finally gets his wide-eyed come-uppance in the form of a booby-trapped bag of stolen loot that explodes, sets him aflame, and then impales him on a steel girder.  My daughter was actually asleep for the thrilling climax, but even sleep deprived as I was I couldn’t tear myself away.

I’m told this phase in a baby’s development is over quickly.  I can only assume that persons with experience are also victims of ‘baby psychosis’ – a condition that causes parents to forget what having a newborn was actually like for the sake of duping them into furthering their own gene pool with additional progeny after the first.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to change into a shirt that has no spit-up on it for work.