VideoGameGeek Needs You!

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VideoGameGeek at https://videogamegeek.comThe minds behind the super-comprehensive boardgaming site BoardGameGeek (and the sister site, RPGGeek), recently unveiled their latest catalog/database/comment/ranking/forum site, VideoGameGeek, focusing on, well, all things Video Game, from Pong consoles to virtualized versions of Pong in a browser and everything in-between. And they could use your help.

The site, like its siblings, relies on users to contribute descriptions, images, and other information about various games, building up a database on games new and old. There are plenty of other sites, some well established, that perform similar database functions for video games, but the Geek guys have demonstrated their ability to develop and nurture a fairly mature, intelligent audience, and one hopes that VideoGameGeek will provide a good forum for both preserving video game history and engaging with the many video games of the present.

They could use some help in populating the database, so head over to VideoGameGeek, if for no other reason than to refute my claim that Marathon is one of the finest games ever made.

Not that you would disagree with me, of course, because Marathon is, without doubt, one of the finest games ever made.

The Strategy Club

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In honor of the recent start of school in much of the United States, behold this scan from a Virginia high school yearbook I recently picked up at a library book sale. Harking from the 1979-1980 school year, this thirty year-old assemblage of wargamers and role players looks much like a gathering of the faithful would look today, though we’re a bit older, wiser, and jowlier.

Maybe not the Breakfast Club, but definitely the Strategy Club!

The Strategy Club!

The Strategy Club met every week to organize wargaming sessions. They had refought the great battles of history (on paper and game boards, of course). They adventured through the deepest underground labyrinths and bravely fought fantastic monsters.

Read through the ironic lens so common today, the club description could be seen as cutting and snide, perhaps, but I’m more inclined to see the descriptive text as a valiant attempt by a non-hobbyist to understand and explain just what these lads were up to in the science classroom every week.

I wonder if there are many similar clubs dedicated to wargames and role playing games in high schools today. As with any hobby, wargaming circles tend to ask where the “new blood” will come from and bemoan the “greying” of the hobby. In my own experiences with Fine Local Game Stores, I’ve seen plenty of younger gamers, but seldom involved in what we would consider board wargaming, focused instead on collectible card games and fantasy/sci-fi miniatures gaming.

How to get them interested in the intricacies of cardboard and combat results tables is a valid question. I think the best approach is not proselytization but rather approachability. Smiles and a willingness to interrupt a turn to answer questions at a game store go a long way towards converting kids from cards to cardboard. Not that there’s anything wrong with cards, of course.

Pastrami at Primanti’s and Polish Pierogis? Perfectly Pittsburgh

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All cities worth their salt lay claim to a foodstuff or two, be it the mysterious Washington half-smoke or the ubiquitous Philly cheesesteak. On a recent trip to Pittsburgh, that Venice on the Monongahela, I had the chance to sample two foods that are, if not unique to Pittsburgh, at least very well represented there: the fry-and-slaw-topped sandwich and the pierogi.

Fry-and-slaw-topped sandwich doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, but it’s the culinary specialty of Primanti Bros., the chain of restaurants in Pittsburgh that serves it. The recipe is simple—meat and cheese topped with french fries, cole slaw, and tomato, served on two slices of thickly cut, soft-crusted Italian bread. It looks a little something like this:

Fries and slaw and meat, oh my!

The version above, a pastrami and cheese, with onion, from the Oakland branch of the chain, was, well, ok.

I understand the concept and the appeal, but it didn’t send me into the raptures that some of its devotees claim. There wasn’t nearly enough meat on the sandwich to counterbalance the heavy starch of the bread and fries, though for a shade under $7, I certainly got enough food.

Perhaps the other meat choices would have been better—the hot sausage and “kolbassi” versions sound promising—but the little bit of pastrami on mine didn’t add much to the experience. The cole slaw on top was the best part—almost dry and vinegar based, just as I like it.

A good sandwich, probably worth a stop if you’re in Pittsburgh, but not enough to inspire a road trip on its own.

And what would a jaunt to Pittsburgh be without sampling some pierogis, those lovely Eastern European dumplings? I didn’t have much time to search them out in Pittsburgh—ideally, one gets them from a Polish or Ukrainian church fair, made by hand and boiled to perfection in a well-worn pot carried over from the homeland—but I managed to get to a small Polish deli to grab a plate.

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Capitol Comics: Archie and the Gang in Washington, DC

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Despite the fact that Riverdale, much like Springfield, exists in every state in the U.S. and in no state at all, Archie Andrews and his chums still manage to visit places that do exist, including the Nation’s Capital, Washington, DC.

In one untitled story in Archie’s Double Digest 138 (January, 2003), Riverdale High takes the gang to Washington, DC, by bus. Given that the story appears in a digest, it’s almost certainly from an earlier time period, possibly, judging from the art, from the 1960s.

And of course, they visit the Capitol Building:

Archie and the Capitol Building

Not an altogether poor rendition of the west front of the Capitol, but one wishes there were that many trees still standing on the Capitol grounds after the Capitol Visitors Center construction . . .

Where else did Archie get up to his antics in DC?

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TARDIS Database Printout?

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Cyberman 1975 01 by Fredde Cooney Ahlstrom on flickr.com via a Creative Commons Attribution license.Given the vast numbers of foes the Doctor has encountered over his almost as vast number of regenerations, one wonders if he’s kept track of them.

Early episodes of Doctor Who emphasized the TARDIS’ powerful computing power, with rows of mainframe-like cabinets and whirring data tapes, and it’s not hard to imagine Hartnell’s Doctor inputting data in the brief lulls between random jumps through time and space.

The Guardian’s Datablog has taken on the task of enumerating all of the Doctor’s many foes, enlisting the hive mind’s assistance by creating a Google Docs spreadsheet, complete with motivations, number of appearances, episode titles, and which Doctor(s) they opposed:

Here’s a list of all the Doctor Who villains there have ever been since the very first episode in 1963. Whether it’s to help you put your bet on what will make a reappearance next series or just to satisfy hard-core Whovians, hopefully this will help you out.

The chart however doesn’t include villains exclusively in Doctor Who books, audio books and spin-off shows.

Definitely worth checking out the entire data set. The Daleks are, of course, tops in appearances, which is sure to annoy their rivals, the Cybermen…

(Image courtesy of Fredde Cooney Ahlstrom via a Creative Commons Attribution license.)

From Europe With Love: The Eurovision Song Contest

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Anthony Lane, writing in the June 28, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, visits one of those peculiarly European spectacles, the kind one points to when thinking of what Europe, as an entity distinct from its individual nation states, means: The Eurovision Song Contest.

The music that Eurovision honors and enshrines is the music you still hear from one corner of Europe to the other. […] But here’s the rub: European pop sounds like Eurovision pop even when it’s not from the Eurovision Song Contest. The stuff you hear in the back of Belgian taxis, on German radio, in Sicilian bars, and in the lobbies of Danish hotels: it was all created by the great god of dreck, and Eurovision is his temple.

(Anthony Lane, “Only Mr. God Knows Why,” The New Yorker, June 28, 2010)

Yes, it is that bad, as anyone who has sat though an installment of the annual contest can attest. And yet, Eurovision remains absurdly compelling viewing and listening. It’s pop, to be sure, but it’s distinctly European pop, tinged by yet disparate from American or British pop.

Fans Inside Telenor Arena, Eurovision Song Contest 2010 by SQFreak on flickr.com, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License.

The quality of the music isn’t the point so much, really. Eurovision is like an international musical sporting event, the Olympics of High Camp, complete with voting along regional blocs and ringers brought in from other countries to help your chances, there being no residency requirements to be a country’s entry.

Countries could certainly spend a fortune to bring in hired talent with real pop pedigrees, but they don’t. For all the pseudo-English sung at this event, there’s national pride at stake—no, not pride. National spirit, national joie de vivre. It’s infectious, and it brings the countries of Europe together in a contest that has little to no negativity or even competitiveness. Watch it once and you’ll remember it forever. Like it or not.

If you spend any appreciable time in Europe, you can’t avoid Eurovision. Having spent several formative years in Norway during the early- to mid-1980s, I was exposed to Eurovision right at the point where my musical tastes were beginning to coalesce. Those who know me point to this as a reason for (in their sadly near-universal assessment) my terrible taste in music. They’re wrong, of course—Toto IV is, truly, one of the finest albums ever—but I owe my predilections to the very first cassette tape I ever bought.

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