Wednesday, November 09, 2005

BGG.con: Tuesday, Nov 08

Again, another holiday that I barely noticed: Election Day. I made for NYC again. More casual wandering around. Having done that two days in a row, I am happy to say that I am sick of it.

This time I went though the Village and Soho. On my way, I stopped at Neutral Ground on 26th St, toting my Magic rares and hoping to sell some. It seems that I was about two years too late. Everyone is playing YuGiOh or Vs (A Marvel superhero CCG). One person still played Magic occasionally, but he could only say a) "Wow, these are old!" (they are from Revised until about 7th edition), and b) you could get $3 for this, $2 for this, $5 for this, ... (which is nice to say, but I can't get anything for "this" until I find someone who actually wants to buy "this").

Downtown was pretty. I stopped in a few used CD stores, Tibetan crafts, etc... Took me most of the day. I headed back uptown for dinner at Mr Broadway, across the street from Kosher Delight, and a more upscale version, but still not exactly fine dining.

There I met up with the friends I'm staying with and another friend who took off some precious time from her GRE studies. This time, unlike last time, she didn't spill ketchup all over herself (only gravy). I would tell you all about how I sent back an order I received simply because the portion was so small, but I don't want to bore you (any more than I already do).

Once again, I was put into the position of finding something to do, something which the natives can't seem to manage. This time I chose Mirrormask, a movie playing at one location down on E12th (Cinema Village). We had a phone number, but no one answered, so we had no idea if it would actually be playing and if so, when. We found it without much difficulty, and the movie was set to start in about 1.5 hours, so we found a bookstore - turned out to be Strand, the big used bookstore. I didn't buy anything, but my friends did.

The movie theater seemed to be experiencing scheduling difficulties. Eventually we got to see Mirrormask. MM is a movie from Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman series, Neverwhere, and other such lovely urban fantasy material. I had high expectations, but some reservations that it would turn out to be a noisy overproduced movie like "Big Fish" or like a Terry Giliam movie. It turned out to be beautiful, a visually rich and stunning dream world, with little in the way of the random noisy overproduction that I feared. The plot was pretty straightforward and allegorical in the way the Wizard of Oz was. In fact, WoOz is its direct ancestor and it plays pretty much the same, if you drop the music and update it to the graphic novel world. Enjoyed.

Home again, and too tired to write my blog. I haven't been able to find any gaming contacts in New York/New Jersey, except one contact that I lost a month ago. Am I to go a week without playing???

Yehuda

No comments: