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For about three years now, my partner Doug has been hankering after Mister Softee, a soft-serve ice cream truck that he fondly remembers from his childhood. Mister Softee of Central Illinois has a Facebook page so you can find the truck. Today they were parked all day at the Warrensburg Corn Festival. So we went, and drove an hour to get ice cream ... and it was the best street fair we've been to. Tiny little thing -- no more than 5-6 vendors, maybe 6-8 food and beverage places, a midway with a handful of rides, and miscellaneous entertainment. But I give them 10 out of 10 points. Let me explain why... ( Read more...Collapse )Tags: community, event, event report, family skills, food, holiday, illinois, life lessons, personal, review
Current Mood:  happy
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We went to see Wonder Woman today. It was totally awesome. Definitely one of the best superhera movies ever. \o/ Lots of athletic women running around kicking butt. Also check out the fantastic merchandise. If you look closely at the dolls, you see they match the actress surprisingly well: reasonable breasts, a little hip, a fairly thick muscular waist, and nice powerful legs. :D Also the Amazons mostly weren't willowy. They were trim and muscular, or beefy. I lost count of how many times someone said "You can't ..." to Diana, and in the next frame they were looking around for her while she ran off doing it anyhow. And that's feminism for you. I have to look pretty hard to find flaws. I did noticed that Diana's mother was an idiot. (You made a baby Amazon, not a dahlia. How could you possibly think she'd be a pacifist?) It was just generally brilliant. If you like watching women kick ass, go see this movie. Tags: activism, entertainment, fantasy, gender studies, review
Current Mood: pleased
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Yesterday we went to see the Harp Twins perform in St. Louis. They play rock music on acoustic concert harps and smaller electric harps. They are exiting in person! Among my favorites: "Stairway to Heaven," "Carry On, My Wayward Son," "One," and "The Imperial March." (I imagine Darth Vader is spinning in his grave over having his scary music played by hot chicks on electric harps.) We have the first two albums, and bought the second two, plus a couple of t-shirts. Their stuff is available online too. We also found out that they've been crowdfunding the purchase of new instruments, so this counts toward us supporting crowdfunded projects. \o/ We actually got in line before the concert, but they had to close the line to start the concert. I suggested giving out numbers to those of us who hadn't gotten through -- we'd been standing there for 20 minutes -- which the staff did. If this happens to you occasionally, you can write numbers on scratch paper. More than occasionally, just buy a strip of tickets you can tear off and hand to people, it's faster. So we were able to get our swag quickly after the show. :D I suggest booking these talented ladies at Worldcon some time. They have played other conventions, they already know a bunch of fan-relevant material, and there is nothing else like them. Tags: music, personal, review
Current Mood:  busy
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Today we went to watch the movie Monster Trucks. It was hilarious and entertaining. I was expecting a pulp science fiction / teen adventure flick, and it turned out to contain quite a lot more science fiction than I anticipated. If you are at all into SF or adventure films, I highly recommend it. There are some excellent twists in it, so if you like being surprised, go see it now instead of reading further. It's not often that any entertainment can surprise me, but this one did. Details and spoilers below the cut. ( Read more...Collapse )Tags: entertainment, environment, humor, review, science fiction, wildlife
Current Mood:  amused
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Brixx, which I have mentioned before in April and May, continues to be a favorite pizza place. The last time we were there, we tried the 4x4 meat pizza. This time we got the Hawaiian, which was bumped up a notch by the addition of fresh cilantro; that makes a surprisingly large improvement in an already good concept. :D Worth noting, they now have more desserts besides the s'mores pizza, which is excellent hot but doesn't reheat at all well so is only good when you have enough people to eat it all at once. The sundaes are terrific -- we got a chocolate one, with a very complex sauce. Also, they're very responsive to feedback. They've added NA beers. We discovered this when my partner Doug spotted the St. Paulie Girl's on the menu. They were out. And instead of being either completely out of NA beer or offering a crappy version like O'Doul's, they had a replacement: Kaliber, one of Doug's other favorites. Turns out one of the staff has been working hard to build a really top-notch selection of craft beers, not only the alcoholic but also the NA ones. Since they already have a perfect-10 craft root beer -- which is my go-to beverage there even though I rarely get anything but water at a restaurant -- I also pointed out that there are a few small brewers catering to NA celebratory beverages with fancy sodas or sparkling fruit juices. It was nice to see people who aren't looking at restaurant work as just a job, but as a passion, presenting edible art and hanging out with people. It's kind of like a little slice of Terramagne. \o/ Tags: food, personal, review
Current Mood:  satisfied
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Today's surprise awesomeness was our discovery of Americana Huckleberry soda. For those of you not familiar with huckleberries, they are related to blueberries, with a flavor that is darker, wilder, and more intense. It is like the Platonic ideal of what a blueberry is trying to be. Much the same may be said of European bilberries. This particular soda is flavored with huckleberry and elderberry extracts. Yes, the real thing. Pop the cap and out comes an intense cloud of fruity aroma. It is like standing in a berry patch, without having to watch for bears. (I don't recommend drinking this outside in bear country. Or where there are wasps.) The top and middle notes are potent huckleberry goodness, with a luscious rumbling base of elderberry. :D My tail was wagging my butt all the way through the bottle. To make matters better, it is sweetened with pure cane sugar and is not full of obnoxious chemical ingredients. No nasty aftertaste. Just awesome bubbly essence of berries. You know how I've been raving about Terramagne's Azure Cap soda? They have a huckleberry flavor. It tastes like this. <3 Tags: food, personal, review
Current Mood: happy
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A friend of ours spotted what turned out to be a fun and unexpectedly brilliant card game, We Didn't Playtest This at All. (I'm pretty sure the title lies. I can't imagine a game this elegant developing without a lot of diligent work.) We expected it to be fun, because we love Fluxx, which is another card game of whimsically shifting rules. You can tell that much from the outside of the box; if you like games of this category, this is a great one. Basically you draw and play cards, then do what they say. This part of the game is light, fast, silly entertainment. However, there are other subtleties that emerge during play, which are elegant and impressive. ( Read more...Collapse )Tags: gaming, humor, review
Current Mood:  nerdy
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Today we visited Armored Gopher Games in Urbana, Illinois. It's a nice little gaming shop with handbooks, board games, miniatures, card games, and other goodies; plus a sizable table zone in the back for people to play. The owner chatted with us while we browsed and talked about our interests. Based on our tastes, he then recommended the card games Gloom and Cthulhu Gloom. My partner Doug being a Mythos fan, we came home with the latter. ( Read more...Collapse )Tags: gaming, horror, humor, review
Current Mood: satisfied
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![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) brushwolf tipped me to the roleplaying game Fate, which is actually a game engine rather than a specific game. It has a core system and an accelerated version, both available in hardcopy or ebook formats. The ebooks are pay what you want. I'm paying in word-of-mouth advertising. If you just want to read for inspiration, the ebook is fine; if you're going to play the game, a hardcopy is advisable. The core system is customizable for any genre, and in fact, it's released under Creative Commons so people have made their own versions especially of the earlier editions. You can find some of that stuff online too. If you want to create a game for some project of your own, check out the CC options for game engines that might fit, rather than starting from scratch, unless you just like building games. This came up while we were discussing Polychrome Heroics, a superhero series of mine. For the parameters of the worldbuilding and characterization, I drew on comics but also on the comic-genre game Truth & Justice, which uses the PDQ engine, so the characters are primarily described by taglines and abilities. Like Fate, PDQ emphasizes storytelling over complex mechanics. That makes it good for freestyle or customized gaming. It's ideal for both novices and experts, because it can be learned quickly yet used very creatively. However, it's not a great match for people who like playing with lots of different dice or keeping track of meticulous character details. Comparing the two engines, use Fate if you want something customizable, although it's got a bit of genre material too; PDQ has more genre-specific versions already customized, which is great if you want to play one of those genres. Fate also favors two-edged character traits which can work for or against you, whereas PDQ tends toward traits that are either positive or negative. I like balancing strengths and weaknesses, so I'm particularly attracted to an engine that facilitates playing both out of a single attribute. I also really like Fate's skill pyramid, where you get a certain number of skills at each level of competence; that's both realistic and playable. I'm also just generally intrigued by the similarity between the two engines as storytelling devices. They're very much like how I run games in my head. I actually started out by hacking that through AD&D with bits borrowed from elsewhere, which was a hell of a kludge that probably worked only because I can see into other worlds (and so could some of my players). If I were designing a game, I'd likely aim for something along these lines, a storytelling engine. Tags: gaming, networking, reading, review
Current Mood: busy
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