Book Review: Monkey Business by Simon Louvish

Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers by Simon Louvish

This comprehensive biography starts with the arrival in America of the Marx Brothers' grandparents in the 1800s. Like many immigrants, they came to New York in search of a better life. Their mother, Minnie, encouraged them in theatrical and musical careers, which in the early 1900s meant vaudeville or the theater. The brothers started locally (lots of opportunities in NYC) and eventually toured all over the country with popular routines that morphed as they went along. Sometimes they fine-tuned routines; sometimes the bigger historical picture changed things. They dropped Groucho's German teacher character during World War I. Their ambitions took them to Broadway, radio, film, and (for Groucho) television. They had long careers, only breaking apart in the late 1940s when the creative juices flowed less and other concerns (mostly family) took over their lives. Groucho had another reinvention with the TV show You Bet Your Life, keeping himself in the limelight longer than his other brothers. The narrative ends with their deaths in the later half of the twentieth century.

At first, I was worried about the book moving slowly with a lot of the pre-Brothers period being documented in meticulous detail from the sketchy records of the nineteenth century. The interest picks up as the boys come on the scene and begin doing their different characters that blend so well together. Author Louvish has done a lot of research, sorting out the the myths, mistakes, and misdirections about the Marx Brothers' lives. He does occasionally imitate the style of the Marx Brothers with some jokey passages or comments about what's happening. Some of bits are clever, some land flat. They take the dullness off some of the narrative spots where things are barely happening. 

The book is entertaining and informative, providing some insight into the personalities of the boys off-stage as well as on-stage. I enjoyed it.

Recommended, especially for Marx Brothers fans.

Congress of Gamers Spring 2026

I attended one of the local board game conventions I've been thinking about going to for years. The Congress of Gamers provides a variety of services to the DC area gaming community. They have a list of game stores, calendars of local gaming events (meetups and conventions), and advice on managing or liquidating large game collections. The main thing they do is host board game conventions. Each year, they have three convention weekends in Rockville. They also organize a summer cruise from Baltimore. I went to the Spring 2026 convention.

The main gaming area

I got there at opening time since I was selling games at the auction store. Participants sign up ahead of time to sell items they no longer want. Sellers choose three different prices for each game and as the day goes by, the price drops two times. I sold half of what I offered, so I am happy with how it turned out. I only bought one game from the store at the end of the day, so I paid the cheapest price on Gutenberg. 

After I put my games in the auction store room, I went to one of the other rooms to play games. I saw another guy who wasn't playing and struck up a conversation. We decided to try out Bohnaza, a bean growing and selling game. After reading through the rules, it seemed a little complicated to start off with, so we switched to Gizmos, which I have played many times. Another fellow joined us and we had a good time.

We put the game back and started looking at the convention library shelves again. An organizer came up and asked if we'd be interested in a learning game about to be taught in the main room. Challengers is an award-winning game where players manage a small deck of cards. The cards represent a team playing Capture the Flag. Two players fight it out each round, shuffling their decks and playing the cards. The first player plays their first card and captures the flag regardless of the card. The next player has to play cards until their point value is equal to or greater than their opponent's card. That player then captures the flag and the opponent's card goes on "the bench." The winner's last card becomes his "flag holder" card (the rest of the cards are tucked underneath it) and the first player plays cards until his total is bigger than that single card. Then the flag moves back and the flag holder and any cards under him are benched. The round ends when one player runs out of cards or has too many benched cards. In the next round, players switch who they are playing against and have another go.

The twist is each round (including the first) the players draw five cards from another set of cards and add one or two to their deck. Play decks become asymmetrical, providing drama and excitement. The new cards might have higher numbers or special powers that make the game more exciting (and hopefully winnable).

Challengers card with list of opponents and the starting deck

Too many on the bench!

It was fun to play even if I did not do very well. It seems like a game that needs a lot of players (at least an even number). The play is not too complicated, the toughest part is choosing what cards to add to your deck. Players have the option of shedding cards too, though giving up too many means losing rounds by running out of cards.

Once that was done, I wandered around a bit and then played a blinged-out version of Wingspan. The owner (people bring their own games to the convention often) bought an insert to organize the components and painted some of the inserts. He also met designer Elizabeth Hargraves, who signed the back of the birdfeeder dice tower! 

Blinged-out Wingspan

We played with the hummingbird expansion, which adds a bit of complication. A separate board keeps track of hummingbirds coming and going to the three habitats. They provide bonuses (extra food, eggs, etc.) and also move tokens on an additional scoring track.

Hummingbird expansion bits

In the picture above, you can see that my player cubes were bald eagles! The guy really went all out making his game extra-nice.

We played through and I came in second, though I thought I did worse. The game has so many sources of victory points that tracking the scores is hard. Other players excelled at getting eggs and food but I had plenty of nectar bonuses and high-value birds.

My final habitats

The whole table

It was a lot of fun. After that, I went to the auction store for the last minute sales. Then I took my purchase to the car. I had a hard time finding another game. At this point, a lot of the tournament games were going, which I was not interested in. They had a room for unpublished games, where a designer would let players try out their games to get feedback. It did not look like any designers showed up for that. I wound up hanging around until the store closed. I picked up my leftover games and the payout for the ones that sold. Then I headed home.

The convention continued on Sunday but we had too many home obligations for me to return. That's the trouble with going to local conventions, all your other obligations are still around to distract you!

Book Review: Marvel Masterworks: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 by S. Lee et al.

Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 3 written by Stan Lee and art by Steve Ditko

Spider-man has more adventures as the original Lee/Ditko run continues. The stories are okay but are starting to blend together. Peter Parker still has a lot of drama around his relationships with Liz Allen, a fellow high school student who is also pursued by Flash Thompson, and Betty Brant, a fellow employee at The Daily Bugle who is also pursued by Ned Leeds. MJ Watson, the actual girl next door, is hinted at a lot but doesn't not make her famous appearance here. Aunt May has started her campaign to get Peter to meet her. Those dramas are interesting and play off against his obligations as Spider-man. He fights the usual rogues' gallery, a less compelling part of the stories. 

The writing style is still very hyperbolic and has a lot of dialogue bubbles. The fights don't have a lot of distinctness (though Spidey still does a lot of wisecracking as he's fighting) and Peter's problems keep repeating themselves (no money, girl trouble, Aunt May overly protective and secretly sick, etc.). I thought this volume was okay but my interest is waning. I was hoping to make it to the famous one-liner by MJ but it wasn't in this issue. I guess I keep going but it's not as fun as it was at the beginning.

Mildly recommended.

Movie Review: The Running Man (2025)

The Running Man (2025) co-written and directed by Edgar Wright

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is a hard-working man down on his luck. He's been fired from his last job when he tried to protect his fellow workers, an attempt where he got too hot-headed, a common problem for him. His wife (Alyssa Benn) works at some sort of strip club though she does not get involved with the clientele. Their daughter is sick and needs medicine that they can't afford on her salary. Ben looks at going on a game show to get money even though they are dangerous reality shows. The biggest show is The Running Man, where three contestants try to survive for thirty days, fleeing from Hunters sponsored by the show and from the general public, also sponsored by the show because they can win money if they spot any of the runners. Ben goes to the network headquarters to sign up for a lesser show but his physicality and anger make him ideal for The Running Man. He gets shafted into it with the promise of a lot of cash, especially early payouts that will help his wife and daughter. But no contestant has survived the show--the best record was twenty-nine days in the first season. Ben goes on the run, hoping to survive, with a side motivation of taking down the show or at least its sleazy producer (Josh Brolin). And to reunite with his family, who have been taken into protective custody by the show.

The simple premise gets very convoluted as the movie moves along. The setting is a future dystopia where television is run by the government and is focused on pacifying the general public into accepting the way things are (which is pretty miserable). The TV sets have cameras built in so they can monitor the viewers, though Ben knows a blackmarket guy (William H. Macy) who can set him up with a new identity and papers since he does all the blackmarket things, like selling old TVs without surveillance equipment. Ben runs into some more underground characters as the movie continues, filling out a bit of the world. But not enough to be convincing or to make a coherent whole. Many moments in the plot seem like they want to be wry commentary on the in-movie society and also our own society, but the comments are not very insightful or believable. The action sequences are fun and Powell is charming enough in the lead.

Compared to the Schwarzenegger version from the 1980s, this is a very unsatisfying movie. Schwarzenegger is much more charming and believable as the hero. The 1980s movie is kind of dumb but it doesn't have real pretensions to greatness or desires to have more than superficial comments on the dangers and lies of reality TV. This retelling wants to be more serious and hard hitting but it still has a lot of the nonsensical moments found in the earlier movie. The difference is the 1980s version aims for entertainment and hits the mark dead on. This version aims for a bigger message but is all over the place tonally and thematically. A lot of the characters want to "Fight the Man" but there's no real resolution of that for Ben or the society as a whole. Nothing really changes at the end, which could be an interesting statement like the ending of Animal Farm but the film just does a conventional wrap-up of the narrative threads. I wanted and expected more from this remake, or at least the same fun and action. The film did not make either goal, leaving it scoreless.

Not recommended.

Game Review: Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection Part II

Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection published by Grand Gamers Guild and designed by Jonathan Chaffer

The Holiday Hijinks Collection gathers a dozen 18-card escape room games designed over the past several years by Jonathan Chaffer. Each game comes in a small tuck box and contains a mystery centered on a holiday theme. The games use a website to confirm correct solutions and provide hints if players find a puzzle too difficult. The website also provides some codes and other information that might be used in the puzzles (like Morse Code or ASCII, things like that). The designs are compact and meant to take an hour or so for one or more players to solve. I reviewed the first half of the box here, now for the second half of the collection!

The Turkey Trial (2023)

Life on the farm is getting a bit crazy. You notice because you are the turkey and the human family is eyeing you up. Sneaking a peek at their newspaper, you see the story of Thanksgiving and realize that you need to escape! Fortunately the other farm animals are ready to pitch in as long as you help them with their problems. 

The Thanksgiving theme works very well and is consistently appied. A lot of the puzzles involve food, which we enjoyed. We also worked through it very fast, finishing in under 25 minutes. We didn't use any hints, another gratifying point. Have we just gotten used to the style of puzzles or are we really that good? Either way, we had a good time and are glad not to be served for Thanksgiving dinner.

The Easter Escapade (2024)

You show up for your volunteer gig at the local community center to help with the Easter Egg hunt only to find nobody else there and none of the eggs hidden! Finding the eggs and hiding them in good spots while trying to figure out what happened to your co-workers takes up all your attention for the next hour or so.

The puzzles were not too hard in this one except for one or two. Typically, a set of four eggs needs hiding in a room of the community center, so figuring out which egg goes where is eighty percent of the work. The web site is critical for this, inputting where each egg is supposed to go. Thankfully, using the website is not the challenging part. We enjoyed these puzzles, which had a good variety, and the final resolution of the story was cute. 

The Marriage Mix-Up (2024)

You run the reception hall for a marriage that is happening soon. You get there and find the place is a wreck--table assignments are all over the place, confetti has been spread too early, mass hysteria! You work your way through puzzles to get things back in order and to find the culprit.

The new twist for this is the division of players (so no solo play for this one). Almost immediately, the group has to separate out into the Bride's group and the Groom's group, each with their own cards and puzzles. Each group can talk about the cards but not show the cards to the other group. The new and interesting challenge was fun, especially trying to describe images on the cards. The puzzles are not too hard, we used zero hints. The final resolution was humorous if unlikely. A lot of fun!

The Leprechaun Larceny (2025)

You are about the celebrate March's most popular holiday, Saint Patrick's Day, at the local festival when a short man enlists your aid in a "quest for lost treasure." Naturally, the guy is a leprechaun and he wants his treasure back. So a fantastical adventure begins as you solve puzzles to find and restore his pot of gold.

The game has the usual assortment of puzzles that we found mostly easy. One or two were very challenging, blending multiple codes available on the game's website. We used two hints, which lost us half a star in the final score. We had a good time playing this, but maybe the series is running out of steam?

The New Year Nightmare (2025)

Going back to the inventor's house from The Groundhog Gambit, players get stuck in another time-looping adventure, bouncing back between Father Time and Baby New Year (though not literally). 

This game has similar duplicating puzzles like The Groundhog Gambit, which can be a little frustrating or amazing. Here, things move faster, coming in under an hour of playtime. We enjoyed it but felt more like it was a lesser copy of The Groundhog Gambit rather than an awesome sequel. We certainly had fun, but not as much fun as before. 

The Krampus Caper (2025)

Santa Claus and the Missus have gone on a tropical vacation, leaving you and Krampus to fill in for the Christmas delivery run. Krampus, being the one who delivers bad things to the kids on the naughty list, has some ideas about what to do, but also many wrong ideas. You work with him to get the North Pole production on track, get the reindeer and sleigh in order, and head off on the world-wide journey of gift giving. If you can just avoid giving lumps of coal to everyone.

This has the usual variety of puzzles that are more or less challenging while being more and more fun. We didn't have any big problems, except when we hit the rows and columns puzzle. We kept getting small details wrong until we worked it out properly. This was a fun finish to the set of calendar conundrums.

As I write this (May 2026), there are two more in the series, so maybe they will keep designing these until they run out of holidays. We will definitely be shopping for these extras, even if they won't fit in the cute box seen above.

Book Review: Darwin and Doctrine: The Compatibility of Evolution and Catholicism by Daniel Kuebler

Darwin and Doctrine: The Compatibility of Evolution and Catholicism by Daniel Kuebler

The supposed conflict between science and religion is the basis for a lot of arguments from people at the far end of both camps. Rather than meet in the middle by finding out about each other's positions, they hunker down in their trenches and lob truth bombs at each other. After several hundred years of conflict, you'd think they'd adopt a different tactic. For such people, the "I'm right, you're wrong" victory is more important than reconciling differences by finding the complicated, integrated truth together.

Daniel Kuebler seeks just such a reconciliation. Operating from the Catholic assumption that there is no genuine conflict between faith and reason, a concept that dates back at least as far as Saint Augustine, he looks at historic understandings of the issues. On the Catholic side, he details the growing understanding of the first chapters of Genesis and how a literal historical interpretation is both unnecessary and unlikely. The origin of the universe is described from a theological perspective at a time when the best science was a nascent science. Sure, a fundamentalist mentality can be found throughout Christian history. But wiser heads can also be found who have taken science seriously and made strides to reconcile the claims of science and the claims of Christianity. On the science side, Kuebler delves into the understanding of evolution as found in Darwin's writings which is quite different from what is asserted by many of Darwin's followers. Evolution is more complicated and incorporates more influences than natural selection. Other natural processes are involved. Digging into the details of current scientific thinking about evolution yields a more complicated and nuanced understanding of how species like homo sapiens came into existence and developed into prominence.

One issue in the debate is a matter of demarcation. Science is great at discovering and explaining processes in the natural world, including the relationships between living organisms (and those that used to live but have been relegated to the fossil record). Theology is great at discovering and explaining relationships between the divine and the human and how that impacts the lives of rational beings. Science and theology look at relationships of things but in different ways and with different ends in mind. They do not have two separate fields of truth, they have two related fields that can inform one another. 

This book is fascinating reading. It is written for a general audience, eschewing highly technical details in science and in theology. But the explanations get into enough detail to make their points. Also, the book is as up-to-date as can be, using the most current advances in both fields to establish how they can be reconciled with each other and provide mutual support and insight.

Highly recommended.

SAMPLE QUOTE:

"Much of the perceived conflict between evolution and Catholicism stems from a failure to distinguish what can legitimately be read from the Book of Nature and what can legitimately be read from the Book of Scripture. While scientific discovery--the 'reading' of the Book of Nature--can uncover how the planets move or how species are related, it cannot fully explain the purpose of man or answer why a universe that is order to support life exists in the first place." [p. 248]

Purple Playground Replacement

One of our children's favorite playgrounds was at the North Laurel Community Center. It was dubbed "the purple playground" because most of the equipment was a pleasant shade of purple. I've blogged about it here and here. 

The community center opened fairly recently (a little over ten years ago) and the plan was to add on a pool at some point. That time has finally come, which meant the removal of the purple playground as they extended the building to add the pool. As they were finishing up, new playground equipment came to replace the previous structures. My kids' initial reactions were, "It's not as good," though that was before they even tried it. We finally went last month to check it out.

"Green and blue playground" doesn't have the same ring to it

The area is about the same size but has a lot of different equipment, including a slightly taller slide and a sleeping bear. The bear was the first thing we saw walking in. It's clearly designed for smaller children to crawl through the log, so my kids did not do that. They did sit on the bear.

Ride 'em, cowgirl!

Shouldn't they let sleeping bears lie?

I thought one panel on the playground looked like a distressed face, though maybe I am the only one who can see it. 

Don't judge me!

A new spinning web climber is fun but not as great as the much larger structures that can be found at other playgrounds. This playground is focused on the pre-teen crowd, so I suppose they don't want anything too dangerous.

Climbing to the top is easy

Trying to get more spin

Another climber looks to me like an Apollo space capsule, but that might just be me.

Top of a rocket?

Don't take our picture!

Overall, the kids were surprised and satisfied with the new playground. We won't be coming as often as we used to when they were smaller, but we probably will go back. Or maybe play before or after visiting the new pool!