fauxklore | Entries tagged with games

Here’s an attempt at getting all caught up before doing too many things again.

Celebrity Death Watch: Steve Lawrence was a pop singer and actor, best known for his collaboration with his wife, Eydie Gorme (who died in 2013). David E. Harris was the first African-American to be a commercial pilot (for American Airlines). Barbara Hilyer wrote about feminism and disability. Eric Carmen was the lead vocalist of The Raspberries. Bernard Schwartz was the CEO of Loral Space & Communications for 34 years and the largest donor to the Democratic Party from 1992 to 1996. Jim McAndrew pitched for the New York Mets from 1968 through 1973. Angela McCluskey was a Scottish singer, who performed both as a soloist and as part of The Wild Colonials. Air Force General Howell Estes III served as the commander of NORAD and the U.S. Space Command from 1996 to 1998. James D. Robinson III was the CEO of American Express for 16 years. Thomas P. Stafford was a Gemini and Apollo astronaut and one of the 24 astronauts who flew to the moon. Vernor Vinge was a science fiction author. Barry Silver was a lawyer, politician, rabbi, and abortion rights activist. Mike Thaler wrote and illustrated roughly 200 children’s books and was best known for his 37 books of riddles. George Abbey directed NASA’s Johnson Space Center from 1996 - 2001. Gerry Conway was a drummer for a number of bands, as well as a member of Pentangle and of Fairport Convention. Lou Gusset Jr. was an actor, probably best known for his role in An Officer and a Gentleman. Barbara Rush was an actress, best known for It Came From Outer Space and the television series Peyton Place.

Christopher Durang was a playwright, best known for Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. John Barth wrote post-modern fiction, notably Giles Goat-Boy. Lynn Reid Banks wrote the children’s book The Indian in the Cupboard. Lori and George Schappell were the first set of conjoined twins to identify as different genders. Clarence “Frogman” Henry was an R&B singer. Ken Holtzman pitched for the Chicago Cubs, including pitching two no-hitters. Ben Eldridge was a banjo player and a founding member of The Seldom Scene. Bob Graham was a U.S. Senator from Florida from 1987-2005 and had been the governor of Florida prior to that. Carl Erskine played for the Dodgers in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles and was the last surviving member of the “Boys of Summer” of the 1950’s. Dickey Betts was a guitarist and a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band. Roman Gabriel played football for the L.A. Rams. Terry Anderson was a journalist, who was best known for being held hostage by Hezbollah for 6 years. Mike Pinder was a founding member and original keyboardist of The Moody Blues. Paul Auster was a prolific writer, who had over a dozen novels published and edited NPR’s National Story Project.

Laurent de Brunhoff wrote approximately 50 books in the Babar the elephant series, which had been created by his father, Jean de Brunhoff. He also wrote children’s books about other characters of his own creation.

Peter Angelos was the majority owner of the Baltimore Orioles from 1993 until his death in March. He strongly opposed the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C., which I’ve never forgiven him for.

Richard Serra was an artist, known primarily for large-scale abstract sculptures.

Daniel Kahneman was a psychologist and behavioral economist and won a Nobel prize for his work in the latter field. His book, Thinking Fast and Slow was an influential best seller.

Joe Lieberman was a U.S. senator from Connecticut and Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 Presidential election. His biggest political mistake, in my opinion, was his opposition to including a public option in the Affordable Care Act. I will note, however, that the influence of the insurance industry in Connecticut was probably the primary driver for that.

Larry Lucchino was a baseball executive for the Baltimore Orioles, San Diego Padres, and (most importantly, of course) the Boston Red Sox. He led the Orioles to one World Series championship and the Red Sox to three. He also played a major role in the construction of both Camden Yards and Petco Park, as well as initiating the renovation of Fenway Park.

Jerry Grote was a catcher for the Mets from 1966 - 1977. Notably, that includes 1969.

Peter Higgs was a physicist and got a boson named after himself. He also got a Nobel prize.

O. J. Simpson was a football player and got away with murder. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. Interestingly, Frank Olson, who cast O.J. in several Hertz commercials, died just a few days after he did.

Trina Robbins was a comic book artist and wrote extensively about women in comics.

Robert MacNeil was a journalist and television news anchor. He was best known for his public television collaboration with Jim Lehrer.

Faith Ringgold was one of my favorite artists and I feel privileged to have been able to see a couple of retrospectives of her work. I particularly liked her story quilts, such as The French Collection. She was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 13 points.

Whitey Herzog managed the Saint Louis Cardinals throughout the 1980’s.

Alex Hasilev was one of the founding members of The Limeliters. Their records were on frequent rotation in our house when I was growing up.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Dick Plotz, whose NPL nom was Geneal, died in early March. In addition to being a puzzle constructor and having organized the NPL con in Providence, he was very involved in Jewish genealogy and offered me some helpful tips when I started my own research.

I knew Ed Gordon from Loserdom. He was part of the group that I play Code Names with frequently. And he attended Loserfests in both Niagara Falls and Philadelphia. He was also a Scrabble player and active in Mensa. I’m glad he was able to take a 20 day cruise and see the eclipse shortly before his death.

Nancy Schuster was a crossword constructor, editor, and tester. She competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament from its very beginning and, in fact, won the first ACPT. She also served as a mentor to a number of other puzzle people.

Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: Barry Posen gave a talk about Israel’s Response to October 7th. He attempted to summarize the range of choices in how to respond. Unfortunately, he essentially summarized the possible responses as bargaining vs. annihilation, which is a misleading choice of terms in my opinion. Most of the history between Israel and Hamas (between 2008 and 2021) was based on bargaining after some precipitating event. The result was something of an equilibrium, largely because nobody saw any acceptable alternative. The problem is that there is less and less reason to trust Hamas. A counter-terrorism strategy, which essentially means killing Hamas leadership, is complicated by the urban nature of Gaza. The other aspect is what political outcome is desirable. That essentially leads to a goal of destroying Hamas as a military entity, which is what he said he meant by annihilation but most people would not characterize it that way. Overall, I was left primarily with despair.

Book Clubs: I missed the Travelers’ Century Club book club meeting this month, since I was at the VASA Gathering. But I made it to both other book clubs. Crones & Tomes discussed Where the Crawdads Sing, which I thought was an enjoyable enough read, though I wasn’t convinced by the last third or so of it. (I had seen the movie previously, by the way, and thought it was pretty true to the book.)

READ had a discussion of Sounds Like Titanic, which I thought was brilliant. This is a memoir about working for an ensemble that is essentially faking their performances while a CD plays in the background. I think it does help to have some background in music. And a little knowledge of geography wouldn’t hurt. (One person thought that her family moving to Virginia meant that they left Appalachia!) I’m a little more sympathetic to the person who thought the author was whiny, but not to the person who didn’t understand why she took the job, apparently having failed to grasp that she needed money to pay for college. Anyway, it was definitely compatible with my sense of humor. How could I not love her description of her job as “Milli Violini”?

VASA Gathering: As I mentioned above, I went down to Richmond for the Virginia Storytelling Association Gathering. Thanks to Jessica for driving and Jennifer for coming along. We stopped in Careytown for dinner at a Thai restaurant and then headed to the hotel for the gathering. The Best Western was in a heavily industrial area, across from the Philip Morris plant and, while the room was okay, it was pretty basic and much of the staff was not particularly amiable.

Anyway, Friday night featured a story swap. There was enough time for everyone who wanted to tell and there was a wide mix of stories. I told a story from Afghanistan about an illiterate lion, which went over well. Some of us went to the bar to chat for a while. Maybe it’s a matter of being old, but how do people not have a go-to drink that they always order at a bar? (For what it’s worth, I’m a gin and tonic gal.)

My biggest annoyance with the hotel was that breakfast wasn’t included and the yogurt parfait and English muffin I got were overpriced. And they were slow to refill the coffee in the lobby.

The morning started with an inspirational talk by Clinton Atwater. That was followed by a talk by Jessica Robinson about the business aspects of storytelling, which covered a lot of ground and had a lot of lively discussion. Lunch was included with registration and the pasta they served was pretty good, as was the tiramisu for dessert. After the VASA business meeting, we returned to the meeting room for a workshop with Loren Niemi, who focused on reimagining how we tell traditional stories. That was interesting (and gave me a few ideas) but he needed a lot more time than he had. Finally, there was a story swap, including feedback, which also needed far more time.

Overall it was worth going to. Of course, the real highlight was getting to see some people who I don’t see very often. (And meeting some new people.) Anyway, the traffic coming back wasn’t too terrible andI got home at a reasonable hour.

A Few Story Swaps: Right after getting back from the VASA gathering, I went to the monthly Voices in the Glen zoom story swap. We had a fairly small group, but it was still fun. I told a very short story about what a clever man asked for when the prophet Elijah offered to grant him a wish to thank him for his hospitality.

The next day, I got together with a few other people from Voices in the Glen for an in-person story swap. With Pesach approaching, I told a story based on my father’s explanation of the crossing of the Red Sea. Since Dad was a civil engineer, Moses had to file an environmental impact statement.

And on Sunday, I went to a zoom swap put on by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles. I told a story I hadn’t told in a while, which mostly has to do with things my father used to say and what I really did and didn’t learn from them.

Grimm Keepers: This session’s discussion was of “The Pink,” also known as “The Carnation.” I think that every single time we meet, our discussion includes the phrase “what a strange story!” In this case, one of the strange aspects is how few things a boy who has the power of having anything he wishes for come true actually does wish for. There was also a lot of discussion about the significance of poodles in German folklore. At ay rate, the discussion left us with a lot of unanswered questions.

Board Games: I have mentioned before that I play board games (almost always Code Names) on-line with a few friends at least a few times a week. We recently realized that our first session of doing that was on 27 April 2020. It was a great way of getting us through the social isolation of the pandemic and it’s continued to be a great way to socialize.

Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a dream the only detail of which I remember is that it involved a character named Tutsi Tu Bruskin. Bruskin is one of my ancestral names (specifically, my paternal grandfather’s mother’s family name) but that doesn’t provide any enlightenment.

Pesach: We’ve just now finished Pesach and I’ve had my traditional post-holiday pizza. I was fairly lazy about cooking this year and, hence, ended up having a lot of string cheese, grapes, matzoh with orange marmalade, and other monotonous foods. Oh, well, it’s only 8 days,

A Few Brief Comments About University Protesters: I think that the correct way for universities to deal with the protests is to focus on enforcing the community rules with respect to “time, place, and manner.” In particular, violence against anyone should be punished, as should blocking off access to particular places. For example, one of my particular concerns about what has happened at some campuses is protestors who have blocked access for disabled students, which is a violation of Title VI and can (and, in my opinion, should) result in the loss of federal funding if it is tolerated. The most difficult of the criteria is “manner of protest,” but I think any civilized person should agree that calls for murder is unacceptable. There are definitely some cases which have crossed that line, e.g. the Columbia student, Khymani James, who published a video in which he said, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Students holding up posters with slogans like “go back to Poland” are both anti-Semitic and ignorant. (Roughly 12% of the population of Israel has Polish-Jewish ancestry. And over 90% of Polish Jews were massacred during the Shoah.)

My other comment is that I wonder how many of the students pushing divestment from everything associated with Israel are using iPhones or used Waze to find routes to campuses, Do any of them use RSA public key encryption? How many of them eat cherry tomatoes or have websites using wix.com?

I’ve been fairly busy over the past few weeks. The biggest thing was the Women’s Storytelling Festival, which deserves its own entry. In the meantime, you can still buy a virtual ticket through April 1st and listen to 16 hours of recorded stories. Go to the WSF ticketing page.

In terms of other stuff I’ve been doing, here is what I can decipher from what I scribbled on my calendar and notebooks.

Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: Emily Pollock gave a talk on Continuities, Contradictions, and Carmina Burana: The Problem of Carl Orff. The short version of the problem with Carl Orff is that he used nationalistic language to get his teachings (primarily about pedagogy and primitivism) accepted. He was interested in the medieval, ancient Greek, and Baroque pasts, which led to him using simplified, repetitive rhythms, for example. As a result he did things like write music to replace Mendelssohn’s for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His best known work is, of course, Carmina Burana, which is a scenic cantata (not an opera) and was based on medieval Latin poems. It premiered in Frankfurt in 1937.

That led to the question of whether or not music is political. Professor Pollock noted that, while his music was praised by Hitler, Orff was not a member of the Nazi party. The nuances have to do with historiography, i.e. how we tell the tory and music as a cultural phenomenon. She didn’t have any real answers to this. Orff is played in Israel, while Wagner is, in general, not.

Incidentally, in talking about other German music of the time, Pollock talked a little about Winfried Zillig's opera, Das Opfer, which has to do with the fatal Terra Nova expedition of 1912, during which Robert Falcon Scott and 4 of his companions died on their return from the South Pole. (By the way, the opera apparently does not include Evans, who died earlier than the others.) The intriguing part of this is that the chorus is dressed as killer penguins, who surround Oates and perform a victory dance as he walks into the storm to die. I have not actually heard this opera, but I do think the world needs more music with evil penguins gloating about human deaths.

MIT Presidential Tour: Sally Kornbluth, who has been the president of MIT for about a year, has been doing several trips to meet with alumni (and other community members) and it was Washington, DC’s turn on March 7th. This started out with drinks and hors d’oeuvres for Leadership Circle members (which has to do with how much you donate). The room where that was held was a bit awkwardly shaped, making it a bit hard to mingle, though I did have a few interesting conversations. Then we moved to the general reception area, where they had several food stations, as well as a photo booth and a 3-D printer making coasters. I liked the photo they got of me.

Eventually (after more eating and socializing), we were herded into a conference room for President Kornbluth’s talk. Well, actually, she was interviewed by Annalisa Weigel, who is a member of the MIT Corporation (and a big name in the aerospace world). I was glad they started off with the elephant in the room. Namely, we’d had an opportunity to write in questions beforehand and I am pretty sure I am not the only person who asked about safety of students in light of the Palestinian situation. I thought she had a reasonable reply, mostly focused on enforcing existing rules re: campus protests. There was a lot of stuff about how MIT will address other little issues, like climate change, before getting to some more frivolous subjects, e.g. her hobbies, which include a capella singing and making felted flowers. Eventually, we went back into the main room for coffee and dessert (which included chocolate-dipped strawberries). There was also more swag, e.g. ballcaps and tote bags. All in all, it was a nice evening out.

Book Clubs: R.E.A.D. discussed Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland, which is a novel based on the life of Clara Driscoll, who designed almost all of the famous Tiffany lamps. Crones and Tomes discussed The Thread Collectors by Shauna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman. (You might recall that R.E.A.D. had done that book previously. I did not reread it, since it had been recent enough that I remembered the gist of it.) I should probably also mention that I took some time out from the Women’s Storytelling Festival to call into the TCC Book Club for our discussion of The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, which is about his walk across Afghanistan.

Medical appointment: The last of the catch-up on medical appointments was pretty routine. Mostly, I got the updated pneumonia vaccine that they give to old folks, as well as the final Hepatitis B booster and the RSV vaccine.

Artomatic: I leveraged off being in the vicinity already (for my medical appointment) to go to opening day of Artomatic. This is an art show (including visual art and performance art and films and pretty much anything, since it’s unjuried). On the way there, I stopped at Call My Mother for lunch and, while I know it’s popular, I still find it disappointing and a crime against bageldom.

Anyway, I started at the top floor and worked my way down, managing to look at about half of the displays at Artomatic before fading out. I did take a break to look at a couple of short movies, the best of which was a cartoon about a support group for cats, which resulted in all of the cats moving in with an elderly woman.

This is called “Pink Compass, True North" and is by Sarah Jane Rodman.

Unfortunately, I didn’t capture the name and artist for this sculpture, but I admired the balance and the use of shapes and colors.

This painting by Giovanni Zelaya is called “The Dream is Alive” and depicts Mae Jemison, Sally Ride, and Ellen Ochoa.

There was also a whole wall of little paintings and what looked like refrigerator magnets. depicting books with titles like “Everything I don’t like is WOKE: A book for basic dickheads” and “How to talk to your dog about The Fall of Constantinople.”

I need to get back and see the other three (maybe four) floors of art. One of my friends is doing a storytelling show there, so I hope to get there for that.

Other Stuff: The Saturday before the Women’s Storytelling Festival, we had a Voices in the Glen story swap. I told “Clever Greta,” which is a Grimm story and quite suitable for women’s history month. That Sunday, we had our annual business meeting. And the Sunday after the festival, the Better Said Than Done board had a postmortem of the festival.

We’ve also had three Grimm Keepers meetings because one had had to be postponed due to conflict. “The Children of the Two Kings” is one of the weirder stories, which is saying a lot since my immediate reaction to most of the stories is that they’re really strange. What made it weird is that, while several things are similar to incidents in other stories (e.g. impossible tasks that have to be done for the prince to marry the princess), there’s a recurring image in it involving the use of glass tools, which nobody had any reasonable explanation for. Our discussion of “The Little Donkey” has inspired me to think of trying to do something with the idea of a support group for people who have been turned into animals (or, who were born as animals, but became human.) Finally, we just talked about “The Turnip,” which needs a certain amount of fleshing out to be satisfactory, but I think I could make it tellable. By the way, this is not the same as the Russian story about the giant turnip that takes several people working together to get out of the ground. It’s a tale of sibling rivalry and revenge.

Also, I’ve played board games several times, including managing to make it to NPL Game Night the past three weeks. I had a stupid accident this past Thursday in which I tripped over a concrete parking stop in a supermarket parking lot, ending up with various bruises, including a black eye. At least, so far as I can tell, I didn’t break anything. And, I went to see the William Shatner movie. You Can Call Me Bill with my friend, Kim, this past Sunday, which was interesting but decidedly not what I was expecting.

I still need to do a lot more housework. And do my taxes, the hardest part of which is always finding all of the statements I need.

I sometimes play games on my phone and they tend to have ads. I don't understand some of the ads.

I do understand what is being sold in ads for, say, industrial machinery or dentistry for children or a leaf cover for your gutters. I just don't understand why the companies in question think that advertising, say, an 18-in-1 wrench-like multitool on Bejeweled Blitz makes any sort of sense.

The worst ads are the ones for other video games. I assume that all of those that claim you can make lots of money playing some sort of game are just outright scams. The games don't even look entertaining.

Just now I saw an ad for some sort of toy called "Cats vs. Pickles." It looks like there is a multipack of plush toys that vaguely resemble those two things. Apparently, cats are afraid of pickles? But pickles love cats? I am, obviously, confused. I suspect this must be a huge fad among 7 year old girls, because it makes no sense to me.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/481717.html

Celebrity Death Watch: Robert Trump was the president’s brother. Ben Cross was an actor, best known for playing Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire. Jack Sherman played guitar with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Fern Cunningham was a sculptor. Joe Englert was a restaurateur, who was largely responsible for the growth of H Street NE in D.C. as a nightlife destination. John H. Hager was the lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1998-2002. Allan Rich was a character actor. Lori Nelson was an actress who appeared in a number of low-budget science fiction films. Arnold Spielberg was an electrical engineer who designed the first computer-controlled point of sales cash register, though he is probably more famous as the father of Steven Spielberg. Gerald Carr was an astronaut. Joe Ruby co-created Scooby-Doo. Ronnie Kole founded the French Quarter Festival. Seymour Schwartz wrote a widely used textbook on surgery. Virginia Bossler was a musical theatre and movie actress, best known for playing Jean McLaren in Brigadoon. Ian Mitchell played bass with the Bay City Rollers. Irving Kanarek was Charles Manson’s defense lawyer. Gary Peacock was a jazz double bassist. Bruce Williamson sang with the Temptations. Kevin Dobson was an actor, best known for appearing in Kojak. Constance Weldon was the first woman to play tuba in an American orchestra. Gerald Shur developed the Witness Protection Program. Luiz Dilipe Barbosa was a choreographer who popularized Israeli folk dance in Brazil. Mel Krupin ran Duke Zeibert’s restaurant in D.C. before opening an eponymous deli.

Gail Sheehy was the author of Passages, a very influential book about aging, particularly for women. She also wrote a lot of long-form magazine pieces, notably one abut Grey Gardens, which led to a documentary about Edie Beale and her daughter and their hoarding issues.

Chadwick Boseman was an actor, who played a number of Black heroes. That includes not only Black Panther, but also Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall.

Tom Seaver was a pitching ace for the New York Mets. For those of us who grew up with the team, he will always be Tom Terrific, their all-time leader in wins. There are too many accomplishments to list them all, but one that is unique is having struck out 10 consecutive batters. Reggie Jackson allegedly said that blind people came to the ballpark just to hear him pitch He was one of my favorite players when I was growing up and will be sorely missed.

Kank Kek Iew, better known as Comrade Duch, was the overseer of the Tuol Seng prison during the Khmer Rouge era. He was an evil man, responsible for torture and mass murder and the world is better off without him.

Lou Brock was an outfielder, primarily for the Saint Louis Cardinals. In addition to his batting accomplishments, his biggest claim to fame was breaking Ty Cobb;s record for stolen bases. (His record has since been surpassed by Rickey Henderson.)

What I Hate About Geni: For those who are unfamiliar with it, geni.com is one of several sites that is trying to build a world family tree. It is somewhat useful for finding relatives, but there are a number of things that annoy me about it. At the very top of the list is the long, complicated lists it shows for how someone is related to you.

So the other day, I got one of their periodic lists of DNA matches. Most of those are around the 3rd cousin level, which is probably further away because of Jewish endogamy. In a few cases, it gives me a list of how a match is related to me. This one showed someone as “second cousin once removed's wife's sister's husband's second cousin's wife's great uncle's ex-wife's great nephew.” This would be mildly amusing, but, no, DNA doesn’t transfer across marriages.

Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 1: Bert Convy was singing the song “Convoy..” ( woke up focused on the word, “convey.”

Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 2: I have a lot of dreams that seem to involve architecture. Or, at least, that is the part I remember. I had a dream last week that involved climbing lots of stairs in a white tower.

Code Names: We have continued playing frequently. The most amusing evening this past week was one in which one team (not mine!) hit the assassin 5 games in a row.

Rabbit Holes: Looking at real estate possibilities is always a bit of a rabbit hole. Providence is surprisingly affordable, so I need to look into it further. (I’ve been there multiple times and like it, but visiting and living somewhere are different.)

The bigger rabbit hole I fell into recently was the Try Channel on YouTube. Basically, they have videos of Irish people taste testing foods from other countries (mostly American). There are also ones involving them watching television programs or doing various things while drunk, but those are less my speed.

Retirement Preparation: I got a really great retirement gift today. My boss told me I don’t have to do our annual performance review! Just what I always wanted.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/476064.html

I am still having trouble with executive function. That is, there are lots of things I should be doing, but it’s hard to motivate myself to do them. Today, I did manage to set up an account I need at work (a temporary thing for a specific project) and I made an appointment to get my car serviced next week, so I feel somewhat productive.

I have been fairly busy with entertainment of various sorts, however. The Sunday before last was a story swap with Community Storytellers, the Los Angeles group that introduced me to storytelling.

Tuesday night was a Profs and Pints lecture by Allen Pietrobon on “The Truth Beyond White Picket Fences.” This is the third of his talks I’ve been to and he is always engaging, informative and entertaining. He talked about the post-World War II housing shortage and how that led to the development of suburbia, with its environmental impacts and explicit racism. My home town was a fishing village turned suburb, so this had some personal resonance for me. We were always aware that Mr. Garrett, who had developed our neighborhood (if not other parts of town) had what was, by far, the nicest house in the area. (We always made a particular point of hitting up his house when trick or treating, for example.) I don’t think there were explicit racist covenants there, though there were in many other places. The really chilling story involved the Pennsylvania Levittown, which harassed a black family for 4 years before they gave up and moved away. There were perfectly nice looking women interviewed by a reporter about how they wouldn’t have bought their houses if there weren’t racial covenants. There was a little discussion at the end about the trend now for younger people to want to live in cities and the uncertainty about whether that will continue with the pandemic. Overall, a very interesting talk. (The recorded talk is available on line if you are interested.)

Wednesday night, I played board games – Code Names and Wise and Otherwise.

Thursday night was an on-line musical theatre trivia game run by York Theatre, which is a theatre in New York that I like a great deal. I mostly go to their Musicals in Mufti, which are concert versions of (generally) obscure old musicals. There were four rounds with 8 questions each. I had a perfect score in the first two rounds, but the last two had more questions I needed to guess on, so I didn’t win any of the prizes. It was still fun.

Friday night saw me listening to a program of Broadway musical performances by Upper Room Theatre Ministry. It was reasonably entertaining, but there was nothing really surprising. Before and after that, I listened to bits and pieces of the Lowell Folk Festival (which went on all weekend).

I spent the weekend doing some household odds and ends, including grocery shopping. Sunday night was a Chavurah meeting, which included some rather bizarre political discussion. Er, no, Biden is not a puppet of “those three girls.” And, no, it is not unreasonable for vaccine manufacturers to get paid for their products. To be fair, this was pretty much on the part of one person and other people pushed back.

Which brings us back to doe, er board games. We had a quick round of trivial pursuit and spend the rest of the time playing Fibbage.

Celebrity Death Watch: Nick Kotz was a journalist who wrote primarily about politics. Peter Hunt directed the musical 1776. Robert May did significant work on chaos theory. Denis Goldberg was an anti-apartheid activist. Gale Halderman co-designed the Ford Mustang. Robert Park was a physicist and critic of pseudoscience. Sam Lloyd was an actor who was best known for appearing in Scrubs and Galaxy Quest. Gil Schwartz was a humorist, who wrote under the name Stanley Bing. Samuel Roger Horchow was a theatre producer and catalog purveyor. Don Shula was a Hall of Fame football player and coach. Michael McClure was a beat poet. Barry Farber was a conservative talk show radio host. Iepe Rubingh was the founder of chess boxing, a rather unlikely combination of the two forms of competition. Moon Martin was a a singer-songwriter, most famous for “Bad Case of Loving You.” Carolyn Reidy was the CEO of Simon & Schuster. Jorge Santana was a guitarist, who was a lot less famous than his brother, Carlos. Fred Willard was an actor, who worked on several Christopher Guest mockumentaries. Wilson Roosevelt Jerman was a White House butler, who spent over 50 years on the staff there. Lucky Peterson was a blues musician. Ken Osmond was an actor, best known for playing Eddie Haskell on Leave It To Beaver. Willie K was a Hawaiian musician. Annie Glenn used her role as an astronaut’s wife for activism regarding speech disabilities. Alan Merten was the president of George Mason University during a time of its significant expansion. Mory Kante was a Guinean singer and bandleader. Stanley Ho turned Macao into the Las Vegas of Asia

Irrfan Khan was an Indian actor. He is best known in the west for his Hollywood work, which included Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire. But I would particularly recommend The Lunchbox as an interesting movie he co-starred in.

Maj Sjowall was a Swedish mystery writer. Her Martin Beck series, co-written with her late husband, Per Wahloo, was a particularly good example of the use of police procedurals for societal criticism.

Jean Erdman was a dancer and choreographer, who incorporated myth into her dancing. She was also Joseph Campbell’s widow. She earned me 25 ghoul pool points (13 for her position on my list and a 12 point uniqueness bonus.)

Little Richard was a rock and roll legend. From the mid-50’s on, he influenced numerous other singers and pianists with his lively style.

Barbara Sher was a lifestyle coach and writer. I know several people who were devotees of her book Wishcraft. Later on, she tackled what she called “scanners,” i.e. people who have multiple interests and don’t want to focus on just one. I actually went to one of her day-long workshops on that subject and found it somewhat useful in my life, mostly as reassurance that I’m not alone.

Jerry Stiller was a comedian and actor. I have to admit I found his work with his late wife, Anne Meara, much funnier than his acting roles on TV shows like Seinfeld.

Phyllis George was Miss America 1971 and went on to a career as a sportscaster at a time when that was pretty much unknown for women.

Last week: Monday night I played board games with the usual group I play with.

Tuesday night was the kick-off for The Great Big Jewish Food Fest, with David Sax interviewing several deli owners about how things are going for them in these times. The answers were more hopeful than I expected, with a lot of take-out business, but it is still difficult, given that restaurants are low margin businesses. It was an interesting program. And, by the way, David Sax is very good-looking.

Wednesday night was book club. We had a lively discussion of My Mother’s Son by David Hirshberg. I liked the book, though it started out a bit slowly. Most of the group liked it, but one person didn’t care for it at all. It actually makes for better discussion when we have dissenting opinions.

Thursday night was a Better Said Than Done storytelling show. I particularly liked Anne Rutherford’s story. And, of course, Andy Offutt Irwin is always a hoot.

Friday night was a reading of my friend, Patrick Cleary’s play Parthenogenesis, which involves interesting questions about what fatherhood means. One nit is that a mother with Type AB blood cannot have a child with Type O blood.

Saturday included zooming into two virtual Balticon sessions - one on Amazons of the Dahoney Kingdom and one on Jews in Space. Both were good, but the latter was particularly entertaining. I zoomed into a session on Sunday about Weather Satellites, which was okay, but didn’t really cover anything I didn’t already know. And I zoomed into a session on Monday (Memorial Day) called The Left Fin of Darkness, which was an interesting attempt to find animal models for the sexual lives of the Gethenians in Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Other things I did on Sunday evening were a story swap (hosted by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles) and a chavurah tag-up. And I played board games again last (Monday) night.

In between that, there was work and some errands on Sunday.

Cooking For the End of the World: I tried a new chicken recipe, which involved a marinade that had olive oil, lemon, garlic, ginger, and cumin. To go with it, I made tahini-glazed carrots, which involve olive oil, tahini, cumin, and curry powder. It was a nice change of pace, a good break from my usual stir fried random odds and ends. I have a slightly different tahini-glazed carrot recipe I want to try, which includes silan (date honey) so I bought some of that on this week’s grocery excursion.

Ink!: The most exciting
news of the past week was that I got an honorable mention in the Style Invitational (the Washington Post’s humor contest) for my “fictoid” about spring. Namely, “most tulips actually have four to six lips.” So I am no longer a one-hit wonder!

Don’t Analyze This Dream - Part 1: I was at a zoo and there were two large kiddie pools filled with whales. There were also creatures that were a sort of cross between whales and giant humanoids lounging in overhead bins above the pools. A child I was with was given a beeper to follow a red path around the zoo.

Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 2: I was in Singapore for a job interview. The person interviewing me was upset when I refused to eat raw vegetables on the grounds of hygiene. He proposed that we should eat in Chinatown the next night. I complained that my hotel room had not been cleaned sufficiently, as I found noodles in the kitchen drain. Also, for some reason, Singapore was only an hour flight from Boston.

I am busy at work and busy at home since I am going on vacation soon and in the usual pre-vacation mad rush. I have a few other things to write about due to the three unexpected things meme, but that will be a separate entry (or maybe more than one).

Celebrity Death Watch: Roger Hirson was a writer, primarily for television, but also of the book for the musical Pippin. Claus von Bulow was accused of murdering his wealthy wife. Anthony Price wrote spy novels. Frank Lucas was a drug trafficker. Thad Cochran was a Republican Senator from Mississippi. He was relatively moderate, e.g. voting to allow stem cell research, but still pro-gun and anti-health care. Paddy Fahey was an Irish composer and fiddler, whose works have been performed by a number of other traditional musicians. Leah Chase was the chef behind the well-known New Orleans restaurant Dooky Chase’s.. Le Anne Schreiber was the first woman to run the sports section of a major U.S. daily newspaper. Robert Earle was the second host of College Bowl. Maida Heatter wrote cookbooks, focused on desserts. Sylvia Miles was a film actress.

Leon Redbone was a singer and guitarist, who earned attention for his unique voice and his revivals of Tin Pan Alley classics. Until reading his obituary, I hadn’t known that he was born in Cyprus. I particularly recommend his album Champagne Charlie. Since that includes the song "Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone," I won’t say more.

Dr. John was a New Orleans singer-songwriter. His shows incorporated Mardi Gras beads and elaborate costumes and voodoo elements. He was pretty much the last of his kind left since Professor Longhair died in 1980 and Allen Toussaint in 2015.

Velvel Pasternak was a musicologist, specializing in Jewish music. He is credited with preserving Hasidic music, as well as Holocaust songs. But his work, especially as a publisher of 150 some odd books, was much broader and included Israeli folk dances and Ladino songs, too.

Embassy of Belize: I went to a reception at the Embassy of Belize last Thursday night. The weather held up, so the event was out on the back deck. They started with drinks – a mixture of pineapple juice and coconut rum that is apparently called a “panty ripper.” Then the ambassador gave a speech, emphasizing the diversity of Belizeans and their ties to both the rest of Central America and to the Caribbean region. Dinner included guacamole tacos, plantains, potato salad, rice and beans, and chicken. There was some sort of pudding with fruit for dessert. They also had music playing, which created a lively atmosphere. All in all, it was a nice event.

Addictive game: The New York Times puzzle page has a new game called Tiles. I recommend ignoring it if you plan to be productive any time in the next few days. Or weeks. Or months. Okay, it just showed up Sunday. So maybe I will get tired of it someday. But, in the meantime, it is definitely not helping me review a list of compliance documents.

Sticker shock: I need to go to the Bay Area for a few days. Unfortunately, the timing is not flexible. The price is not quite high enough to justify using miles, but it is getting close. Oy. I’m almost afraid to check Amtrak prices for a trip to NY this summer.

Since it is pride month: I am hopelessly heterosexual and past child-bearing age, so this has no direct impact on me. But I am increasingly angry about the struggles LGBT adoptive parents face with respect to having their parental rights recognized. This is particularly dramatic when it comes to citizenship issues. I believe that recognition of same sex marriage should imply that the adoption of a child by the non-biological parent should be treated the same way for same-sex partners as for mixed-sex partners. And this should be the case when assisted reproductive technology is involved. The State Department needs to update the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to fix this.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/454170.html

Back in late January, I devised an initial set of rules for a game I called Safety: It’s Not Jeopardy. Based on some feedback on the National Puzzlers’ League facebook page, I made some minor tweaks to those rules, mostly to randomize how players passed questions. I also somehow changed the word "Safety" to "Security" and wrote 60, rather than 42, questions, but blame those changes on a faulty memory.

I did note that I took it for granted that I could write interesting, yet challenging but fair, trivia questions. Given the results, I was clearly wrong. I overfocused on what I thought was interesting and overestimated what people would know. Given how many fights Robert and I have had over the years over his fondness for the phrase "but everybody knows that" (generally referring to things that maybe four people in the known universe know), I should have known better. Or at least tested things more on a different set of friends.

The first set of players quickly got into not even attempting to answer the questions. A passer-by asked what was going on and one of the players said this was the hardest trivia game ever. Clearly, I had misgauged what people know. What bothered me was not that people weren’t getting the answers, but that it was clear they were not having fun. I did get some useful feedback and thought it was worth revising questions as much as I could overnight and running it again the next night. That did work better, but it was still clear that an interesting item of trivia does not necessarily make a good trivia question.

To give a couple of examples of questions I was surprised people didn’t get:

Q: Bel Kaufman’s best known literary work is the novel, Up the Down Staircase. Who was Kaufman’s famous literary grandfather?

A: Sholem Aleichem – this falls into the category of things I assumed "everybody" knows, but apparently not so much. This is something I could have rewritten, perhaps by adding a mention of Sholem Aleichem’s most famous character, Tevye.
Q: The only painting Caravaggio ever signed is Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. In what city can that painting be found?

A: Valletta, Malta (in St. John’s Co-Catherdral) – I didn’t necessarily assume everybody knows this per se, but I did assume a significant number of people know Caravaggio was a Knight of Malta, having been exiled to that nation after her murdered someone in a bar brawl in Naples. (And, for what it’s worth, people should know more about him, as he was arguably the greatest painter of the 17th century.)
Q: In 2015, the movie industry of what country surpassed Hollywood to become the second largest in the world?

A: Nigeria. The intended trick is that Bollywood (i.e. the Indian film industry) is the largest in the world. But apparently the existence of Nollywood is more obscure than I thought. It’s not like I was asking about The CEO, a Nollywood movie that was the first film ever to premiere aboard an airplane. (Apparently, it was funded, in part, by Air France.)

To give an example of something I was able to rewrite to make it easier to guess:

Q: What Middle Eastern airline features a shower spa in its Airbus 380 first class cabin?

A: Emirates

Here, the change was adding the words "Middle Eastern" to the question.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the game mechanism (which is what I had been primarily focused on) is basically sound, though could use a bit more tweaking. If I do the game again, I need to put a lot more effort into how the questions are written. I’d intended to have a mix of difficulties, but the only question which actually proved easy was:

Q: Who was the second man to walk on the moon?

A: Buzz Aldrin

I probably won’t run this again next year, but intend to the year after. My reasoning on next year is actually because I have an idea for something else, which is probably a mini-ganza, though it could be a (live) pub quiz. We’ll see as it develops.

I also want to note that I was pleased to see more games and puzzles run by women this year, though there is still a gender imbalance. Saxifrage collaborated with Cazique on a Jeopardy, for example. And, most significantly, Colossus ran the Extravaganza.

The meme runs like this:
Comment to this post and say you want a set, and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

cellio gave me Musical perception (you have a singleton LJ interest there), a place not on Earth you would like to travel to, nalbinding, decadent food, MIT, a superpower, a favorite board game.

Musical Perception: Actually, I have a broad interest in perception. I mentioned musical perception, specifically, for two reasons. One is that I went to many of the lectures at the Music and the Brain series that the Library of Congress had a couple of years ago. The other is that music is a particularly complicated art form.

The type of questions that intrigue me can be talked about in other contexts. For example, why do we like what we like? I can just as easily ask why Caravaggio's paintings blow me away as I can ask why I was drawn to Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" the first time I heard it. As another example, I've pondered the question of what defines Jewish music. I can ask that question just as well of, say, Jewish food.

But the most fundamental question that intrigues me has to do with my inner experience. I can never know that somebody else actually hears the same things I do when listening to a piece of music. By the same token, I can't know that somebody else's experience of a given color is the same as mine. Because music has so many aspects (pitch, rhythm, timbre, etc.) it seems like a particularly fruitful area to explore.

A Place Not on Earth I'd Like to Travel To: I expect that the question was intended to bring up space exploration, but I think that the deep sea would be as intriguing. I've been on a couple of tourist submarine rides and both were awesome.

Nalbinding: This is one of the most obscure crafts I pursue. I usually describe it as what the Vikings did because they didn't know how to knit, but the same technique is used in a lot of places, including Papua New Guinea. It is, essentially, a detached buttonhole stitch, worked with a single needle and short lengths of yarn or thread. I learned it because I saw a class being offered at the Montpelier Fall Fiber Festival a few years ago and couldn't resist learning something I knew nothing about.

Decadent food: There is nothing more decadent than perfectly ripe fresh berries, but there is a lot to be said for good chocolate. Good chocolate is the major argument in favor of the continued existence of Belgium.

MIT: I chose MIT for a simple reason. I intended to major in chemistry, but I also knew there was a good chance I would change my mind. I figured that anything I did would still be in the math / science arena and MIT is universally strong in those domains while the other school I seriously considered (Yale) is less so. The Boston area was also a big draw. (I was very attracted to Dartmouth, but worried about the lack of Jewish community in the local area, for example.)

It was a good choice for me. For one thing, I did change my mind about what I wanted to do and ended up majoring in mechanical engineering. For another, I think I did a good job of taking advantage of the cultural environment in Boston. I'd also say that I fit well into the campus environment. What I appreciate most about MIT is that people there are passionate about what they're doing (which isn't necessarily what they're studying). From what I've seen via the MIT Club of Washington and encounters with a handful of current students, that's still true.

A Superpower: My first thought was, "but, wait, isn't the U.S. the only superpower left?" Then I realized what the probable intent of the topic was. I think the superpower I would most like to have would be the ability to instantly understand and communicate in any language.

A Favorite Board Game: While I love all the modern games, there is still something about backgammon that tops anything else for me. Part of it is memories of many hours spent playing it with particular people, some of whom are, alas, no longer with us. But mostly it's the simple fact that it is a game of skill when I win and a game of luck when I lose.

This was an insanely busy week, partly because of all the stuff I'm trying to get done at work before taking a few days off. On the plus side, I finally figured out how to approach a task I've been floundering on for weeks. It was interesting because I had this insight while I was asking somebody else for information that I thought cold be helpful. Nothing he said was actually relevant, but the process of talking it out led me to an "aha!" moment.

While I'm on the subject of work, I learned something cool this week. See, a lot of pure metals form crystalline structures that grow into "whiskers" that can then short out electronics. Tin is the most notorious (and has been a big problem in space systems, having caused the failures of a few commercial spacecraft). But the same thing can happen with several other metals - silver, cadmium, and zinc to name a few. I read an article this week about computer failures caused by zinc whiskers. It turned out that the raised floors in computer rooms were responsible, as the floor tiles had pure zinc coatings on their undersides.

I actually made it to a game night on Monday night. That's too rare an occurrence. I had a good time playing Pandemic (which we actually won - an even rarer occurrence), Guillotine, and Chrononauts. The latter was probably my favorite of the night.

Tuesday was a day for catching up on sleep. It was also farmer's market day. My bounty provided a nice meal in the form of a green salads with balsamic vinaigrette, fried zucchini, a frittata filled with onions, fennel and mushrooms with a bit of shaved parmesan cheese, and black raspberries for dessert.

Wednesday night was Bollywood dance. It was a disappointing class because there was a substitute teacher whose choreography I don't like as much. I was somewhat tired to start with and didn't think I got a great workout.

Thursday night I did household stuff. That included buying some theatre tickets (the Signature subscription, a 6-show pass for the Fringe Festival because I looked at my calendar and gacked, and the Shakespeare in Klingon).

On Friday, I needed to kill some time between work and meeting up with the Flyertalk crowd for drinks, so I went to see Toy Story 3. It was very good, though the 3D was not essential enough to really justify the extra four bucks for it.

As for the weekend, I did a Volksmarch in Towson, Maryland yesterday morning. The walk description had suggested that part of the route was actually on the grounds of the Hampton Historic Site, but the actual walk just skirted the site. It was pretty much all through an upscale - and very hilly - suburban neighborhood. It was a nice enough walk, but the hills were a real killer given the heat and humidity. Still, it counted for the cemetery special program (which was the reason for doing it) and now I've finished that!

Today was far lazier, with errands and the Sunday paper. I still have a bunch of stuff to do in the next day and a half, but it feels reasonably under control.

As for progress on my 2010 goals:

1) As noted above, I finished the Volksmarch cemetery program

2) I'm about 20 pages into The Apocrypha

3) I've been doing a good job of keeping on track with respect to dance classes

4) I have only one more major league ballpark to go to a game at (Minneapolis) and have tickets for that in August

5) The briefcase I had been using had a catastrophic strap failure on the way to work one morning. So I've been experimenting. I'm using a conference briefcase right now. I like the design (and the European Space Agency logo) but it's a little too small, so it won't be a good long term solution.

6) I've either barely started or done nothing about my other goals so far. But the year is not quite halfway over, so plenty of time, plenty of time.

The past couple of days have been incredibly hectic. I went into work yesterday thinking that my calendar was reasonably empty. Just after I got in, I got a phone call asking me to attend a 9 o'clock meeting, largely on the grounds that I would be capable of being dispassionate on the subject. As it happens, thanks to my corporate network, I had some information that was useful for due diligence. I also seem to be the only person around on our floor who knows how to use a particular useful database, so could pull out some budget numbers we needed.

Then we had staff meeting and I got asked to see what I could find out about another subject. Telephone tag is the official Olympic sport of the circle-A ranch and that (with some follow-up emails) filled up the rest of the day. I still made it to game night, where I enjoyed playing Just Desserts followed by Plague and Pestilence with Emily and Michael (and another person whose name I don't remember). Alas, the Busboys and Poets at 5th & K is not really a good venue for game night, since the layout meant we were scattered among several tables. The food was good, though.

I knew today was going to be busy. I spent the morning following up on various odds and ends, as well as digging up information for a quick turn tasker. Then I went downtown to a particularly wonkish meeting, which turned out to be useful as I learned something that may help us mitigate the damages if we lose a battle we're currently waging. (And I also learned what tactic one of the other players is going to use, which may be even more useful.) After that, I had to go over to my corporate office and brief my grandboss on a study we've completed recently.

After work, I went over to the Kennedy Center to see the National Symphony Orchestra Pops with the Smothers Brothers. The first part was just the NSO Pops, with Emil de Cou conducting a salute to Valentine's Day. I haven't quite decided how I feel about de Cou as a conductor. His flamboyant style is interesting to watch, but I think he overdoes it a bit at times. I was amused when he used Lincoln's birthday as an introduction to "The Girl From Impanema," claiming that Lincoln used to dance around the Oval Office. But I thought that his bit of asking people to request Gershwin songs went on too long and was rather silly. (They played "The Man I Love" and "Embraceable You," by the way. The latter is my second favorite Gershwin love song, behind "Nice Work If You Can Get It.") Other pieces they played included "The Carousel Waltz" (which they had opened with), a medley of songs from Lerner and Loewe's Gigi and two pieces from Carmen Jones.

After the intermission, it was time for the Smothers Brothers. They started with a cute version of "Those Were the Days" - "Once upon a time we were on TV ..." Most of the show consisted of their usual routine of bickering as they would start out a song straight and Tom would do something silly that Dick would react to. For example, Tom switches from Spanish to German in singing "Quando Caliente El Sol" and Dick just stares at him for ages. They've been doing this sort of shtick for 50 years and it hasn't changed. There were a few cute jokes along the way, but nothing especially topical. They also did the "yo-yo man" bit, which I remember having started something of a fad when I was a kid. There was a sequence of clips from their TV show, also.

It was entertaining and there were some memorable jokes. For example, Tom went into a whole bit about flying and Dick said "no matter how many frequent flyer miles you have, they never upgrade you to pilot." And they certainly look quite for men in their 70's. I do still wish, however, that they had done something new, instead of relying so completely on nostalgia.