This week, in the ABC Monday Mystery Movie, Lt. Columbo is going to try every trick in the book–but he has to make sure that book doesn’t end up with his name in it! Watch Columbo Reads a Death Note! This Monday, at 8:00/7:00 Central!
Continue reading “Columbo Reads a Death Note”
Once upon a time, I was called upon to put together a module of activities for a summer theatre camp. Through some breakdown in communication, I had an inaccurate notion of the ages that were at this camp.
This is that story.
Continue reading “Greek Tragedy for Little Tykes”
This Lookout Games offering is an enjoyable two-player experience with pleasant artwork, a straightforward mechanic, and one of the most intriguing uses of time that I have ever seen in a board game.
We are always on the lookout for a game that’s good for two players, as I think I may have mentioned in my review of The Fox in the Forest Duet. This was true well before the pandemic, but has taken on a different sort of urgency in the last year. Patchwork is a game I had seen around, either on the trip to OwlCon that netted me Fox in the Forest, or when I’ve bopped in to some of my favorite local game stores. So I was aware of it, even curious. But I wasn’t sure that a game that revolves around quilting was something that I’d get a lot of satisfaction out of. Then Alli went and put together a grab bag of games for a recent birthday, and–seduced by the art–she placed this among them. And I gotta say, I’m really enjoying this game.
Continue reading “Jeff’s Game Shelf: Patchwork”
A brief rundown of the hardware, software, and other accoutrements I use to facilitate teaching college-level courses from home, though this setup could be used in many lines of work.
My college will soon resume face-to-face instruction. I’m 50% vaccinated. How do I feel about either of those things? I don’t know. But the point is that even though teaching from home has been a big part of my life in the last year, I’m soon to be returning to the classroom. However, like a lot of colleges (community colleges in particular), I think my school will be keeping more elements than expected from this year of online only. At least, I hope they will. I’ll miss parts of online teaching–particularly, the ability to offer niche courses that actually make enrollment, since they’re accessible to every tech-equipped student in the HCCS area, as opposed to only those students with regular transit to my specific campus. Furthermore, despite the increase in vaccinations, the pandemic is not over, so I do not think the online-only classroom will be disappearing any time soon. To that end, I just wanted to share the system I’ve kludged together to work from home.
Letters from a chorus girl from the play-within-a-play in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.
In the 1954 classic White Christmas, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye play a couple of army buddies turned Broadway producers (Bob Wallace and Phil Davis, respectively). Like many Hollywood musicals from the period, there’s a show within a show–this one is titled Playing Around, which Wallace and Davis bring up to Vermont in order to facilitate their Yuletide hijinks.
This year, when Alli and I were having our annual watch of this holiday classic, we kept thinking about how two random singer/dancers were added to the show at the last minute, and the effect this would have had on members of a professional production. This is the story of one of those chorus girls, based on Alli’s and my joking around.
Foxtrot and Renegade have produced a truly charming two-person game that could easily be more of a hobby than a diversion.
A couple of weeks ago, I stopped in at OwlCon, a gaming convention held at Rice University. There, I picked up a couple of games I’d been eyeing for a while, and a couple more impulse buys. One of those impulse buys is a game that my wife and I have thoroughly enjoyed: The Fox in the Forest Duet.
Continue reading “Jeff’s Game Shelf: The Fox in the Forest Duet”
The Landing Theatre Company’s debut of Elizabeth A. M. Keel’s new play about simulation and intimacy gives us intimacy without simulation.
When my wife and I pulled up to the performance space, I thought that I had misentered the address into Google Maps before suddenly having the freefall recollection that Override is produced in people’s private homes. I’m a big fan of productions that alter the traditional performance framework, but I’m always initially nervous to see how it will be justified by the production. (Also, the thought of being in a stranger’s home sets my teeth on the edge of my seat. But that’s my damage.) However, Override used the alteration quite effectively to make even more immediate its tale the difficulty and importance of human connections.
Continue reading “See OVERRIDE (this is a theatre review)”
For no particular reason.
PIGGY: As for moi, I have been studying martial arts. Do you want to see what I can do? Come here, sweetie.
KERMIT: Oh, I don’t think that’s necess–
PIGGY: Hiii-YA!
(Kermit flies like a ragdoll across the set.)
KERMIT: Sheesh. I need to get out more.
PIGGY: Oh, you think vou could get out of that? Is that what you’re saying?
KERMIT: No, actually, what I said was–
(Sounds of off-screen mayhem. Pan back to Piggy and see she has tied Kermit’s limbs in a pretzel knot.)
Continue reading “The Muppet Stephen Sondheim’s Company”
Pressman’s Oregon Trail card game is good for a shot of nostalgia, but has poor mechanics and limited replayability.
Because this is my blog, I am going to make it exactly as unfocused as I am. So let’s have a little something about what of my abiding hobbies: board games! The games I cover here aren’t necessarily new or great. They’re games I have on my shelf, and want to say something about.
Continue reading “Jeff’s Game Shelf: Oregon Trail”
A fun, brief speculation about Back to the Future, pt II.
A couple of my more abiding interests are anachronisms (the subject of my dissertation) and time travel (a lifelong fascination). These two things have combined recently in an academic article I’m working on which combines the too and brings in a little alternate-history fiction for good measure. In this article (which, happily, is nearly finished) one text I get a lot of mileage out of using is Back to the Future, part II (henceforth, BF2). Now, I don’t share my time-travel thoughts on here as often as I thought I would when I set up this blog–I had originally intended to make an entry for every story in Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s wonderful anthology The Time Traveler’s Almanac. The reason is this: since time-travel literature is an academic interest, most of the time I end up wanting to put my time-travel thoughts into an academic publication. But sometimes the thought is silly enough, or too insubstantial for such a publication, that I feel free to share it here, instead. This is one of those thoughts.
Continue reading “By His Biffstraps”
Jeff (in the bowtie!) 