One movie, various misadventures.

“Central Intelligence” is a comedy with an odd twist: The comedian (Kevin Hart) is the straight man, and the other guy (Dwayne Johnson) is the goofball. It works surprisingly well, and this coming from someone who fundamentally does not LIKE comedies. The pacing was uneven, and the characters were in some cases broken (from a literary standpoint; broken people oftem make great characters), but in the end, it WORKED. It also played a bit with the Mary McCarthy quote, “We are the hero of our own story.” More of that in another post.

So… Friday, after much dithering, I managed to get out of the house, en route to Palos to visit my father. The idea was that, after he went to supper, I would head over to Tampier Lake and go rowing to wait out the traffic. Except the traffic messed things up; by the time I got to O’Hare it was obvious that I wouldn’t even get to Palos before my dad went to supper, so I aborted the journey and went rowing at Busse Lake instead. I haven’t been there since 2007, with Valkyrie, so this was the first time under oars. It’s a cool place.

Saturday disappeared into mist, mostly. Sunday, I was supposed to visit Ernie G. for gaming and barbecue. Except… The couple from Sheboygan who proposed the gathering never showed, nor did anyone else. Ernie and I sat around and told lies for a while, then headed to Lake Geneva Games, found little, then went up to the Elkhorn Pizza Ranch for the monthly SLAG gathering. Ended up playing two games: “Mogul”, a mostly abstract bidding game with a REALLY thin layer of railroad trappings, and “Evolution”, a 2014 release that would seem to have a good chance of being the next “Settlers”. The game is simple to learn, deep, of a reasonable length, and amusing. Good times.

Uncle Hyena