10. The Home Neutering Kit

9. Miss Piggy’s Big Bag O’ Pork

8. Gasp! – The Dry Cleaner Bag Game

7. Mr. Wizard’s Acid Factory

6. Fontanelle Lawn Darts

5. Hello Kitty Tiki Torches

4. Pin the Tail On the Family Dog

3. Mattel’s Bathtub Surge Protector

2. Baby’s First Nail Gun

1. Easy Bake Sushi
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

I awoke with a start. A cruel, twisted nightmare had run its course through my synapses, triggering primal fears embedded deep within my psyche. Moments ago I had witnessed the murder of my childhood, the stagnation of any creativity that made residence in my bones. The development of my mind was stunted at the very height of its growth, and laughter between friends had been replaced by the dull hum of the machine.

We weren’t children. We were subjects.

And through it all, one horrifying symbol of corruption ripped through the landscape of my beloved past.

Behold: The Tower

Bursting forth through the center of the game, of the world, the perversion of all that was innocent and good spread through the rip in the cardboard and spidered out toward me. Baltic Avenue, The Reading Railroad, even the utilities weren’t safe. The Tower took over the transportation, the parking, the police…it even extended its reach to Boardwalk Blvd…the epitome of the American Dream.

I remember trying to roll the dice. My hands were the hands of a confused and frightened child, freezing cold as though The Tower had sapped the atmosphere from the air. My brain fired messages to my hands to grab the dice and hurl them in a defiant, fiery burst of individuality and anger. My fingers, though, couldn’t comply. They were clumsy and numb, and I suddenly felt as though I were always compelled to stare…to stare at The Tower in awe.

Moments before we had laughed. We could still laugh, I suppose, but we did not know what was funny. We could only wait and stare and hope that The Tower would tell us if something was funny so that we could experience what emotion was allowed. I fought through the fog and remembered why we played this game, this simple game with brightly colored spaces and too many antiquated dollar bills splayed across the floor. Now those bills were useless, waiting to be cleaned up like the blood of so many martyrs. They were not needed, just as the dice and the role of the banker were not needed. Nothing was needed, really…except The Tower. We needed The Tower to play.

With effort I could recall what it was like to decide who was given the responsibility of being the banker. I could still feel the warmth of pride that beat in my chest when my friends deemed me worthy of such a responsibility. So many thoughts and emotions tugged at me. Temptation reared its head when I realized I was in charge of the money and the property, that I could use my god-like powers to manipulate the entire market and the outcome of the game. Of course, doing so would risk my friends refusing to play with me…nobody likes a cheater.

Maybe I became an honest person because when I was very young, my friends threatened not to play Monopoly with me if I cheated. Perhaps I learned to be wary of others, to always watch my bank account and possessions closely, because one too many times I had been cheated out of a yellow $100 note, or I had seen someone take one bill too many when they passed “Go!”

I started to question the need for The Tower. I opened my mouth to ask if such a simple, small, minuscule task in a childhood board game, is worth replacing. Though I did not, and do not, believe that being the banker or rolling my own dice or learning to cheat (or learning not to cheat) would have much of an impact on my growth…I needed to know if they were such egregious offenses that they needed to be snuffed out by The Tower. I dared to rebel the tiniest bit-

…and The Tower saw me do so.

Muted by fear, we dared not think these thoughts any more. After a few moments, I was sure that I was the only one who had ever thought so…if I confided my feelings in my friends-NO! If I dared share my treacherous thoughts with my neighbors, they may identify my rebellion and I would be cast out forever. No longer would I be ostracized for cheating as a banker, now it would be for the crime of speaking against the good of all. In fact, the more I thought the less I wanted to think…maybe I never thought those awful things in the first place. After all, The Tower makes everything easier.

The Tower watches my neighbors, so I do not have to. And The Tower handles the properties and the money, and now I believe I can find comfort in my role. I am no longer simply playing a game…now I am an integral cog in the system. Without me, The Tower would have no purpose…just like without The Tower, I would be lost and cold. Alone.

I awoke and tried to remember a world without The Tower. The chaotic tribes of young hyper-evolved apes threw their dice like spears and quarreled over something as immature and silly as orange and blue money bills. Needless today, that was energy wasted. I have a job to do, and it is not to try to steal or cheat or stop others from doing so…it is to serve The Tower.

I don’t know how they had the audacity to call this Monopoly before. Any Monopoly we tried to have was but a cheap facade. The Tower knows better than we foolish children ever did. The Tower knows better.

10. Sharp Objects Potpourri

9. Mr. Wizard’s Home Liposuction Kit

8. Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Pitbulls

7. Lady Gaga Meat Playdress

6. The Highway Trampoline

5. Mattel’s Choking Hazard

4. The Sarah Palin Wind-Up Mama Grizzly

3. Baby’s First Self-Inoculation Kit

2. Owie! – The Jump-Off-The-Roof Game

1. The Underwear Bomber Blow-Up Doll
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Early on in my parenting travels, I was a total anti-video game guy. A staunch opponent. Of course, these feelings were not due to a lingering bitterness because growing up I was the worst Pac-Man player in my town. No, I just didn’t want my kids sitting idly for hours on end, ruled by a screen, twitching, stagnating, drooling. But then came the Wii.

My kids quickly honed their desire for the Wii. The normal parenting move of switching one toy for another did not work with this alluring technology, this attractive nuisance. As a family, we still enjoyed the great Cranium board games. We still played Chutes & Ladders, Scrabble, Sorry, and Checkers. But beneath their smiles, they wanted that Wii too.

The external pressure grew. We became one of the last neighborhood video game holdouts. I noticed that kid conversations around the playground were about these games. I began to wonder if my kids might be missing something important because they weren’t participating.

You’re thinking of me as spineless bandwagoner. You’re thinking of me as weak conformist. Maybe you’re just thinking of me as devoid of principles.

But this was no small matter. Where do you draw the line on parental decisions like this? Where do your core philosophies and values end and your own prejudices and opinions begin? On some things you shouldn’t cave for anything. Holding the line on foundational values might be a good way to help your kids avoid being pressured into doing drugs or launching boulders at other people’s houses. But I realized the Wii wasn’t in the drug/boulders category, and I wondered when we reach the point where our vehemently clinging to our opinions becomes an unjustifiable obstruction to our kids’ lives.

You enter the parental game trained mainly by your experiences on the other end of it: Being a child. I don’t think it’s news that that is inadequate training, especially for those of us whose upbringings were a little challenged.

So we work through the debris of the past and come into being parents with a kind of weird list of what must happen and what we won’t allow: this is a good dream for you to have; this is verboten; that kind of kid makes a bad friend; you want to have this kind of job; etc.

Then our kids come bursting on the scene, and they make a mess of it all. And soon after that, these friends of theirs start popping up and really foul up our plans.

So my stubbornness about the evils of the Wii and video games kept being contrasted with an uncooperative reality. I went to a Fourth of July party during which twenty people ranging in age from four to 45 played Rock Band. Kids and adults banging out “Mississippi Queen” and having a blast. Just like the darn advertising. I also noticed my kids’ video-game-playing friends, all relatively upstanding citizens for the sub-10-year-old set who do well in school, don’t drink too much soda, and brush their teeth most nights, were enjoying the Wii and also having these involved, interesting conversations with each other about their gaming adventures.

This time of reflection ventured into holiday gift season. The Wii and its components ruled the lists. My internal arguments began to seem petty, maybe shallow. So we gave some advice to Santa and in came the Wii.

We set it up, and right away my two boys spent a long afternoon in the front room playing. Just like I thought! I came in, almost teary, screwdriver in hand, to rescue them. How had I been so short-sighted?

But as I rounded the corner, what did I hear? I heard stomping. I heard a weird kind of problem-solving, strategically-oriented argot. I heard laughing.

I peeked around the corner. What did I see? The boys were bouncing into each other deliriously, jumping around the room. They were sweating, actually breathing hard. They were scheming and working together to confront — I don’t know what was going on on the screen, but they were dealing with it. Together. And they were laughing. Together. Switching controllers. Guiding each other through the problems of the to-me-still-bewildering world of Mario. I dropped my screwdriver. All would be well.

So time has passed. The Wii has evolved. They haven’t graduated to the hard video game stuff yet; they play Lego Star Wars and Batman and sports games. They still even play the core Wii games, like that battle of the tanks. Sure they have their occasional fight. The Wii remote becomes a projectile sometimes. But mainly they spend a lot of time together as brothers having fun.

Watching them, I realize this is what I want out of their activities. If they spent an afternoon learning how to drub each other into financial destitution — meaning playing Monopoly — I would feel I had significantly strengthened my application for Father of the Year. Yet here they were, playing together, in tandem, actively and with engagement.

And then there are those calf muscles.

My little guy, the six-year-old, has calves that would make a bodybuilder proud (see above for unPhotoshopped graphical proof). Sure, he plays a few youth sports. He might have some genes on his side (on his mother’s side, of course). But those calves were built by the Wii. During the most routine Wii game, he bounces up and down on his toes, sometimes for an hour straight. Like most of his activities, we have not figured out why he does this, but he associates motion of the game with his own physical motion.

So in the end I made peace with video games. My kids use this electronic toy to interact, laugh, problem solve, and even get some serious exercise. I still love those classic board games, but, unless you’re playing the full-contact version, even Parcheesi can’t promise all that.

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is in its fourth edition (but fifth incarnation) since 1974. I’ve played three incarnations: 2nd, 3.5, and 4th. I’ve got to say that the fourth edition does one thing very well.

For anyone unfamiliar, a table top role-playing game (RPG), like D&D, uses a pen, character sheet(s), a series of books, and a set of dice. The set of dice consists of: 1 four-sided, 1 six-sided, 2 ten-sided, 1 twelve-sided, and 1 twenty-sided die. Dice are also abbreviated “D” as in D20 for a twenty-sided die. You might laugh at this now, but one day you’ll be in a comic shop on the wrong side of the tracks and knowing what a D20 is might help you make a saving throw against a band of asthmatic angry nerds.

D&D, and similar RGPs, are played with one person running the world and a group of players going through the world. The concept is that the players will have their characters act according to their personalities and shared experiences. For example, a brooding solitary dwarf will warm up and make friends with the plucky tiefling after they save each other’s lives from a nest of giant spiders. Or as is more common with my current D&D 4th edition group, they will buy each other prostitutes once they return to town.

RPGs are as much a part of comic culture as comics themselves because they share space in the same shops. While there are purists, comic readers who hate RPG-ers and vice versa, for the most part anyone into one has at least tried the other. In fact I became interested in comics because I was into Star Wars RPG as a teenager.

The 4th edition D&D is a great miniatures game. The publisher, Wizards of the Coast, has taken a lot of the ambiguity out of the game by instituting a standard series of measurements. This sound logical, but is a huge shift away from 3.5 D&D where things were vague and left to the discretion of the dungeon master, or DM. (A DM is responsible for making the world around the players.) In 3.5, a player would need to ask the DM if he or she could do something; now the player simply counts squares.

While many old school D&D players and DMs are unhappy with the shift, I happen to love it. Currently, I am the DM for a monthly group of mid-twenty-somethings. Not forcing the DM (me) to make a nit-picky decision every twenty seconds, and not forcing the players to ask a nit-picky question every twenty seconds, allows us to focus on the role-playing aspect of the game.

I would say the band of greedy anti-heroes I’m DM-ing now is the best its ever been strictly because the new rules let them focus. I’ve actually seen players do things that are completely illogical from a tactical standpoint because they’re so focused on their role. It’s a beautiful thing for a DM to watch and makes all those hours spent building dungeons pay off.

So my hat goes off to you, Wizards of the Coast, for a ballsy shift in the RPG paradigm that really paid off.

Author’s note: This little story will only make any kind of sense if you’ve played the digital crack strategy game called Civilization …

“Mr. President, we have to talk about the unit.”

“What unit, Minister?”

“Remember the regiment that was forgotten in the Peltarsh Mountains?”

“Right. The unit of horse archers. Did we ever figure out what to do with all those old compound bows? I’ve got one in the armoury — it’s quite ingenious in design, you know, thought it’s primitive. Did you know it uses horn?”

“Yes, sir. We auctioned most of them off on E-Bay. The idea was to help pay for the retraining.”

“Excellent. I like to see our Departments using our resources efficiently. How is the unit shaping up?”

“Well, not as well as it did with our cavalry units. We had a surprising number of troopers who were able to fly the helicopters, and the rest really seem to like the idea of being called air cavalry.”

“And the horse archers?”

“Most of them seem to think the helicopters are some kind of god.”

“I see. Well we had to expect some problems. They were isolated in the mountains for centuries, without any word from us. If I remember the file, the country was still under the control of the ancient dictator Slagothon the Bloody when they last heard from the capital.”

“Yes. We’ve been trying to educate them and bring them into the 21st century. It has, uh, been somewhat costly.”

“How much?”

“About ten times what it takes to upgrade our cavalry units.”

“I see, and the recommendations?”

“Well, we think we can do it, but we may lose the unit cohesion that we were trying to save. The unit has quite a storied history. Did you know they defeated the Horde of Logdor on their own?”

“I see. Naturally, these are their descendants. So how much more do you think it will cost?”

“Estimates are high. Possibly 500 million.”

“And they think the helicopters are gods?”

“Yes. Every time a pilot gets into the cockpit they scream in horror. They think the god is eating them.”

“And when they come out?”

“Well, it’s a miracle to them. They’ve started worshiping the pilots. Or stoning them to death. It has started a small religious disagreement.”

“Could we just send them back to the mountains?”

“Sure. They’ve been guarding that flank of our country from the barbarians for centuries. I say we give them some rifles, a few officers with modern training, and let them do it.”

“So we have a plan.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

[pause]

“Well?”

“There’s just one other matter. You know our territories down in the Glotharian jungle? Well it turns out we have a unit of warriors down there.”

“What do you mean, warriors?”

“Well, it’s hard to define.”

“Give it a try Minister.”

“I should probably start by explaining that they are armed with clubs . . .”

We need to come together to face a plague of addiction more tragic than any in recent memory. It’s even worse than drug addiction; even worse than nicotine addiction; even worse than food addiction; even worse than gambling addiction; even worse than shopping addiction; even worse than sex addiction; even worse than Jane’s Addiction.

Actually, sex addiction sounds like it’s probably pretty good — I don’t care what anyone says.

What I am writing about is FarmVille addiction. And no less an authority than Dr. Phil has come out swinging against it:

Dr. Phil confronted a FarmVille-loving mother named Teresa about her duties to her children recently, and he thinks she would be better served to go out and “start a garden for real.”

…

[Y]ou have a ridiculous addiction to a ridiculous computer game that’s interfering with your ability to be a mother. You needed a fix, and she wouldn’t get off, so you had to create the opportunity.”

It’s good of Dr. Phil to bring such attention to a modern scourge that is — well, it pains me to write this, but — threatening to ruin my own life.

I have been touched by the tragedy of FarmVille addiction.

Nights previously spent watching reality television shows with my female companion are spent watching those shows virtually alone. Oh, yes, she sits on the couch beside me, but her attention is wholly on her laptop, and her never-ending FarmVille game.

“I just got a goat,” she tells me. “I have to put him in a pen so he doesn’t run around.” She speaks as if the goat is real, in a voice tinged by inadvertent Maria-like pathos.

“But, Tom Sizemore just brought a balloon of heroin into the Pasadena Recovery Center,” I tell her, motioning toward the television. She doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. She almost seems not even to care. “Tom Sizemore is giving rehab one more try — for crying out loud, he’s about to see Heidi Fleiss again! This is compelling stuff! Look at the television!”

My plea seems to fall on deaf ears; her face does not turn away from the computer screen.

It’s difficult, but I have to remind myself that she just can’t help it. If there’s one thing “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew” has taught me, it’s that television doctors consider addiction to be a disease. It’s also taught me that they pretty thoroughly search you when you enter a rehab facility, so if I ever end up being sent to one, I will have to hide my drugs pretty well. Anyway, she doesn’t mean to taunt me, by sitting there with her game. She is addicted. How else to explain the fact that she is in the same room as me — a charming, witty, sophisticated and extremely good-looking man — and she is choosing to play with her goat rather than watch television with me?

There is only one explanation, and I thank Dr. Phil for articulating it.

10. Big Bag O’ Discarded Hypodermic Needles

9. Balloon Boy Self-Launch Home Kit

8. Easy-Bake Microwave Oven

7. Fisher-Price Choking Hazard

6. Baby’s First Power Stapler

5. Mr. Wizard’s Home Meth Lab

4. Fontanelle Lawn Darts

3. Miss Piggy Swine Flu Inoculation Kit

2. Owie! – The Fall-Off-The-Ladder Game

1. Zhu Zhu Flammable Hamsters
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

I read somewhere that the average age of a video gamer is approximately 30.  At 276, I’m still on the young side of life, but I can remember the days of 8-bit heroes and light guns.  (I kept all of mine, even the bad ones.)

In those carefree days of yore video games were weighed and measured exclusively by how much fun they were.  Then rankings ensued.  Because there was no internet I doubt any formal reviews exist for most games, but I once held an evening long debate over which game was better “Bart Simpson vs. the Space Mutants” or “Air Fortress.”  Sixteen years later, they are both primitive, but I can still play Bart.

Why isn’t anyone telling me if a game is fun to play?

I read a lot of free online reviews: IGN, GameSpot, 1Up, etc.  And after 500 to 1000 words they haven’t given me the only information I need to decide if I want to play the game: did you enjoy it.  Anymore the reviewer make playing games sound like work: such as the reviews for “Grand Theft Auto IV,” which made me feel like a life of crime was indeed a lot of hard work and networking, even if all you wanted to do was steal cars and run over the elderly.  The biggest and best games get flat uninteresting reviews.

Moreover, enthusiasm is saved for bad games, such as the reviews for “Golden Axe: Beast Rider.”  A game so awful I’ve seen people convulse from considering buying the game, but the review was fantastic.

I submit as evidence “Kung-Fu Panda.”  A fun game based on a fun movie, which I only played because it was free.

The game isn’t over simplified either.  It’s not simply running, jumping, and Kung-fu.  There are significant RPG qualities to the game in the upgrades screen.  If we’re being honest, that aspect is all that separates quite a few games from the slop pile, including “Star Wars: Force Unleashed” (an enjoyable game, which will hopefully see a more evolved sequel).

All I want from a game review is a single comment, if you weren’t paid to play this, would you have spent the time to finish it?

I began playing World of Warcraft (WoW) again recently. It’s my second time around. I played during my carefree college days, averaging 5 hours a day, which would have disrupted my social life except all my friends played too. Turning the weekends into prolonged LAN parties and foiling our chances with the microscopic female student body. The handful of us who had girlfriends transformed them into a support group named: Widows of Warcraft. Okay, only one of us had a serious girlfriend and she had the sleeping habits of a housecat. We’d play upstairs and she’d laze on the couch, watch movies or play PS2. I quit WoW, about a year after graduation, when the house cat went feral and divided friendships, incited deceit, which ruined our online guild. The guild amounted to a boys’ club — think Fleas or Rotary for a new generation.

I came back to WoW to fulfill my need to play videos economically and for a group of three friends. I’ve been waiting to hear back from MFA programs for quite some time now, and still have six +/- weeks to go. From January on I’ve hopped compulsively from TV to movies to my XBOX 360 and Wii, trying to fill the hours. About a week ago I realized three significant details: 1) once I get accepted to an MFA program (I refuse to believe otherwise, call me arrogant if you like, but without that belief I’m sunk) I’d have four or five months of working 9 to 5 and sitting around with which I need to cope; 2) I have a total of 170 hours of TV, about 6 to 8 weeks of viewing, waiting for me on my shelf; 3) sitting on your couch, with or without your roommate, waiting for a letter is an incredibly lonely way to live.

I would like to add that I try not to play my consoles while my roommate is awake, because she doesn’t play video games and she is also my sister. Our arguments tend to stretch back to our childhood and move forward — it’s best to avoid them. WoW on my laptop seemed like the best choice.

WoW provides me with an updated version of a party game. I can play alone or as I tend to do while chatting in game with friends. Instead of playing Canasta or Bridge, which requires everyone to enjoy the same game and play only when together, we have a highly customizable group activity. I can play Death Knight, while Derek plays a Mage, Heather, Derek’s serious housecat, plays a Hunter, and Patrick plays Priest. During the week we can play separately or meet virtually and play together. On Friday nights we can gather and sit around a table chatting, snacking, and drinking while we play together.

Group video gaming is nothing new. When I was in ninth grade Goldeneye was released on Nintendo 64, and the next year was spent going to friends’ houses to shoot at each other. After Goldeneye was Perfect Dark or some other shooter. Then, in 1999, Mario Party came out. I’m sure it wasn’t the first group oriented video game, but it was what my friends and I played endlessly.

So, what has changed in WoW?  Not much. Derek, Heather, Patrick, and I are gearing-up to hold weekly gamer parties. The game is as beautiful, complex, and expansive as I remember. And it still takes obscene amounts of time to do anything, but doing anything and everything is incredibly fun. Last night I picked flowers for two and a half hours and loved every minute of it.

Going to an MFA program won’t stop me from gaming, but one day I’ll have a wife and kids (or not), a house and yard (or not), a job that requires me to work ridiculous hours (or not) and I’ll have to give up gaming, or at least WoW, altogether. But until then, at 10 pm on most nights I will stroll over to my MacBook Pro, log-on, and become a Minotaur. Then I’ll find Derek, Heather, and Patrick so we can kill some zombies.