Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
OTF: Whoopie Pies and Civil War Lessons
The OGN crew catches up on a Friday night, sharing stories about family visits, temporary housing situations, movie disappointments, and finding unexpected wisdom in history books.
• Clay recounts his weekend at Grandma Fleagle's, featuring boating, tubing, and famous whoopie pies
• The hosts debate which "Bad Boy" cologne flavor suits each of them best
• Travis discusses his temporary military housing and negotiating time off for a gaming event
• Scathing review of the latest Jurassic Park movie and thoughts on the upcoming Superman reboot
• Travis recommends "Boys State" documentary on Apple TV about teenage politics
• Jared shares his visit to Gettysburg and how reading "Killer Angels" helped him process his hip replacement
• Travis recommends "Demon of Unrest" by Erik Larson about the siege of Fort Sumte during the Civil War
As always, come interact with us online, let us know if you have any feedback, and leave us a review/comment anywhere you get your favorite podcasts!
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welcome to the operation game night podcast. It's friday, everybody it's over the it's over the fence day. It's not your normal host, it's Jared. You know, I'm just trying to trying to help out where I can. I'm here with my two best buds, travis how the heck are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. That was a phenomenal intro. Couldn't have done it better myself. I'm so proud. I didn't.
Speaker 1:I should have came up with a witty witty intro I'd put you on the spot too oh well, no, you're, you're fine, it's all good, bro. Uh clay, what's going on over there, over in pa? Duh, you know anybody watching washing your, uh, your deck over there anymore no, she finished up the deck washing project a little bit ago.
Speaker 3:We just got back from bedford, pennsylvania, it's about two hours west of york. Here we were visiting my grandma. My mom's side of the family lives up there. My sister and brother-in-law have a boat and there's this awesome lake called Lake race town. It's like 28 miles long and they hauled that boat up there and on Saturday we boated, we tubed, we skied. We had a great time. So, uh, pretty tired from an exciting weekend of eating grandma's cooking and and boating, but I'm excited to be culminating the weekend here with you guys and starting the weekend for our listeners next week.
Speaker 1:Oh, heck, yeah, but he doesn't get a family day anymore, travis, now that that's now that he's outside of the military.
Speaker 2:Very few. They don't do family days anymore.
Speaker 1:No, I think they're called days of no significant activity. Now I was told I was told it's called a Donza. I think they're called days of no significant activity. Now I was told it's called a donza or something like that. Great Tomorrow, I'm on a donza.
Speaker 3:Oh really, yeah, oh wow. No wonder you guys are all hot and bothered here almost at 10 o'clock at night.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you want to call the glass store and tell them that you're sick, clay, I'll come up and play board games with you okay, I mean, if you will do that, I will definitely call off and risk my employment well, travis, if you, if you would be obliged, I would like to offer clayton the first question for over the face and please, I want to know, what did grandma fleagle make you this weekend?
Speaker 3:oh my god, what also. We came up on friday for the fourth of july and she, she was having a banger up at the farm. She, the the pasture was parked, parked full of people. Uh, lots of hot dogs and brats she made a bunch of beans and mac and cheese on friday and then on saturday. What did we have? Saturday? Some chicken and broccoli and green beans. But today she made my favorite, which is ham pot pie. Um, ham pot pie.
Speaker 1:I could have guessed that there's some home-cooked noodles.
Speaker 3:Oh, just all melding together in this beautiful broth, yeah, yeah did she send you home with any whoopie pies? Oh, you bet they're sitting on my kitchen right now oh my gosh, are they homemade whoopie pies? Oh yeah oh man she cranks them out like a factory man, that's nervous.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you've ever experienced a uh, a grandma fleagle weekend um I've never had a grandma fleagle weekend, but I remember one time clay had a game night and he said that there was whoopie pies available and I don't. I don't think I got one. I think they were all out by the time I got there and I probably got there before you and I hate them all.
Speaker 1:That's probably well that has never happened.
Speaker 2:So I don't know where they went, because you have never beat me to a game night.
Speaker 1:But I'm usually late. Yeah, that's about right. It's about the five milli vibe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bad boy, Bad boy. He's got to make an entrance. Bad boy himself. Jared, I was going to ask you. We were in some, I don't know. Rachel had to go to a makeup store or something. They had multiple flavors of bad boy. What flavor of bad boy are you?
Speaker 3:Elixir oh.
Speaker 1:The elixir of the bad boy. So you know, when I was mopping it off the floor to squeegee it into that bottle, when I broke that bottle, it was only the elixir.
Speaker 2:So I.
Speaker 1:It's a blue lightning bolt.
Speaker 3:I think they have a purple lightning bolt.
Speaker 2:They've got a green. They have a green. I just sampled the original. The original smelled pretty good, but I didn't know that there was. I didn't know you were an elixir boy.
Speaker 3:Should we all wear a distinct bad boy flavor?
Speaker 1:I think you guys should figure out. It's kind of like your true color, or what is it when they pull the colors off of your neck?
Speaker 3:What is that called? What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 2:I've heard of true colors. You're talking about your Myers-Briggs personality.
Speaker 1:Oh no, Not that color. He's talking about pulling stuff off your neck. I don't know what that is it makes your eyes pop, listeners, if you could please comment like subscribe. Tell us in the show notes or no, that's what Travis does.
Speaker 3:They won't be in the show notes, but comments maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell us somewhere, make a recommendation on what flavor of bad boy we should be. Oh my god, all right. Well, what have you guys been up to besides board gaming?
Speaker 1:oh, I alluded to it on a previous uh episode, but I am currently in a temporary lodging facility. I do have a fridge, but I'm not fully bedded down, to use a military term. If we could, you know, try and get back to our roots here. For the podcast I will not be entering my forever home well, not my forever home, but you know my, my home here in virginia for uh another, another week and some change, so this will be our home um bivouacking, bivou, that's right.
Speaker 1:So we were staying in Cole's basement, you're outstayed.
Speaker 3:You're welcome, huh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know he was like please leave. Well, gemma can be a lot. She's always in everybody's business, wants to know what's going on with Fritz.
Speaker 3:He's an interesting guy. He's so cute, that little fritters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he is, oh man, but no, it's been good being here. Uh, I actually went to work already, so wow that's even more I did well, I had to check in before you know your report, no later than. And then I was like, well, I don't have a house to go to, so and I already know where I'm gonna live because I already signed the lease.
Speaker 2:So when you checked in, did you tell him about world series of wargaming? I'm going to on wednesday okay I was really curious to know how that goes.
Speaker 1:Well, I am actually on, you know, like kind of this recall roster type thing, and I did specifically say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa that Monday I, I need to not be on the schedule. And he's like oh, okay, we can make the. We'll shift the schedule around for you, perfect, oh, sweet. So I We'll shift the schedule around for you, perfect, sweet. I've made arrangements to clear my calendar, if you know what I mean. Okay, excellent.
Speaker 2:Yes, nice, I cannot wait to hear how that conversation goes.
Speaker 1:It's going to be like you want to do what.
Speaker 2:We've said it multiple times Engineers are nerds at heart and I feel like they appreciate nerd stuff. Like I was saying, I was gonna go I don't know compete in some engineering competition. People get fired up about that like, oh yeah, like you're gonna go do something nerdy, like people love that I.
Speaker 1:I do think I still might be able to get permissive TDY for this.
Speaker 2:I think you should, and.
Speaker 1:I think I could also I don't know maybe my boss. Maybe we should do an episode on how to get your boss to board game with you. You know.
Speaker 3:Oh boom, I like that it could be a two year long challenge, but how to advance your career through board gaming yeah, no, legit.
Speaker 1:When I met my boss this week he, when he shook my hand, he's like you really are a big motherfucker. Wow, sorry, you'll have to bleep that out, but I won't believe it, I'll say it's not for kids oh my goodness. No, remember my nieces and nephews.
Speaker 3:Hey, if you want to swear like that, you can do it yourself.
Speaker 2:That's all right, that's on you. You choose to be a bad role model every time you step on this podcast.
Speaker 1:If it wasn't for that damn cologne that I spray on my body.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wouldn't have such a sailor's mouth.
Speaker 1:Yep, but what else? Travis you found any good eateries down there in montgomery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, had plenty of good food. We are really enjoying going to the farmer's market. That's kind of down the road from us, the Sweet Creek yes, that's good. What did we eat the other day? Trying not to eat out too much, honestly, but we did get a chance to go see a movie last week. This is our first time being in the movie theaters in forever and we saw the new Jurassic Park. And you good, whoa, listen at this point. I think they are really trying to hammer home this meta narrative. There's a message that they're trying to hammer home and it's in the meta. Back in the day, hammond brings back the dinosaurs. Science has gone too far. They should never have brought them back. You're supposed to let them die. Cloning yeah, the series is now a meta message that you should have just let the series die a long time ago. Right, jeez, jurassic park should have been extinct a long time ago. I get it. These reboots are all terrible. This one that just came out is the worst out of all of them.
Speaker 2:I'd rather watch the ones with chris pratt than this one yeah, chris pratt's not in it anymore I like chris pratt they had probably four or five different movies that they wanted to make this iteration of jurassic park and they tried to mash them all together and then, like slap, chop them into a coherent movie and it's just bad. Man, like there's a scene, one of the characters if you go, if you go to see it, there's a scene, this character they're in like a boat chase type thing he injures his knee. Okay, he's like, oh my God, my knee, I can't walk, I can't do anything. The very next scene, like not 30 seconds later, he's running up the beach. Okay, he's frog kicking in the water. Then all of a sudden he's injured again. Right, he needs a branch to lean on. He's hobbling to the jungle. Then he's running from a dinosaur, then he's hobbling again. The narrative is all over the place. There's some really bad writing and editing. I did not enjoy it. The CGI was terrible, jeez.
Speaker 1:Travis, we need to get Vic on here. He's a big Jurassic Park guy, right. Bring it up in Discord.
Speaker 2:I feel like he'd be sorely disappointed because it was not worth the money that I paid for. I got 20% off the tickets.
Speaker 3:Speaking of movies, how do you feel about the new Superman movie coming out?
Speaker 2:Listen, the Blue Boy Scout has never been my favorite. Okay, Superman.
Speaker 3:I'm all for Superman.
Speaker 2:I'm all for Superman existing in the DC world. Listen, james Gunn has made some good movies in the past. He did great with unknown Marvel characters. He really brought the guardians of the galaxy along into the mainstream media. Superman is so hard to make interesting because like he's got no flaws, he's got no real foes that can compete. Okay, he's like the ultimate, and I always find that that's difficult to do unless you make him campy like this. He's got Crypto, the Wonder Dog that can fly and fight alongside him. I'm all for that. They're making it more comic book-y instead of real-world hardcore, dark, gritty, dark Knight version of Superman, which just never works. I'm curious to see how Lex Luthor Luthor plays, because Lex Luthor is always like just kind of cringy in the in the movies. Um, jesse Eisenberg was like just the wrong person to ever play Lex Luthor. Oh my god, it's like the worst iteration.
Speaker 2:So I'm interested to see how this dude guy does. Um, I wish I could shout out his name, but he plays. He's actually plays Beast in like the reboot of the X-Men movies. So he's good. He's been good at stuff before got a new Superman. It's always like interesting, like what direction are they going to take? So I don't know, I probably will not see it in theaters, just because we don't have a whole lot of opportunity to see movies in theaters anymore but whatever we had to seize the just because we don't have a whole lot of opportunity to see movies in theaters anymore but you wasted on Jurassic, whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had to seize the moment, we had to carpet the diem, and that was do you go with the baby asleep, or you had found a babysitter, or? Found a sitter for the moment. Oh nice, so yeah, well, it was like family in town visiting. That was then babysitter, uh, and we only had a couple hours. But if they would have been visiting a little bit later, I definitely would have picked superman, and I'm curious to see how it shakes out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do have one I do have a movie to shout out that I did appreciate. It's a documentary on apple tv. It's called boys state. Have you guys heard of this? Seen it? No, anything about it.
Speaker 3:Is it? Is it older it? I don't know when it came out. Is it like about politics, like a political thing? Yeah, I think I did see that it's like a little camp where they like I don't I don't remember what the thrust of it was, but if they were like pro yeah, this, this came out in 2020, okay, okay yeah, about the
Speaker 2:politics that were going on in 2020. Um, this is super interesting. Boy state is like an actual convention that uh, gets together in multiple states, cross-country, and people compete and it's very competitive to get selected to go to boys state or girls state. They have two separate ones, one for boys, one for girls. What it is is a bunch of high school boys and girls in their respective camps, like 1,215 to 17 year olds-olds, all gathered in one area and they're like we're going to do a mock election, basically through to the election of a new state governor.
Speaker 2:Okay, so these boys and or girls in this case, boys it's in Texas, right? And so these boys all get together and they're like pick what job you want in the state and they have, like you know, smaller jobs, like the media and social media and, you know, secretaries and all this other stuff. But this really follows this governor race, gubernatorial race to the election of a new governor, and it follows a handful of guys that all want to be the governor eventually and some people adjust fire and some people adjust their plans. But, man, you always think like I don't want to make this political at all. I think it's an interesting like case study. It's like all these boys get together and it's like right on the verge of like Lord of the flies the entire time.
Speaker 1:You can tell this is like on.
Speaker 2:This is about to collapse at any moment. That's how they make it feel. At least, I've never participated. My girlfriend in high school went to Girl State in California.
Speaker 3:And I did not understand.
Speaker 2:I did not understand at all, like what she was doing. To this extent this is like a huge like information teaching moment for me, but like it's really interesting to watch, like what of these kids' politics is like inherited and what they learn from what goes on in real life politics in this country. Um, you know, people take strategies that they never would have taken if they had not seen it on the media. Um, people adapt their strategy even though they know that it might not be the morally ethical, ethical thing to do do, because that's what has worked in the past, like such an interesting case study in how politics evolves over time and is handed down to new generations. So, yeah, um, yeah, man, they like really make you feel for some of these characters and and they do this kind of like side interviews where they're like why did you decide to approach this challenge this way? Why did you do that? Why did you do this? What? Why did you make that decision?
Speaker 2:And a lot of them is like well, I've seen that work in the real politics. Or I had to like undercut this guy to get ahead in life and like, uh, you know, one of the guys looks straight at the camera and he's like you know I don't believe in any of these politics but like that's not going to win me an election so I have to like just adapt morals that aren't my morals because I want to get elected. Like it's. It's really interesting. Uh, you know this is texas, so you can kind of guess like some of the policies that they're arguing over um. But yeah, super interesting. It's called Boy States on Apple TV, highly recommend Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember it being good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great. I had heard about it before, but we sat down and watched it on the 4th of July. I wanted something a little patriotic and our democratic process felt patriotic in the moment. It's a series or is it just one? It's a one-shot documentary.
Speaker 2:It's like an hour and 45 minutes long okay, well, I'm, I'm in it yeah, it's great, it's really good and I I feel like I learned a little bit about like how the at least in texas you know how the governor races run, and like the different positions and what they, what they do, why they matter. Like I think I learned a little bit at least, so nice yeah, jerry, what do you?
Speaker 3:what do you got before I have to go to bed, right, I know you guys got don't do anything days tomorrow, but I was gonna do anything.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say I was supposed to actually meet up with you this last weekend. Oh, we got COVID.
Speaker 3:I did not.
Speaker 1:Didn't.
Speaker 3:Well, your people surrounding me are less strong than I am and I actually got to go to Gettysburg.
Speaker 1:And it's not the first time I've been to Gettysburg, but the first time I went been to gettysburg. But, um, the first time I went was during my honeymoon actually. And uh, what was that thing 12 years ago that my in-laws were in town they just took off. But yesterday, but, uh, it was awesome. It really like always always super eye-opening to just be on those grounds. I love the visitor center.
Speaker 1:I love walking around Cemetery Hill and the round top down there in the south end, like how the tides of the Civil War could have changed at that one battle, like it wasn't the battle that, uh, the most people lost their lives at, but like it was very pivotal. And that's where I realized that like, yeah, I am a big nerd and I could easily turn into like a civil war history guy and I really I'm just like my dad. My dad talks about this stuff all the time and like, so we'll start just like talking your ear off about like Civil War stuff. I'm like gosh, I'm just like him, and my uncle was actually a history teacher too, so it's in my blood, you know. So, being around Civil War sites, I think I'm going to really enjoy being here. And then, just to top it all off, while I was at Gettysburg, I downloaded a book to listen about Gettysburg. You guys ever read or listened to Killer Angels?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I feel like that was given to us at the Academy. Our entire class received a copy of killer angels. I was.
Speaker 1:I think we were supposed to read it, but um definitely sounds familiar, but I certainly did not read it.
Speaker 3:dude Okay.
Speaker 1:So in the book it it it is talking about um, this is my last little bit, and then you can go to bed. One of the Confederate generals dude got his leg blown off. Then a couple of months later he has to go take over the unit that Stonewall Jackson. He got killed by his own people. I think it was an accident.
Speaker 1:So this dude, he's a little shaky, he's got a wooden peg leg and the old General Lee is trying to kind of get his confidence back and he's trying to prop this dude up. He's got a peg leg. He's like hey, dude, sometimes it's not about the wounds, forget about the leg, it's your spirit. It's like what? Sometimes it's not about like the wounds, like, forget about the leg, it's like it's your spirit, it's like what's inside you and it really it hit me, even though I'm like throw the middle finger to the Confederates. I'm not a Confederate guy, never will be.
Speaker 1:But that little interchange, that exchange, like it hit me because of my hip replacement, because I lost a lot of confidence in myself when I lost a piece of my body. I lost that joint. And when I went to Korea I lost some confidence. I was like damn, that spoke to me, even though he's a traitor. Lee was like bro, forget about that leg, it's like you, your heart, you as a leader. That's why I need you. I don't need your leg, I need you as a leader. So I was like dang okay. So, killer Angels, shout out to the book. I'm not quite done with it yet. I'm listening to it on Libby. So shout out to your local library.
Speaker 3:But, man, I would have loved to see a Gettysburg clay, maybe next time, I know, I know I have we'll sync up soon.
Speaker 2:I have two quick things, if you like. Yes, war books. Demon of unrest by eric larson must read now.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna read it next the sacking of fort sumter during the confederate interchange. It's great. It's great, learned a lot deep. Uh, demon of what? Demon of unrest? By eric larson. It was a great book. Um, also two, did you take a guided tour? No, okay, I should Look up the process for getting selected as a Gettysburg tour guide. Tens of thousands of people apply to be Gettysburg tour guides and they pick 1%. People apply for years on end. They have to pass like a knowledge test and stuff and like they have to do like an interview test. It's crazy. I saw. I saw it pop up on like maybe msnbc or like um, maybe it was like new york times did a piece on it. It's super interesting, um, just the process on how people like want to get into that world and the selection process. So that's my two cents, clayton it's bedtime Night.
Speaker 3:Yeah, nothing will put me to bed quicker than talking about Civil War history. I'm fired up.
Speaker 1:All right, wait, wait, wait as the host, he has been Travis, he has been Clay and I have been Jared, so hey,
