Squid Plays: Dominion

Dominion is an important tabletop game in the history of the the hobby as one of the earliest and most influential deck-building games.  Following a medieval theme, you begin with a ten-card deck, mostly currency.  Gradually, you add action cards with names like Village, Market, Cellar and Moat which gain certain advantages: extra cards, extra plays, extra money and so forth.  Whoever accumulates the most victory points wins.  An entire subgenre of games have been developed along this model.

Dominion was originally published in 2008 but I'd never played until last fall when the boys and I tried it out.  I've since played a couple times with my wife, too.  We've all enjoyed it.  The original box includes 26 action cards.  One can vary gameplay depending on which 10 of them you use each time.  There are both pre-set and randomized options for this variance.  There are also numerous expansion sets available for even more variety.  

While the game concept itself is fantastic, one of the biggest things Dominion has going for it is the organizing tray provided so you don't have to resort the cards each time.  

The BoardGameGeek rating is 7.6 out of 10.  I'll be more generous and give it an 8.  

On the Coffee Table: Rawand Issa

Title: Inside the Giant Fish

Writer and Artist: Rawand Issa

In this graphic memoir, creator Rawand Issa describes her childhood in El Jiyeh, a seaside town in Lebanon.  She and her family were effectively shut off from her fondest, earliest memories when private resorts cut off access to what was once a public beach.

There's no shortage of stories about how much Lebanon has changed in recent decades.  Civil wars and military occupations by both Syria and Israel have devastated a once beautiful country.  Issa's tale is unusual for the fact that it mostly ignores the violence, focusing instead on how privatization and politics combined to separate the town's local population from an ocean that defined its culture for generations.

The book is neither long nor densely worded.  I read it in a single sitting - maybe half an hour.  The artwork is rather boxy, though boldly colored.  Inside the Giant Fish (Jonah's whale is the metaphor here) makes a simple point quite elegantly.  Solid work.

Star Trek: For the Cause

Episode: "For the Cause"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 4, Episode 22

Original Air Date: May 6, 1996

via Memory Alpha

Garak episode!

Suspicion falls on Kasidy Yates.  Odo and Commander Eddington believe she may be smuggling on behalf of the Maquis.  Personal and professional loyalties pull Benjamin in opposite directions.  Meanwhile, Garak and Ziyal become friends, and it's a bit awkward in the early going.

This is a big character development episode and mostly for secondary cast.  I'll keep saying this until the series finale:  one of the major strengths of Deep Space Nine is the depth and quality of its bench.  As repeated ad nauseam, Garak is the gem and he gets excellent material here.  More importantly, "For the Cause" represents a transitional moment for both Yates and Eddington and in both cases, the impact on the broader story is significant.  Trust is broken on multiple fronts.  Reality is not what it seemed.  Emotional recovery will not be easy.

The Garak/Ziyal relationship will be an interesting one to follow moving forward.  It's a new actress this time, the second of three to perform as Ziyal.  Tracy Middendorf makes her only Trek appearance.

Acting Notes

via Krull Wiki

Kenneth Marshall (Eddington) was born in New York City, June 27, 1950.  He went to the University of Michigan for undergrad, then Julliard for grad school where he crossed paths with both Robin Williams and Kelsey Grammer.  He worked as a professional stage actor in New York for 14 years, including a run as Tony in a West Side Story revival.  Films include Tilt, Krull and Feds.

Off My Duff: Readjusting to the School Year

For the most part, I love middle age.  Life is simpler in many ways.  Put simply, I just don't give a crap about quite a lot of things that used to preoccupy me.  All of the self-consciousness of youth is long gone.  Ambitions remain but they're more personal than professional.  In Being Mortal, Atul Gawande writes of how our worlds get smaller as we age.  While I am still well short of elderly, I'm already feeling a need to draw those I love most closer and make the most of our time together, however long it lasts.  Truly, mine is a precious age.

But of course, there are trade offs.  My body doesn't function as well as it used to.  Most noticeably, my once 20/13 eyesight - "You could fly fighter jets," a doctor once told me - is fading fast.  I also can't keep the weight off the way I could in my youth.  Last October, one of the numbers on my blood labs was higher than it should be.  Historically, I have shrugged off these sort of concerns.  This time, the message was different: change your life or you'll be forced into changes you won't like at all.  I had three months to bring the number down for the next blood test and I took the goal seriously.

One of the big changes I made was getting more regular exercise.  I was an athletic child - not a good athlete, mind you, but a genuinely active one.  I played soccer, basketball, baseball, ran track and cross-country.  Adulthood has been different.  Team sports were a meaningful motivator for years but those are harder to pursue as an adult.  

On the bright side, just about the most efficient exercise I can get is going for a walk in my own, beautiful neighborhood.  You scoff.  I can assure you, a walk in my neighborhood is not like it is for most people reading this.  We live in the woods on a dirt road off of another dirt road.  Just to get to our mailbox, we have to go up an 8.5% grade hill.  Do you remember the old FitBits that measured how many flights of stairs you climbed each day?  It's 18 flights just up to the mailbox.  And that's only the first big hill of several on my walk route.  No kidding, it's a meaningful workout.  As long as I'm diligent, knocking out FitBit goals is pretty straightforward.

The big question is what to do in winter.  On the weekends, it's not bad.  I can still strap on the Yaktrax and feel reasonably safe even on icy days.  The problem during the week is the fact that it gets dark so early.  The nearest streetlight is literally miles away.  But we've found you can make a fitness tracker happy by jogging in place.  Cheating?  Maybe.  But I figure it's better for you than vegging on the couch.

Anyway, it all worked.  The number came down.  When I went to the doctor this summer, both my weight and my blood pressure were down, too.  He was thrilled.  

Summer's a relatively easy time to establish healthy routines.  Now that the school year has started up again, I'm finding it harder to meet my goals.  I can still knock out my step count without a problem.  Teaching keeps you on your feet.  But my active minutes are down.  I'm so tired when I get home that I just want to relax.  On the bright side, I'm sleeping better and that's important, too.  But I still want to keep those other numbers down and I know more vigorous exercise is essential.

I got a new fitness tracker several months ago: an AmazFit Band 7.  It's a third the cost of the FitBit I'd been using and, just as importantly, doesn't have the weird battery drainage issues I was experiencing.  The three main categories it emphasizes are steps, exertion and sleep.  It's a real taskmaster on the sleep - senses when I have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, for instance.

Among other things, AmazFit tracks Personal Activity Intelligence or PAI.  PAI uses your heart rate data to assess your physical activity over a given week.  The initial goal is 30 PAI, then 50, ultimately reaching the optimum level of 100.  By the end of the summer, I was comfortably above 50.  Just two weeks later, I'm at 24.  I definitely need to make some changes.  

I think the first thing I'll do is raise my step goal.  Since reaching that has been relatively easy, it makes sense to push myself.  But I also need to be intentional about getting additional, more vigorous exercise in the evenings.

And maybe even blogging about it can help.  One thing The Armchair Squid has been very good for over the years is keeping me going with my hobbies.  Writing is a meaningful motivator for me.  Perhaps it can help here, too.

On the Coffee Table: Moomin

Title: Moomin Adventures 1

Writers and Artists: Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson

The Moomins were invented by Tove Jansson, a Finnish writer and artist who found success in a number of media.  She first introduced the Moomins and their world in a 1945 novel, The Moomins and the Great Flood, initially in Swedish, her own first language.  She started the comic strip in 1947.  The charming hippo-like trolls have since found their way into television, film, theatre, video games and even theme parks, including one in Japan.  Moomin Adventures 1 collects seven of the comic strip serials.  While Tove produced all of the stories for many years, eventually her brother Lars took over the comics.

Moomintroll (often referred to simply as "Moomin") and his family live a simple life in Moominvalley.  Every once in a while on a whim, they'll set off on an adventure.  This book includes trips to the Riviera and a desert island.  Sometimes, the adventures find them such as when gold prospectors or artists come to the valley.  The atmosphere is light but there is plenty of playful satire along the way - occasional nuggets of wisdom, too.  

Tove Jansson's story is one of many real-life bios featured in Be Gay, Do Comics.  Jansson was with her partner Tuulikki Pietilä for the last 45 years of her life.  Unfortunately, they were not able to be open about their relationship for decades.  Eventually, they became important symbolic figures in Finland as one of the first same-sex couples to attend prominent public events together.

Star Trek: Tuvix

Episode: "Tuvix"

Series: Star Trek: Voyager

Season 2, Episode 24

Original Air Date: May 6, 1996

via Memory Alpha

Tuvok and Neelix are merged into a single being through a transporter malfunction.  What follows is one of the most interesting moral quandaries in all of Star Trek.  That's saying something.  "Tuvix" may be the most polarizing episode in the franchise.  It's the make-or-break story determining how many fans, including my own child, feel about Captain Janeway as a character.

The merged being is his own man.  Tuvix is the best of both, the worst of both.  He shares the memories of each but the experiences from the point of merger are all his own.  He deserves to live.  There's really no question of that, is there?  His existence also means the end of the independent lives of two others.  There's no denying that either.  Thus the dilemma.

Spock: Logic clearly dictates that the needs of many outweigh the needs of the few.

Kirk: Or the one.

If there's one exchange that defines - and haunts - Trek, it's that one from the climactic scene of The Wrath of Khan.  By this argument, the needs of two outweigh the needs of one.  Tuvok's and Neelix's separate rights to exist trump Tuvix's.  

But real life is more complicated than that, isn't it?  Those we might cast as "the few" suffer needlessly all the time.  The benefits to "the many" from such suffering are often nebulous to non-existent.  There's a term for it: the tyranny of the majority.  It's not theoretical.  It's largely how the world works.

Tuvix's pleas for his own survival are both chilling and heartbreaking.  Plenty of viewers hate Janeway for the choice she makes.  Would any of those critics have chosen differently in her place?  I think it's too easy to say yes.  Either way, she's choosing death.  Either path means pain and regret.

It certainly makes for good television.  However one feels about the choice made - and a deep, emotional reaction is absolutely understandable - the question itself is exactly the sort of dilemma that has made Star Trek so compelling to watch for nearly 60 years.  If the answers were always obvious, who would care?

Acting Notes

via Criminal Minds Wiki

Tom Wright (Tuvix) was born in Englewood, New Jersey, November 29, 1952.  This episode is his first of two Trek appearances.  Films include The Brother from Another Planet, Barbershop and Barbershop 2: Back in Business.  In television, he had principal roles on Extreme, Martial Law and Granite Flats.  His other high-profile guest role was the recurring character Mr. Morgan, a Yankees front office colleague of George's on Seinfeld.

Squid Flicks: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Title: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Director: John Cameron Mitchell

Original Release Date: January 2001

My Overall Rating: 5 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

John Cameron wrote, directed and starred in what I consider to be one of the most under-appreciated films around.  In my mind, I maintain a list of movies I wish more people would see.  Hedwig resides comfortably on that list.

Hedwig Robinson grew up in East Berlin, assigned male at birth.  She fell in love with Luther, an American soldier, who convinced her to get a sex change and marry him as part of a scheme to leave the country.  The operation was botched, leaving Hedwig with... unsatisfactory genitalia, thus the title of the film.

We first join the story as Hedwig, now living in Kansas, is trying to make a living as a rock musician.  Luther is long gone.  Tommy, a more recent lover, has become a star, propped up by songs we all know Hedwig co-wrote with him.  

Those are the basics of a whirlwind story.

We saw the movie at the Vermont International Film Festival's screening room.  I would be remiss if I did not point out what our child helped clarify for me: Hedwig is not a drag queen movie.  While it shares thematic material with Priscilla (last week's movie) and To Wong Foo, it is not of the same genre because Hedwig is not a drag queen.  Botched operation or not, Hedwig is a trans woman and living as such.  The wigs and the boas add to her performance. They are camp but they are not drag.

It's also better than either of those more commercially successful films.  Hedwig is adapted from Mitchell's off-Broadway musical of the same name, music by Stephen Trask.  Mitchell's on-screen performance is fearless and relentless.  The vast majority of the material - the lines, the songs, the camera shots - focuses on the one leading character, far more so than one typically sees in a movie.  The music is wonderful.  I've written about the showstopper, "Wig in a Box," before.  Hedwig was a huge hit at Sundance but disappointed in its mainstream run.  

Hedwig can be difficult to watch.  It's funny, visually dazzling and musically charming.  It's also continually heart wrenching.  What's more, Hedwig is not always a likable person, guilty of mistreating others as she has been mistreated.  Parts of the story can be uncomfortable for a cis man, that healthy kind of uncomfortable we've talked about before (here, for instance).  Lean into that discomfort and it will broaden your world concept.