Coffee & More Gaming Stuff

Issue #57: Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.

Hello readers.

I don’t have a lot to talk about this week but I wanted to get something out anyway.

So who all out there is a coffee drinker? I know I am. What is your favorite brand or coffee place? I usually drink coffee at home but sometimes I will go out somewhere to get some coffee. Usually, it is not a trip specific to go get coffee but if it is, I typically go to Dunkin. If I’m out and about and just need to get some coffee, I tend to go to 7 Eleven. I didn’t used to like their coffee but lately I’ve been leaning toward it more than the coffee at OnCue. And I don’t go to Starbucks. I’m not a fan. Never really have been. I don’t like the taste of their coffee. When I lived in Seattle I absolutely would not go to Starbucks even though that is where they came from. There are so many other places in the Seattle area that have better coffee. Usually the drive through places that you can find throughout the area were better. There are a couple of those types of places here in the OKC metro area as well. Scooters is the one that I will usually go to if I want drive through coffee. I will NOT go to Dutch Bros. Not a fan of theirs at all. Their coffee, in my humble opinion, is nasty. Worse than Starbucks even. I can’t really think of any other drive through places around here. Living in a college town, there are plenty of sit down cafe places but I don’t hit many of those. I can sit down and drink coffee at Dunkin and I like their coffee better. In fact, I drink ground Dunkin at home. Speaking of drinking coffee at home, I used to always drink using the single use k-cups but I’ve gone away from that. Mostly because those things are not recyclable and I’m trying to do my part. If I ever find any good k-cup coffee that has bio-degradable k-cups, I would probably use them but until then, I just take the time to brew a full pot of coffee. If you know of any GOOD biodegradable k-cup coffee, let me know. For now, I just drink my ground Dunkin coffee. Also, for the record, I do NOT like Folgers coffee. That stuff tastes like rotten pond water. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

Anyway, thanks for reading and for coming back every week. Eventually, I hope to make this thing more interesting to you.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

This is a new segment I thought I’d throw together for any random music stuff that I want to talk about.

For this first segment, I would like to give an update on my music adventures. My old band, Get Fired, has gotten back together. With a slightly altered lineup. Before we split up, the most recent iteration that is, not the original lineup, we consisted on myself on vox, Dwayne on guitar, Wyatt on bass, Rob on guitar, and whatever drummer we had at the time. Dwayne moved back to California so he is not in this lineup. Wyatt switched to guitar, Rob switched to drums (due to our ongoing finding a drummer problem), and we brought on newcomer Drake as our bass player. So far, we have been rehearsing our stuff. Eventually we will play some shows but we’re not in any hurry. We are also fiddling around with the idea of what to record for a future release. I’ll keep you updated on all that.

My friend Dave released a new episode of One Band 5 Songs. This week, he covered Canada-based music project Northcote. You can check out the episode on Spotify.

Here’s a list of my most listened to artists in the month of August. This is based on Last.fm which only pulls in music I’ve been listening to on Spotify so it’s not 100% accurate considering I also use Apple Music but it’s still not a bad representation of my listening habits.

Things are getting really busy at the shop lately with all the games we’ve been running. It’s been a blast. Here is what this week has looked like:

Monday - Mork Borg Monday: I ran my table through an adventure called A Dungeon Most Pointless. The adventure really lived up to its name. I didn’t necessarily run it as written though. I added my own little tweaks to it. To be fair, I’m not sure if anybody runs Mork Borg adventures exactly the way they are written. I am of the opinion that they are specifically written in a way that leaves a lot open to additional storytelling. Anyway, the adventure started out with the PCs being chased by death himself and they ran for cover into the aforementioned dungeon. At my table, there were 3 players (and one of the player’s dog). In the end, naturally (as is the case with most Mork Borg adventures) everybody died. Along the way, however, while roaming through this dungeon, 2 of the characters went insane and came across a couple of adventurers that were nicknamed the immortal nincompoops. All in all, I had fun running the game and I think all the players had fun running through the pointless dungeon.

Wednesday - RIFTS: Anybody that knows me, knows that I am a fan of the RIFTS TTRPG. Ever since I start working at the shop, I’ve been bugging Dave (the owner) about getting that stuff in the shop. Finally, he had me contact Palladium and figure out how to place an order. Then I put a list of books together for him to place the order. So this was the first Wednesday that I got to run the game. I am pretty excited about being able to run this game in the shop. So the got off to a late start since we had to walk one of the players through character creation (he had never played the game before) but aside from the late site, I think everybody had fun. I know that I did. I’m looking forward to running this game on a weekly basis.

To Catch A Killer - I watched this on……uhhh……Hulu I think. It’s a crime drama with Ben Mendelsohn as an FBI agent trying to catch a serial killer. It came out this year. It was decent. I thought the acting, particularly from Mendelsohn and the other lead (Shailene Woodley) was done well but the ending felt kind of anti-climatic.

Jurassic Park (3D) - Saw this one in the theater with my son Sunday evening. This movie was either not meant to be seen in 3D or whoever put the 3D cut together screwed the pooch. The 3D elements were in the weirdest spots. 3D did nothing for this movie.

Total Recall (2012) - Saw this on one of the streaming platforms a few days ago. I’m not sure why I never bothered to watch this one previously. I did like the original movie. I’m not sure whether or not I liked this one better than the 1990 version with Arnold. Maybe. Maybe not. I did enjoy this one. I found it odd that they left out the Mars connection though.

From Hell - Here’s another one that I never bothered to watch when it came out for no particular reason. I watched this one on HBO Max last night. It is a crime/horror film based on the comic book of the same name by Alan Moore. It is about a detective that is trying to solve the Jack the Ripper murders. It was good. I don’t think it would show up on any top 10 movies of all time for me or anything like that but certainly worth a viewing.

This week’s pull list was very short. It only consisted of one comic book.

• Ultimate Invasion #3

This week’s tune comes from Chicago based band Ratboys. They just released a new album last week called The Window and this week’s song comes from that album.