Our rock show last night went off like a natural 20. That’s nerd-speak for ‘quite good’, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you blog readers. Despite the fact that we haven’t played (including practice) since March, we hardly screwed up at all. I did forget the words during “Shoggoths Away” but only for a second, and I covered by making up new lyrics as I went, which is always popular. We played at about quarter after nine so by the time we finished the sun was setting. Yes, we played in a parking lot. Merrick stood right over a manhole cover. The sound system was da bomb – my worries were completely unfounded. Fatrick really came through for us, my thanks to him and to all the fans who formed the “mosh” “pit”. At a bar gig, we never (well I shouldn’t say never but very rarely) are asked to give autographs, but at these nerd-cons, we’re small ‘c’ celebs, and yes I must admit that’s a nice feeling. Someone brought their copy of SSZ for the band to sign, another person just had a piece of cardstock, and another one grabbed our set list and we signed that for him. If I had been able to bring CDs I would have made a killing. But sadly they’re still not done. I did have the foresight to bring the last dregs of the t-shirts that have been quietly sobbing of loneliness in my closet at night, and I sold all but one. Someone shouted out from the crowd that we should play some Clash, so the boys started playing some Clash song. Since I have no idea how any Clash songs go, I stood quietly and entertained myself by thinking about different kinds of wallpaper. For our one and only encore song, there was another little surprise, Jordan got off the drum kit and Mario took over. Oh the fun we have!
All the toil about figuring out the buses turned out to be time wasted – one of Chris’ friends gave us a ride there. I got to play Bubble Bobble too so I was happy. Lester’s Arcade, for those of you who don’t know, is quite a large arcade in Burnaby, open 24 hours, with pool tables and air hockey and LAN games. And it’s got its own pizza joint. After all the nerding was done, Stuey, Slater, Kathryn and I were given a ride back to civilization by Darcey, who ranted (as is his wont) about the many things he was born to rant about, to the edification of us all. A late dinner of salad, an episode of Black Adder, and it was to bed for me.
In the morning Rob called offering me a ride to the gamey-game part of NecroWombicon. Naturally I accepted and gave him his birthday present. I played a game of Carcasonne (I think it’s spelled) which was mildly dull but not without its charm, then I just kind of wandered about while everyone played video games. Finally 6pm rolled around which was when I scheduled to play Spaceship Zero. At first I thought nobody was going to show, but I ended up playing with 9 people playing (though not all at the same time). Everyone seemed to love it and a few asked how to get a copy.
Jeff told me the other day that Robin Williams has a copy of Spaceship Zero the RPG. Apparently he plays D&D with his daughter on the set of the movie he’s shooting now in town with Jeff’s girlfriend’s young daughter, so Jeff gave him his extra copy of SSZ. Will he play it? I hope so. Rob and I were hoping that he and Vin Deisel would get together and start a celebrity RPG advocacy group of some kind. Then maybe it would be cool to play RPGs…
…or they’d just be stigmatized. Either way, I approve.