weekend

Busy weekend up in the land o' cheese, as I took in the Gen Con game fair for the first time Saturday, and Sunday we made our annual pilgrimage to the Wisconsin State Fair, warming up for the bigger event later this month.



Amazingly, the scary people-watching title remains at the state fair. This despite the prevalence of Genconners dressed as Klingons, generic renaissance wenches, X-wing pilots and Padawans (okay, if you're over 10 and dressed as any character from Lucas's current trilogy, you're just hopeless). The fair had the old standards of tube tops, leathery suntanned skin, and images of Calvin peeing on NASCAR numbers this year mixed with new anti-Osama messages and some sad fake breasts (according to Kirsti, I didn't see that particular person). And we didn't even get near the midway.



I admit I was skeptical. And who could blame me, really? But I'm here to eat a big plate of crow and tell you that I'm now a believer:

The deep-fried Snickers bar is f'ing amazing.

It's just behind the cheese curds in the pantheon of deep-fried foods consumed last weekend, and rivals the DF'd Pickle, which is available in Minnesota. The deep-fried Oreos were better than I feared but still just okay. They won't make it into my usual rotation.



Saw the llamas. They still look like space aliens led around by little 4-H kids. Alpacas even more so. Got to see the 4H-ers leading their animals in a showmanship contest: high jumps and limbo. let's just say I never need to hear "Limbo Rock" again.



I was at GenCon for 18 hours and had a hard time leaving. Games played:

Monopoly (entered a tournament, actually...came in second in my qualifier and was an alternate, but not needed)

Guillotine

Fluxx

Burn Rate (a clever game by a laid-off dotcommer about running a dotcom and trying to lose money slower than your opponents)

some baseball CCG (while waiting to see the demo of the Simpsons CCG; a deluge of trash questions will soon follow, no doubt)

DC Hero Clix (sucked, and so did the baseball game for that matter. )

Apples to Apples (rocked)

Blink

Switch

Gold Digger

Nexus

Battle of the Bands

Illuminati

Settlers of Catan

Management Material (another workplace game, but better-conceived than Burn Rate)



Games bought:

Cosmic Encounter

Apples to Apples

Switch

Gold Digger

Freeloader

US Patent No. 1

Nexus

Battle of the Bands

...and a Cheapass Games Ultimate Bits set



So, when to play all these?