Games Club wrapup

I picked up a copy of Loco at the Compleat Strategist in the afternoon. We played two games of it, one with four players and one with three, and for some reason it didn’t seem as much fun as Quandary, even though I’m pretty sure the mechanics are identical. Maybe the components (Quandary has really nice tiles) do matter.

I won Puerto Rico for the first time, with 49 points, beating out bigscary by just one point. I’d started off strongly, then foundered for much of the game unable to ship anything during captain phases. I pulled ahead by getting a buttload of money and being able to buy the two large buildings that yielded the best bonus points for my situation.

Nicht Die Bohn is marketed as yet another Bohnanza spin-off, though it really isn’t. The reviewer got it right who said “This is not a game where you have a huge amount of control, but it is one that often offers plenty of scope for group malice”. There’s a lot of second-guessing involved.

We finished off with a couple of quite intense games of Call My Bluff, then walked down to Big Nick’s and introduced one of the newbies to the pure creamy liquid ecstasy that is garlic soup.

JC Open Studios, Day 1

This weekend is Jersey City Arts Festival weekend. I skipped out on most of the festivities and headed straight for the heart of things: 111 First Street, the Powerhouse Art District, an old factory converted into artists’ studios. Lots of good stuff. I saw some abstract oil paintings that got me reconsidering how I felt about surface treatment, and some watercolors that made me want to take up watercoloring again.

After three hours I came out (having seen maybe half of what there was to see) tired with aching feet, and headed over to Ground to cure both conditions. There were musicians performing, and I sat and sketched. The dark-haired woman with the microphone in the second image, below, is Kama Linden, who I liked enough to buy her CD. I wound up typing her track info in for the CDDB — oh, the responsibility!

( Sketchbook dump )

Increasing website traffic

How to increase website traffic.

(Man, I listen to net.radio hoping to hear new music I’ve never heard before. If I’m gonna get “Don’t Fear The Reaper”, can’t it be a cover by, I dunno, Tori Amos or Mojo Nixon or Johnny Cash or someone?)

(Update: And wouldn’t you know, immediately after I hit the Submit button, that song ends and the Johnny Cash cover of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” comes on.)