In The Zeitgeist

A Game for Old Grognards

August 28, 2024 Steve Comments 0 Comment

One of my favorite old games is Titan, from Avalon Hill. I have played it since all the way back in high school. I’ve also mentioned it on this blog already. It’s one of my top 10 games on BoardGameGeek; in fact, it’s #10 on the list on my BGG profile, which means that it’s the oldest, not that it’s the least favorite.

It’s both a wargame and a fantasy themed board game, so there’s just no denying its appeal. It combines the delight of building armies of fantastic monsters with the thrill of rolling large amounts of dice in combat.

I played a lot when I was young; it was surely one of the more popular games among my circles as a teenager. I even wrote a BoardGameGeek session report about a game I played back in the early 1980s: Bad Luck in a Long Ago Game of Titan.

As I got older, I found fewer people willing to play. I did have a few friends who played in the late 1990s into the 2000s. That was when I developed a variant I called “Tactical Titan,” where you build a huge map and focus on the combat, ignoring the higher level strategy map. I actually hand made my own maps, coloring in hex paper, but photocopying the existing game components and assembling a map is another way it could work.

I devised scenarios, with special maps that had limited types of terrain and thus limited the monsters used. I came up with magic items that could be seeded on the map and would enhance the monsters in combat. There were some new rules to accomodate the large tactical map, and new monster types. This is similar to variants other Titan fans have come up with.

I managed to rope a few players into this version of the game, and played a lot of two-player games with one particular friend who sadly passed away in the early 2000s.

Later, I developed another variant that got a slight amount of play. It was called “Campaign Titan” and the idea was that your Titan (the leader of your armies) would earn XP from game to game and level up as a character, picking up all kinds of abilities, even spells. Again, I only got a few players into it (I think two total) and this version did not get played much, so the rules I have written around it are largely untested.

The last time I played Titan was probably in 2015. It’s just hard to find people interested in this kind of game, and willing to commit to the long hours it takes to play all the way through.

I have a bunch of pages on my gamer site devoted to the Titan variants I created here: Steve’s Titan Corner. You can also find links there to the content that other Titan fans have created. We old grognards are still out there, showing our devotion to this classic game!

Hulu, Take Us Back to the 90s!

August 23, 2024 Steve Comments 0 Comment

We watch a lot of streaming video, it can’t be denied. We’ve fully embraced the modern entertainment mode of binge-watching a television series. As a family we often watch shows together from beginning to end. For example, after finishing Better Call Saul, we just couldn’t help ourselves and rewatched Breaking Bad, all the way through, including the movie. Typically we watch a couple of episodes in a night, a couple of nights a week. You’d be surprised at how quickly you can go through multiple seasons of a series at that rate.

The girl and I have more time to watch other shows, when it is just the two of us, after the rest of the family has retired for the evening. We browse through our various streaming services, and pick a show we’ve heard good things about, or just try something based on the teaser. I like the mini-series format a lot; you can get a good story in without a huge time commitment. It’s a particularly good format for a mystery-type show – two that we’ve enjoyed recently are Bodkin (set in Ireland) and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (based on a young adult mystery crime novel).

When we like an ongoing show, we’ll tend to get caught up on it, but then we’re left hanging. We’re all caught up on Abbot Elementary (it’s just adorable, and set in Philly!) and now trying to figure out how to watch the last four episodes of Evil (you haven’t watched it? – it’s a hot mess but super fun!) but, as often happens, we find that we run out of content. We try some stuff out (there’s so much out there) but more often than not, a show doesn’t pull us in. There is a craft to good storytelling and a lot of what’s produced just doesn’t pull it off.

So then we go to YouTube and browse random informational videos, or watch the news which is just depressing (unless we watch it through the lens of late-night comedy shows, our preferred medium). How to overcome this television malaise?

Luckily, in this streaming era, it is possible to binge-watch old timey shows, from the good old days. You know the ones I’m talking about – the 1990s!

When we were still young, and life was full of promise.

The streaming platform Hulu is especially good for this kind of television watching, as they have the license to share a variety of old shows. We’re watching two from the 90s on Hulu now, depending on which group of family members is available for the evening.

One is The X-Files, for when we are all together. This is a show I actually didn’t watch much back in the day, so it’s mostly new to me. I just remember the general vibe of this show and its popularity then. It was pretty cutting edge in terms of graphic content for its time, which of course pales now compared to the 2000s stuff like Dexter. It has great writing and pacing, and an excellent score as well.

The other show we are watching, after Gavin has gone to bed, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In this case, I have watched it all the way through, but Aileen and Tiernan have not. They own the whole boxed DVD set, but just kept stalling out in the later seasons when trying to watch it (I suspect they got bored at Season 4, which is understandable).

Buffy has a sly sense of humor, and oh so much heart. It’s a joy to re-encounter the beloved characters, like reuniting with old friends. With me having to bite my tongue to not reveal any spoilers about what happens to them. What makes the show so wonderful is how, despite its completly fantastical supernatural premise, it is ultimately about friendship, loyalty and love. It’s a very Gen-X show that way, in my opinion; like Friends, but much more interesting and clever.

There’s something about these shows that seems simpler, more innocent. I know, an odd thing to say about the 1990s. It’s just that they evoke an era when the world’s problem’s seemed less intractable, the stakes lower. Both of these shows – Buffy and the X-Files – deal with otherworldy powers with immense potential to harm humanity, yet the characters confront them in an easy-going manner, with tongue in cheek. We all know we’re just playing with the idea of apocalypse here.

Apocalypse doesn’t seem so playful now, and screen entertainment has gotten darker, and more earnest, in response to the changing times. We’re living through an era of real-life danger now, which calls for courage and resolution, faith and hope.

And sometimes, it calls for a little escape, to a safe harbor in which to rest our minds and hearts. In our case, to the television shows of our past.

Could There Really Be another Civil War?

August 16, 2024 Steve Comments 0 Comment

Recently we watched the new movie Civil War, written and directed by Alex Garland, and distributed in the United States by A24. It’s about a near future civil war in this country, and I had been wanting to watch it since I heard about it. I like Alex Garland’s work a lot, both his writing (for example Sunshine) and directing (for example Annihilation). I was also drawn to the subject matter, as I am very interested in history, and history is full of civil wars.

We even had one here in the United States once, in case you didn’t know. It’s both fascinating and appalling to think that we could have a second one. I admit I’ve given the idea some thought, and even have a set of pages up on my old Web 1.0 site where I consider different scenarios, based on pop culture depictions or on sociopolitical theories: USA Breakup Scenarios.

The movie Civil War doesn’t go into much backstory of how the war starts or its exact outlines. We know that there are secessionists who oppose the sitting President, who apparently has made a power grab and overreached. He only appears briefly in two different scenes and seems to be modeled after a certain unpopular recent President. The primary opposition is the Western Forces, which include Texas and California, and has enough resources to muster a formidable army.

The story follows a group of journalists, so you only pick up on all this background gradually, as you travel with them on the wartime East coast. They encounter various militias and armed groups and it’s often not clear who is on what side, or exactly what is going on. The cinematography is amazing, and the mood varies from eerily apprehensive to terrifyingly tense to action-packed war violence.

The film isn’t a political thriller or a historical film; it’s about photojournalism during war – about that experience on the ground. As such, it reminded me of the comic series DMZ, set in Manhattan during another version of a Second American Civil War. The city has become a demilitarized zone, and the comics follow a reporter who ends up stranded there. It’s a dangerous place, with the people living there being the ones who were either too poor or too stubborn to evacuate. Again, while the war is there as a backdrop, the story is about the people living through it.

Both of these stories – the movie Civil War and the comic seres DMZ – invite their audience to consider what it would be like for Americans to experience the political collapse and devastating warfare that they have become used to seeing happen only in far away places, such as Iraq, Syria, Ukraine…the list goes on. There’s almost a feeling of schadenfreude coming from these storytellers, like they want to give Americans a taste of what their hubris and lack of foresight has done for people in other countries. Yeah, it could happen to you, too.

After watching Civil War, I added a page for it on my Web 1.0 site, as well as one for The Handmaid’s Tale, which in its own way depicts a civil war, or at least an insurrection. We’ve had decades now of speculative fiction about the U.S.A. breaking up. But how likely is that to happen?

According to current public sentiment, there’s a pretty good chance. The problem is having such a strong partisan split, where each side in the red zone-blue zone conflict simply can’t accept the other side’s perspective. Or the legitimacy of the other side’s leaders. If that’s the case, what choice is there besides war?

Is it possible that by speculating so much about civil war, we are in danger of bringing it about? A self-fulfilling prophecy, as it were. I may be guilty of this myself, what with my web site and all. Just to make the record clear, I do not believe that would be a desirable outcome. It would be an absolute horror. As these fictional accounts make clear.

I will also add that in the generational turnings theory of which I am advocate, we are currently in a Fourth Turning, or Crisis Era. This is an era of political upheaval which in retrospective are seen as “founding moments” in which America passes through the “gates of history.” The American Civil War was such an era. Does a Fourth Turning mean there has to be a civil war? No. But if there were to be one, it would likely by in a Crisis Era.

I hope we can find another way out of our partisan quandary. Having support for the two major parties split evenly between voters, leading to narrow margins in every election, is a huge problem. Only by overcoming it, one way or another, can we pass through the gates of history.

Are We at the End of Time Already?

August 6, 2024 Steve Comments 0 Comment

*I stole this off a book cover because I liked the art – just like generative AI does*

There is this really cool sci-fi trilogy written by Michael Moorcock, called The Dancers at the End of Time, which takes place far, far in the future (warning: mild spoilers ahead). Human technology has advanced to the level implied by Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” There aren’t many people left on Earth, but those people live like gods. They wear power rings attuned to their minds, and can alter the physical world in any way they want with a thought.

The rings they wear tap into these huge machines in the center of the planet that draw on vast energy sources. It’s like the matter replicators from Star Trek, but on a planetary scale. Sometimes the machines generate images instead of actual matter, like the Star Trek holodeck on a planetary scale. I suppose this is to conserve energy.

So for example someone in this distant future might decide they want to live in a fancy castle, and then just dream it up, and the machines will make it for them. They can create any kind of landscape around it, maybe a lake of rainbow colored water with crystal mountains all around – why not? They can change the color of the sky and add a few moons. If they get bored with their castle and landscape, they can disintegrate it and imagine up a new one. All with a wave of the hand.

The denizens of the end of time are a frivolous and wanton people. After all, their tech level makes them immune to any consequences for their actions. They can’t even die; if they do, the machines recreate them from backup information. Their existences are pure recreation and socializing in a world where everyone lives like an insanely wealthy elite.

How is this matter-altering technology even possible? That is irrelevant to the story, which is an exploration of morality and its connection to the material limitations of existence. At least, that’s what I got out of the trilogy. It’s been ages since I read it, but I’ve been reminded of it lately when reading about the technology of our time.

You see, as part of the plot in the sci-fi books, aliens come to Earth to ask the humans to kindly stop their machines, because as it turns out their energy source is wormholes to the far reaches of space, and they are using so much energy that they are accelerating the end of the Universe. Humanity is sucking the cosmos dry just to have fun. Naturally, the humans brush the E.T.s off and continue with their careless lifestyle.

This is kind of happening already, here in the real world of actual technology. The advent of digital cryptocurrencies has incentivized computationally-intensive processes which require huge amounts of electricity. For example, one estimate is that a single bitcoin transaction uses as much power as it takes to run a household for 36 hours. Generative AI, which for whatever reason has been integrated into every major platform on the Internet, is also a significant consumer of power and has a major environmental impact.

Yes, we are accelarating climate change and causing lasting environmental damage, just for a little amusement. It’s a similar story to the one in the sci-fi books. We’re not destroying the whole Universe with our latest and greatest Internet technology, just the planet. But that’s all the Universe we realistically have, so it amounts to the same thing, from the perspective of our puny civilization.

We didn’t get to the stage of mastery of the physical laws of the Universe so we could live like gods, but a few of us got rich from speculative bubbles and we generated massive amounts of creepy images and canned text. All while cooking the Earth dry. It’s really quite pathetic.

If we keep it up, we just might reach the end of time. I mean our time, on Earth.

The Next Game on My Top 10 List

July 31, 2024 Steve Comments 0 Comment

My next top 10 game is Axis & Allies, #5 on the top 10 list on my BGG profile. I’m making it my next blog post because I played it around the same time I was playing Magic: The Gathering, which was the first top 10 game I posted about. My preference was to play either the United States or Japan, and focus on the Pacific theater. I much preferred the naval maneuvering to the slog of the two-front war in Europe.

At the time that I played this game extensively, in the 1980s and 1990s, we didn’t have all the new versions available which focus on specific theaters or phases of the war, with all the new units and new rules. There were fan-made expansions available, with pieces that didn’t match the base game, but they were hard to come by.

While we liked Axis & Allies, my friends and I found the game as designed too restrictive. So we invented our own variant, where we played on home made maps, and set up our positions randomly, like you would in a game of Risk. Eventually we mixed in other games, and created a whole slew of new units using pieces from Fortress America and Supremacy. We called our Frankenstein monster of a wargame simply “The Game” and played it obsessively, and partied pretty hard while we did. Games would last all weekend long. Those sure were some great times, in a more carefree phase of my life.

So it was really The Game that I played extensively, not actually Axis & Allies, but that is why I put Axis & Allies on my top 10 list. I created a GeekList which breaks it all down, as best as I can remember it: Games that made up ‘The Game’.

I like that so many reimplementations and expansions to the original game have come out since the days when I played it. I did get a chance to play Axis & Allies: Pacific once (as the United States) and thorougly enjoyed it (possibly because I won). But for the most part I haven’t done much wargaming since the 2000s began. I don’t hang out with my old wargamer buddies any more; we’ve all moved far apart. So it goes in the life of a gamer.

My Top 10 Games, Starting with Magic

July 24, 2024 Steve Comments 3 comments

Over on BoardGameGeek I have a list of my Top 10 Games. These are the board games that have been my favorites or that I have played the most over the years. I am putting together a GeekList that fills in the details of why I like each game and how it fits into my board game biography, and thought it made sense to share each entry here on the blog as well. They might be likelier to get read coming out one at a time, maybe once a week or so for a while.

So here is the first top 10 game, actually a card game, not a board game. It is #4 on the list on my BGG profile. And that game is…

Magic: The Gathering

This is the first and foremost in a category of games called “collectible card games” which feature a basic rule structure and a large assortment of cards. Players build their own decks out of the cards they buy, and can always get more (hence “collectible”) to enhance or modify their decks. You play games with these decks, with two or more players, though usually four or five is the limit. According to the AI generated search results I just read, as of early 2024 there are over 27,000 distinct Magic cards, so good luck trying to collect them all. You don’t need to do that, though, to have a good deck to play.

Magic: The Gathering debuted at GenCon in 1993, when I was still living in Virginia, prolonging my college party days. I still played lots of Dungeon and Dragons back then, and was only just beginning to be exposed to the new wave of board games coming out of Germany. I remember when Magic was introduced to our gaming circles, and the huge buzz it caused. I attended GenCon in Milwaukee in either 1994 or 1995, and recall the excitement in the air there from all the obsessed players.

The game was innovative for its time, and was hugely popular in my circles throughout the 1990s. Interestingly, it attracted most of the same people who were into D&D, probably because of the rich fantasy theme. I have many fond memories of late night D&D sessions as well as late night Magic games with the same groups. Even after those old game groups split up as people moved apart to carry on with their lives, we would occasionally get back together for a nostalgic weekend, and usually it was Magic that got played.

I moved around a bit at the turn of the century, and didn’t get to play Magic much for awhile. In the late 2000s I tried getting back into the game by going to game stores, but the vibe had changed. It was more about keeping up with the latest releases, spending the money to get the better cards, and making ruthless decks. The new generation was using new terms and playing by different rules than I remembered. I wrote a session report about one time I entered a tournament and found myself completely in over my head: Magic: The Gathering – My first tournament.

In 2010 I attended GenCon again, for the first time since the 90s. I didn’t play any Magic, but I was flabbergasted by how huge the room was where Magic was being played. Thousands of players dueling in an enormous warehouse type room. Just amazing how far the game had come. And I can tell you why it’s so popular: it’s a really good design. It has nice tension built into it with the way cards are played using mana from lands, and with the way it mixes the luck of the draw and the skill of good deck construction.

Throughout the 2010s I did have a few more gatherings with old friends in which a nice round or two of Magic got played. It was fun to break out the old decks and relive those carefree times. Whenever this would happen, I would get bit by the deckbuilding bug and spend some time on my own retooling my decks, only to stash them all away to wait for the next reunion in a year or two. One funny memory I have is of all us old timers sitting around the table at night playing Magic, but having to put on reading glasses and squint in the dim light to read our cards.

I’m happy to say that I am still playing Magic: The Gathering today. Lucky me, my stepson has recently gotten into it, and pulled his mother in as well. So I get to play with my family and my stepson’s friends. We play a format called Commander, which I personally like a lot. I like it beacuse the games tend to start slowly, so you can relish the build up, but then typically come to a crashing end without dragging on for too long, once the good combos of cards come out. We’ve bought quite a few preconstructed Commander decks, including some from licensed franchises, which we tweak a bit. I have a pretty mean Dalek deck from the Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond – Doctor Who product line.

I’m sure I will always be into playing Magic: The Gathering. I honestly believe that when my generation reaches old age, you will find us in retirmement homes still playing. We’ll be squinting through our reading glasses at our cards, grumbling about being mana screwed, and staying up way past our bedtimes. We Gen Xers live to have fun, and to indulge our imaginations, which is just what this game provides.

A Little PIZZAZ in My Scrabble Game

July 19, 2024 Steve Comments 0 Comment

A couple of nights ago I was playing Scrabble with the girl, and I got to play a word I have been wanting to play in the game for as long as I can remember! I’m so thrilled by this that I just had to blog about it.

The word is “PIZZAZ” and the reason I have always wanted to play it is the tough requirements – since there is only one Z in Scrabble, and the word has three Zs, you have to use the Z and both blank tiles (which can be any letter) to play it. An unlikely scenario.

So in the game a few nights ago, I got a blank tile early on. Then, amazingly, I got the second blank tile (there are only two in the set). I also had an A, which is a common tile. I resolved not to use these three tiles, in case the Z became available. Then, shortly afterward, I drew the Z! This was the first game I have ever played where I had the three required tiles.

I searched the board for a place where the word might go, and saw that there was an I where the word would fit, and a P could be placed to turn UP into PUP as a connecting word. So if I could just get a P then I would be set.

Now, the girl and I play a very competitive game of Scrabble. The board was already a mess and it was hard to play words on it. The girl expressed her frustration with the set up, and I concurred, which pretty much happens every game we play. I also told her that I was set up for playing a word I had always wanted to play my whole life, and was playing with that goal in mind.

And then, a miracle happened. After taking a long time trying to find a good play, the girl resigned herself to a simple turn. She put a P in place next to the I, to make PI and PUP. She had set up my perfect word.

Thank you, I said, and placed my Z, A and two blanks. I put the real Z next to the triple word score space just to be nice.

There it was! The word of a lifetime!

I seriously wonder if the girl played the P because she was hearing my thoughts, and subconsciously aligning with my intentions. She actually consciously helped me play another word once, in a different game. The word was SEQUOIA. In that game, I revealed to her what the word I was going for was, and she made a play to set me up for it. She is such a sweetie.

In the case of PIZZAZ, I did not reveal the word to her, so it was fortuitous that she played the P. But maybe she picked up on my desire subconsciously. I have blogged before about how our intentions can affect what we might expect to be a random outcome.

By the way, if you are wondering about the spelling of pizzaz, usually spelled pizzazz, with four Zs – it is an alternate spelling and it is in Hasbro’s official Scrabble dictionary. The spelling with four Zs would be impossible to play in a standard game of Scrabble, unless you had some truly remarkable mind-bending powers.

Here is the board at end of game. The final score was 287-287, a draw.

This post was also published in modified form as a session report on BGG.

A Plea for Our Democracy

July 10, 2024 Steve Comments 1 comment

I have argued on this blog already that we are in a political era of partisan conflict between two factions, in which the stakes are power and control and the arguing is essentially over. It’s all about solidarity now, what Ibn Khaldun called “group feeling.” That’s why it’s a really bad idea for one of the factions to be turning against their own candidate at the eleventh hour. I don’t think a Presidential debate was really necessary, but it happened and there is no going back. Seriously, Biden got flustered facing an opposing candidate who is a pathological liar and expert baiter. That’s all, get over it.

The MAGA faction now controls one of the branches of the United States government, the Supreme Court. They are close to capturing a second branch, the U.S. Congress. And they have a Presidential candidate who commands massive loyalty; it make no difference that he is a convicted felon and a disgusting human being. The point is the MAGA faction has the solidarity to potenitally propel their candidate into a second term as President, this time shielded by the Supreme Court and more prepared to implement policy.

*_{From https://x.com/mmpadellan/status/1809638465073516561}*

The MAGA faction has a plan should they take the Presidency, which you probably have heard of if not seen – Project 2025. It essentially rolls back the New Deal and aligns the federal government to Christian beliefs. The project’s leader has stated that “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Meaning they understand the stakes.

If what you want is a dictatorial President persecuting minorities and enforcing religious law, well I guess you know which faction you are in. If you are in the other faction (full disclosure, that’s the one I’m in) then I must reiterate that what is needed now is solidarity. That’s what it takes to win this power struggle.

Let me repeat what I wrote in an earlier post on this topic, written in May of 2022:

Which faction is currently favored in the conflict? A few years back I would have speculated that the red zone faction, rallying around former President Trump, had a stronger group feeling. They really seemed to have a greater solidarity of purpose than the blue zone faction, split between its progressives and moderates. But after the failed coup attempt in early 2021, my sense is that the strength of their faction just wasn’t quite enough to achieve superiority, and now they are on the defensive. However, I would note, as Khaldun might put it, that the red zone has been more clever at manipulating the laws of royal authority to favor their faction.

The Supreme Court decision granting the former President immunity from criminal prosecution was just such a manipulation of the laws, as was the way they maneuvered their judges into position in the court in the first place. This does not bode well for the blue faction. Luckily, awareness of this seems to have galvanized Democrats, and Project 2025 is now all over the media. But awareness and fear are not enough; they must translate into action at the ballot box. We must not allow ourselves to be cowed by negativity from profit-seeking media outlets.

Probably if you are reading this post you are in the blue faction, as I am, based on my social network and who is likely to see this in their feed. Or maybe you think of yourself as not in a faction; but let me tell you, this is not the time for voter apathy or for a protest vote. Save that for a calmer era.

At this time, we need common purpose to resist a MAGA takeover. Should they win both the White House and Congress in this year’s elections, it is over for democracy in the United States. There will be no way to vote them out after that.

If you are reeling from the danger that we are in, that’s understandable. Remember that this is all part of a generational cycle. We are in a Crisis Era, a phase in the cycle in which the external world is reshaped. This includes political institutions, which is exactly what we are witnessing happenning. The MAGA faction has their plan to reshape the government, plain to see.

If you would rather have a government that upholds the rights of women and minorities, and respects the separation of church and state, then you must resist now, while you still can. You must vote for Democrats in the 2024 election. If you are not registered to vote, please register and vote Democrat. It is the only way to save our nation.

The Apotheosis is Upon Us!

July 2, 2024 Steve Comments 0 Comment

Aileen, the vagabond gal who has been doing theater her whole life, continues each summer to direct a show with the Arts Bubble. Last summer was City of Angels, which was Tiernan’s first lead role and he was excellent at it. This summer was a newly available show, with Tiernan in multiple supporting roles, and really it’s just a whole lot of fun. Below is my mini-review and promotional post.

The Arts Bubble Presents: The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals

I hope you can make the time this week to see Starkid’s The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, presented by The Arts Bubble at Cosmic Art Studios in Pottstown, PA, because you don’t want to miss this amazing production. The Arts Bubble continues its tradition of putting on the cool shows that no one else does, and in this case are presenting a regional premiere of a show whose rights recently released. If you are familiar with the Starkid show from their online channels and come to see The Arts Bubble’s production, you will be delighted by the matching set design, and by the leads expertly capturing the characterizations of the original performances. You will also enjoy how well The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals works with a much larger cast. If you are not familiar, well, I don’t want to spoil the show for you. I’ll just say it’s like a campy old sci-fi B-movie, except it’s a darkly humorous musical, and it’s a lot of fun. The Arts Bubble makes excellent use of the generous space on the second floor of Cosmic Art Studios, and gives its audience fantastic performances, with a live band and plenty of thrills and laughs. The show does have some strong language and mature themes, but it stays (just barely) at a PG-13 rating. The audience clearly loved it on opening night, and if you want to be entertained as well, then make sure to reserve your tickets now! It’s “pay what you can afford” but you do need to reserve a seat (see the link below).

https://vagabondgal.wixsite.com/artsbubble/about-4

Remaining performances are Tuesday July 2 at 7pm, Friday July 5 at 6pm, Saturday July 6 at 2pm, and Sunday July 7 at 2pm, at Cosmic Art Studios, 310 E High St, Pottstown, PA, 19464.