“Yeah. I can fly.”¹

Geek Out

Get earthy. Al Gore hits the stage tonight for the Radio City Music Hall Speaker Series, and while the ex-VP has made himself the brand name of climate change, many forget that he has solid nerd credentials to back up his newly prominent science wonkiness. Behind the old “Al Gore said he invented the Internet” canard was a guy who truly did back the formation of the Internet before many of us were born. That said, don’t expect Gore to talk up his favorite Twitter mash-ups on stage—he’s got a globe to save, after all. Available tickets start at $90 for a talk that starts at 8:00, just after the 5:00 showing of Iron Man lets out. Convenient!

Gore’s price of admission is pretty steep, but if you’re looking to get in touch with nature on a budget, the park’s always free. Did you know that Central Park’s North Woods were modeled on the Adirondack Mountains? I didn’t. Well, technically, I did, but only because I read the description of the “Manhattan Adirondacks Tour” that kicks off at 9:30 Saturday morning from the park’s Discovery Center. The tour will teach you about Central Park history, and the serene walk in a calming drizzle (bring an umbrella) should clear your mind for a matinee showing of Iron Man. Serendipitous!

Finally, my pet eco-issue is marine life, so the latest entry in Columbia’s LDEO Spring Lectures, “A Slippery Slope? The Watery World Beneath The Changing Ice Sheets,” sounds like an enlightening way to spend Sunday afternoon. The lecture starts at 3:00 and wraps up about an hour later, so I might even have time to hit the theaters afterward. But is there anything playing…?

Geek In

Conquer feudal Japan. A special treat this week, as a game recommendation comes to us all the way from GONY West—i.e., my friend Hank Leukart, who lives in Los Angeles. Hank is a former project manager for a major software company who now works in the TV industry and occasionally publishes a missive on his travel blog, Without Baggage. He also wrote this staggeringly dweeby book in the 1990s. Come to think of it, he’s more qualified to write this blog than I am.

Anyway, Hank, an avid board-game enthusiast, recommends Shogun and writes:

“Shogun combines a light war game with the strategy of a Eurogame; it’s complex without being impossible to understand. In the game, you try to take over feudal Japan by attacking other players’ regions and building churches and palaces. You need to be careful, though—if you don’t take care of the people living on your land while you’re trying to take over the world, they will revolt.

“My favorite part is the mechanism used to determine the outcome of battles, called the Battle Tower. It’s this crazy contraption where you throw cubes representing armies into a funnel and a random bunch comes out the other side.

“(Note that this game used to be called Wallenstein when it first came out and it had a Germany/World War II theme. I’ve never seen that version, but the Shogun version is what’s available now.)”

Thanks, Hank!

UPDATE: Baby Ruthless author Johnny writes in:

Just a quick heads up before you get flamed … Wallenstein, the original version of Shogun, was based on The Hundred Year’s War, not World War II.

Picky. He was only off by five centuries, give or take.

Johnny also included his own impressions of the game, and they were too interesting not to pass along:

There are about 25 things you determine before each turn. Then you’re powerless to change any of it during the game. In fact, each turn is resolved in minutes. By far, making all the decisions beforehand takes up the bulk of gameplay. Analysis Paralysis isn’t a by-product of the game; it is the game.

In a way, the game is almost like a programming challenge: You and your opponents create complex executables, then run them simultaneously and see who was the best programmer.

Thanks, Johnny!

FINAL UPDATE, GOD WILLING: I had no idea it was possible to be so sick of a game that I've never played. Hank did the research and found that Wallenstein was based on the Thirty Years War, not the Hundred Years War. Hank wins.

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1. According to some new flick by that guy from Swingers. ↑