Pulp Captions Round 12

David Fox - "For Lance, a quick tap was always enough to dislodge that last drop of water in the ear. But he is still stuck with that nettlesome question that all men of today must answer-- how do I get that last crab to let go of my nuts ?"


Mike Reed - "At last, young Eric found his dream job (one that didn't require work)...a stand-in for Troy Donahue.."


"What Eric hated about being on the 'receiving end' of bukkake was that 'it' was always getting in his ears..." **** FIRST PLACE ****


"As Lars exited the water and was clearing his ears, he couldn't help but wonder...who _WAS_ that mysterious American who had stolen away his beautiful Norweigan nymph? What did a _librarian_ have that he didn't? Was it true of what they said, "Once you go 'black helicopter', you never go back"???"


Karen Spurny - "Rejoicing in kicking sand in the face of a beach weenie, Chuck didn't realise that in ten years Charles Atlas was going to own him."


Peter Card - "Several blows to the head dislodged the last few drops of liberal news agenda from Brad's cerebral cortex. With relief he felt his hatred for freedom subside to a low throbbing moral relativism and a sneaking regard for KD Lang's lyrics."


Paul Wegner - No matter how hard Rex hit himself in the head, he still could not get the image of Brian Y in a thong out of his mind. **** THIRD PLACE ****



Ian Wedge A smile, a flick of the hair and a rub of the towel, and all evidence of low flying seagulls was gone.


Matt Foster - “Look, Ron,” Lance said tiredly, “This ‘dsdsdsdsdsdsThe Men of Tomorrow will piss one each other’s heads’ cult just won’t fly. Why don’t you try starting a fake religion instead?”


Dirk Heinz - "Must remember to put Supports A Ruhr - Silesia in my next move" **** SECOND PLACE ****


T. Johnston - This is the last photo of Guy Lesnevich, taken an instant before he exploded his own skull while demonstating a powerful open palm fighting technique. Guy, who called himself "The Man From Tomorrow", was a martial arts champ, golf pro and spy. His funeral will be closed casket.


Otto Schmidt - Wow,! I coulda' had a V-8"


"Uhh..Duhh... This works when I have water in my ear, maybe it'll work for the bullet too!"


"I'm too sexy for my shirt

Too sexy for my shorts,

Too sexy for my Shirt

Too Sexy....

Too Sexy.....

Too Sexy...."



"Lemuel Lunkitt had spent a fortune on his makeover from West Virginia hillbilly to Surfer Dude, but the goal of it all still did nowithout telling him, the owners of his favorite nude beach had sold it to the Southern Baptists."


"Kyle was in a good mood. It was going well! She had said "Can't we just be friends" and "I'll call you sometime......"


Joe Steadman - “I won't do it Kahn (pronounced KAAAAAAAAAAAAAHNNNNNNN)!!!!” **** MITFTi Prize ****


“That was too bad of a landing… now, where did I leave that time-machine?” **** MITFTi Prize ****

Walt thought… “Thank goodness I’m not Tenctonese. … stupid Slags”…**** MITFTi Prize ****


Gary Christiansen - "Damn Babelfish always pops out when you least expect it." **** MITFTi Prize ****

Next Week's (Round 13) Caption comes from DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY (Sept 21, 1929)

The gift of Gab, Whitehouse, Gladiators, and Sunday kid's stuff

When you're painted and left on the Airsoft range,
And the part-time staff come out to clean up for next day's,
Jest find your car keys and head home 'fore it rains
And pretend to teh Internets that you're a soldier. -- Grant Whitley

Saturday dawned with a hearty breakfast (brunch really) of Eggs Benedict and coffee. I was tired from the night before, and decided for once, I could let a membership meeting go by without me. I kicked about in the dealers' room, almost giving in to the siren song of this advertisement:

Who could resist such high pressure advertising?

As is usual for a HISTORICON, I got cajoled by Howard Whitehouse to be an assistant director for his Pulp Adventures game, Astounding Tales! I'm a sucker for whining and sniveling, it always gets me right here, so I agreed to help.

Better Slideshow, more and better piccies!

For those of us who are unused to Howard's Astounding Tales, you know that the structure is simple but the texture is quite complex. The game is on the surface a "skirmish" game, but it really is a low-grade RPG setting. Howard runs his convention games as movie sets, where each table referee is an assistant director helping to make the main movie happen. In this case, the "movie" was SLAVES OF THE ELEPHANT GOD, a fictional movie set in four sets, the Jalalabad Marketplace (with a strangely phallic looking minaret), The Northwest Frontier, The Jungle, and a Tibetan lamasery. I ran the Tibetan table, which featured (of course!) Fu Manchu and his deadly minions.

Fu Manchu (pictured) this fellow did the evil Warlord justice!

Some local Warlord thugs did his bidding, as well as the llamas at the monastery. Into this mix came Biggles the famous pilot, The Indiana Jones family (Indy, Henry Jones, Short Round and Marian), The Tibetan SS expedition, the Gestapo, and the Bolshevik Spies. They were all investigating the mysterious idol of the Elephant God. Fu Manchu sent his deadly minions out to interfere with the groups. A fierce battle ensued. Indiana and Marion were captured. Short Round infiltrated Fu's group and released them. Biggles fought with the bad guys, who captured Ginger.. who got released again. Henry Jones (Indy's dad) got captured by thugs. Things were looking dire for the Jones team when it became... Act 2! We did a table switch for a few teams.. I sent out the Bolshies and the Gestapo and brought in Clark Savage, Jr. (aka Doc), whose dad knew Henry Jones back in the day, and Jeeves and Wooster, just wondering the Hindu Kush looking for a petrol station.

Patrick Wilson volunteered to be a standin stooge for me.. and since he had so many cool hats I took him up on it. A wonderful job.

Things picked right up in the Second Act... Fu acted inscrutable, Clark helped out the Jones family, Bertie acted lost and got his car blown up. Fu disappeared at the very end when it looked like the good guys were winning. The scene shifted to a very speedy denouement at the Island Volcano of Riki-tiki, where, of course, the volcano blew up, the Elephant God emerged to plague the world, and every beat feet out of there before the island sank below the waves. A fun little game. You have to be on your toes with this system, and keep the action CONSTANTLY moving-- the game is partly improv comedy, partly a test of trivial knowledge, and oh yes, kinda sorta a RPG game. I love it.

The game ended, and we all (the TriaDCon planning committee) went out to dinner at Lapps. It had been a while since I had been to Lapps, but it hasn't changed much. They still make a wicked chicken corn chowder. Andy had a bombshell to drop that we'll discuss when we get more details. We compared notes and discussed issues. And we had corn chowder.

Karen thinks: I love hanging out with professional competitive eaters. They are so hawt.

I had to get back to get into a chariot racing game (one of my favorite minis style events). It turned out it had morphed into a gladiator fighting game using the Arena Rules. I liked this game, but maybe would have enjoyed it more with fewer people and less of them shouting in my face under the influence of beer. Oh well, I had a headache.

Cool Slideshows!

They seemed upset at "the turtle" and ganged up on him. Towards the end, I implored the child across from me for death.. the shouting was a bit much. The young lad that I had pulled a fast one on in the Aachen game the previous day dropped by to say hello.

Hey Mr. Traitor.. YOU SUCK!

Even at this late hour (Saturday night), there were still lots of games going on. Greg Whitaker (below) had run several rounds of Viking Looters, the game that Pirate Raiders comes from.

Mark Fastoso was running one of his Sword and the Flame games, late Saturday..





There was a preponderance of cowboy games as a secondary theme...



And one thing I liked was the REAL SCALE Pulp Adventures game, called "The Shrink Ray"



I didn't party too hard in the bar like I have in shows past.. I was tired enough. I did end up talking with some friends until late, but at least I didnt' wake up with a headache the next day.

SUNDAY DAWNS

Whoops, we haven't shot the obligatory "Massive Vendor's Room Shot" that everyone takes at HISTORICON. Here you go.









There you go, tracking right to left. Glad we got that out of the way. For my money,and it was for my money, at that.. the Vendor Hall was only so so for me. There wasn't much new. I spent my money mostly on the Gaming Camp supplies, rather than anything personal, except for some reference books. Having the A/C fail put a "damper" on things... even walking calmly through the area had me drenched in sweat. (which wasn't the vendor's fault, to be sure)

From the "This Hobby has Plenty of Shiny Young Faces in It" Dept. Games for Kids and the Adults they bring with them:

Sunday seems to be getting focused on games for the youngsters, and I couldn't be more delighted. I love throwing games for kids and I love watching all the clever stuff that other people do along the same lines. Here's Jim McCourt's awe-inspiring "Red Five Going In" (Z-733) Star Wars based game, featuring ships he handcrafted out of wood. This guy is a genius.













And of course, the game that started the trend, Mark McGlaughlin's Princess Ryan's Space Marines, a longtime favorite of Sunday Mornings.





And Duncan Adams' BUCK ROGERS AND THE SECRET LABORATORY (Z-196), featuring recast flat figures from commercial Buck Rogers figures from the 1930s! Very cool stuff. I thought I saw Peter Card playing this..





Mr. Todd Harland-White has also run his "Teddy Bear Picnic" rules for a few years now, and this year, he had a wonderful Western theme with cowboy teddy bears.





Not a bad effort... I am inspired!

Sunday seems a good time to try something a bit wacky, or in large scale..



Here's Chris Weuve playing a raw-ther large scale PURSUIT OF THE GOEBEN game in mega 1:1200 scale.



Having hit the dealer's room one last time, and shaken Otto's hand farewell (thank you, roomie!) I bid Historicon farewell and nosed my ancient vehicle southward for a nice easy ride home down 30, to 15, to Frederick and points South. It was an easy ride.. but I was exhausted. Historicon wears me out!

If I have taken a few impressions away with me, I'd have to say this was a remarkably apolitical, easygoing convention. MANY thanks to all the contentious individuals for leaving it home. There was a dearth of nasty gossip, and that's the way I like it. I felt more charged up about HMGS than I have been for a while-- I had been in a slow spiraling burnout for a good bit of the last two years but I'm beginning to get enthusiastic again. I want to break out the paint, I want to finish off a few projects that have languished out of apathy. Thank you to all the staff and participants of HISTORICON 2007, you helped recharge my batteries.

And to Bob Giglio, a job well done, sir.

NOTES:

Additional Photo sets

Mr TankGuy1's HISTORICON SLIDE SHOW

HISTORICON WEBSITE

Aachen Killing Time, Dreadnoughts, Shopping, etc.

AACHEN KILLING TIME

This was a blast. If he wasn't camera-shy, I would have immortalized the expression on the commander of the bunker that I wiped out in the course of the game.. you mean, you weren't German????? I fear he didn't take it well.

As we were in the lobby, I had a chance to schmooze a bit while we waited on the turns. Here's our illustrious President doing the GM Help Desk thing that he does.



Some nice games were being run on Saturday, including large scale Star Wars (below)





And Demolition Derby.. who says this hobby is greying?



And a larger scale Guadacanal?? game



It looked too stodgy and dignfied for me.



... and a very nice "Sword in Africa" presentation.



I even bumped into some guys playing the new TIDES OF IRON by Fantasy Flight. It looks a wee bit TOO much like "Axis and Allies: Miniatures" or on of the Command and Colors games for me (all of which I have) for me to seriously ponder sinking any money into it.



It was nice to see the TRIADCON displays done by Otto Schmid. They stood out (and up) above the competing pile o' flyers. We have done right by the convention this year, when it comes to advertising in advance, I think. We also got into the Historicon and WBC books.



Young Dylan Schuler, who had given Brian Whitaker such a tremendous hand running pirate games for the Va. Rennaissance Faire crowd, now is running the game at Historicon! Mostly unaided! Sniff! Nice to see the youth of today taking up the torch from a previous generation. (F-688 Pirate Raiders, in the Lobby)






Speaking of passing the torch metaphors.. I really loved this game put on by the young Logan Weiss with some assistance from his brothers. It was a sort of pulpy King Kong game- Kong: the Ninth Wonder of the World! (F242), set up in the lobby. The Empire State building was very clever.







Our hobby is very fortunate to have young fellers like Dylan and Logan around to remind us stodgy older types about the good old days of Sense of Fun and Spirit of Play.

I went out to lunch (anywhere that wasn't serving pork, thanks!), and got back around 1430.. again, I seem to have missed a major shift change for games going on. Fine with me, I need to get some shopping done for my upcoming Gaming Camp at Saint Stevens and Saint Agnes School. I got some more lilliputions in the flea market.. I see a really crappy paint job coming on in the near future!!! I got into the Dealer's area about twenty minutes before closing and bought another pack of hex tiles for the Lilliput game.

Dinner was nothing-- just Lancaster Host fodder-- brisket right off of the grill. Yummy stuff, but the rain storm kind of ruined dining on the veranda.

Friday night at 7, I played in Leo Walsh's COLONIAL NAVAL ACTION (F-148), again in the show room, using Age of the Dreadnought rules. I teamed up with Mark McGlaughin (designer of Wellington, Kutuzov, and Princess Ryan's Space Marines), and we played our veddy veddy British fast cruiser section in grand theatric style.


Click on the picture above for a slideshow, then hit the back button to return here.

Mark and I posited the idea that there are three kinds of people in this world. The Good French, whom we are allied with, the Bad French, whom we are shooting at, and Britons. Harrumph! Hear Hear! Have some port. We did rather well-- I was in the lead heavy cruiser. We closed with the enemy, got pounded by shot, but managed to get a torpedo into the head of their dreadnoughts squadron, sending it to the bottom. The fellows out in the middle made a giant of cha cha line of naval gunfire but somehow, our side sank more than their side. Rule, Brittannia!

Friday night was my one night to stay up late and drink beers. The bar seemed subdued, and clearly more people were interested in playing games in the bar than the usually boozy blarney. Another 3AM bedtime. Oy!