Sunday I finally saw The Pianist. That night Adrien Brody won the Best Actor Oscar for his wonderful role in this film which takes place during the WWII German occupation of Poland. I've been an admirer of Adrien Brody for a few years now, based on Summer of Sam and Liberty Heights. This was the first time in years I didn't watch the awards on tv; I wish I'd seen his acceptance speech. He said, "It fills me with great joy, but I am also filled with a lot of sadness tonight because I am accepting an award at such a strange time. And you know my experiences of making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people at times of war."
I highly recommend The Pianist. It's not an easy or happy film, but it certainly gives a vivid portrayal of the effects of war on the civilian population of a city.
There are occasional problems with the russcon mailing list (with mail being delayed or lost). Plus it's hosted by Marty's friends at cws.org and Marty will be moving away soon. So I'm considering moving the mailing list to yahoogroups. I am on many yahoogroups mailing lists (for webcomics, software, games, etc.) and personally am happy with them. The benefits we would gain include:
The drawbacks are that emails have an advertisement appended, and that it might be a brief hassle for you getting set up if you're not already on any yahoogroups lists (I'm not sure whether it's a hassle now or not). If I make this move, I should be able to move all the existing email addresses over to yahoo, so in theory it should be pretty simple and transparent. Possibly the only real change from your point of view would be that to post messages to the russcon list, you would email them to a different email address.
So this is a solicitation for feedback; if you have any opinions or questions, let me know.
| Blokus | 4 | RussW 3 MarkH 1 Dan -1 Fred -3 |
| Barbu | 4 | Ben 3 William 1 MarkH -1 Dan -3 |
| Entdecker | 3 | RussD 1 RussW 1 Clayton -2 |
| Acquire | 3 | RussW 2 JimG 0 Fred -2 |
| Exxtra | 5 | JP 4 Dan 2 MarkG 0 Ben -2 Matt -4 |
| Bluff | 3 | MarkG 2 MarkY 0 Justin -2 |
| DurchDieWueste | 3 | JP 2 RussW 0 RussD -2 |
| Tichu | 2 | ( Ben MarkG ) 1 ( Matt Fred ) -1 |
| Carcassonne | 5 | JP 4 MarkY 2 Clayton 0 Dan -2 RussW -4 |
| SettlersStoneAge | 4 | Justin 3 MarkH -1 William -1 JimG -1 |
| Guillotine | 3 | MarkY 1 Justin 1 MarkG -2 |
| Phantan | 4 | MarkY 3 MarkG 1 Ben -1 JP -3 |
Ah, a satisfying win in Blokus as I got rid of all my pieces. Sadly, my 1-square piece was my penultimate play rather than my final play, but still pleasing. Poor Dan suffered a series of smackdowns early.
The epic 4-session Barbu game finally concluded. Congratulations, Ben. 5 years ago, we had a Titan game that lasted 2 sessions, but I think this 4-session Barbu game is a definite RussCon record breaker. Of course they weren't playing Barbu the whole evening all 4 weeks.
The 3-player Entdecker was quite suspenseful and surprising, with several very large islands. Clayton began to pull ahead in the chip race and on the victory point chart. I was behind and thought I was going to finish last, but somehow managed to pull out a joint victory with RussD with Clayton finishing last, to my surprise.
We also had a 3-player Acquire. Fred had early good fortune and started many chains. But what killed him and JimG, I believe, was that Fred's first chain was Imperial (with 3 hotels, not just 2). (Or maybe Continental, I don't remember for sure. $500/share, in any case.) We got into a 3-way race for shares, as no other chains started for a few turns, and Imperial showed no sign of getting taken over any time soon, so then I decided this was being too costly and bailed out of that Imperial race. So JimG and Fred ended up broke for a long time, and I had money to buy shares in other chains, merge, and get bonuses. Lather, rinse, repeat. I ended up with almost twice as much cash as JimG who had 2nd place. Also Jim had bad luck on starting chains early on. I think Fred started 8 and I started 3 before Jim even got to start one.
3-player gaming continued with a pleasingly close Durch die Wüste; JP beat me by just 2 points.
Phantan is some card game I know nothing about, except that it's good that it was played, narrowly averting possible disaster.
The English Patient, original soundtrack recording
Evita, the complete motion picture music soundtrack
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, original motion picture soundtrack
Star Wars, the original motion picture soundtrack
To my surprise, it took a while before anyone detected that this was all Oscar-winning movie music.
Time magazine special report: First Stop, Iraq is required reading about how we got into this war.
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann shows a surprising number of parallels between 2003 and 1933. Plus it's an interesting history lesson.
U.S. Lifts FBI Criminal Database Checks: The Justice Department lifted a requirement Monday that the FBI ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information about criminals and crime victims before adding it to the country's most comprehensive law enforcement database. Whee.
What's wrong with this photo caption? "Anti-war activists wear make-up symbolizing fake blood on their faces..."
Mystery of the Min Min lights explained — these seem analogous to the Marfa lights which some of us saw in a trip to west Texas years ago.
BobK sent a link to photos now that he, KT, and the kids are settled in Paris.
i'd like to thank the academy
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