Last night, I played Modern Art with some folks. It was a high-stakes game. One of us (not me) had revealed that he was one of the top five players of Caylus (a geeky German boardgame) on Brettspielwelt (a geeky German online boardgaming site). But he wouldn't tell us his "handle", the name he used on Brettspielwelt. So we played Modern Art, with the stakes: if he didn't win, he had to tell us his handle. But he won. So we still don't know his handle.
When I got home, I looked at Brettspielwelt's list of top-ranked players.
| Pos. | Name | Alltime Score | Points | Games Played | Won | %age |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BenderRodriguez | 139157 | 190.89 | 729 | 679 | 93.14 |
| 2 | BrainDeadMan | 54517 | 168.26 | 324 | 262 | 80.86 |
| 3 | similie | 7397 | 164.38 | 45 | 43 | 95.56 |
| 4 | BraddockG | 92462 | 163.65 | 565 | 439 | 77.7 |
| 5 | SuperMouflette | 18567 | 161.45 | 115 | 107 | 93.04 |
| 6 | bundi | 25505 | 160.41 | 159 | 133 | 83.65 |
| 7 | Holbard | 75349 | 158.3 | 476 | 421 | 88.45 |
Hmm, I can't figure out which of these "handles" is most likely to belong to this guy. Hmm. Then again, maybe there's another approach. Maybe I can just start calling this guy... "SuperMouflette". If you didn't choose "SuperMouflette" as your handle, you might be kinda insulted if someone else claimed that you had. You might say, "My handle isn't 'SuperMouflette', you cretin, it's ____________."
Sooner or later, we'll get an answer out of this guy. Oh, wait, but that wasn't my point. My point was a book report.
I caught a ride from the restaurant to the game-playing spot with Michelle, who works at Chronicle books. Thus, it's not so surprising that she had a book in her car. She said, "You might want to check that book out." Stealing a joke from Kevin L. at work, I said "Is it a pop-up book?" Michelle said, "Yeah." Not the answer I was expecting. Now I had to look at the book.
The pop-up book was The Castaway Pirates. It's the most elaborate pop-up book I've ever seen. Michelle mentioned that a "paper engineer" had worked on it, and I think this "paper engineer" earned that title. There was a splash of water, rendered in pop-up. There were interlocked loops of rope, rendered in popup.
I'm not sure if a verbal explanation is sufficient. Oh, lookie, here's a video I can embed.
The Castaway Pirates