Waldo's corner

In these days of COVID-19 most of us have been sidelined, SIP, quarantined, whatever you wish to call it and the world wide web is a tool to connect us all now more than ever before. Until further notice, a lot of our interactions happen behind masked faces and in a social distanced world. Seriously, how do board games or even chess tournaments happen now in an intimate setting? The answer is, that it is almost impossible to social distance while sitting across another person challenging them to a game of chess....this is where correspondence chess and other tools come into play. Personally I have been playing on and off games with my friend and former president of the Citrus College Chess Club since 2014 when I left to work in Texas. I have been back in California since late 2016, albeit I currently reside up north, but if you have stumbled upon this old blog by accident, through Google or whatever organic means are out there, welcome and let's discuss some of the fine points o...

Emboldened by my recent victories against the internet tyros, I decided to challenge my old rival the dangerous and devious Michael Chen, former president of the Citrus College Chess Club. He usually tends to kick my arse, but this time it took only 15 moves to get the job done. In my defense, he was aided by a bizarre move I made on move 6. A classic case of not surveying the whole board leaving the Knight "en prise" was I just exhausted?? Chen (W) Carmona (B) 0-1     1/16/2020 1. e4 b5 2. Bxb5 Nc6 3. Bxc6 d7xB (this left me with early double pawns!) 4. d4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.e5 Ne4 (moving the knight thusly was a mirage where I thought I had a recapture, I must have been tired) 7. Nxe4 Bc8f5 8.Nc5 Bg7 9.Nf3 0-0 10. 0-0 e6 11.Ng5 Qd5 12.b3 Bg4 13.c4 BxNf3 154. gxf3 At this point Black resigns because W is up in material and has too powerful of an attack

1. Nf3   d3 2.Nd5  Nf6 3. f4 Nc6 4.Qh4  Bd7 5. a4? b6 6. c4? Bb7 7. Qg4? NxQ!!! 8. NxN Nd4 9. e3 Nf5 10. Rg1 f3 11. g3 0-0 12.Bd3 Bf3+ 13.Kc2 BxNg4 14.h4 Beb4 15.b3? Nxf3? My blunder! 16. RxN Bf5 17. Rg7 BxB+ 18. KxB e5 19. f4xe5 Qxe5 20. Rxd7 Qf5+ 21. e4 QxRd7+ 22. Kc2 Rd8 23. Bb2 Qc6 24. Bf6 QxB 25. h5 QxRa1 26. h6? Bxd2 27 NxB Qa2+ 28. Kc3 QxN++

For the first time in about seven years, this past summer I missed Free Comic Book Day back in May. I was so busy working, to be honest I did not even remember it  until a few days later! Lucky for me my ex roommate is a big fan and he and his brother went out and picked up a few issues for me. Quite a number of the offerings actually, so I thought I would do a retro review of a few of the issues in my collection dating back a few years, because why not? Maybe you  are a fan of comics too and are in my same boat where you either forgot or never knew about the FCBD offerings. I figured maybe reading some of these will get me out of my rut and my writer's block thereby giving me incentive to continue working on the creative project that I have bouncing around in my head trying to get out. It is funny, I read another review of the 2019 Spiderman/Venom offering by Marvel and it amazes me how one person can have a totally different take on a book. In fact, this particular r...

Why is it so hard to create? To get started on a creative project? To engage in creative writing? I am not sure the answer to that question, everyone who writes or engages in the creative process gets blocked in some way and at many periods of their careers. Currently I have been fighting to find the time and the motivation to create more, and I have at least two good ideas to develop. My saving grace is that I will be going on a mini vacation for two glorious weeks and hopefully I can kickstart the creative juices then. Along the way, I will try to use some of my free time (such as it is) to work on character biographies, I have started those and also to continue my endeavor to track down some sample scripts. For me, it's always imperative to have a template or two to work from because I need to have a blue print that guides my writing and gives me a springboard. Writing comic books is not as straight forward as say writing a screenplay. The former has a more free flowing less rig...