Calling 'Mania

03.29.2010

I'm not sure how long I've been doing it, but yesterday I made my annual call to Jason at Wrestlemania. This year, after having to leave messages the past two years, I actually got a hold of him! He's a busy man, so I expect to leave a message most of the time, but I still get a kick out of talking to him when I catch him. Although I Just saw him in Nashville less than 2 months ago, talking to him when he's getting ready for the biggest show of the year just makes my wrestling giddiness switch into overdrive.

When I called him, Fantasia was practicing "America the Beautiful" and I heard Jason telling her where she could stand, what the camera would do, that the metal grate would be covered by a red carpet, etc. A few years back I managed to call when Motorhead was tuning up. Evidently I've got the timing of the musical acts down!

I got my annual call in, which oddly had the least amount of wrestling than any of my normal, annual calls. I may blame part of that on sending Jason more text messages than normal over the past two months, which in part comes from the February Raw Matt and I went to and its associated backstage tour - you know, where I moved a Diva.

Later that night I went to Matt's and we watched Wrestlemania 26 in all of its HD glory. I had a paltry 44% success rate in picking the winners of the matches I knew about beforehand, which either means I'm not paying enough attention during the normal tv matches or somebody backstage is flipping a coin on who will when while the entrance music is playing. Like most Wrestlemania's I ended up paying more attention to the entrance stage and the lighting than normal. Jason's good at his job, and this is one of those times when he shines (bad pun for a lighting guy, sorry about that). My favorite new thing of the night was a cylindrical tron/monitor that came down from the lighting rig above the ring. When Randy Orton won, the tron lowered to make a nice video backdrop as Randy posed on the turnbuckle.

But today Wrestlemania is over. At least until next year. In Atlanta. Which is close. Now I have 12 months to find enough blackmail material to make Jason smuggle me in.

Permalink wrestling

Russell Spears (1917-2009)

03.21.2010

Googling yourself is nothing new. Everybody does it. How else would I know I'm also a Psychology professor in England? Today I Wikipedia'd myself, and found that I had died last March.

Ok, not me specifically, but someone with which I shared a name. I went on to learn more about the elder Mr Spears through his obituary and learned that he was a craftsman who helped others. In between helping he also had 12 children. In the list of children's names, I found a kindred spirit with my namesake. Whether he knew it or not, he shared my sense of humor as he had a son named Lance.

The sheer redundancy of "Lance Spears" has always made me giggle. I've always said that if I were to ever have a son I would name him "Lance". Or "Guntar", but it would be pronounced "Goooon-TAR". But "Lance" was always my first choice. Maybe it comes form a childhood of being named "Rusty Spears" and never realizing it was a joke?

For now I'm still alive. No Wikipedia entry. No psychology text-books authored. No sons named "Lance" or "Guntar". If I live to see 92 that'd be a heck of an accomplishment for me. 42 might be an accomplishment. We'll see if I have a follow up to this next year :)

Permalink random

Poot

03.19.2010

Thursday morning I awoke from not just a dream, but a series of dreams. In fact, I kept going back to sleep to find out what would happen next. Much like my dream of the one-eyed monster, this doesn't make a lick of sense.

• Dream 1: I am intrepid 1940's newspaper reporter "Poot" Smith. It is not 1940, it is present day. My catchphrase is "Adirondack". Somehow, that's a dream.
• Dream 2: I am wearing pajama bottoms, and pajama bottoms only. I am outside the Forrest Gump house in Alabama and decide to go jogging. I start jogging down a road which I know to be an old airstrip. In front of me are 2 women jogging, and I don't want to bother them but they're going too slow. I pass them and notice they seem to be talking about me in disgust. I realize I've got jogging plumbers crack, so I hike up my pajama bottoms.
• Dream 3: I'm reaching the end of the runway (yes, my dreams really do link together like this) where it forms a t-intersection with a dirt road, the dirt of which has been recently churned by a large tracked vehicle as the tracks are still readily visible. I turn left. I still have only pajama bottoms on and am worried about my feet. Luckily, after a curve and over a hill, Mom and Terry's house can be seen. There are teenagers milling about, because this is the house that's used for gang initiations. Not necessarily bad gangs, even the glee club would use it. The initiation is always to go in and bust up the bathroom on the 2nd floor (there's 3 floors), because everybody is amazed at how the bathroom is cleaned up when they come back the next time. They don't know anybody lives here.
• Dream 4: I'm inside the house, starting at the top floor and working my way down. I pass someone going into the bathroom and say "for god's sake don't fuck it up too bad" and continue on. I see a woman that I know who has a little girl (maybe 9?). I tell her that this is where my mom lives and asks if she wants to see my room. We go into my room, which is where all the extra pillows and blankets are thrown when they're not used. Also in this room is an older woman (just think Wal Mart greeter) in a recliner, hooked up to a dialysis machine. In front of her is a tv tray with a tv on it. I go to her and ask if she needs anything, maybe some water? She says she doesn't need anything and reaches forward to turn the tv stand a little. I ask again if she's sure she doesn't need any water.

After that I couldn't force myself back to sleep anymore. Now to go over the fun stuff!

Dream 1: "Poot" Smith? Of everything above, the part that's stuck in my head the most has been 1940's newspaper reporter "Poot" Smith. I've got nothing there.

Dream 2: I don't know the last time I wore pajamas, much less pajama bottoms. I'm pretty sure the last time I managed a jog was 1985. Plumbers crack happens more often than I want to admit.

Dream 3: The house was really one some friends of Mom and Dad had in St Florian. From what I remember it was hex-sided and at least 3 stories, out in the woods near either a lake or a river. I would have been around 4th grade age, so I don't remember much else except it was a neat looking house.

Dream 4: The woman hooked up to the dialysis machine was very reminiscent of one of the ladies I worked with at Humana in the Pharmacy.

None of this explains where the parts of my dream came from, just that all the parts are wierd. Like me, I guess.

So, until next time, "Adirondack!"

Permalink dreams

May the Force be with you. Until April.

03.15.2010

I few years ago I started collecting pieces from the Star Wars Miniatures game. It was the first collectible game I ever really got into, and I think Jerry and I might have even played a game once. I've oft been one to collect games (rules, parts, pieces, etc) and never play, and the Star Wars game fell into that. I even started to get the rulebooks they were putting out for the RPG. I never intended to play the game, but I used to enjoy just reading the rules of games to see how they worked.

Yep, I've been a nerd for a looong time.

Wizards of the Coast, distributors of the Star Wars Miniatures game, recently announced they would no longer be distributing the Star Wars games as they would not be renewing their license with Lucasfilm when it expires in May. The last scheduled product for the the miniatures and RPG lines will still ship, but after that it won't be Wizards filling your nerd Star Wars needs.

Odds are somebody else will pick up the license, but to be honest Wizards of the Coast is the best out there right now. Before Wizards got the license, West End Games had the rights. Different distributors is nothing new in the RPG market - the Star Trek license has been used by at least 5 companies depending on which games you actually count.

One of the fun by-products of reading all of those rules is that it gets your mind wandering about what would work for a game. Jerry and I tried our hand at combining some rules from various games to make a miniatures based war game. The miniatures (ok, toys) we used were Mega Force vehicles. Lots of vehicles. and Legos for buildings. And cotton for smoke. At that point, rules were just an excuse to play with all of that.

Now I'll have a couple hundred Star Wars miniatures to play around with. Hmmm, Keith's boys just liquidated their HeroScape stock (probably 3 or 4 set worth of tiles) that I've still got to merge with my own. I bet I could recreate Endor with Star Wars Miniatures and HeroScape. Just how nerdy am I supposed to be at 41?

We'll see how far this train of thought goes in the coming days.

Permalink boardgames gaming miniatures

Did you hear a tree fall in a deserted forest?

03.14.2010

After a week and a half you would think there was something noteworthy that happened in my life.

There's not.

That's ok, it's a side effect of low-stress. I liked low-stress.

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