Brian the Blogger!

Hey Everyone!  I wanted to do a blog on another board game that I played many time during my childhood.  First of all, I can clearly remember getting this game for a gift on my birthday many ( and I mean many) moons ago.   It was 1978 and I was the tender age of 7.  Star Wars was a huge blockbuster the year before and the marketing of this now classic film was in full swing:  action figures, clothes, a motion picture soundtrack, and various other items that helped to push this film into the American consciousness at the time.  To capitalize on the board game craze, Kenner, the company that produced many of the action figures and other toys in the Star Wars line, produced a board game in October 1977: Star Wars-Escape from the Death Star game. The game is set in the latter half of the Star Wars film.  The object was simple:  You had to move your Han Solo and Chewbacca token, along with your Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa tokens out of the trash compactor,  collect th

"Be the hero of your story 'til it's done.  Why go promenade when you were born to run? Epiphany Lutheran Church presents their annual summer musical and this year, it was Big Fish .  If you never heard of the show, then here is a brief summation:  Traveling salesman Edward Bloom is known for regaling his tall tales, which delight his wife Sandra and his daughter-in-law Josephine, but aggravate his son,  Will.  Now that Edward is dying from cancer and Josephine is pregnant,  Will decides to get the truth behind his Dad's stories once and for all.  What Will discovers is that Edward has been trying to inspire him, and that his Dad really does love him.  I was involved with Epiphany's shows from the beginning, when I was in the pit orchestra for The Sound of Music .  I then landed the role of Mendel the Rabbi's son in Fiddler on the Roof .  I had taken a long break from these shows, I  returned in 2006, to perform in Music Man as Olin Britt, a member

My 14 year old daughter just started high school a few days ago.  Yeah....just let that sit for a minute.  HIGH SCHOOL! This is just crazy to think about for this dad.  I vividly recall Sarah's first day of school when she was going to start first grade.  This little girl wanted to wear a dress because she INSISTED that nobody wear slacks on their first day of school.  Sarah has always been an old soul.  So, Paula and I watched her little body climb those steps of the bus and she waved as the bus pulled away.  I followed her to school and walked her to her first grade class.  There, I met Sheila Sanders, Sarah's first grade teacher.  I set Sarah's bags that contained her school supplies down next to her chair.  I gave her a hug and said I would see her later that night.  Sarah cried, and begged me not to leave.  As I held her for a moment, I reassured her that she was going to be fine.  I waved as I walked out of her class and stood just around the corner, where I

  Hi Everyone!  I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Board games are the staple of families and have been enjoyed for decades.  I wanted to write a post on a game that I loved playing when I was a kid.  Monopoly, Sorry, Payday, and Operation were some of the games that I relished over the years.  But there was one game that still stands in my mind as one of the greatest games which I never tired of playing:  Clue. To give you some background on this game, Clue was originally titled Murder! and was the brainchild of Anthony Lee Pratt, a English solicitor's clerk.  He dreamed up this game as a way to past the long hours from air raid drills in underground bunkers.  Mr Pratt presented his idea to Norman Watson, who changed the title to "Cluedo", which is play on words of "clue" and the Latin word of "ludo", which means "I play".  The game was launched in 1949 in America after it was licensed to Parker Brothers fo