Fun with Zombies, Gunfighters, Viral Hemmorhagic Fever and Cthulhu

Mission Fun And Games in St. Albert recently had a sale to celebrate their twentieth year of business. That's a real accomplishment for any independent store, let alone a brick and mortar game shop, and with their entire store going for 20% off, well, only a fool would let an opportunity to swing by and congratulate them pass by, right?

The danger in a store like this to me, specifically, is two-fold: the first being that I like games, you know, like, a lot.

And pretty much all types, too. I like board games, card games, war games, dice games, party games, role-playing games...pretty much everything except head games, and yes, that includes the song by Foreigner.

The second threat is my uncanny ability to rationalize purchases: 'it was on sale', 'it's out of print now', 'a portion of the proceeds go to charity', 'he seemed like a good guy and he said the beans are magic!', et cetera. Luckily my wife has developed what amounts to a highly evolved resistance to these rationalizations, and I have a deep and abiding desire to remain both married and ambulatory, so I managed to restrict myself.

Having now played all the games at least once, I thought I would share my findings with the like-minded among you.

BANG!
Bang is an Italian card game that recreates the gunfights seen in spaghetti-westerns, complete with shifting allegiances and ambiguous loyalties. It is fast, fun, and easy enough to play that both Fenya and Glory enjoyed it, although a lot of time was lost trying to explain exactly what the hell a spaghetti western is to an 8 and 11 year old.

Each player takes on a role of either Sheriff, Outlaw or Renegade; the Sheriff has to kill the Outlaws before they do the same to him, while the Renegade wants the Sheriff's job, and so has to arrange it that he is the last man standing. In larger games, there are also Deputies to aid the Sheriff. The only role known to all the players is the Sheriff; all the other ones need to be deduced.

In addition to having a role, each player is also given a Character, and that character has a special ability, like 'Calamity Janet', who allows her player to exchange 'Bang!' cards for 'Missed!' cards, and vice versa, or 'Vulture Sam', who gets to collect all the cards from an eliminated player.

Most of the game consists of playing a 'Bang!' card against an opponent, who can thwart you by playing a 'Missed!' card in response, so it is fairly straightforward. Three or four un-missed bangs will eliminate that player. One complication, however, is that the opposing player's relative position to you at the table defines what the the range is between your characters, and at the start, you can only shoot the players to your immediate left or right. Later on, you may find a Schofield, allowing you to shoot a player two seats away, or a Mustang, which increases the distance others see you at by one, but in the meantime, your targets are limited, and you are already in a fight.



The edition I got not only included three expansions (High Noon, Dodge City, and A Fistful of Cards), but also came in a very large bullet that serves as the storage container. Oh, and best of all, there is a devastating but fickle card called 'Dynamite' that circulates between players until it explodes. Glee!

One of the primary motivators in picking up this game is that it is playable by ages 8 and up, making it a good choice for the family, but I am looking forward to playing this one with the lads, as it is highly competitive and quite a bit of fun. You do need a minimum of four players however, and a maximum of eight.

CTHULHU DICE
Game design legend Steve Jackson takes less of a lead in the running of his company these days, which frees him up for more actual design work, and after a career spanning four decades and having produced Ogre, GURPS, Car Wars, Chez Geek, and his most prosperous creation to date, Munchkin, it's clear to me at least that this was the right choice. Take his most recent dice game, Cthulhu dice.

I have a weakness for cool looking dice, it must be said, and this game has one of the coolest, but having played the flash game version on the SJGames website, I was impressed by the simplicity of the premise, the speed of play, and its inherent vindictiveness.

Each player begins with three marbles, representing his sanity. He picks a player to roll against, and the victim rolls back. Depending on the result, the Victim may lose sanity to either the Caster or to Cthulhu, who resides in the centre of the table. He may also gain sanity from the Cthulhu, but if dread Cthulhu himself is ever rolled, then every player loses one sanity to him! Mad players (having lost all their marbles, waw-wah!) continue to roll, hoping the Elder Sign will show Cthulhu's favour and return at least some of their sanity.

The object of the game is to be the only sane one left, and it is not always assured that there will be anyone left sane by the end, which just adds to the fun.

You can theoretically play with two people (each playing two cultists with their own set of marbles), but you really should have at least three, and five is best yet. There are enough marbles for six, and you could theoretically play with more, but it would make for a long wait between turns.

A very entertaining game, which can be taught in about 5 minutes to a group of new players, and can be transported quite handily in a dice bag.

PANDEMIC
I love the idea of collaborative games, they are part of the reason I enjoy RPGs so much. When I first read about Pandemic about three years ago, the concept of a team of 2-5 players racing around the globe in an effort to stop a global health catastrophe seemed like a very sound premise. Since its release in 2009, they have already spawned an expansion, which I considered promising since if no one liked it, it's not likely they would have bothered to make one, right?

Each turn, each player draws cards to determine which city a disease, represented by wooden blocks in four different colours, is going to strike. If there are three blocks already on a given city , an outbreak occurs, and an additional block is placed on each adjoining city. If one of those cities also has three blocks on it, another outbreak occurs, and so on. The game is lost at the 8th outbreak, or when you can't place any more blocks for a given colour due to running out.

Players have cards with the names of cities on them, and can use 5 cards of the same colour to cure that disease, provided they can reach a research centre. They can also discard a card to travel directly to that city, or, if they are already there, build a research centre instead. They can also give a card to another player, but they must both be in the city named on the card in order to do this, so you can see that some coordination is called for, especially since you aren't able to see the cards of the other players! If they are in a city with a disease block, they can discard one block, hopefully preventing an outbreak.

Each player also has a role which comes with a special ability: the Researcher can trade cards in any city; the Scientist only needs four cards of one colour to find a cure, the Medic can remove all disease blocks from a city, the Dispatcher can mov another player's pawn, and the Operations Expert can build a research centre in the city he is in without having that card.

Periodically, players will draw an Epidemic card from the player deck, which means the city at the bottom of the Infection deck gets three disease blocks and all the cities previously drawn get shuffled up and placed back on top of the infection deck, making an outbreak almost inevitable. Once you haved cured the fourth disease, you win.

This is a game for ages 10 and up, so the three of us played while Glory was away camping with a friend. Thanks to the game's simple yet elegant mechanics, Fenya caught on right away, even pointing out options Audrey and I hadn't considered yet. ("Daddy, instead of you using three actions to give me your cards, why don't you just spend one to take one of mine? You can cure Black with your five cards then, right?")

We lost our first game, but triumphed in the second, even though we continued to use the 'Introductory' rules which allowed us to keep all of our cards face up like a virtual hive mind. There are two additional levels of difficulty, Normal and Heroic, and the "On The Brink" expansion apparently includes a Legendary level, as well as a fifth disease strain and scenarios like "Bio Terrorist", where one player works against the others. I think Normal level will provide more than enough challenge for the three of us for the nonce, but it's nice to know that there is variety available in the future.

Pandemic is probably my favourite of the games I got at the Mission sale. It has decent production values, a sharp looking board, and good quality cards. As opposed to dice, the card-based mechanic brings just the right combination of random and inevitable, which results in a very dramatic game. ("No, not Sao Paulo again! It'll take forever to get there from Karachi!")

ZOMBIE DICE
Steve Jackson's second dice-based game, Zombie Dice is a cup with thirteen dice in three different colours.

These dice represent the victims that you, as a zombie, are trying to catch in order to snack on their brains. The colour represents their relative toughness, with green being the easiest, yellow being tougher, and red being very hard indeed. Each turn you draw three random dice and roll: a picture of a brain means you caught him and ate it, footprints are one that got away (and which can get re-rolled next time) and a blast represents your zombie being shotgunned. Each turn you decide whether or not to press your luck and keep chasing brains, but when you roll your third blast, your turn ends and you lose any brains you got up to that point. Ending a round with the most brains after 13 makes you the winner.

This simple 'press your luck' mechanic means a game between two players can still be entertaining. Again, you could theoretically play with as many players as you want, but the wait between turns could get interminable. There are two opportunities for fate to fickle-ize you; first with the dice you draw ("Two reds and a yellow? Argh...") and then again with the throw of the dice themselves, so there is a little room for strategery, but daring and luck will win or lose the day for most players.

Steve Jackson gave a prototype of the game to Howard Tayler, creator of the sci-fi webcomic Scholck Mercenary, who wrote a great little essay about the surprising roleplaying potential of the game. For instance, everyone already knows three red dice are bad news, but you are already obliged to roll, so cracking a line like, "Special Forces, eh? Let's see if you taste special..." adds a whole new dimension to play.

Another accessible and easy to learn game with a minimum of rules and lots of portability, a game rarely lasts more than ten minutes, so Zombie Dice is probably the game which has seen the most play of the four I got at the sale.

Observances

A colleague at work confided that Canada Day is his absolute favourite holiday, since he is not religious.

"How do you observe?" I asked him.

"Well, I usually go down to the Leg grounds for the pancake breakfast (which is a great example of the cultural mosaic at work by the way, since it is hosted by the Ismaili Muslim community, and flapjacks are not necessarily a part of the traditional middle eastern experience), and I also like to see the new Canadian citizens get sworn in."

"That's awesome!" I said.

"Yeah, I love the look on their faces," he continued, "It's like they've won the lottery because, well, they kind of have."

Who better than new Canadians to remind us of the awesome country we live in? Sure, it's a country like a lot of others, and one with its own fair share of idiosyncrasies, challenges and just flat-out problems, but there is nowhere else quite like it, and nowhere I'd rather raise my family.

This year our family ended up heading out to Leduc for Canada Day, the city I grew up in (although it was a town for most of my childhood), and the place where my sister recently purchased a house.

Since she has a much larger and neater backyard than we do, I was looking forward to putting up the badminton net, drinking a Neapolean (an Alley Kat Stout that, hand to God, tastes like Neapolitan ice cream) and perhaps throwing around the Nerf football with my daughters a bit. I hadn't given too much thought about actual observances; I mean, since I am a Canadian, isn't anything I do on this holiday pretty much a de facto observance?

Probably not.

At any rate, we did end up on Main Street to watch the parade, which I found surprisingly enjoyable. There were not a whole lot of floats, but I like to watch the Legion Colour Guard followed by the Mounties, and my parents also drove a scooter wearing their Legion uniforms, which was a big thrill to Fenya and Glory.



There were a number of really cool vintage cars, and a couple of very old oil-burning tractors which appealed to the history buff in me, but I was pleasantly surprised at just how much enjoyment I still get from being in close proximity to a shiny fire engine with its lights and siren going. One engine had a motto painted upon the glass over the side door which read, "Everyone comes home" in script, which I found peculiarly moving for such a simple sentiment. Still, a good sentiment hardly needs complexity, right?



Retiring to the backyard after the parade, we played a little badminton until the wind made it impractical, played some catch, and my mum brought a game called Ladderball which involves throwing tiny bolas at a set of coloured ladder rungs. It's a simple enough game once you get the fundamentals of throwing down, but aI have to tell you, the first time you snag the target with a bola and the balls pass each other a couple of times until they have completely wrapped around the rung, you totally feel like Batman. "Why do cops waste their time with batons when they could carry these" I thought to myself.

By the time we had cooked some smokies on Tara's firepit, my mid-day triple-shot frappucino had worn off and I was feeling pretty fatigued, but I was not about to be the party-pooper, and I joined everyone at the ball diamond by the Leduc Recreation Centre (which I grew up knowing as the Black Gold Centre) for a free rock concert and fireworks display.

I texted a couple of people my location and the fact that I was watching 80s rockers Harlequin warm up the crowd for Darby Mills and The Headpins, and was delighted when Island Mike replied that he was on a Parksville beach listening to Trooper at the same time. Retro night indeed.

To be frank, I probably like slightly more Harlequin songs than Headpins songs, but I would not really call myself a fan of either band. Harlequin is clearly one of those bands that is happy and grateful to be able to hit the road and play, but the lead vocalist has a hard time reaching the pitch of his heyday, and occasionally sounded like a karaoke singer stepping outside his range.


Darby Mills, on the other hand, sounds even better than she did in her heyday. Her voice has gotten smoother and smokier, although she is no torch singer. (The hats on the merch table read "Headpins: 30 Years of Loud".) And for a lady who just turned 50, she looks great as well, and I don't just mean her figure (which even my sister commented on as being stupendous), but very fit, which makes sense as it turns out that she teaches tae kwon do when she isn't touring.

The fireworks display which wrapped up the night was wonderful. I mean, even a small fireworks show is fun, and this one ran for about a quarter hour and had a great variety of effects.


It made for a long and somewhat tiring day, and the following day at work was a little brutal, but I was still glad I relented and didn't end the evening prematurely. All in all, one of the better Canada Days I can remember, spent with my family in the place I grew up. What could be more Canadian than that?

Us Versus Them

Watching the Ghana-USA soccer match on Saturday afternoon, a text crawled across the bottom of the screen saying that protesters had clashed with police in Toronto, the site of the G20 summit. How is this breaking news? I thought to myself. Since the 1999 WTO conference in Seattle, practically every multinational conference has drawn larger and increasingly more violent protests.

But at half-time they showed two police cruisers on fire, and I was shocked.

I understand the need some people have to protest. There are a lot of marginalized people and a lot of untabled ideas out there that really need to be heard, and our vaunted technological innovations do more to distract us from them than to engage them. I have nothing but respect for people who willingly give up their time, energy, and occasionally safety to publicly display their dissatisfaction with the status quo. I even understand the motivation behind civil disobedience; you don't get to be a fan of Martin Luther King Jr. without gaining an appreciation of what a struggle it can be to bridge the gap between legislation and justice.

But.

Someone kindly explain to me how smashing a coffee shop window, throwing golf balls and stones at police and setting police cruisers ablaze is making the world a better place.

I do feel a portion of the blame lies with Stephen Harper. Holding the G20 in downtown Toronto not only paralyzed the entire city for days, with untold economic and safety repercussions (both Eaton Centre and Sick Kids Hospital had to go into lockdown mode), but in terms of security, this was like outlining the perimeter of your picnic area with sugar and then complaining about the ants. However, since the Prime Minister has been in full view almost the entire time that he has not been on camera, I am fairly confident that his weekend was arson-free.

Certainly I appreciate that the G20 provides an audience for protesters to air their grievances about a lot of things, from a lack of transparency in the proceedings themselves, to the increasing influence of multinationals like Monsanto on our courts and government. I even share some of these grievances, and even if I didn't, part of the price of living in a free society is that you have to listen to some ideas you mightn't agree with. Everybody should have a chance to be heard.

But.

I just can't seem to make this leap from freedom of expression to a burning police car.

Here in Edmonton, our latest chief of police is slowing making some headway turning the Edmonton Police Service from an 'us versus them' culture with paramilitary overtones to something more community oriented. Growing up around police meant that I have always viewed them as people first and uniforms second, and I've never been afraid of them in a general sense, so I have never understood people who just don't like police on principle, who just find the very idea of police objectionable. If I were to talk to these people directly, I might ask them how they feel about traffic signals, and what they think might happen if we just abolished them some afternoon at rush hour, but I digress.

The police should be a means of maintaining order and protecting people and property. Your taxes go towards their upkeep. Instead of setting a police car on fire, why don't you take a bunch of your money, convert it to $5 bills, bale it, and burn it on Bay Street?

And aside from the police presence, what is your major objection to world leaders getting together? Would you rather they just insulated themselves from each other and refused to cooperate, they way they did a century ago? You know, like when they were so concerned with getting a leg up on each other that they allowed the first global war to break out, and in the course of sorting that out, set all the pieces in place for the most comprehensive and far-reaching acts of organized violence the world has ever seen? Did you forget that almost all of these people are elected leaders, and that one of them is representing you? Oh wait, with the federal voter turnout numbers now below 50% and shrinking, I guess that's outmoded thinking, huh? Time to write off democracy as one more failed social experiment and move on to the next phase, eh comrade?

And even if you have objections to the way the G20 goes about its business, how exactly are you improving things by actively seeking out unboarded windows and impacting some shopkeepers livelihood? Please don't tell me he's a pawn of the system, or a wage slave that you are trying to free, it just doesn't work that way Neo; you are not The One. Congratulations on instead becoming the oppressor, and giving the police in whatever city hosts the next G20 the authority to do pretty much whatever the hell they want, and the justification to spend more tax dollars securing an area from its own citizens, most of whom just want an opportunity to be heard.

Next go-around many people will be sympathetic to the cops when they outlaw masks at public demonstrations, and I'll reserve my sympathy for the poor lady in a burqa who gets hauled off just because she got off at the wrong bus stop that morning.

What do I want? Well, for openers, I would like it if legitimate protesters started condoning the anarchy and vandalism that has come to mark so many of these occasions, but while I'm at it, I might as well wish for pony. These demonstrations have become a magnet for all manner of shit-disturbers and common criminals. The recent fan-riots in Montreal that followed the Canadiens being eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs contained a number of people wearing masks and carrying backpacks full of tools that they could use to break windows and facilitate looting, and I will bet their hockey affiliation was irrelevant to their behaviour. You know for a cold hard natural fact that not every jackass with a bandana tied around his head at the G20 is there to expand the social consciousness, right? Unfortunately, a lot of organizers are in a situation where they have a tiger by the tail, and fear that 'telling others how to protest' will cost them credibility with their own supporters. Besides, who wants to come to a protest with no police crackdown or television cameras, right? That's hardly exciting! That's not romantic!

I would like it if the moment that other 'protesters' starting donning masks or stooping to pick up a stone, the real protesters just legged it in the opposite direction. I don't know how many videos I saw yesterday of masked individuals pushing away cameras. But wait, aren't you trying to promote your ideas? How are you going to do that behind a mask? Isn't it odd that the people who occupied Tiananmen Square didn't need to wear masks, when they probably had a legitimate reason to? If they end up banning masks, how on earth am I going to realize my dream of becoming a costumed crimefighter? Maybe I should be grateful; perhaps the mask can serve as a type of shibboleth the rest of us can use to separate actual demonstrators from anarchist shit-disturbers.

Maybe I'm wrong though; maybe we are already living in the dystopian future we read about in 1984 and saw in movies like Blade Runner. Maybe due process and discourse really have run their course, and it really is just a case of Us, the people, versus Them, the forces of oppression, and those of use still wasting our time with voting and polling and the herculean effort of wrapping our tiny heads around ginormous, multi-faceted and constantly mutating issues need to step aside and let these Nihilistic heroes push the reset button for us so that human society can get a 'do-over'.

But I have a hard time believing that, and it is mostly because of how far we've come. Two centuries ago, you could own other humans in most parts of the world. One century ago, women were practically property. Half a century ago, your ability to vote was affected by your colour and gender. A quarter century ago, half the planet wanted to eliminate the other half based largely on how they felt property issues should be dealt with. We are in the middle of making our minds up on how much we give a damn whether two guys or two gals can get married or not.

And every one of those steps was preceded by the realization that there is no 'them', and that we are all us.

To the people in black: please, take off the masks, and tell us who you are and what you want. Please put down the rocks and pick up the people hit by them. Stop fighting your leaders, and if persuasion fails, vote in new ones. These are your representatives, after all.

There is no them.

Third Time's a Charm: Toy Story 3 Review

As part of our Father's Day observances today, we got to go see Pixar's latest, Toy Story 3. We've seen every Pixar release in the theater without fail, most of them on opening weekend. It's not as though there are going to be any mad spoilers if we don't get in straight away, but given how merciless the movie industry can be, and how much an individual picture's success or failure seems to reside on those opening weekend gates, it feels good to get out there and vote with our dollars.

Another factor is that Pixar has never failed to delight, amaze or, at the very least, entertain me at every turn. I have loved every film with the exception Cars, which I didn't necessarily dislike, but really had no passion for. As far as worst things one can say about a movie studio, they are batting pretty high.

Despite being a threequel, Toy Story 3 has all the heart, pacing, character and brilliant storytelling of its predecessors, and never seems to feel tired or forced. Even when they re-visit familiar ground, like Buzz Lightyear acting like he's just come out of the box again, they still manage to change it up enough to make it enjoyable and at least a little unpredictable.

Truth be told, there is a lot of familiarity here; the themes of childhood and its passing, loyalty and friendship are all present and accounted for, with the major challenge being that their owner Andy is 17 now and heading off to college. His mother brings in a box for the attic, a bag for the garbage, and tells him everything not going with him needs to go in one or the other. Strangely, you really start to feel things getting ominous when the green army men (led by perennial favourite R. Lee Ermey) declare their mission with Andy completed and let their tiny plastic parachutes carry them away.

When they end up in a utopian daycare environment, with the promise of perpetual play, it is not easy for Woody to convince them that this is not where they should be. In fact, it's impossible.

The new toys introduced at the daycare are great, especially Lots O'Huggin' Bear (Ned Beatty) and of course, Barbie's counterpart, Ken, voiced by Michael Keaton. Beatty's bear is a folksy charmer, with a hint of something else beneath the surface, while Keaton's Ken brings a strange mix of vapidness and sincerity to the proceedings at Sunnyside daycare. Tim Allen, Tom Hanks and the rest of the original characters do a marvelous job of voice acting, as they always do, but what I love most is how the Pixar crew have learned to let the characters be quiet and allow their faces to do the talking, a real tribute to the well-deserved confidence the studio has in their animators; 'pixel artists' indeed!


The movie is significantly darker in tone, hitting a lot of the same beats as a gothic horror, like alienation, betrayal, and confinement, without ever becoming horrific or full on terrifying. That said, if you had told me that a Toy Story movie was going to echo a lot of the elements from Dante's Inferno and Stalag 13, I would have found that pretty implausible, but it turns out that is just one more impossible thing the wizards at Pixar have accomplished again.

Due to my mis-reading of the schedule, we ended up seeing TS3 in 2-D, but I honestly think that may have been better. Director Lee Unkrich, who co-directed TS2 with original director John Lasseter, proves a deft hand with the film, although I have to say, he seems to spend more time than Lasseter on the escape and chase sequences, which may be an attempt to max out the 3D appeal. He doesn't do this at the expense of character, and the pacing is still robust enough to tolerate the diversion that these excellent gags and set-pieces provide. I'm really beginning to hanker for a straight up adventure film from this studio, even though The Incredibles came mighty close. Who knows, maybe that will come from Pixar alumnus Andrew Stanton with his adaptation of John Carter of Mars in 2012.

That's probably all I can really say about the story without inadvertently giving something away, and since every little surprise in a film like this is such a gem, I'd like to avoid that and encourage you all to see it so we can talk about it later. The one thing I'd like you to keep an eye open for, when you do go, is whether or not Toy Story 3 has something to say about the rewards of faith; not necessarily spiritual faith, but more than just faith in your friends. Woody never loses his faith in Andy, even though the shape and colour of that faith changes somewhat over the course of the movie. And there's even a little something for the three-eyed aliens and their faith in The Claw which chooses "who will stay and who will go."

As a guy who has always found significant change a little hard to deal with, the theme of this movie struck me even more than those of the first two, but at least there wasn't a childhood's end montage with a Sarah McLachlan song because even on re-watching, that scene destroys me. Seeing how Buzz and Woody and the other toys deal with Andy's maturity and the changes it brings was probably the perfect mix of bitter and sweet, and a great finale for the Toy Story series if they wrap it up here.

Something for Everyone

Even though I couldn't name half of the teams involved two weeks ago, I am now displaying multiple symptoms of World Cup fever.

* getting dressed in front of the television due to early morning games
* discussing team rivalries with my daughters
* lamenting France cheating their way in due to a blatant handball
* cheering teams based solely on the esthetic appeal of their jerseys
* watching people in other nations take this sport so seriously that Canadian hockey fans go, "whoa..."

I don't really have a dog in this fight, but have decided that I will cheer for the following teams, in the following order:
* England - great chant, plus it will make a lot of people I know very happy
* Holland - my wife's family is Dutch, and Ireland didn't make it in (boo France)
* Germany - young, high scoring squad, will make Island Mike happy
* South Africa - great jerseys, host nation, catchy name (Bafana Bafana)

And even though the games themselves aren't often as fun as they should be, what with most teams playing to not lose instead of playing to win, there are still elements of the World Cup that even non-sports fans can enjoy:

Desmond Tutu: I've been an admirer of the Archbishop for some time now, but his heartfelt welcome at the opening ceremony was absolutely wonderful: I loved his comparing Africa's metamorphosis over the last three decades to 'an ugly caterpillar' becoming a 'beautiful butterfly' but my favourite was his welcome: "Africa is the cradle of humanity so we welcome you all, every single one of you. We are all Africans; welcome home!" Plus, he cuts a rug pretty well for a 78 year old clergyman.

Pachyderm Traffic - The US team has been delayed twice now by elephants on the road; you can't make stuff like that up.

Flag Day - Seeing so many different flags flying from cars and balconies. There is no "Greece Town" or "Little Chile" in Edmonton, so seeing people sporting their colours is wonderful, like the librarian the other night with her Portugal jacket, jersey and t-shirt. Plus it's been great playing "whose flag is that?" with my daughters and nephew

African Teams - Bafana Bafana is just fun to say, and how can you not love Cameroon's team, the Indomitable Lions? It's too bad that the African teams aren't faring so well against the Europeans, but hopefully some of them will make it out of the first round.

Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium - 'Nuff said.

Wavin' Flag - I don't listen to a lot of pop radio, so I am still enjoying K'naan's song and it's childish, cheerful chorus. Plus I am a huge fan of his 'you don't need gangsta cred to be a successful hip-hop artist' stance.

It's Early Yet... - but none of the four teams I am cheering for have lost a game so far.

"Hand of Clod" - the British headlines about their goalkeeper Green and the spectacular fumble that ended up giving the US a tie against them have been great. My favourite: "That's one spill the Americans can't complain about."

Fresh Commentary - In hockey you might hear, "there's a scoring chance, oh, just wide!", but with British sportscasters you get, "here is an opportunity for England to prosper..."

Nicknames - A lot of the team nicknames are simply the colours of their jerseys, but I found a list that covers things like Greece being known as "To Piratiko" (The Pirate Ship) and Algeria as "Les Fennecs" (The Desert Foxes).

The Waka Waka - The official World Cup 2010 song by Colombian artist Shakira and African band Freshlyground incorporates Latin rhythms as well as bits from an African soldier's song called Zangalewa. In addition to being infectiously catchy, it is also being used to promote world literacy. Victoria School will be dancing the Waka Waka next week and uploading it to YouTube, so I will post a link as soon as I can.


(Does anyone else love that lion logo shown at the start where his face is an outline of Africa, or just me? Someone find me that t-shirt please!)

Despite how ferocious the competition can get, or how contentious the fans, or how noisy the vuvuzelas, everyone seems to appreciate a good competition, a surprise upset, an artful goal, a daring save, and it is a great reminder that despite its size, the world really is not too big a place. 32 nations from every corner of the globe congregating to find out which country has the best football team might not be the greatest of human aspirations, but if it reminds us that we all share common ground, even North Korea, it can be a step in the right direction.

Fanatical

Watching the World Cup and seeing so many national flags on cars has reminded me of my first trip to England in 1996 for a Games Workshop sales conference. I was new to the company and eager to make a good impression, and also very excited about my first journey overseas.

Meeting international colleagues was a real treat as well; people passionate about the same things you are, a lot of overlapping interests, an invariably great sense of humour, a lot of what my boss would call 'switched on blokes', and so on. That said, however, a lot of them were too distracted to worry about being good hosts, since the European Cup was not only going on at the time, but was actually being hosted in England, with some games being played right in Nottingham, where GW is headquartered.

After the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Euro Cup is the world's largest soccer event, with all the sportsmanship and international pride and rivalry this entails, both positive and negative. Bringing people together over a common passion is often a good idea, but sometimes pride or one-upmanship can drive people to do funny things, such as in 2006, when Dutch fans wore bright orange WWII-style German helmets to symbolize their 'invasion' of host nation Germany.

Well, all in good fun, one would hope, but, still.

At any rate, I have never been a huge soccer fan, enjoying scoring as much as I do, but the enthusiasm among my British colleagues was infectious. Far better than the events on field, however, were the challenges, taunts and boasts among the many nationalities present. The Americans, Australians and Canadians, having no dogs in this fight, were free to either sit back and watch the fur fly, or, if feeling impish, exacerbate things by misquoting other co-workers or simply lobbing easy meat into the crowd, like, "This is pretty much Britain's national sport isn't it? You guys must win international tourneys all the time, right?"

A statement like this was guaranteed to open up a row even if there were only British people present. If there were any German fans there, you were assured of hearing someone (often a lot of someones) quoting the announcer of the 1966 World Cup and his, "there's someone on the pitch...they think it's all over...well, it is now!" with a group usually chorusing in on the last four words.


There had been some minor trash talk going around the office before we boarded the buses for the West Retfords Inn, where the conference proper was being held. By the time we arrived there, you would have thought that soccer, sorry, football, was why we had come in the first place.

At registration, each participant was given a laminate showing their name, what division they worked in, and a flag denoting what country they were from. I walked away with mine, happy with how well my maple leaf had turned out, when I heard the person in line behind me say, in clipped tones, "What's this then?"

I turned to look, and saw Paul Sawyer, then editor of Citadel Journal, holding his laminate like a dead rat and showing it to the staffer handing them out. The staffer was not having any of it, so he simply answered, "What's wot?"

Paul tapped the Union Jack on his laminate. "This."


The staffer shrugged. "Everyone's got 'em, so we know who's from 'ere and who's, you know, Johnny Foreigner. You're from England, so.."

"That's right," interrupted Paul, smiling in a not entirely friendly fashion. "I am from bloody England. So you will get that Union Jack off there, sharpish, and put a proper English flag on there. It's not as if the bloody Cup isn't on, you know."

The staffer turned to his colleague, who shrugged in turn. "He's not wrong, you know. We do play Scotland on Sunday."

"All right then," said the first staffer agreeably. "One St. George's cross, coming up."



A moment later, a beaming Paul Sawyer, head held high, marched away from the registration desk, a proper English flag on his badge. This took him, not coincidentally, into the path of studio supervisor and Scotland backer for life, Gordon Rennie, who wasted no time accosting Paul with a grab of the arm and an interrogatory "Wot's all that then?"

Here we go again, I thought.

A moment later, Gordon had pushed his way to the front of the line and flipped his laminate at the staffer who had just re-done Paul's badge. Anyone who felt slighted took one look at Gordon's face, broken nose, creased brow and all, and thought better of mentioning it.

"I dunno why ye put the wrong flag on there, and I dinna care, but I'll gi' ye a chance t' fix it.," Gordon's burr proclaimed.

The staffer sighed. "I don't even know what the Welsh flag looks like, Gordie..." Looking up, Gordon's reddening face prompted a comment about some people not knowing a joke when they heard one, and two minutes later, Gordon walked away proudly, a St. Andrew's cross adorning the flag on his laminate.



Seeing the exchange, one of the American attendees whispered to me, "I hope I'm still here for that England v. Scotland game!"

I nodded, and whispered back, "Save me a seat at ringside."

The following day, I was in a seminar early in the morning, and as jet-lagged and hung over as we all were, we were all rapt with attention. Ronnie Renton, one of the legendary sales managers of the company, was telling us a very personal story about corporate dishonesty, and the importance of humility and doing the right thing, even in the face of failure. It was great stuff, and you could hear a pin drop when a knock came at the door near the end of his talk. He opened the door a crack, accepted a piece of paper that was passed through, nodded, and returned to his presentation.

When Ronnie finished, we all sat back in our chairs, stunned by what he had told us, deeply impressed by his courage in sharing it and all agreeing that it was a brilliant illustration of his point, when he said, "If there aren't any questions, in conclusion, I just want to say... England is going to the semis against Germany."

The place went apeshit. While the non-Europeans sought cover, all the Englishmen leapt from their seats, cheering and hooting, and eventually all joining in singing "One World Cup and two world wars, doo dah, doo dah..."

Well, this all came as quite a shock to the politically correct Americans and the quintessentially polite Canadians, but we were soon joining the irreverent Australians in enjoying the spectacle of the affair, and by the time we left the room, my sides ached from laughing.

There was no hooliganism, no serious repercussions, and in all, it was probably healthier than many North American sports rivalries I've seen (Edmonton? Calgary? I'm looking at you!). Despite the competitive nature of the affair, the tournament was a means of bringing people together from different parts of the continent, and many a pint was shared, and many a good play admired, whatever country it might have benefited. Maybe that's why they call it, 'the beautiful game'.

And by the time England played Scotland, Gordon and Paul were far too exhausted to do much more than watch quietly from the patio loungers of the hotel, side by side.

Poppy & Dad

I miss my dad, a bit, even though he and my mum came over yesterday afternoon and stayed for supper.

We get together less often than I would like, but it isn't through any neglect or willfulness on anyone's part; life just continues to be that thing that happens while we are busy making other plans, I guess.

They are pretty much gyppoes now, nomads; they live in their motorhome year-round, spending winters near Oliver, B.C., and their summers in Leduc. Mum doesn't like to drive at night, which makes week-night visits to Edmonton difficult, while our need to get the girls in bed at a half decent hour keeps us out of Leduc except for the weekends. Still, we do what we can and have a very nice time when we do get together.

A few years back, my dad had a series of micro-strokes, which, in the big picture, were not as destructive or debilitating as they could have been, but which did have a pronounced effect on him. His once excellent memory now fails him in unexpected ways, which he finds incredibly frustrating. Why can't I find anything? Who moved that? What's going on? It's been very difficult on Mum, but she soldiers on indomitably, which will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows her.

Some time after this, the sudden realization that there were certain conversations that I simply was not going to have with my father any more, certain insights it would just be pointless to share, reduced me to tears. The fact that my daughters are never going to meet the Dad I remember, except through my own recollections, still saddens me greatly.

Audrey and her co-workers were having a discussion along these lines, prompted by a colleague whose husband had a massive stroke and required tremendous levels of care before recently slipping into a coma. So cruel to prolong the end, one had suggested, to nods of agreement. Better to have the heart attack accompanied by the sound of fingers snapping, the sudden exeunt.

Don't be so sure, another said. A heart attack or a car accident leaves so much unsaid, there is no chance for closure, no opportunity for farewell. Half a goodbye is better than none.

The man my girls know as Poppy is quite a bit different from the Dad I grew up with. Poppy is quieter, more withdrawn. Less insightful, and prone to faking his way through certain exchanges. Still, it's not as though he's a total stranger; the same laugh, the same sense of humour, the appreciation of many of the same things.

Even a lot of the same recollections; after supper tonight, Mum was telling a story about an incident that happened when we lived on a farm in New Brunswick, nigh on forty years ago. She'd been watching our dogs play through the kitchen window, wondering what toy they were fighting over, when it turned out to be a mouse...which, as if on cue, came apart at the seams, messily. Never the strongest of stomachs, Mum became quite sick, and despite being at the kitchen sink, decorum prompted her to run at flank speed to the nearest washroom, thirty feet away, right past Dad and an official from his union. "What was his name, Maurice? Bill something.."

"Jim Davidson." Poppy asserted, without hesitation.

"That's it," confirmed Mum, "Jim Davidson! Well, all he saw was a blur.."

Even though Poppy can't recall everything he's done, and recent incidents are actually more difficult to recall than those from the distant past, there's still a lot there. He remembers occurrences from childhood, his and mine, like names and faces of family members from a motel stay in Manitoba when I was three, which I mostly recall through association with an ancient picture of my then baby sister, looking up out of an ad hoc playpen made by folding a motel cot to ninety degrees, flipping it on its side and moving it to a corner filled with blankets. Poppy remembers who was there and who wasn't.

It's almost as though Poppy and Dad are two different people who travelled in very similar circles, knew all the same people, and so on. Like an unknown brother, or best comrade. Poppy is a great fellow to have around, and I know he speaks to Dad. I don't get the impression of one person who is trapped inside another; it's more like a shape where formerly precise edges have been worn smooth with time, only all at once, rendering it into a subtly different form.

Most importantly, we still get the opportunity to break bread with him, to watch him hug his granddaughters, to see him smile and laugh and to know that he is loved. Every time I see him, I give him a big hug and get a huge smile in return, and so do the girls. To me, that still speaks of a certain quality of life, even it is not the same as it once was.

Much more than half a goodbye.