My Favorite Things in 2020

In no particular order:

1. The Mandalorian. I love everything about this show: the music especially, with its appropriate Western style theme; the colors and settings; the 30 minute episodes; the return of puppets to the Star Wars universe, instead of CGI; the emotion among the characters; the surprise appearances; the fact that my whole family likes this show.
2. The iPad Pro keyboard. This totally transforms the iPad from a smudgy piece of glass into a wonderful laptop. My most used device in the house.
3. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. I started this series when it first came out decades ago, and fell off the Stephen King wagon while it was on hiatus. But now I’m back, and I enjoyed King’s wild, meta-journey on writing itself. The series can be uneven, but there are so many stand-out parts. Putting himself in the story was perfect, as was the ending. Hile, gunslingers everywhere!
4. Playing Gloomhaven. This board game set a new standard: independently produced through Kickstarter (by a PhD scientist who made a huge career change), enormous in scale and physical size, and filled with surprises. It’s a legacy game, meaning that the game has permanent changes to it by applying stickers to the board, discovering new treasures, and retiring characters. First opening the box and discovering the wonderful character boxes, and choosing a character based only on an icon, is really glorious. I have great memories of playing this with my son.
5. Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I had long heard about this, and a friend inspired me to dive into it. It’s an amazing work in scope, attention, and thoughtfulness. A long meditation on a broken world, on good versus evil, on time as cyclical and linear, and the awesome fear of prophecies coming true. I especially like the Children of the Light, who are a terrifying military force of intensely religious men: think Pharisees combined with Crusaders.
6. Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes trilogy. In re-discovering Stephen King this year (which makes sense, because in a year of pandemic horrors the salve is imaginary horrors) I read his crime detective trilogy that begins with Mr. Mercedes. The protagonist and antagonist are terrific in them, as is the luminous Holly Gibney. The TV show is terrific as well, with a pitch-perfect cast.
7. The Bowflex C6 stationary bike. It’s not that getting on this bike is my favorite thing, but it’s an important thing, and I’m so glad I invested in it. This is the kind of purchase that can famously end up in the corner of your garage after a few weeks. But I have stuck with it, and am getting stronger and better at it. This bike is 70% cheaper than Peloton, you don’t need special shoes, and you can use your iPad as your screen. Win!
8. The Favorite Game Friday series on The Dice Tower YouTube channel. My fascination with this show is hard to explain. It has a “local access channel” feel to it, as amateur hosts briefly discuss their picks in board games. It’s fun to see regular hosts and new ones, people from around the world, and the consensus that can build around some games. There is great joy and humor with many of the families and hosts. When nerds love something, they love it deeply!
9. The board game Twilight Imperium IV. This game is hard to explain: imagine Risk as a space opera, but with an auctioneer. You want to grow your species, survive, and gain victory points along the way. The game changes gears when the central planet is conquered and players must debate and vote on edicts that will change the game. It’s an exhausting and brilliant game.
10. YouTube in general. How did I learn to fix some plumbing, replace a dishwasher part, learn about new board games and their rules, watch SNL clips, and watch documentaries on Aleister Crowley, the rise of fascism in Europe, Twilight Imperium? YouTube has become an integral part of our lives. I love that you can watch historical clips, amateur videos, how-to videos, you name it. I used YouTube nature videos for online church services for the prayer time, and use YouTube music for board gaming. It’s an essential part of our lives. Sadly, it’s also gotten really aggressive about playing ads.
11. Jacques Pépin YouTube videos. It’s so great to see Jacques cooking, even now at 85 years old. He combines a vast knowledge with an anti-snobbery element – he makes hummus with peanut butter, and uses toasted English muffins for his hamburger buns.
12. The TV show Succession on HBO. The sets, performances, and intelligence of this show are unbelievable. It is dark, funny, and illuminating to watch the petty power games of a powerful family that is agnostic in every way. They don’t care about politics, the news, hurting others, or kindness in any way, and only faintly do they ever care about love, shame, and guilt. It feels like a diagnosis of recent decades in its exploration of cable news channels, the super-wealthy, and shamelessness. That the story revolves around a clever father figure who must pass on his media power to one of his inept children is the icing on the cake, because you forget that it’s all the theater of the absurd.
13. Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. This novel resists description: a coming of age story about a dreamy place and time where characters wrestle with sickness and health, love and death, war and peace, wealth and poverty, and Marxism and the Middle Ages. The main character Hans visits his cousin at a tuberculosis sanatorium and ends up staying for 7 years as a patient. It’s never clear whether Hans is really sick, or whether the sanatorium is a racket or not. Unforgettable characters and scenes populate the book: a dwarf waitress, Hans wrapped up on his balcony during his rest cure, the larger than life Pieter Mynheer Peeperkorn, Hans swooning over Clavdia, Hans’ obsession with his X-ray images, the lavishness of the sanatorium itself. Mann breaks the 4th wall at times, and the chapter titles are bizarre and humorous. I can only read it in chunks, but it sticks to my memory like few other books do.
14. The election of Joe Biden as United States President. Trump has been a disaster. He made politics into a game of entertainment, personality, destruction, and meanness. We are left with a tarnished global reputation, vital agencies (such as the CDC – the CDC!) in disarray, numerous convictions among the President’s inner circle, a tattered Coronavirus response, a Trumpian alternate reality machine, militias and white supremacist groups emboldened, and a swath of the electorate still deluded by Trump. The images of children in cages, a rusting and ineffective border wall, Roger Stone pardoned, cities on fire, George Floyd’s death, and people dying alone of COVID behind plastic – these are the images that will haunt us as this period recedes in time. The thing I return to is the ending of The Handmaid’s Tale, where the fearsome Gilead has become only a historical oddity of academic interest. This is an image of immense hope!
15. William Placher’s Callings. I adopted this book for my Vocations class, and found Placher’s selected readings and introductions very powerful and even-handed. He is a trustworthy guide, and the book was a success for (most of) the students and for me.
16. Apple’s Fitness+ program. Apple has nailed the sense of challenge, accomplishment, and comraderie in a virtual fitness class. The instructors, variety, and descriptions of how the exercise should feel, are what keep me coming back on a daily basis.

Watch me and a bunch of nerds

I’ve been nerdy for forever – Star Wars, Weird Al, Monty Python, Tolkien, comic books, you name it. One of the surprises of recent decades is this “triumph of the nerds” with the ascendancy of Marvel movies, Star Wars, and computers in our popular culture. The nerds won.

Nerd culture is fun because it goes deep on its obsessions. If you like Star Wars then you bought the Jedi Masters Quizbook and tested your nerd friends (I still have my childhood copy on the shelf). If you watched Babylon 5 then you have your favorite episode and character. You quibble over the faults of the many incarnations of Star Trek. You have strong opinions on Apple products. You want to collect all the editions of The Wheel of Time or the Pandemic board games (most nerds are collectors, I’ve noticed). If you like sports (nerds can opt out here), it’s something with lots of stats, like baseball or football.

Nerd culture, in my experience, tends to be fairly accepting. If you like nerd stuff then you are a nerd and in the club. If you’re overweight, balding, non-binary, or have a disability it’s okay, just like Star Trek and you’re good. This is a generalization, and sadly not true in all times and all places.

One of the newer areas of nerd culture is board gaming, because the field has blossomed in recent decades. And I’m full in these days. So here’s one of my kids and I talking about board games with a bunch of nerds at the 7:00 mark. Excelsior!

One week with Apple Fitness+

I’ve been thrashing around the past years for a workout routine. Before that, I had developed a solid lap swim routine. But the regular lap swim fell apart at some point, for reasons I don’t fully recall but probably had something to do with family and work. (One good thing about this stupid pandemic is not having to drive the kids to school and activities.)

With the start of the pandemic and the growth of my waistline, I bought an exercise bike (the Bowflex C6, based on the Wirecutter’s recommendation). I also asked around and found some old dumbbells from a neighbor. I have experimented with the Peloton app and some other apps, and recently I hired a virtual personal trainer.

So here are my thoughts on working out at home. I love not having to drive to the YMCA to workout, as that commute added 30 minutes to the entire situation. Plus there was always the issue of taking work clothes and showering, or showering a second time that day, that added more time and mental effort to the event. At home I can workout, then shower and dress, when I want that day. That is easier and more empowering. But of course, it’s also strangely easy to avoid as well.

One great thing with the YMCA is having a workout buddy to keep you honest. Meeting someone at the gym means I am 99% likely to show up on time. A personal trainer, virtual or otherwise, can mimic this because you have someone checking in – when are you working out today? How was your workout yesterday? That gives you that precious accountability.

The Peloton app, and Apple Fitness+ app, are both really interesting. They give you great choices and variety – bike, yoga, stretch, rowing (if you have a rower), and weights. It’s fun to dial up what you want and do it; it’s like flipping channels on the TV to find something you are in the mood for. Both apps record what you do for easy comparison. Both apps have great trainers and great music.

A personal trainer is great because that person gets to know you and what works for you, and can measure your progress and regress. Are you a morning workout person, or an afternoon? Do you like riding the bike, or variety? Do you need to work on upper body strength, core, or endurance? This is where a personal coach really shines in helping you achieve your goals.

Peloton was a lot of fun at first, but I could never complete the bike workouts as they instructed. I am still not sure if my resistance knob is the same as Peloton’s, and only Peloton has a cadence number (speed and rotation). I got better with Peloton, but always felt like a loser because I couldn’t complete a beginner workout. The coaches on Peloton were great, but sometimes weirdly chatty. Working out with a screen is weird, and so is being filmed working out in front of a camera. We are social creatures, and the coaches are trying to connect with you by talking a bit about themselves. Peloton also adds a social aspect where you can see the online handles (not bike handles, ha ha) of others doing the same workout, and you could work out with a friend. Peloton wants to sell you their bike, but they will also let you have the app if you want to adapt it to your circumstance. I used it for 3 weeks or so but eventually got tired of it and dropped it.

I’m guessing that Apple Fitness+ has noted these problems. Their platform is bike and equipment agnostic. The cycle instructors tell you to “find a medium speed that is challenging,” but they never give you a number. They tell you to “find the recovery you need” by turning down the resistance, but leave it up to you. This is genius, because it takes the guilt and competition out of the workout. The weight workouts also don’t specify weight amounts, because there is no standard “normal” here, just what you find works for you. The focus is on completing the workout, the quality of the exercise, closing your rings, and your heart rate. The latter two elements are displayed on the screen of your device, which is so so great. I know that, given my age, a heart rate in the 140s-150s is optimal. If my heart rate gets higher than that and I feel like I’m dying, I might be right, so I should back off. If my heart rate is in the 120s I should push harder. It’s an external measurement that mirrors how your workout feels. If memory serves, the Apple Watch was called Apple’s most intimate product by Jony Ive, and this feels like that concept to the extreme: your heartbeat is displayed on screen to a workout you are doing right then. (I’m reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which is about a tuberculosis sanatorium in Switzerland in the 1920s. The protagonist gets obsessed with the x-ray machine and its printed photographs. For him they are windows of the hidden inner body, and they are magical mementos, especially the one of his love interest. The Apple Watch displaying during Apple Fitness+ is kind of like that.)

To help with the social aspect, Apple has their various trainers exercise in each other’s workouts, so you see Greg off to the side on the bike while Kym leads the workout. This is very effective because the instructor has someone to interact with – they call out to each other, and respond and smile. There are also multiple cameras and angles at work to film the workout. All of this gives a real sense of comraderie and community, because the instructors seem to like each other and invite you in. It has a fun aspect that helps with working out. Like most people I don’t especially like exercising so it needs to be fun and welcoming, which Apple Fitness+ does well. The music is great and varied, and the playlists are available in Apple Music if you want to find a good song later. You also see the participants modifying the workout as needed, so someone may be seated instead of standing during the bike workout. This is encouraging because it reminds you that you’re not doing it wrong if you modify the workout in some way, especially if you are not as fit as Greg.

So far I’ve worked out out 5 days in a row with Apple Fitness+, and I plan to do one today as well. How much of this is the shininess of the new, and how much is real? It’s hard to know right now, but the good bit is I’m building a habit so perhaps it will stick. Or, like with Peloton, will it wear off eventually as I slide back into the old Adam? We’ll see.

The hardest bit about health is how delayed it is. Working out doesn’t produce benefits for weeks, even months – you don’t workout and then the next day you’ve lost 5 pounds. (In fact, your weight often goes up as you build muscle and your appetite increases.) It’s a massive act of faith, hope, and love to exercise because you don’t see the results anytime soon. This is also why bad eating and laziness are so pernicious. You won’t see the results of bad habits for some time, so it’s easy to eat pizza and Cheetos for a week and see the scales not change much. The delayed results naturally encourage bad habits, and discourage good habits.

One life-hack I’ve tried is clipping an index card to my bathroom mirror, and every day that I exercise I mark that day off. This is the famous Jerry Seinfeld trick for writing because it incentivizes maintaining that streak of success. My system is nothing fancy, and it doesn’t always work – if I’m in a funk I don’t care about a streak at all. But those X’s filling up the month does gently remind me to have faith and hope that what I am doing will produce benefits if I just keep finding ways to move it forward. Right now Apple Fitness+ is doing that for me.

Things I’m Enjoying Right Now

1. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. I’m currently on book 5, The Wolves of Calla. Great evocative characters against a rich tapestry and epic story.

2. The new Perry Mason HBO series. Atmospheric and compelling, although I found the last few episodes in the courtroom disappointing. I know that’s the essence of the character, but having him as a gumshoe detective was way more fun than having him arguing legal terms.

3. The Drafts app on iOS and the Mac. Quick and easy text and formatting, text storage, even note-taking and journaling. It’s amazing, and you’ll never think of text the same way again.

4. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion board game. Gloomhaven balances immediate and long-term gratifications so amazingly well. You make immediate choices that impact your character and the overall game. It’s an amazing game.

Lamarr Wilson gets serious about race

YouTuber Lamarr Wilson is someone my kids and I have enjoyed. He’s funny and interesting, and gets very excited about geeky things like electronics and Oreo cookies. In my experience, nerdy folks are usually fair accepting of others – if you like Superman, or Dungeons & Dragons, or Han Solo, then you’re cool. Liking something on the geek landscape was enough to make you a homesteader in Nerd City.

Lamarr Wilson’s latest video is an honest discussion about race, and it’s very moving, especially in comparison to his usual YouTube persona. Who knew that race gets regularly interjected even into YouTube channels for geeks? It’s a really sad wake up call.

The Uniqueness of Dungeons & Dragons

I spent much of this summer trying to master Dungeons & Dragons. I had wanted to play as a kid in the 1980s and owned a copy at one point, but we were too rural to have anyone to play with. I distinctly remember the instructions saying you needed at least 3 people, 1 Dungeon Master and 2 players, and my brother and I just gave up on playing.

Now I have sons who are interested in this sort of game, and Dungeons & Dragons is popular again with the dominance of nerd culture and YouTube. Shows like Community, Big Bang Theory, and Stranger Things have featured Dungeons & Dragons, and YouTube has many shows of people playing the game. It's never been easier to learn to play, especially with YouTubers demonstrating and explaining the game. So I get to time travel a bit and fix my personal timeline, and be a kid again.

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Part of the challenge for me over the summer was getting my head around the game. What is it? Like some weird chimera, it is many things: improvisational acting, the random chance of dice-rolls, the imagination and preparation of the Dungeon Master. It's a mash up of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Choose Your Own Adventure books. It's a game that is non-competitive because the goal is to tell a great story and have a great experience, not to win. You win battles but you don't really win the game exactly. The Dungeon Master is not competing with the players, and neither are the players competing with each other.

Trying to DM a game is weird, because there's a lot of material in the published campaigns. It took me a while to understand that you don't have to do it all. It's not a book where you read the whole thing, or a TV show where you watch all the episodes. It's weirder than that. There's all this possible material they you don't know if the players will use, because you don't know how they will engage it. Which clues will they follow, which door will they open? They will most likely pursue leads you didn't consider, or get interested in the wrong supporting character. So you prepare and study, and yet prepare to throw much of it out the window if need be. There are important plot points in the campaigns, and if the players don't follow them in expected ways then you re-introduce them in other ways, later – if they kill a character who had a clue for them, you have someone else give them that clue later. The deeply improvisational nature of Dungeons & Dragons was hard for me to get my head around, especially when I was studying a detailed campaign book.

Dungeons & Dragons was first published in 1974. It is descended from miniature figurine war games of the early 1900s. H.G. Wells wrote a book of rules for such games in 1913 (the full title of the book is hilarious: Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books). It was a strange variation of chess, but with figurines and recreated battles, and even a judge/referee to adjudicate the battles. The popularity of Tolkien's book series The Lord of the Rings led to a variation of these war games that included fantasy characters such as hobbits, wizards, and sword-bearing adventurers. This is part of why D&D is such an odd game: it's not descended from other types of games like board games, card games, and dice games. The miniature war games are competitive and zero-sum, but the role-playing aspect of the game that later developed meant that the game was focused more on story and character development, and less on winning. It also became a game of stats and tables, some wild variation on baseball analysis; different characters, races, roles, and levels meant different numbers to roll to win a battle. Yet D&D is quite versatile: it can be played lightly for comedy and fun, or with more focus on the rules and stats, or more for the cosplay and roleplaying aspects.

A fun innovation in tabletop role-playing games is Call of Cthulhu (1981), which eschews the battle and improvement elements of D&D for mystery, investigation, and ultimately defeat. Set in a Lovecraftian world, most of the characters end up dying or going insane. The fun is in the story and growing sense of horror. Both gaming systems allow for some overlap; Pulp Cthulhu is a variation of Call of Cthulhu that features more fighting and excitement, and Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition allows for insanity.

There's a lot to learn from tabletop role-playing games. They inspire creativity, problem solving, and improvisation. They force you to think critically about the game, plotline, characters, and players – how do you move the story forward, especially when the players are stuck or getting frustrated? It's like conducting a story written in realtime by several writers who include chance in their decisions. Games like this help you be a better teacher, preacher, writer, and thinker, because attending to the plot and the audience is at the heart of so much of what we do.