13
Mar 06

Attention board game geeks: Settlers of Catan

Every month at my apartment complex there is a “game night”. It’s hosted by this couple who work for a group called “Cares”, a non-profit that tries to build community in large apartment complexes. The idea behind Cares is that if you make the complex feel more like home the tenants will want to take better care of things and stay longer. That saves the landlord money.

We have a young married couple on site who run all the events. They’re very nice. My guess is the complex gives them a free or sharply discounted apartment in return for their services. I can see the point behind trying to build community in a 300 unit complex, although every time I go to a Cares event there are usually fewer than eight people and most of them are regulars like me who can only be coaxed from their apartments to play board games. The last couple times I’ve gone it’s been a total sausage party, 4-5 guys and occasionally a couple women playing Scrabble. Out of the three times I’ve gone in the last three months, we’ve played Risk once and Settlers of Catan twice. I’m new to Settlers of Catan, but it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s Chess meets Risk. Although there is no combat, it is very strategic and competitive. The basic idea is to get to ten victory points before anyone else. You start out building roads and villages and each village gives you one point and helps you to collect resources like ore, wood, sheep, timber, and clay every time the dice are rolled. These resources help you build or buy development cards. Like Chess, there are several ways to win, and as you play you will see the most popular strategic gambits: the race for the longest road (2 victory points), the race for the largest army (2 victory points), etc. Many people go all out for the development cards, which like Chance cards in Monopoly can often throw you some sort of bonus. For example, there is a card called “Monopoly” that allows you to strip all of one resource out of every player’s hand. The game itself is relatively new as board games go, having been created in 1997 by a small publisher, so many people have not heard of it. It will become one of those classic games, if it hasn’t already. It’s that good.

Poking around online, I stumbled across a free knock-off of Settlers of Catan called Sea3D that you can play over the Internet. It’s a direct translation of the game into digital form produced by Jason Fugate, a programmer at EA in Chicago. It even just looks like a board game on your computer since it uses 3D representations of the game pieces complete with wood grain. In addition to a fantastic iteration of Settlers, Fugate created a ladder ranking and online game matching system, so you can actually compete against players from all over the world. The game application allows you to host your own Settlers matches as well as join games hosted by other players. In some ways, I wish I hadn’t found this because I’ve spent several hours playing since last week. Last night I laid awake at two in the morning trying to figure out why my strategy using the sheep port didn’t pan out. I think I’m coming out too strong in the beginning which results in unwanted attention from my opponents who check me with the Robber and slow me down. The Robber is placed on a tile whenever someone rolls a 7 or plays a Soldier card. If the Robber is on one of your tiles he can keep you from producing resources until the piece is moved.

If you’re interested in playing The Settlers of Catan Sea3D is be a good way to start. It’s still more fun to play in person since you can enjoy the petty little rivalries and arguments that inevitably take place as players become frustrated watching their fortunes change.


08
Mar 06

Golden Age Music

The 1960’s was a golden age for popular music. It was a time where diverse musical influences bubbled out of the larger culture and melted together, especially black and white music. I don’t think you can say the same about any time since then. Today, due to cultural fragmentation music exists in isolated ghettos. With the exception of one-off experiments by the likes of Jay Z and Linkin Park or anomalies like Eminem, it’s all segregated. Sure, white kids listen to rap and hip hop, but no one is really listening to and grooving on the same stuff… cross-pollinating. I was reading Wikipedia about one of my favorite singers Lou Christie (born Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco) whose biggest hit is “Lightnin’ Strikes”. It went on to describe a rumored interracial relationship between him and Diana Ross while they were on tour with Dick Clark. That would never happen these days. Everyone is too busy reinforcing cultural walls and stereotypes.


08
Mar 06

Five word movie reviews

I’ve watched a few movies since the weekend. I went on a rental spree at Blockbuster since the Netflix process requires too much of my patience, and these are a few things I’ve seen since then.

Four Brothers – These four guys can’t act.

Wedding Crashers – Owen and Vince are old.

Thumbsucker – Good movie. Great ensemble cast.


02
Mar 06

Wish I was in Austin for this…

March 4, 2006: Staple! The Independent Media Expo:

An event to promote independent creative media: comics, mini-comics, zines, art, and self-published literature. Building a community to encourage communication between creators and their audience. All the while having a damn good time in the Live Music Capital of the World – Austin, TX.


28
Feb 06

Obvious: ‘Brokeback’ named Hollywood word of the year

‘Brokeback’ named Hollywood word of the year:

The nonprofit group Global Language Monitor placed “Brokeback” — as in the film title “Brokeback Mountain” — at the top of its list of Hollywood words and phrases that captured attention this year.

Paul JJ Payack, the head of Global Language Monitor, said the movie became a cultural phenomenon that generated a million jokes, according to Google. Overall, a Google search shows more than 38 million references to the film, although only about 10 million people saw the movie.


14
Feb 06

Liberace was an alien from outer space

…with hotpants. As far as I know, this is a real photo. Liberace had a huge following among middle aged women, which is completely inexplicable. Why do older women love flamboyant, closeted gay men? Clay Aiken probably has a similar following.


13
Feb 06

Jigglypuff on American Idol

American Idol in Austin…


10
Feb 06

Caché

Jody and I went out for dinner and a movie last night after work. We stopped off at Campisi’s Egyptian, a good Italian restaurant here in Dallas with good food and great atmosphere. I just read on their website that Jack Ruby ate dinner at Campisi’s the night before he shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Campisi’s is the kind of place where you see nicely dressed old couples who look like they have been coming back for a while. My favorite feature: coatrack attached to every booth. I had spaghetti and meatballs, although in this case it was meatball. The plate came piled with a ball of spaghetti and the marinara sauce was sweet and fresh. I almost had to use the garlic toast to cancel out the sweetness.

After dinner, we crossed Mockingbird Lane to stop over at the Angelika to see Caché, a French film about a couple who are being secretly filmed and provoked with these mysterious recordings. It’s a movie where you have to pay close attention. Unlike what we’re accustomed to from Hollywood, it doesn’t pre-digest the ideas or plot for you. You really have to observe and think about it. After the movie, in fact, this older gentleman kept asking people as they were leaving if they “got it” in the hopes that they would give him “the answer”. I’m glad he didn’t ask me because it seems almost a violation to ruin that sense of mystery with an inarticulation of your own sense of meaning, even though I’m sure he could have come up with his own interpretation had he just thought about what he had seen. That’s not to say that the film tries to be incomprehensible because it doesn’t, however it’s very much an examplar of the “show don’t tell” school of film-making. It is worth seeing.


10
Feb 06

Blogs I love

Sometimes I really need a break from reading about all the technology-related prognostication and navel-gazing. Here are a few antidotes to the usual fare:

WWTDD: What would Tyler Durden do:

I don’t know how much unicorn blood they pump into her [Terri Hatcher] on the set of ‘Desperate Housewives’ to make her look human for a few hours, but think about it, when was the last time you saw a unicorn? Exactly.

Clublife:

“I heard,” I say, “that you went cliff diving, but when you dove, your lat spread flared out so wide that you took flight, and glided out to sea, and they had to send a Mexican Coast Guard boat five miles offshore to pick you up.”