Madison Madness and Money

Amy and I went to Madison last weekend to visit Evan and Sandy. On Saturday, we went to the airing of 'Michael Feldman's Whad'ya Know?' at the Monona Convention Center. I ended up getting on the show for about five seconds courtesy of a question that Dennis insisted be asked of a guest director at the Musicbox Massacre, "Which would win in a fight: an 800 pound gorilla or 800 one-pound squirrels?". Unfortunately, no answer to the question was even attempted, but it did offer me a questionable fame of the NPR variety. Proof of the event can be found at the shows website, www.notmuch.com. The date of our attendance was October 21st and I'm on near the top of the second hour of the show, probably in the third segment.

On Sunday, we made a short visit to Devil's Lake following an afternoon tour of Baraboo through various artists' homes. Local artists were showing their wares throughout the area and so we stopped at a number of them, not only admiring their craft but also partaking in some of the snacks that were available as a thank you for visiting. One place even had soup, which was a warm welcome on a rather frigid October day. We also played Artifact, the game I got from my parents a few months ago a couple of times and we can now see some of the strategies involved and how they can be turned around quickly during the endgame.

Finally, my first batch of freelance work will be coming from Rosetta Stone sometime in the next few days. It appears that this could be relatively steady work and the extra money will definitely come in handy while we still have the kitchen debt. I'm not exactly sure how I would like to manage these monies yet, though. I have always wanted to set up a seperate account for freelance audio work an have that money pay for more and better studio gear. In other words, the money made from extra audio work would go toward some kind of studio fund. That was the advice that was given to me quite a while ago and I would like to follow it, but that kitchen debt is just begging to paid. Obvioulsy, more thought will have to be given to the matter. Ultimately, I would rather have this dilemma over the problem of finding where the money is going to come from in the first place.

Musicbox Massacre: Part 2 - The Slothening

October has been an incredibly busy month for us. So far, all but one weekend has been filled to the brim with family and friends to visit and fun things to do. Even the weeknights have been busy. We've been attending our regular tabletop gaming night on Wednesdays and hitting some bars to celebrate birthdays of coworkers. It's times like these when work seems like that thing that just gets in the way of my real schedule.

Last weekend, we attended the second annual Musicbox Massacre, a 24-hour festival of horror movies. I'd seen a lot of the movies on the line-up, but I'd never seen any of them on the big screen. For me, the highlight of the 24 hours was watching John Carpenter's The Thing in a packed theater, hearing people gasping at the design and make-up wizardry, and starting in their seats at the scary moments. It's a real testament to the quality of the movie that despite after almost 25 years, it is still so tense and spooky that it can both scare and disgust an audience like it does.

Other personal highlights included finally seeing Let's Scare Jessica to Death, a movie that's more about tone, lighting, and pacing to make an audience uncomfortable than going for the popcorn-throwing scare. It's a film very much in the spirit of The Wicker Man, in my opinion, which is also one of my favorite movies. I was also treated to seeing Night of the Creeps for the first time in almost 20 years. When I was younger, I never really understood a lot of the comedy in the movie outside of the overt slapstick stuff, but watching it as a middle-aged man, I was able to piece together more of the references that they tucked away in the characters and settings. It's a movie dripping with 1980s cheese, but I would argue that that's an intentional decision in order to juxtapose the 1986 time period against the anachronism of the detective's character. The people sitting behind me had never seen it and said that it was the best suprisingly good movie of the festival. I would most certainly concur.

There were two surprise entries to the schedule that were both fantastic. The first was Imprint, Takashi Miike's submission for the Masters of Horror series on Showtime that was never shown because it had been banned from cable broadcast. That ban was for good reason, too. Imprint was one of the most difficult movies I've ever had the (dis)pleasure of watching. If you are a fan of Miike's other work, I would most certainly make an effort to see Imprint, but its 63-minute running length ends up feeling like a full 180 minutes by the time the end credits roll. Seeing Imprint once was enough for me but I will never forget it. The second surprise was The Eyes of Edward James, a short film that is shot entirely from a first-person perspective with continuous, interconnected, un-edited walking shots. If you find this movie as a rental, please check it out as it is a unique experience.

My only regret was the timing of Dario Argento's Deep Red. The festival had actually been given the unedited 126 minute Italian release and not the 96 minute American mess, neither of which I've seen. However, if you've ever experienced an Italian horror movie by the masters like Argento or Fulci, you'll know that it was very slow paced without much action. So, because it was also the next to last movie shown, I was so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open and ended up sleeping through most of it. If I had been smart, I would have slept through Friday the 13th Part 2 in order to see Deep Red.

On a final note, Movieside auctioned off some items for charity throughout the evening and I ended up getting a 12 month subscription to Netflix for their 3-at-a-time (Unlimited) plan for $50. Considering that the plan would cost over $200 normally, I was quite pleased with that deal. I'm most certainly looking forward to next year's Massacre!

Kids' Games

In preparation for our impending Dungeons and Dragons campaign, I purchased the player’s starter kit, which included a paperback copy of the player’s handbook, a set of dice, a single-page character sheet, three quick start guides, and in this particular case, a randomized set of eight miniatures. Priced the same as a hardback version of the player’s handbook, it seemed a decent value.

However, as I examined the items on the shelf, I noticed that on the back of the Basic Game kit’s box there was a photo of a group of twelve- to thirteen-year-olds playing the game. Obviously, there is nothing out of the ordinary about the idea that teenagers might play D&D. But, then again, why wasn’t it an image of a family gathered around a brightly lit table with windows and ferns in the background as one might find on the back of a box that contains Yahtzee. To be fair, the children looked well adjusted and there were no half-eaten Ding Dongs, empty bags of Cheetos, or slightly crushed cans of Mountain Dew in the photograph, so I might be able to cut Wizards of the Coast a little slack, I suppose.

Putting the image out of my mind because, after all, it wasn’t printed on the box that I was about to purchase, I took the game box to the counter. When I approached the cashier, she scanned the item and before printing the receipt asked me, “Would you like a gift receipt with that?” Obviously, to her, there was no way that the thirty something man in front of her was buying this for himself. I glanced at Amy and we both laughed as I told the cashier that we wouldn’t need a gift receipt.

Of course, the cashier's innocuous question charged me with considering why Dungeons and Dragons is assumed to be a children's game while Yahtzee or Cranium get pulled out at parties when everyone is left staring at one another. I considered two possibilites. First, the rules for Yahtzee can be explained in five minutes, usually while the game is being played, because they're even printed on the scoresheets while Dungeons and Dragons is a complex set of rules that use simple arithmetic functions to govern everything from unlocking doors to attacking an enemy. Even as an adult, using the total ruleset can seem like a daunting task. Therefore, some amount of effort outside of the game must be made to familiarize oneself with the rules. Dungeons and Dragons, therefore, cannot be taught to newcomers quickly enough for them to begin playing the game immediately. It requires at least a little preperation, which could be interpreted as study, which would most certainly be a roadblock for casual adult players.

The second possibility I considered was much more speculative than my initial thoughts on the complexity of rules: perhaps role-playing carries a stigma that naturally associates itself with children, especially in terms of what this study refers to as intersubjectivity or, "...having a shared understanding with another in a common activity." I'm sure that an expert could show me examples of adult forms of intersubjectivity, but perhaps there are not as many explicit references to the thorough kind that manifests itself in childhood role-playing. Realistically, I can't imagine many adults in the parking lot of a football stadium playing the game, each person playing as their favorite player, and especially not supporting one another's fantasy role. But I can certainly imagine them playing a simple game while perhaps secretly imagining themselves as a particular player at discreet moments.

So, my first point is rather pragmatic in nature, but as for my second point of consideration, I can only speculate that adults as well as children participate in a variety of forms of role-playing activities. However, going forward with that line of thought, I would also hypothesize that the context of those role-playing activities becomes more significant in adulthood. For unknown reasons, as we age it seems that we segregate our acceptable role-playing away from heroes, heroines, and fantastic settings and closer to more mundane subjects such as sports team management. Some of my coworkers hold stereotypical opinions of Dungeons and Dragons yet have no qualms about assuming the role of a baseball team's general manager.