O Captain My Captain

When I found out about Robin Williams I cried pretty much right away. I cried like a big baby. My wife helped me calm down some. I had tears in my eyes for a good 24 hours. If you bring it up around me and get me talking about it, I might cry some more. I fell asleep that night with The Fisher King on. I went on Amazon and ordered a bunch of his films I did not already have on Blu-ray. I’m on a waiting list, mind you, because every one of them was sold out already. 

It took me decades to figure out that I was completely addicted to watching films. Once we moved into our home and I started to feel cemented in place for the first time in my life, I just embraced my love of films like never before. It's not a cheap habit to have. But as habits go, well, it is far from the worst. I don't buy lottery tickets. I smoked just two cigars all summer. A bottle of vodka has been sitting above my fridge for years now. And the closest I've come to drugs is taking a few too many pills after a painful tooth problem. 

I buy and watch films. 

I don't profess to having the most sophisticated taste in film. I love to love films, and I hate to hate them. I want to enjoy myself. Even the shittiest film is alright. As much as I like artsy films, I like Godzilla films too. I love it all. 

I'm not buried and lost in films either. Anyone who knows me knows how important my family is. There is no substituting film for reality. No substitute for hiking up a mountain. No substitute to spending time with my wife and kids, or running through a thunderstorm with close friends. Films, though, are a distant second for me. And once I realized how much I loved films, I dove in head first. Films are like a drug for me. Like a second source of air I tap, to breath into vestigial gills awakened by this grand art form of our time. 

Films made me who I am. I wanted to be funny like Bill Murray in Meatballs after seeing that film as a kid. I lost myself in Star Wars for most of my childhood and became an artist. I was with a childhood friend out in the Hamptons after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark. We dug a huge hole and kept jumping over it all day, all the while talking about getting a video camera and somehow making a film. Eventually my friend Jesse would make a film. One of my favorites. 

As time went on, I'd see films I loved and buy items that were used in the films and put them around my house. The globe from several Wes Anderson films. The pliers from Speed. The sunglasses George Clooney wears in The American. The book on religion Robin Williams shows to Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King. Yup. I tracked all that crap down. Back in college, I even dragged my girlfriend all over Philly looking for the toggle coat from Dead Poets Society—the coat the kids wear in the film. Maybe I've taken it too far sometimes—nervous LOL. 

I've rebought VHS films on laserdisc, then DVD only to rebuy them again on Blu-ray. I can see the film grain now on my 60-inch TV, so hopefully I'm done buying films in many formats. Criterion has me hooked good, though. And, new films keep getting made. 

I know there are other people out there like me, or there wouldn’t be a Blu-ray market. There wouldn’t be a DVD market, and there wouldn’t have been a laserdisc or VHS market before that. I'm the reason most films have a commentary when you buy a copy of them. You may shake your head at people like us when you see us in the store, but we’re the reason wide, flat screen TVs are now accessible and affordable for you. We showed our support. We tested the waters.

I enjoy sitting in my basement after dinner and watching a film, pretty much every night. I like keeping a film on when I fall asleep. Soon, in September and October, I'll start watching almost all horror films until Halloween is over. This is a habit I adopted from my lifelong friend, Mike, another partner in crime for his love of films. I rarely watch TV any more. I watch Netflix. 

At Barnes & Noble not too long ago, I grabbed Naked Lunch on Criterion Blu-ray and got to talking with the sales associate there about David Cronenberg. We became fast friends as we discussed our similar drug of choice—films. 

My oldest son is now slowly collecting Criterion films I have not seen, and I could not be happier.  

I've tried my hand at making films, too—by writing screenplays. I don't have the temperament to wrangle so many people to all do what I want to make a film. I'm too easily frazzled to make anything beyond a short, very simple film. I write instead. It's easier. I don't need to bother anyone except my wife. 

I'm just going to cruise through films, and hopefully leave a wake through them till the day I die.  

When I learned Robin Williams was gone—to suicide no less—I just broke down and cried. I'm more than familiar with getting emotional from films. They make me cry all the time. I also lost my best friend from childhood to suicide because of addiction and depression. He was a filmmaker who made one feature film. He even told me he met Robin Williams once. 

It's all connected, you see. 

We’re all connected. 

All of us. 

Like the lattice of coincidences Miller talks about in Repo Man. Or how Steve Martin’s character in Grand Canyon says, "all of life's mysteries are answered in films."  

Alex in A Clockwork Orange says, “It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.”

Real life is too nuanced and detailed for film to ever compete. In Cinema Paradiso Alfredo says to Toto, "Life isn't like in the movies. Life... is much harder."

It's all true to some extent. For me, beyond the obvious escapist entertainment nature of many films, the best and most subtle ones give me back watered-down moments from real life that cannot be relived—like in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories when he's just enjoying a fleeting moment watching his love sit and read a magazine. I love that.  

Films feed me joy, pleasure, action, adventure, sadness, loss, triumphs, and countless more experiences. They feed my love of storytelling, my love of music, my love of photography, and above all, my love of people.  

Robin Williams was a manic individual on the talk show circuit. I always suspected his act was a massive mask. As I'd watch Robin Williams over the years, he always seemed like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day, when he'd lost himself in the repetitive days and was just reciting lines, ready to explode. Then I'd see Robin Williams in various films, like The Fisher King, Good Will Hunting, Awakenings, and Dead Poets Society. He'd give these amazingly nuanced performances, even more subtle then actors who were far more controlled then him in real life. I'd wonder, continually impressed beyond belief, how the manic, nervous, off-screen Williams could do that on screen.

Well, now we all know how he was able to pull it off. He was never the funny man. He was always the sensitive, dramatic, complex individual. The jokes were a defense mechanism. 

People may ask how can you cry for someone you never met. A stranger. Well, if I can cry again and again watching films, I can sure as shit cry for the tragic loss of someone I loved watching so much, performing his heart out in many of those films. Someone who moved me to tears in a performance certainly warrants emotion from me for his real life loss. 

And I did meet him. I met him in his films. 

God bless Robin Williams. 

We all know and love Robin Williams

There is Robin Williams, and then there is everyone else. 

We have lost one of the all-time greatest comedians, actors, people, of our time.  I don't feel like writing. 

We know. 

We all know. 

RIP Robin Williams.

D&D PHB

So with all my running around this summer, camping trips, beach trips, backyard fires, etc, I somehow found the time yesterday to get over to my local gaming store, Flights of Fantasy, and grab copies of the lovely new D&D books. The Players Handbook looks amazing. 

A special thanks to FOF for holding copies aside for me while I was away. 

I have not been entirely game free this summer. I did play a few rounds of Magic with my son earlier this week. 

I hope everyone is well. Please post here or check in just to say hi and chat. 

—Adam

Slip-N-Slide Wizard

The Mini Wizard takes a Slip-N-Slide!

I Missed Free RPG Day

You'd think as school ends for my kids and it gets warmer things would get easier around here. The opposite is the case. The lack of a normal weekly routine creates chaos here. Warm weather takes me outside for yard work, outdoor photo excursions, films on the back deck, fires, BBQs, and more.

The weekends fill up and a slew of birthdays, graduations, and upcoming weddings find a way to pull me away from the web, my blog, and gaming in general. I always swear it won't happen and every year I contradict myself and act incongruously to some ideal I can simply not live up to.

I even just figured out that I missed Free RPG day. :( That did suck. I'm just too busy doing other things. I'd love to hear from everyone. Post on WNWA G+ page. or just post comments here. Or PM me and we can chat. I'm here, I'm just not here-here.

I did manage to pre-order the fast approaching D&D basic set at my local gaming store. I'll definitely post when we get that. I 100% promise.

So what have I been up to? Well here are a few pictures just so you know I've not been sitting around doing nothing...

My new Jeep keeps me busy. 

I've been out and about taking pictures. 

My dad turned 70! :)

I found these awesome crates @ Target. I'm using them for gaming stuff. 

We've had outdoor video game nights...

and outdoor fires. 

I had a shed removed

And we had a garage sale. Don't worry, we wound up keeping all these toys. They are now in the attic. 

Is Gaming A Winter Sport?

It took a while, but I slowly learned that I am not a winter person. I grew up in NYC, where, although winters were cold, big snowstorms were rare and usually melted quickly. Spring came in March too, not at the end of May. I think not caring or noticing winter so much when I was younger also has a lot to do with the fact that kids are just crazy awesome and rarely care about the things that adults concern themselves with. After all, winter for me as a kid meant holiday gifts and any snowstorm meant that I had a quick easy way to make some pocket cash by shoveling snow.

Now as an adult, winters just flat out suck. My moving further north and working from home has not helped. Sure cost of living in upstate NY is way better than in hipster central NYC, but after 10 years up here winters just seem to get harder and harder. The few times the sun would poke out mid day I would find myself standing in the doorway shirtless and trying to soak in some rays like Superman trying to recharge my battery.

Each winter, gaming and RPGs have more than helped to get me from November to April. Each and every year I have so much fun gaming I swear I'll not slow down once it warms up. Then, like clockwork, as soon as it warms up my gaming slows, my blog posts wain, and I'm outside doing landscaping, taking walks, wandering around, skating, and camping. Dinner on the back deck, outdoor movie nights, and hanging in our shed all become part of the daily routines when the weather warms up.

I did not game for decades between childhood and adulthood. In many ways the winters up here likely led in some way to me getting back into gaming. I do not do winter sports. I do not watch professional sports. And even though I love watching films, something else was needed to fill the downtime when going outdoors for anything other than necessities is just not something I want to do. Even playing in fresh snow with the kids lasts for an hour or two tops and the prep time and cleanup doubles that time. It's not pretty. At one point I was in the house for so many days without going anywhere that when I did finally get in my car to drive to a dental appointment my cars battery was dead. Five to seven days of no use in sub-zero weather made the car unable to start.

I did not game every second this winter, but I was focused on it a lot. I posted a lot here, too. I went to D&D Encounters—actually leaving the house to game at a local store once a week. I also read and read and read. I read rule books, adventures, and just soaked in lots of game-centric stuff all winter. I painted minis and worked on my Land of the Lost miniatures. The year before it was Blade Runner miniatures. These things kept me from going nuts. Kept the cabin fever at bay.

I hope this spring/summer/fall will be different. I hope I can stick with some level of momentum. Surely I will not be going strong like I did when going outside in -5° was madness. I'm going to make an effort. I'd like to do some gaming with the kids on the back deck. Maybe short games in tents while camping after the sun sets. Something.

I'll document what I do. I'll post when I can.

D&D Next, launching this July and August, should help. I'm also going to continue to attend D&D Encounters for the next session too.

If and when I ever move to a warm climate—it will happen one day—I'll hopefully achieve some happy medium between the feast or famine gaming extremes the ultra cold winters up here have elicited from me.

Lake ice from our "Spring Break" trip even farther up north.

Dubious Alliance Card Game

The people over at Dubious Alliance were nice enough to send me a preview review deck to examine, fondle, shuffle, and play. Kudos to them for a job well done!

The first thing I noticed was the old school-style art mixed with new-style gameplay. This is a nice contrast, as many of us long for the look and feel of RPGs from our youth. Over-slicked computer-made art is beginning to wear very thin and has become so ubiquitous that even high-quality work gets lost in a sea of ultra-slick art. This art stands out.

Although this is a card game, it does play out in a semi-cooperative, RPG style. The name "Dubious Alliance" is appropriate since you play as a band of Orcs working together yet individually vying within the group to trick, bluff, or otherwise achieve the ultimate level of one-upmanship on your "team." You need to be careful, though, because if one orc dies everyone loses. A player wins when more prestige points are earned than indicated on the player's card. The game has a home-brewed simplicity to it, and that is a definite plus. Each card has interesting art and simple-to-follow info. It's not too complicated. It's not too simple. It can be played in less than an hour. And it's flexible because it can be played with 3 to 7 players. While I've only played with 3 players so far, I can imagine it would be even more fun to play with a band of 7 back-stabbing orcs.

Smartly, the creators of  Dubious Alliance have made a very simple and easy-to-follow video here. Check it out. Game companies with far more resources should take note as to how an easy-to-follow, well-explained video can do wonders for helping game play get started quickly. I tend to learn by doing instead of reading, so a video is the next best thing to having a skilled player sit down and explain the game to me. 

The Kickstarter campaign for Dubious Alliance launches on May 25th. Mark your calendar so you can become part of this fun game that was surely created with much TLC. I'll post a link and an update once it launches.