As a youth, I collected autographs of baseball players the couple of times a year we were able to attend pro baseball games. I managed a few good ones too: Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, Bob Uecker, better known for his Hall of Fame career as a wisecracking baseball announcer than as a player, Cub […]
Read MoreThis is not a post about cosplay or costuming. I’ve been thinking about how we dress lately. It occurred to me, after taking my wife to dinner for her birthday on a Friday night, that I was the only person in the restaurant wearing a necktie, or for that matter, a more formal shirt and […]
Read MoreRecent events have called up memories of conventions past. It seems some overly enthusiastic person(s) at Dragon Con this past Memorial Day weekend seriously injured two DragonCon attendees by throwing chairs off a tenth-floor balcony at one of the large hotels in downtown Atlanta. The current prevailing theory is that the person(s) responsible were in […]
Read MoreI’ve attended three conventions over the last six weeks. It’s nothing nearly as intense as my buddy Matt McElroy, who usually attends 15-20 (or more!) conventions ever year for his job, but I’ve been thinking about conventions quite a bit: not only are they a chance to get away for a weekend, they also represent […]
Read MoreWith barely a week in between conventions, I have to make this late post short and sweet: I will be attending GeekKon this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, appearing as a local guest and participating in panel discussions. Due to unforeseen circumstances, part of the schedule is in flux right now: a number of panels may […]
Read MoreBack in December, I was contracted to work on parts of three different books. I had strong reason to believe all three would be available at GenCon, August 17-20 of this year. After turning in most of my initial material in late January/early February, I was confident things were on track. None of those books […]
Read MoreMy colleague Owen KC Stephens has a great blog post that just went up about burnout. Here’s the LINK. In it, he is specifically referencing burnout in the RPG industry, but I think it very easily applies to any job out there. I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot recently, so his post inspired […]
Read MoreYeah, I realized I missed posting last week. Truth is, I’ve been obsessed with something lately — to the point where I’ve stopped thinking about much else. Back in June, my “friends” Matt McElroy and Monica Valentinelli were trying to convince me that I should give Pokemon Go! a try. They were having fun with […]
Read MoreI’ve been thinking about zoos a lot lately. What started it all was a whiff of nostalgia: one of my all-time favorite commercials EVER, created by and for the Detroit Zoo circa 1982, showed up on YouTube. It was later modified to be a general-purpose zoo commercial run on national television in the US, frequently […]
Read MoreI just got back from a brief vacation. We often find we need to get away from our day jobs and other concerns for a while, and just be tourists. In this case, we took a short driving trip through south-west Wisconsin to Galena, Illinois. The entire area was rich in lead and zinc deposits, […]
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