Set List: Secrets for Sale!

Obviously, the right way to play the game is to proceed as though the prompts you receive make sense to you, because they're supposed to be your notes, but as a special service for the curious, here's a chance to find out what's really going on with "Yang Rudai!" 

Set List at the Pack is a completely improvised stand-up show that happens every Thursday night at 10:30, at the Pack Theater in Los Angeles, CA. 

Also, I have this ludicrous fantasy where, when we're done with the show, I post all of the thousands of slides for anyone who wants to do their own set list show (at the pack, unless you crop the logos), and I offer to explain any card that anyone is curious about. 

Escape Room Reviews: Wizard's Workshop

Company: 60 Out
Room: Wizard's Workshop
Date Played: 6/11/17
Player Count: 4, which felt just right.
Success:  Success!

Premise: You know how sometimes wizards accidentally trap their souls in alternate dimensions?  Well it's usually fine because this is why you get yourself an apprentice or four.

Immersion: 60 Out is the king of magic objects, so this room seemed like a natural fit. The production design is pretty great, and the transitions between scenes were each delightful in their own way. Some of the objects were kind of broken though, and others showed a lot of wear and tear. 

Highlights: This company always gives you neat things to do in their rooms that I'm certainly not about to describe in detail here. There are a lot of incidental jokes in this room. 

Lowlights: This room might be a little bit too hand-holdy? I'm not sure that I would have liked anything better if it was set up to have you do all the same things except without the clues / instructions, but the in-room guides cover a lot of what you need to do. I'm not even sure if this is a 'lowlight,' although it does mean that you're sometimes robbed of the 'Aha!' moment. Pre-recorded wizards are a tough thing to make.

And Finally: I don't know what our actual time was, but this room seemed really fast to me. Maybe because we didn't spend as much time pondering as we did moving from task to task and then completing the tasks. I do appreciate how 60 Out seems to have an interest in showing you all of the neat stuff they took the time to build - as though it's more important to them that you have a complete experience than that they have impressively low win percentages. Out of 25 rooms, I'm going to rank this one #6. That makes it my favorite 60 Out room so far, although I would caution that it's more in the school of cool experience rooms than mind-bending puzzlers.

#2,364: The Verdict

Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse - ★★★★★
I've been to a couple of festival screenings of the movie.  We had one at the San Diego Comic Fest and another at a festival here in LA that doubled as a cast and crew screening.  I still like seeing what parts audiences enjoy.  The LA screening was unusual because there was so many cast and crew in attendance that the audience was a little too hot; their laughs stepped all over jokes the regular audiences enjoy.

Alien - ★★★★★
Watched alongside reading the book of production designer Roger Christian, Cinema Alchemist. The movie remains a classic. The book was badly in need of an editor.

Doctor Strange - ★★★½☆
On a rewatch, I was really pleased with how much more filmic, more cinematic, Dr. Strange is than other, similar movies.

I was wrong when I originally guessed that it would be set in the recent past (in order to make it make sense when he's name dropped in Winter Solider), but I'm going to try again by predicting Strange gets into it with Star Lord about when some song from the 70s charted.

The Verdict - ★★★½☆
Man, Lumet, Mamet, Newman.
You know that ridiculous trailer for House of Games, where "David Mamet writes the way people speak" (even though nobody in that movie sounds anything like a human)? It's movies like this one that got all that praise. Plus, I like the way they slow play a reveal so long that you might start to think it's not coming. I feel like the pacing is more a product of its time, but if you did it today it would seem deft.

Set List: Run the show Sweepstakes!

You know, a big part of what makes Set List at the Pack work so well is... me.  I push buttons, slide sliders, and even make these graphics for when Jason wants to talk to me about something. 

However! In about a month, I will be going on a planned and expected vacation that has nothing to do with my untimely and insensitive remarks, and when I do, someone else is going to have to steer the ship. It could be you! Find out by purchasing specially-marked packages of Hubba Bubba gum, or, like, talking to me or Jason after the show!

Set List at the Pack is a completely improvised stand-up show that happens every Thursday night at 10:30, at the Pack Theater in Los Angeles, CA.

Escape Room Reviews: The Crime Scene

Company: Enigma Escape
Room: The Crime Scene
Date Played: 5/14/17
Player Count: 2, which was enough
Success:  Success!  We not only escaped, we solved the murder!

Premise: My Uncle, the one who died a little while ago and we attended the reading of his Will? It’s time to discover what exactly happened to him, in this probably-flashback mystery.

Immersion: Enigma Escape has a particular level of quality and design that isn’t precisely matched by many other companies out there. Things feel solid, and old, not made of pressboard. What it may lack in the sense that an object or puzzle might not 'really be there,' Enigma makes up for in craftsmanship in their build-outs. 

Highlights: Some of the reveals are pretty fun in this room. Our typical opening sweep of the environment paid off. I'd love to be able to see heat maps, or some kind of time graph, of various escape rooms to see how much time the average group spends on various points of the puzzle flow. We did get stuck at one point, but according to our GM, not where people usually do, and we supposedly breezed right through some interactions that are usually sticking points. (This could be a specialized case of the rule where the GM has to tell you how smart and wonderful you are, but without a chart, I can't tell!)

Lowlights: We smashed against our most frequent, most dreaded hint: "keep going!" One box was open to us as soon as we saw it, and I was never clear on whether or not it was a mistake.

And Finally:   In our visit to The Will, we got the sense that this company's rooms would be playable as a duo, and we were right. Enigma's rooms are typically a mix of locks and interesting (sometimes mechanical) tech, and I think this is the first time I've played a room that made a bonus goal of actually comprehending the story. Out of 24 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #12. Because trying to rank all of the rooms numerically is a little bit absurd, I'm pretty sure that this reflects that this room is among the finest of what escape rooms were capable of a year or two or three ago.

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.enigmaescaperooms.com/room/info/4