Bananarama '08!

Oh man. Okay. Last Thursday, I interviewed Dan Koeppel, the author of the book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, for the Breeze. The interview was great. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology it was easy for me to conduct and record an interview via iChat and Garage Band.

I spent most of Friday transcribing the thirty-five minutes of raw audio. This means that I would listen to about fifteen to twenty seconds of the audio at a time while typing, and re-listening for good measure. After about five hours, I was about three quarters of the way finished. I bet my Mac would dictate it to itself, but I haven't figured that out yet. 

I was sitting there, at my dinner table, with headphones on listening to this brilliant interview, when I thought I heard my name being called. I got up and looked around outside, but didn't see anything, so I went back to work. 

Suddenly, at my screen door, was  a dapperly dressed Richard Banana. Coincidence, maybe. Ironic, certainly. Bizarre? Most assuredly. We were going to be playing RISK later that evening with our friend Crissy, but I was so engrossed in the loss of the banana, that I'd spaced on the return of the Banana. 

For some backstory, Richard, Crissy, and I used to have an over two year long game night, every Monday. It was great fun. We had a revolving cast of auxiliary characters, including my old roommate Joseph (who almost always won at RISK, and was prone to loud outburst, as well as thirty minute turns...), Matt Korn, the socialist sweetheart, and a few other folks. 

We mostly played RISK, or RISK 2210 AD (uh, nuking the moon? yes, please). We branched out a few times and played some great games like Zombies, Carcassone, Parcheesi, and The House on Haunted Hill. 

I know, I'm exposing major nerdcore love. However, I'm also earning my Geek street cred. I'm a mean RISK player. Bring it. 

Anyway, there was Richard. Whoa. We played Starship Catan, which was fun, and something I'd like to play again in the future. When we finished, we walked over to Thai Kitchen, where I over ate, before going and purchasing a shiny new edition of RISK. 

RAB and the Starship Catan.

Get some wheat!

I had all the cash.

We went over to Crissy's house, which is right around the corner from my place near Duval and had some beers (and a few shots of Ouzo).  My co-worker Carlos and his fiancee, Katherine, came by, and we raged global domination on a very small, plastic scale. Carlos and Crissy grew up together in Albuquerque, which I had forgotten when I hired Carlos a year or so ago.

All's quiet on the Western Front.

Endgame. Red resigns. Green Dominates. I would have turned in two sets, which would have been fun...

In the end it was a good night. I won. It was a total sleeper game. Lots of build up, then some trap springing. Good times; I won't go into specifics. 

I'll be looking into doing something with the audio of the interview. I will post it here when I figure out how to do that, and may make it into a podcast. Who knows?

Stay tuned.