On a beautiful fall night in Boston, we grabbed the last table at the Cask and Flagon and watched the game. It went just about exactly like this.

I saw Igby Goes Down last week, and came out in a morosely sad mood. Some reviewers were not entirely thrilled by the New York upper class milieu in which the story plays out, so fair warning: if you don’t particular care about rich kids with problems, it’s not the movie for you. That said, Kieran Culkin is absolutely great as the lead character, and the rest of the cast is solid. The director, Burr Steers, got Ryan Phillippe to play the role he knows how to play; he’s the same spoiled brat we saw in Cruel Intentions. Amanda Peet gets a similar boost from good casting. Igby’s parents, played by Susan Sarandon and Bill Pullman, are just solid. And the best of all is Jeff Goldblum, playing an emotionless affable friend of the family, breaking beautifully away from the roles he’s been doing in summer blockbusters for the last few years. ...

Hudson’s now admitting (original) that he was in an “altercation” Friday night at Q. He says it was just a little shoving match, but the number of people who’ve said there was a fight is getting up there.

Just a little more on the Hudson story before I hit the bars for tonight’s game: ESPN picked up the story. No additional info, though. However, a guy named Andrew just called into the Ted Nation show on WEEI, and claimed to have been present. He said that a Red Sox fan picked the fight with Hudson, and that Hudson was a complete gentleman up till that happened — signing autographs, and so on. “Zito tried to calm Hudson down.” He said someone (wasn’t clear, but I guess the club bouncers) kicked the Red Sox fan out and got Hudson off into another room to calm him down. ...

Boston Dirt Dogs has an email exclusive (will scroll off the front page after a day or so) on the Tim Hudson nightclub brawl. I’d be pretty pissed at Hudson if I were an Oakland fan. Edit: David Pinto notes that the story is anonymously sourced. He’s got a point, but Boston Sports Media mentions that Steve Burton of WBZ’s Sports Final also reported the story Sunday night. The San Francisco Chronicle article ran on Monday and was not sourced by Steve Burton. ...

Charles Kuffner is still the man for Texas redistricting news (original). At the moment, the Republicans can’t agree on a map. The Legislature has adjourned until Wednesday for Yom Kippur. They’ve missed the deadline for redistricting in time to get all the necessary changes made before the 2004 primaries, which means that if they want to redistrict now they have to reduce the importance of Texas in the presidential primary process. ...

WISH 67 is all about the story: How do you tell stories in your games? Are there character stories, overarching stories, and/or other kinds of stories? Could you tell a coherent story from games you’ve GMed or played in? Does it matter to you? Why or why not? I don’t ever strive to tell stories, but it’s nice when it happens. I’m really more interested in exploring the story space than I am in setting out to tell a story. I like it when things happen to my characters and I like it when my characters do things, but I find plotting for a story to be restrictive. ...

I’m ready to reassert my position as the foremost White Wolf v. Sony blogger, if it please the court. I got myself a login for the federal court system, and soon thereafter procured a copy of Sony’s response (original) to the complaint. (Thanks to Chris for hosting.) I don’t speak lawyer, but I think it mostly says “We have no idea what your game says vampires and werewolves do, and we did not copy our ideas from you.” ...

Mike Tinney’s deposition in the White Wolf v. Sony case is mildly interesting, if only for the following paragraph: White Wolf has been in discussions with Sony Online about it creating a massively multi-player Internet game based on White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and World of Darkness. It also sets out the course of events which led to the lawsuit. On April 21st, 2003, Tinney sent Andy Zaffron (a contact of his over at Sony, presumably for the EverQuest pen and paper adaptation) email asking for help getting in touch with Sony Pictures: ...

Notes to self: ECS EZ-Buddie Barebone case (original), $200. Celeron 1.7 GHz CPU (original), $57. A 256 MB RAM stick (original), $44. Linksys WMP11 wireless PCI card (original), $50. 80 GB Maxtor HD (original), $83. Total is under $450, and it makes a nice quiet little wireless MP3 jukebox.