The Queue

You may recall me being pretty excited about Animal Crossing: New Horizons last week. That hasn’t changed. I love the game. I want to spend every second playing it. I can’t believe I’m even here writing this right now when I could be in my town, saying hi to Isabelle or organizing my fruit orchard.

But instead of Queue and A(nimal Crossing), let’s have some Q&A, shall we?

So, true story. Back in 1995/96, I spent a year or so studying in London. It was pretty great — since it was part of a Theatre program at my college, I ended up going to something like fifty or sixty plays, including getting to see some amazing performances like Mark Rylance as Macbeth and Iain Glen as King Henry in Henry V, and I even met some cool people like Tom Stoppard and David Edgar.

But as cool as that was, I still remember with chagrin the day a family saw me out in public, ran up to me, and excitedly declared that they’d come to London to see me perform and asked me to autograph the program for the show. Confused, I looked at the program in the father’s hand, and it was for Meatloaf. Now, Meatloaf is a year older than my father and I really don’t see the resemblance, but no matter how often I demurred, they would all smile almost in unison and say You are Meatloaf, yes?

So anyway, that’s how someone out there has pictures of me with his entire family and a program to a Meatloaf concert signed I am not Meatloaf at the bottom. There was a very large expletive in that, but this is a family site and I trust you all to work it out.

It’s been twelve nights since we started the whole social distancing thing, and since that’s my favorite Shakespeare play it seems a good a reason as any to celebrate! Unfortunately there aren’t any movie versions I’m fond of — there was one in the 90’s starring Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia, but it’s uneven at best. One of the best versions I’ve seen was nominated for a Tony, featuring Helen Hunt as Viola and Paul Rudd in a purple loincloth as Orsino, but aside from the showings on PBS I’m not sure the proshot was ever released. Header photo is unrelated.

This is The Queue, where we ask you As and you give us Qs, or maybe it’s the other way around.

I level characters so infrequently now that some of these old dungeons can be mazes. Luckily I have my trusty map with me. Wait, was it the left path to get to the last boss or the zombies… wasn’t there supposed to be a giant hydra around here somewhere?

Ah well, I’m sure I’ll find it eventually — after all it’s a giant hydra how stealthy can it be? Until I track the beast down, let’s Queue!

Long live the Old Gods.

If I haven’t made it clear over the last forever, I’m excited that Animal Crossing: New Horizons is finally here. Or, it will be tonight. Same thing. We’re in the final few hours and my excitement could probably power an entire continent. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it has nothing to do with *general hand gestures at world* and entirely everything to do with Animal Crossing. I AM SO EXCITED, YOU GUYS!

…

Anyhow. Let’s Queue.

When I feel tense and irritable and I don’t want to socialize at all, which is often, I play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The combination of being able to climb anything, sneak up behind people and stab them to death and my love for the character of Kassandra absolutely keeps pulling me back in to a game that’s in a series I never cared about before.

I feel kind of bad for people who were diehard AC fans and who hate the series new direction and swerve into RPG elements. But for me, that swerve made a game I dearly love, so… sorry, guys. I hope the next AC is to your liking. I suspect I won’t be coming along since it won’t have Kassandra in it.

Anyway, it’s the Queue. We’re all trapped in our homes waiting for life to start up again, so until it does, let’s do the question/answer dance.

I hit the grocery store for the last time early on Thursday morning to pick up a couple vital medications, a gallon of milk, and some candy which is currently hidden from everyone in the house, including me because I forgot where I hid it. I looked into doing musicals on stream but that’s kind of a no-go, because aside from limited medleys you still need to pay for performance rights on everything newer than Pirates of Penzance. My four year old is also incredibly unimpressed by my belting skills. Maybe I’ll learn the ukelele with my daughter’s plastic 4-string Minnie Mouse guitar? I just superglued my fingers together, so that might be a no-go too.

No, I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine, it’s fine. It can’t be that hard to cut your own bangs, right?

This is The Queue! Please wash your hands before asking us questions, which we’ll answer from way, way over here.

There were a few questions about Horrific Visions for me today, and I just want to say that I unabashedly love running them. There are so many hidden things and secrets tucked away in the corners. Did you know that there’s a Wine Vendor in the Stormwind Vision who looks like he’s collecting and barreling blood? He doesn’t do anything other than attack you, but it was a neat little bit of flavor to find. I’ve just completed my first Five Mask run this week in Orgrimmar, and I’m looking forward to getting another full clear done on Tuesday. I cheated and brought a Fire Mage friend though, Combustion makes short work of anything that it’s pointed at. (Side note, did you know that you can use a Mage who has Combustion active as a cooking fire? It’s true!)

While I’m waiting — Let’s Queue!

Keeping track of days — and thus time — is a complicated endeavor and I can’t envy anyone who does it on a regular basis.

But here we all are, stuck in time together, so I may as well look at answering a few questions.