play with your brain

Last night, Nikki and I met up with our friends - Vin, Jason, Marco, Carl and Alex - for dinner at Salsa Rosa and endless fun with Cranium, the new game we got in New York. After sharing our some Twinkies (which, as you know, saved the earth from being devoured by Galactus), we started off at ComicQuest in Megamall with Vin and Jason, with the highlight being Vin's spectacular clay rendition of DNA (complete with double helix) and ended up at Country Waffle where Marco's stirring charades of "Evolution" and "Short Order Cook" competed with Carl's humming "Girls Just Want To Fun" (everyone had guessed it but his teammate Jason) for the best moment of the evening.

What's is this game that got the game freak in us so excited? Well, a few months ago, Cranium, the fastest selling independent board game in history, pulled off an upset by besting such industry giants as Microsoft and Nintendo to win the “Game of The Year” award at the annual Toy of the Year. The Toy Industry Association’s (TIA) prestigious “Game of the Year” Award recognizes the most innovative, interactive and playful game of the year including board game, CD-ROM, electronic or card game formats. Cranium’s variety of outrageously fun activities outshined the electronic competition in the “Game of the Year” category including Nintendo’s Game Cube, Game Boy Advance, Microsoft’s Xbox, and the Harry Potter Levitating Challenge Electronic Skill and Action Game.

You compete as teams in a race to complete various tasks around the board, in four categories: Creative Cat (with challenges like Sensosketch, where you draw something with your eyes closed), Word Worm (where puzzles like Black Out and Gnilleps confound even Nikki), Data Head (with tricky questions that proved that Jason's double degrees sometimes mean absolutely nothing - ha!), and Star Performer (where you hum, whistle and act). The combination of all these elements provide for a fast-paced game of fun, creativity and raucous laughter all night long.

We ended up playing several rounds because, like eating peanuts or potato chips, its hard to stop. We just wished Cynthia and Arnold and Dino were with us to join the thrills!

table talk

Of course, we did talk about others things:

1. How difficult it is not to attract the attention of a Sand Worm in Arrakis (you have to be really creative in how you walk, making sure that you do so without any discernable pattern, which led to hilarious renditions of stumbling, rolling and limping around chaotically)

2. My traumatic foot massage experience in Singapore (where I was strapped down and learned the meaning of podiatric pain at the hands of an evil evil evil woman with metal and wooden implements straight out of "Hellraiser")

3. Our various reasons for happiness this year (Jason is having a hell of a good one, di ba Cams?)

4. Our various comics projects coming out in the next few weeks (Ab Ovo from Kestrel Studios, Textmen from Dynatica Comics and Zsa Zsa from Carver House) plus the projected launch of our secret web project (which is our common pride and joy - a collective creative endeavor )

5. And just who should become the new Dumbledore (nominees, all presented complete with tongue-in-cheek dialogue, included Clint Eastwood, Danny Glover, Patrick Stewart, Max von Sydow, Mike Myers and a whole lot of truly absurd choices)

What a night.

invisible kingdom

Picked up the final volume of Morrison's "The Invisibles" for some good reading tonight, along with various issues of Grendel (the inspiration for the spot color color comic we're releasing next month - go Tony!), JLA, JSA and Lucifer. Morrison always has the capacity to surprise, even with the most throw-away of concepts. Too bad I didn't like "The Filth". Perhaps in TPB?