Soup Night

It's tortilla chicken soup night here at the Astleford household. I've been hard at work, slaving over a hot stove, since I got home. My wife is chasing my son around, making him laugh hysterically so that he can't stand up on his own. Soft music is playing on the stereo, and the paper cut from this morning's session of filing (at work) is screaming bloody murder because I got jalepeno juice (or salsa or something) in it.

Gen Con SoCal is not in the cards for this weekend. Sorry, folks, I just ain't doing it. My car has a radiator leak which, combined with its general unreliability as of late, precludes me from making the drive. Not that I would have gone were my car in tip-top shape; I'm sure I would've made some other excuse, either due to finances or (most likely) time.

This doesn't stop me from seeing a friend of mine on Sunday, though; a guy that I only see at conventions named Dave. Dave is an Aussie that I met at the very first Gen Con SoCal. He was a player in a massive Cyberpunk 2020 game that I was helping to run, and by chance I ended up moderating for his table towards the end of my evening out. I'm not sure when he noticed my name, but he recognized me instantly as "Ocelot," author of a handful of homebrew Cyberpunk articles from "back in the day."

As neat as it was to be recognized, it was also a bit uncomfortable. Granted, it would've been a heck of lot more uncomfortable if he'd expressed negative opinions about the design work I'd done in my youth. I managed to get over it, though, and he and I have since become friends. In the years following, he moved from Australia to the USA, and now lives a few scant hours away in the Arizona outback. On his way home Sunday, Dave plans to stop by my place, and we're going to head out for breakfast. It'll be good to talk with him again.

Aside from my car acting up, I also got the results of my latest blood test. Don't worry, folks, I'm not dying or anything. At least, not yet. In fact, I guess I'm pretty healthy for a fat guy who does little else but type all day. That is, except for the levels of triglycerides in my bloodstream. Who knew this stuff could kill you? So I'm going to be heading for a low-fat diet in a matter of days, which is pretty much what I've been doing for the past week or two, anyway. Not that I've noticed a difference.

This past weekend, I went to the first movie I've seen since V For Vendetta. I've been a big WWII buff for a while now, and I realized last week that Flags of Our Fathers had been out for a while. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It was a good mixture of grueling battle scenes intermixed with a story that was somewhat removed from the rigors of war. I was especially interested in the film for two reasons. First off, my grandfather was a sailor aboard an LST that landed at Iwo Jima; and secondly, there have been few good "modern" films that center soley on the Pacific campaign.

By "good 'modern' films" exploring the Pacific aspect of the war, the only one I can really think of that I approved of was 1998's The Thin Red Line. I'm probably the only person I know who liked the movie, though, being as it was largely tropical eye-candy interspersed with the self-reflection of the characters and only sparsely populated with combat scenes. There have been other films, sure, but I consider the majority of them (including the banal, Titanicesque Pearl Harbor, and John Woo's overly fiery Windtalkers) to be cinematic crap.

If you can think of other worthy "modern" Pacific theatre WWII flicks, by all means, let me know.

Okay, so past that, what else is up? Hmm. I ordered copies of Atlas Games' Pieces of Eight and Cthulhu 500. I regret not buying Pieces of Eight at Gen Con this past August, and so I'm making up for it now. As for Cthulhu 500, we can always use another light-hearted card game for those occasions when RPing is not on the agenda, but gaming of some kind is.

I also discovered that there's a re-make of Conquest of the Empire, which was the Roman equivalent of Axis and Allies when I was but a lad. The new edition looks damn fine, and along with a rules update (as well as some expansion, from the looks of things), it's definitely on my list of games to buy within the next month or two.

So I'm babbling tonight, yeah. There's very little of consequence for me to say, actually. Schwalb is heading to see Queensryche tonight; I never figured him for a QR fan. I've seen Queensryche live on two occasions, the second of which included a backstage meeting with 3/5ths of the band. They seemed like a great group of guys, and it was a good show to boot.

I've got some stuff to do, so I guess I'll cut this post short. There will be more later, I'm sure.