Nothing puts me off more than corporate mandated friendliness at a store or restaurant. When the sentiment is so clearly phony, it puts me off and makes me less likely to patronize the place, not more. It’s the same reason I can’t stand Rachel Ray. I tried watching her $40 a day show when that first came on, and her ridiculous hamming put me right off. “Ooooh, mmmmmm, it’s sooooo gooooodddd. Mmmmm!” Now seeing her stupid face on a box of Triscuits makes me not want to eat Triscuits.

Last night I had dinner with Nik and Rick at PF Chang’s before the Anti-Flag show. PF Chang’s has this weird “signature” thing where the waiters excitedly mix up your sauce for you before you even order. I usually just lay back and think of General Tso while this is going on, but last night I finally had to say something to the waiter. “One thing I never get about this place if your obsession with the sauce,” I said. “If I get something like dumplings, I might want a sauce like that, but if I don’t it’s just a waste. So, what’s the deal with the sauce and why are you so keen to give it to me?” Our waiter’s response was to leave the soy sauce and take everything else away in a huff. I guess it didn’t occur to him that I might want to use the chili oil or other condiments on my own. “I’m taking my sauce and going home, you bastard!”

He totally had the enforced friendliness thing going on. It made me think, of all things, of porn. No wait, stay with me here. I was watching HBO’s Pornucopia show and they were interviewing this actress named Katie Morgan. She said that when she first got into porn, she didn’t know what to say during the scenes. Then an older pro said, “It’s easy, you just say whatever is being done to you.” If you think about that, it’ll ruin most porn for you. Anyway, our waiter was doing the exact same thing, and he ended every declaration with “guys.” So he’s in the middle of clearing our plates and he says, “I’m just clearing your plates, guys.” Really, I get it, because I’m one foot away from you and I have eyes!

The Anti-Flag show was OK. I guess I just wasn’t feeling it. I mean, I’m glad there are still some earnest bands doing real protest music, but it takes a lot more than raising your fist at a punk show to affect change.

A lot of folks have asked me if they’ll see me in Vegas this week at Games Expo. The answer is that Green Ronin is not attending. Here’s why.

Games Expo is a new show organized by Mark Matthew-Simmons. He’s spent a year going on about how he’s doing this show for the good of the industry and he only has everyone’s best interests at heart. I do not believe him for a minute. I think this is part of Mark’s lunatic vendetta against GAMA and I just don’t want to participate in that. He pretends otherwise, but why else would you announce a show in the same month and the same city as GAMA Trade Show? Just a coincidence I’m sure. Now to its credit GAMA decided to push GTS into April instead of having an outright bitch fight, but that still puts two game industry shows in Las Vegas within a month of each other. How many companies or retailers have the budget to go to both? And even if you could do both, is it really going to be worth your while?

I decided that Green Ronin would support GTS because we know what we’re getting with that show. As this is Games Expo’s first year, all we have is Mark’s promises and a location that’s way off the Strip. The danger here is that this show will split the audience down the middle and make neither show viable. If we end up with zero trade shows in two years because of this, we’ll know who to thank.

I got up early this morning, determined to get some shit done. Spent about an hour proofing and polishing something for GR, and then cut up about three months worth of accumulated boxes on our back porch and garage. This allowed us to move the Christmas stuff still littering the living room into the garage and reclaim that room a bit from the encroaching tide of stuff.

Around 1 Rick swung by, as we had plans to visit American Eagles AKA the game store that time forgot. The way to American Eagles goes right by Fire and Sword, a miniatures shop near the Northgate Mall. Rick asked me if I wanted to stop in and I said sure. We got inside to find that all stock was 30% off. A cursory glance around showed the racks were pretty picked over. I asked if the store was going out of business and one of the employees confirmed that it was indeed on its way out. After 5 years the owner was packing it in. It’s hard to be a game retailer these days.

I always liked Fire and Sword. It was miniatures focused, which made it unique of all the stores in Seattle. The owner was also pleasant and seemed to be doing it because he loved it. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t that close to me and as I don’t drive I didn’t get there that often. I always meant to go down for one of their DBA nights, but never did get a chance. I’m sorry to see the place go.

I did make a point of buying some stuff there today. I hope it helps the store close in the black. I picked up three Osprey books about the English Civil War. It’s a period I’m considering gaming and while I hadn’t planned to buy those books today I figured what the hell. Also got a couple of army books for the Disposable Heroes game and Ferdinand assault gun for my 15mm Germans. I think the store is open for another few weeks, so if you are in the Seattle area and like minis do stop by and help Fire and Sword go out of business with as much money in pocket as possible.

The media would make me laugh if I wasn’t so busy being sick. Lately I’ve seen a spate of “legacy” articles about the Bush administration. With nearly two years still to go in office and uncountable damage to America and the world still to inflict, George Bush is apparently worried about how he’ll be viewed by future generations. The so-called surge in Iraq is one example of him trying to salvage something from his foreign policy disasters. These media articles ask in all seriousness what his legacy will be and whether it will be positive or negative. When it has become clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that the Bush administration is dangerously incompetent and grossly corrupt, is this really a serious question? On almost a weekly basis some new horrifying scandal breaks, to the point that one can’t even keep up with all the ways this administration has made a mockery of the Constitution and the supposed ideals of American democracy. So no, dumbass pundits, the question is not, what is Bush’s legacy. That is clearly to go down as one of the worst, if not the worst, president the history of the USA. No, the question to ask right now is much more troubling.

What has the Bush administration done that we don’t know about yet?

For 6 years these no good liars have done whatever they’ve wanted, the law and decency be damned. Until recently the democrats had no ability to even get a Congressional debate going, never mind subpoena anyone to find out what was going on behind the scenes. Even so, enough information has come out to make the scale of incompetence and corruption jaw-dropping. But it surely can’t end with the scandals we already know about. Behind Dick Cheney’s death mask and Karl Rove’s huckster grin I am certain there are much, much worse things that the administration has done in the name of democracy and freedom that will shame America for decades to come. We won’t really have a chance to know about them until after the next election (one hopes) and even then it’ll probably take at least a decade for something close to the truth to come out. If what we’ve seen so far is the tip of the iceberg, one can only shudder at the possibility of what lies beneath the surface. If the journalists of the fourth estate would remember what it means to actually do their jobs instead of endlessly repeating back talking points while giving equal time to every crackpot idea the right wing idiocracy spews out, we might find out some of this sooner. I’m not holding my breath.

I have been meaning to do an update since I got back from Vancouver but I have overwhelmed with small tasks. There’s no one big project or problem consuming my time, but a seemingly endless series minor things that don’t mean much individually but are collectively important to get done. To quickly sum up a few things:

Vancouver was fun as always. See www.nikchick.com for more details.

The Pirate’s Guide to Freeport is going to rock.

I have less and less desire to argue with my industry colleagues about pointless bullshit.

The Sarah Silverman Program, sad to say, is just not funny.

The Rex Mundi comic is a great read and I can’t believe I never heard about it before last month.

I will not be at GAMA Trade Show this year.

That’s all for now.

I was so on autopilot yesterday morning that I forgot to bring miniatures with me when I left for work. That made it rather difficult to play a minis game last night at Rick’s. Initially we thought we’d give Axis and Allies: Battle of the Bulge a try, but when I was still reading the rules come 9 pm I knew there was no way we’d finish. Instead we played a couple of games of Ticket to Ride, which was fun as always.

Next week we’re going to start a mini-campaign of Blitzkrieg Commander that’ll probably last about a month. Since I have German paratroopers, we’ve decided to kick it off with a theoretical airborne assault in the opening hours of the Battle of the Bulge. I’m trying to seize a vital crossroads for the advancing panzers from Rick’s Americans. Historically, the Germans did try a paradrop during the battle but it went disastrously wrong (in part because at this point in the war very few German paratroopers had actually received jump training!). Our scenario is slightly different but plausible enough. We’ll see if it ends as badly for the Germans. Without tanks or heavy guns, it’ll be a challenge for sure.

Ex-TSR and current computer game designer Warren Spector gave a talk at GDC this week. In it he said:

“If you think that story has no place in games, you’re crazy. If you think story is everything in games, you’re just as crazy. It’s all about balance.”

He’s talking about computer games but I think it equally applies to tabletop RPGs. The roleplaying part of RPG is important but the game part is just as crucial.

Gamespot story here: http://www.gamespot.com/events/gdc07/story.html?sid=6167016

The other night we went to see Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast at the new SIFF Theater. At the show I picked up a flier advertising Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films. I so totally want it. Janus is the distribution company that brought most of the classic foreign films over the US from the 50s on. To celebrate they have released this enormous boxed set that features 50 films, one for each year they’ve been in business. You can see the list at http://www.janusfilms.com and as a collection it is truly awesome. From Kurosawa and Fellini to Wajda and Eisenstein to Truffaut and Bergman, it’s a who’s who of art house directors. Even after a SIFF discount though the set is still $600. That is a great deal considering what you get, but I can’t really justify dropping that much money when I’ve got credit cards to pay down. It is quite tempting though, so I’m considering selling some minis and game stuff on Ebay to fund a purchase. Then it’d be more like trading for it, or so I could tell myself.

If you are a player or GM, you’ve probably read a lot of advice on how to make your gaming more fun. It almost all boils down to one thing though and that’s my gaming maxim: don’t be a dick.

Yep, that’s all there is to it. Don’t be a dick and you and your friends will enjoy your games a whole lot more.

If your GM tells you his game is about heroism and camaraderie and you insist on making a character who is a loner and an assassin, you are being a dick.

If your players tell you they want a break from the current campaign and you respond to that with a total party kill, you are being a dick.

If you beat someone in a competitive game and you then gloat and rub their faces in it, you are being a dick.

Don’t be a dick. It’s that simple.

Any visit to a con makes me ask an age old question: what is it about such get-togethers that cause people to forget how to use the toilet? I seriously don’t get it. I lost count of the number of times I had to wipe down toilets and flush other people’s waste. By the end of each day at ComicCon I seriously feared using the bathroom because the stalls had become so foul. Is seeing girls dressed up in anime costumes so exciting that these guys just don’t have time to aim? Were they in such a hurry to get to the Jedi Stage that they had to plotz everywhere?

At the other end of the spectrum I went to two restaurants with bathroom attendants. Man, do I find them creepy. Look, I know how to wash my hands. I don’t need anyone squirting soap into my hands and giving me towels, and I’m certainly not going to tip for the privilege. Here’s an idea for bathroom attendants. They should hire them at conventions, sporting events, and movie theaters. Their job would be to check the stalls as the patrons exited. If they find the places befouled, they make the mad sprayers clean up their own messes. THAT is something I’d tip for.