I have never been more disappointed by a puzzle’s solution than I was last night.
KOOOOPPPPPIIIITTTTTAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!
I am in an undisclosed location on the East Coast for something very important, so I had to go to sleep last night before the Kings game was over. Just before I turned off the lights and shut down my laptop, I saw the great Anze Kopitar score what would become the game winning goal, to lead the LA Kings to an historic comeback against the San Jose Chokes Sharks. (They are now just the fourth team in NHL history to come back from a 3-0 game deficit in the playoffs and advance to the next round).
Had I been at home, I would have reposted this vine to celebrate the occasion:
Now, I’m not saying that I called it on April 17, but … maybe I called it on April 17.
All good-natured ribbing aside, what an incredible series this was. I’m looking forward to the next round, because it’s Duck Season.
midnight highway
The second song on the Kill Bill Volume 1 soundtrack is a fantastic rockabilly number called That Certain Female. It has this great thick guitar riff with a lot of echo and delay and, for me, it conjures up images of Route 66 under a new moon, windows down and radio blaring as a ’58 Chevy puts miles between its mysterious driver and Chicago as fast as he can lay them down.
This music fills the dark and bug-spattered spaces between Amarillo and Tucumcari, staccato white lines flashing by in the headlights, the smell of exhaust and old tobacco swirling with dust.
Is he running toward something or away from something? Or is it a she behind the wheel? What’s in the trunk? What’s in the backseat? When we see the driver’s eyes in the rear view mirror, briefly lit by the glowing cherry of a cigarette, are they determined? Resigned? Afraid? Tear-stained? Vengeful?
Maybe they are all these things.
The road goes on.
interlude: from a family dinner
Ryan and Nolan came over for dinner last night, and for the first time in far too long, I ate dinner with my entire family.
While we sat at the table and ate, Anne told us that she is thinking about getting a Mini Countryman when she pays off her Cooper S.
“I like the way it handles, and I like the extra space that it has. It sort of feels like my Mini, but there’s just more room inside,” She said.
I said, “Oh! So that means that maybe I can get the little two-seater Mini when my lease is up?”
“Isn’t that a mid-life crisis car?” Ryan said.
“No,” I said, “A mid-life crisis car is something you buy so you can drive around and try to pick up twenty year-old girls.”
Without missing a beat, Nolan said, “Oh! Can I have a mid-life crisis car? That sounds like something I could use.”
He’s twenty-two, and clearly has my sense of humor.
Ten great Tabletop games you can use to introduce your friends to gaming
Via Reddit, I saw this fantastic list at Board Game Geek, detailing the top 100 “gateway” games, which is how we describe a game you use as an infection vector for tabletop gaming.
Here’s the top ten, as voted on by Board Game Geek members:
1 Ticket to Ride/TTR Europe
2 Carcassonne (all)
3 King of Tokyo
4 Dixit
5 For Sale
6 Diamant/Incan Gold
7 Can’t Stop
8 Pandemic
9 Love Letter
10 Settlers of Catan
As I’ve written before, different games work for different people, and someone who loves Ticket To Ride may not like King of Tokyo at all, so ask your non-gamer or tabletop-curious friends questions, and choose their gateway game carefully. All of these games have a high ratio of luck to strategy, which makes it a lot of fun for experienced and new players alike to play together.
And, as luck would have it, a lot of these games have been played on Tabletop, so you can get an assist from Your Old Pal Wil Wheaton when you introduce one of them to a new gamer. Just use the links above.
Have fun, and PLAY MORE GAMES!
