I wanted to do something creative and cool for the booklet that comes with Just A Geek The Audiobook, so I bought a Molskine notebook, and hand-wrote an introduction, the chapter and track listings, and a bunch of liner notes in it. There may also be a few things like the surfer "S", a Van Halen "VH", an actual game of Tic-Tac-Toe that I played with my wife, and some of the other stuff that you typically find on a Pee Chee folder in seventh grade. The idea is that Just A Geek is sort of a journal (all about Star Trek, if you believe the cover and marketing), and I think that this booklet ties in with that theme quite nicely. It’s supermegatotallyawesome that I have the creative freedom to layer one creative mini-project over another creative mega-project.

I’ve finished the art work several times, but when I go to scan it and e-mail it off to the appropriate people, I end up with one of those "Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I just added . . ." moments, and the project keeps growing and growing, so now I have to edit out some of the stuff that it would be "cool if I just added . . ." so I don’t have to kick up the cost of the damn thing by twenty bucks to account for my unrestrained creativity. (Unless you really want to purchase the "holy shit I can’t believe I paid this much for an audiobook, but Wil Wheaton thanks me for helping him buy a boat" edition.)

I also have to write my trip report from the WPBT Winter Classic in Las Vegas this past weekend, and turn in a Games of our Lives column today, and I hope to record a new episode of RFB before the kids get home from school . . . so I guess I should probably stop blogging and get back to work.

Oh, the whole reason I sat down to write this was to point at this week’s Games of our Lives, Satan’s Hollow, which I think is pretty funny:

Gameplay: It’s 1982, so of course you have to enter Satan’s
Hollow in a spaceship. To pull this off, you build a bridge across a
river of fire by picking up pieces from the left side of the screen and
dropping them onto the right side of the screen. You have a shield that
will protect you (for about .08 seconds) from the gargoyles and demons
dropping World War II-style bombs. When the bridge is completed, you
cross into the game’s eponymous locale and face down Satan himself. If
you avoid his magic pitchforks and destroy him, you won’t save mankind
from eternal damnation, but you will earn bonus points and an extra
laser blaster for your space ship.

Before you complain that none of this makes sense, please remember
that the number-one song of 1982 was "Centerfold" by J. Geils Band, and
the number-one film was Tootsie.

One final thought before I really get back to work: You know who’s cool? Enoch Light.