Life in a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. B.M.A.T.C., and Etruscan typewriter erasers. Blogged by David Gorsline.
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We're off to start the rounds of family visits at home and abroad. Posting will be somewhat sporadic for several days. Warmest winter wishes to all! posted: 3:40:04 PM |
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There was game I had when I was a kid, it would have been about 1963. As far as I can remember, it was called Smack A Roo, and it was a sort of design-your-own horizontal pinball game. You could set it up to play ten pins, or you could play a kind of skee-ball with the marble rolling up into a triangular catcher with holes for scoring. There were about 6 ganes you could play, with lots of little plastic parts to be lost. The jingle from the TV ads was contagious: it was probably the reason my mother bought it for me, to get the song out of her head. Blaring brass instruments behind a guy singing "It's a blast and a half, I'm telling you/Boinka-boinka-boinka/Get Smack A Roo." The game doesn't seem to have left much of a trace online. I'll bet my friend Chuck has one in his basement. posted: 2:51:47 PM |
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100 best-loved classic British toys, annotated. Most of them have US counterparts, sometimes subtly renamed (e.g., Clue vs. Cluedo), but there are some UK endemics, like #96, the tabletop cricket game, and #22, the TARDIS playset.
#61 Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots
The Americans sure knew how to name toys. We, to be honest, didn't. So, while this boxing automaton chestnut went under one of the best names for any game, or indeed any thing, ever, in the States, the rather rarer British version was renamed... Raving Bonkers Fighting Robots. Quite. #12 explains how the indoor soccer game was named by a birder with a flair for puns.
Our in-no-way-scientific reckoning puts the ratio of completed games of [#54] Mousetrap to occasions when you just built the thing and set it off, counters be damned, at about 1:8...
The yellow-on-black type will make your eyes bleed, though. (Thanks to blogdex.) posted: 2:41:55 PM |
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I saw at least four (perhaps five or six) hawks—two buteos and two accipiters—on a drive out to Leesburg and a walk along the trail. The cold overcast weather must have coaxed them out. They're looking for mouse popsicles, maybe? posted: 1:57:59 PM |
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Bookmarks for a future trip to Yosemite National Park: travel tips and resources from National Geographic magazine; live webcam views from the Yosemite Association. Unfortunately, there isn't time to visit this year, nor are we carrying tire chains. posted: 10:27:14 AM |
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Our Lady of 121st Street, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by John Vreeke, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Kennedy Center Film Theater, Washington
Woolly's holiday offering less a play than a series of scenes: a multi-culti group of New Yorkers (some of them now successful and settled elsewhere, and some still in the 'hood) assemble for a wake for Sister Rose, an influential Catholic school teacher. The chemistry is strongest between Michael Ray Escamilla and Mando Alvarado, who play brothers Ray and Pinky. Pinky is a little slow on the backswing, due to an unfortunate experience with a brick and an open window in his childhood. Alvarado finds interesting business to play, like squeaking his sneakers on the floor, in a part that is written a fraction to the clichéd. Director Vreeke surprises by using the ramps on either side of the audience as part of the staging. Lighting, by Colin K. Bills, is less successful: as part of the bar set, there is a strip of distracting neon lighting that is just about at eye level for those of us in row H. Guirgis's script is all about getting pairs of its characters to "What?" as in "Okay, I'm really listening. What do you want to say to me?" and on that account it succeeds. But the play's closing moments largely serve to illustrate my playwright friend Lisa's dictum that "Endings are hard." posted: 9:49:09 AM |
 D. Gorsline, Proprietor
   
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