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| 2/28/2005 2:34:39 PM Single Mothers and Chaos Warriors | Comments (4) |
| Pretty good weekend despite most of it being spent at the store. Thursday s snow (yay! snow) nixed some plans so I ended up hanging out at the Guild. Played some warm-up BloodBowl for the upcoming seasons. New teams to break in and all.
Friday was a lot of prep for our 'Cabin Fever' games day... y know, for kids. So I unveiled, once more, my renowned Dungeon Crawl amidst playing some History of the World... three player History is weak, but quick.
Saturday s Cabin Fever went pretty well. I think I ran 6 Dungeon Crawl sessions. Probably a record. It was pretty much none stop all day, breaking only long enough to construct Mountain Dew snow slushies.
One kid was there having a 13th birthday party with his mom and two friends. They were supposed to have a spot in one of the role-play groups, but that fell through, so I ran the four of them through the Dungeon Crawl for free. I was on the top of my game, adding some mood and atmosphere to what is supposed to be a pure hack and slash adventure.
It was priceless. The mom played the cleric dealing out healing to her son and his friends as they gleefully hacked monsters to bits. At times as many as half a dozen onlookers were cheering them on. The kids were really enthusiastic about the game. One had practically memorized an old 1st ed DMG he had come accross. At one point he called me out on why they were fighting Dryads, who are supposed to be benevelont forest spirit tree-people, to which I replied without missing a beat, "The dungeon environment and lack of sunlight prevents photosynthesis, making these dryads ill-tempered and angry." That explanation seemed satisfactory enough as they immediately began whacking away at the foul tempered tree-folk.
There was another precious moment, where the birthday boy landed a series of blows against a dread chaos knight, and barked out, "Isn t in he dead yet?" in frustration; to which his mom answered oh so matter-of-factly, "Honey, that's a chaos knight. He's gonna have a lot of hit points." How great is that? There s a bonding moment most mother-son combos never get to experience.
Anyway, so we had the whole store sing him happy birthday... I think he was too laden with dungeon monster bloodlust to be too embarassed and I got to have some cake... and the mom even tipped me handsomely for running the dungeon (I tried to refuse), don t see that too often.
Anyway, as the event died down Ben came by and we were later joined by the wayward Ryan Aponick for some 6 player History of the World. I fared miserably. Maybe the worst performance ever in the game, but it was just cool to have some new faces playing and to have Aponick around (next time he s in town we ll have to squeeze in Angies, as he is still the reigning Zingo King... five zingos, plus fries... plus pie... frightening).
Sunday we ran a Warhammer tournament. I played a few games and even managed to best Rob s Cheater of Ways army, destroying him once and for all. More board games Sunday night with Darkan and his brother followed by the slaughtering of Americans. All in all a pretty good weekend.
As the snow continues to fall, I guess I ll wrap things up and head home to some Chicken Corn Soup (perhaps the purest food on earth).
-bampf | | | So, seriously, why are Pennsylvanians so terrified of snow? We ve seen it before. We know what it does. Driving in it isn t that friggin hard. Yet at the first sign of it and people just go into hysterics or become gripped by fear. It s bizarre.
I m curious as to what would happen if we had some kind of real natural disaster or weather anamoly... my best guess is most of these people s heads would simply explode... I d be really OK with that... at least they d be out of my way on the highway.
-b | | 2/22/2005 3:35:45 PM Need some fucking golf shoes! | Comments (6) |
| Eventful weekend, to say the least.
Had a great time in Baltimore running the BloodBowl Tournament at GW s Grand Tournament. Turn out was a little light but the competition was excellent. I ended up winning it all... I kinda hate doing that. Looks bad to win your own tournament. But alas, my Punchin Pugilists battered their way to the number one spot fighting through three of the top 10 rated coaches in the US. Nice.
Had a great time outside of the event too... reminiscent of the old days of Games Day trips... being raucous around the inner harbor, gorging ourselves on crabs at Phillips, and laying about the hotel rooms laughing and joking. Good stuff.
Looks like we ll probably be running a tourney again at Games Day. That could be cool, even though it s a one day event.
Had Presidents Day off to spend some quality time with the family. That s a good thing. The past year has been nothing but a long string of personal tragedies and trauma for myself and every member of my immediate family, so the time together is good.
Did some shopping with my sister. With holiday sales prices compounded with her Bon Ton employee discount I ve managed to completely overhaul my entire wardrobe for about as much as two or three items would typically cost.
After shopping, went to see Constantine with Evan and Stoner. It was actually pretty good. Infinitely better than the trailer made it look and a ton better than we expected. In many ways I thought the story was better presented than it was in the comic. Impressive. And Neo/Ted managed not to fuck it up... even more impressive.
On the down side, we lost Hunter S. Have to watch Fear and Loathing post haste and read Rum Diary. Crazy old bastard left quite a legacy...
"Our trip was to be different. A gross physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country. But only for those with true grit. And we chocked full of that, man!"
Words to live by.
Sticking with the crappy news, there s other horrible shite going on in my life, but this probably isn t the time or place to be discussing it. Suffice to say that it seems that personal tragedy does lend the one upside that it helps dilineate real friends from pretenders, back-stabbers and other assorted riff raff. Good things to know.
-bampf | | | Speaking of houses... some blog house cleaning. Replaced the desperately inactive Blog Friends with new exciting ones. Ben and Todd, welcome to our nightmare.
-b | | | Just a quick update, for those who, for some reason, may care. I ve uploaded some additional pics of the house. These are the pics taken during the home inspection, and are labeled v2 for visit 2. Basically just more of the same.
Anyway, the link again:
House Pics take 2
-b | | | New Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy trailer on amazon.com today! Sweet! It actually looks pretty awesome. The cast and crew appear to nothing but a bunch of BBC no names... I like where this is going. From the trailer, the casting looks awesome. Love the Arthur Dent. And not having a bobbing manequinn or cgi head on Zaphod s shoulder is a good decision. April 29. I can t wait. Might have to try to reread the books again before then.
Also, in other interesting movie news, Guy Ritchie s new film Revolver is due out in the Fall. Luc Beson is a co-producing and Guy has gone on record saying Madonna will not be in it! Sweet! Although according to the same Ritchie interview this is a much more serious film than Lock Stock or Snatch... don t know if I like the sound of that.
In other news, this weekend I m running the BloodBowl tournament at Conflict Baltimore (formerly the Games Workshop Grand Tournament). Should be a sweet time. We re putting the AGBBL on the national BloodBowl map (don t laugh, such a thing actually exists).
-bampf
| | | Well, that was a scare. For those who didn t get redirected to the Network Solutions error page... my domain registration for bampf.com expired. I wasn t warned nor was I able to immediately re-up because the third party registration company I initially used had woefully out of date contact info.
So I had to do some scrambling and make some calls but all seems well. I was extremely paranoid about those guys who simply cull the lists of expired domains, scoop them up and then sell them back to their forgetful owners at inflated prices. Network Solutions even provides a bunch of features to fascilitate those guys. Bastards.
Anyway, disaster averted. I m registered thru Feb 2014. So if you guys could do me a huge favor... please remind me sometime late 2013 to extend the registration. Yeah, that would be mucho appreciated.
-bampf | | 2/10/2005 1:35:06 PM One House, sans crackheads | Add Comment |
| I had my home inspection yesterday. Things went pretty well. No big surprises. A few minor details to attend to. The inspector pointed out a lot of little maintanence things I should/could do. Inspector said the same thing about my last house when I bought it and I did none of them... I expect about the same here. Ah... Laziness, my constant companion.
Anyway, I did make one significant discovery. There s a large building across the street that was obviously a business. I paid it little mind on my first visit. This time I took the time to read the sign...Gaudenzia - Home for Adolescents. Home for Adolescents? WTF? So I do some quick research and essentially its a detox for 13-18 year olds. Great. So I m gonna have a yard full of crackheads. Nice.
I m actually not worried about it. The place seemed nearly empty, and may just be more of a mental health/counsoling thing. I dunno. In any case we ll be well armed against any crack-head intrusions (their withdrawal induced spastic convulsions will make for excellent target practice). Plus, I hear if you need to buy any appliances/electronics crackheads apparently always have good deals on hot merch. Sweet.
-b | | | I m in Philly today and there are no fastnachts. WTF? Stupid non-Pennsylvania Dutch. This sucks.
-b | | | I feel obligated to make some comments about the Super Bowl. It is the biggest day in sports all year (I d say it s the best day, but I still think the NFL s Opening Day has a slight lead).
First, the not game stuff...
The pre-game crap was nigh unbearable. Just really awful Fox chaff. The physics one was particularly grating. The commercials save a few high spots were pretty uninspiring. After denegrating the field of physics it was a nice follow-up punch to disgrace the sport of rugby with that non-sensical Gladys Knight thing. Ug. After the dim-witted Marvel comics ad I was convinced that a Fox executive somewhere had taken it upon himself to personally poop on all of my loves. Bastards. The half time show was abysmal, no surprise (I m pretty sure that Fox was contractually obligated to make it so by the NFL in light of last year s events).
Now the game itself was good. I was rooting for the Eagles, but I would rather have seen a close Pats win than an Eagles blow-out, so that was cool. We were sick of the dynasty talk after the second mention (we were counting the number of occurences... I think we reached 8). Tom Brady not winning MVP was an added bonus at the end so as to help diminish the absurd best-QB-ever talk. The dumbfounding thing about the game was the poor coaching decisions by the Eagles. The play-calling, the alignments... the atrocious time management. What the hell? I say this loss is on Andy Reid and his staff... they opened the game in a 4 wide reciever shotgun set... when trailing late in the game with time quickly slipping away they bring in the fullback and multiple tight ends? What? Just mind-numbing.
So anyway, with poor non-game stuff and a good actual football game, our theory is that hopefully some of the extraneous crap that tends to overshadow the game may start to erode... leaving only the beautiful game... wouldn t that be grand? We can only hope.
And now begins the worst time of the year... waiting for football to start anew (amidst the horocious Nascar season... gah). At least BloodBowl will start back up soon to help ease the pain.
One last comment... American Dad... awesome. So it s clearly Family Guy with a different wrapper... nuthin wrong with that! It was also nice to see the show juxtaposed with a new Simpsons episode... made it clear just how dated and irrelevant Springfield has become in comparison. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Viva la Seth McFarland!
-bampf | | | So there have been a lot of comic movies lately. Some good (X-Men, Spidey, Hellboy) some not so good (Hulk, Elektra, DD). These are exciting times for us long time comic geeks. However the excitement levels have never been so high as right now...
I know Evan has brought this up on his blog a number of times, but the Sin City movie is looking to be the most amazing peice of comic cinematography ever! If you haven t seen the trailer, go watch it now! A simple search should yeild a couple different sites to get it. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez? Oh yes. Every shot in the trailer is a direct correlation to a panel in the comic... it s amazing. The cast... unbeleivable... and of course the comics themselves are friggin awesome (thanks, bk, for the lending).
Now on top of this, I noticed something incredibly intriguing on imdb yesterday... I was checking out my favorite directors to see about any new projects and stumbled across Darren Aronofsky planning a Lone Wolf and Cub movie! How friggin awesome would that be? Now I have to pull all my Lone Wolf and Cub s outta the attic and re-read them... they re fabulous BTW.
Wow. Exciting times for us geeks.
-bampf | | | Ok, now you know the rules. May be a little more obscure this time.
1. "Incidentally, my leige, this is how we know the world to be banana shaped." Monty Python and the Holy Grail
2. "We'll start the ass-kissing with you." The Boondock Saints
3. "Forgive me, father, for I am a worm." Highlander
4. "Bigger guns. We need bigger fucking guns!" Split Second
5. "Shall I describe it to you? Or would you like me to find you a box?" The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
6. "It's kosher. As Christmas." Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
7. "Ugly little spud isn't he?" Ghostbusters
8. "We will charge valiantly, and be butchered valiantly. And afterwards men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chest and say what a brave charge it was." Gettysburg
9. "I'm gonna eat some watermelon now." UHF
10. "Wiping out the human race? That's a great idea. That's great. But more of a long-term thing. I mean, first we have to focus on more immediate goals." 12 Monkeys
11. "Now a question of etiquette; as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?" Fight Club
12. "Some kings tend to be amnesiac. Others, the opposite... retentive... a royal retainer!" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
13. "I think I'll build her a cake or something." Napolean Dynamite
14. "Mmm... nachos." Hellboy
15. "Wither, ladies, wither." Fifth Element
16. "If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!" Time Bandits
17. "Funny, she doesn't look druish." SpaceBalls
18. "...when suddenly an unconscious Argentinean fell through my ceiling." Moulin Rouge!
19. "Don't take any guff from these fucking swine." Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
20. "Clearly, you've never been to Singapore." Pirates of the Carribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Have it em...
-bampf | | | I m working on a second list of quotes so the late comers can play. And no looking up quotes on google this time around! I mean it! (not that I m accusing anybody of cheating or anything)
-b
| | | A request was made. And I aim to please.
So here are some pics of the new house. Signed the last of the paperwork last night.
Da House
The pink room is the master bedroom... my room. That one may require a bit of paint. | | | All right, all the lj losers have done this so I guess I ll follow suit. Twenty quotes from twenty beloved movies. Identify the movie and I ll cross em out. No prizes, no wagering. Evan can t play (turnabout is fair play). Sorry.
1. "Now they will know why they are afraid of the dark. Now they learn
why they fear the night." Conan the Barbarian
2. "She's terribly partial to perriwinkle blue." Snatch
3. "Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos." The Big Lebowski
4. "You know, for kids!" The Hudsucker Proxy
5. "The dead know only one thing: It is better to be alive." Full Metal Jacket
6. "I kick ass for the Lord!" Dead Alive
7. "I'm a mushroom cloud laying mother-fucker, mother-fucker!" Pulp Fiction
8. "The Statue of Liberty is kaput? That's disconcerting." Saving Private Ryan
9. "There was this guy, and he was always requesting shows that had already played. Yes. No! You have to tell her before! He couldn't quite grasp the idea that the charge nurse couldn't make it be yesterday. She couldn't turn back time, thank you, Einstein! Now, he! He was nuts! He was a fruitcake, Jim!" 12 Monkeys
10. "Everything around us can be described and understood through numbers." Pi
11. "We should be drinking and fucking by now." The Blood of Heroes
12. "The good Lord says he can get me outta this mess; but He's pretty sure, you're fucked." Braveheart
13. "Hurry to meet death, before your place is taken." The 13th Warrior
14. "It's not my fault I'm the biggest and the strongest. I don't even exercise." The Princess Bride
15. "A few nights ago Rory's Roger iron rusted, so he has gone to the battle-cruiser to watch the end of a football game. Nobody is watching the custard so he has turned the channel over. A fat man's north opens and he wanders up and turns the Liza over. 'Now fuck off and watch it somewhere else.' Rory knows claret is imminent, but he doesn't want to miss the end of the game; so, calm as a coma, he stands and picks up a fire extinguisher and he walks straight past the jam rolls who are ready for action, then he plonks it outside the entrance. He then orders an Aristotle of the most ping pong tiddly in the nuclear sub and switches back to his footer. 'That's fucking it,' says the guy. 'That's fucking what' says Rory. Rory gobs out a mouthful of booze covering fatty; he flicks a flaming match into his bird's nest and the man lit up like a leaking gas pipe. Rory, unfazed, turned back to watch his game. His team won too. Four-nil." Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
16. "Bunch of slack-jawed faggots 'round here. This stuff'll turn you into a goddamned sexual tyranosaurus. Just like me." Predator
17. "You're a funny man, Sully, I like you. That's why I'm going to kill you last." Commando
18. "Would you like a ding-dong? Oh, I don't mean mine! I mean a chocolate ding-dong... of course mine would be chocolate now that I've been dyed. Bubba Hotep
19. "First you take a run at La Fours with a sock full of quarters. I'd do it, but I pulled my back out humping your mom last night, noodge! Mallrats
20. "Hail to the king, baby" Army of Darkness
There ya go. Only a couple are obscure. And for bonus points which two were uttered by United States Governors to be?
-b | | | Sweet sweet Day of the Hog.
Greatest... completely meaningless... borderline retarded... holiday... ever.
Seriously, I m a big fan of the Day of the Hog. Don t have the movie... should fix that. Quality Bill Murray that.
-b | | | OK, did you ever have a dream that evoked memories of past dreams? I m pretty sure I had one of those the other day. I m not one to remember my dreams outside of vague impressions and fleeting tidbits, but I m quite certain I dreamt about going to an event that I had visited annualy, and I had vague remembrances of making these annual trips. Seemed perfectly reasonable.
Then when I awoke (and still had decent recollection of the dream) I realized the event existed only in my dreams. So can the dream-state version of me have its own memories? That would be pretty weird. Makes it seem like the dream-me is almost an alternate reality me experiencing an analagous but clearly different lifeline.
Now the really frightening part of all of this is that maybe he s having a better time of it.
Fucker.
-bampf |
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