The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - lugubrious huxter

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

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This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. Hello. Welcome to this episode of the James Donald Force McCann Catamaran Plan. I am back in the United States, specifically beautiful, hot Arizona. I've just finished up doing a weekend of shows with the great Matt McCusker at the hotel. And after I finish this podcast, I'll be off to the airport to fly back to Austin.

That will be very nice. I have nothing to say about any of that. All I have to say is I've been thinking very seriously about starting a trading card game. I've been really thinking about whether it's moral to start a trading card game. I've been thinking about whether it's good business to start a trading card game. But mostly, I'll tell you what I've been doing. I've been coming up with the names of the cards. I remember playing Magic the Gathering as a youth and the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game. What fun was had as a ween playing these games. What I really liked was the names

of the cards, you know, strange adjective, unusual noun, and you'd look them up, you know, you'd look the words up. What does Calipagiant mean? Or whatever it was, whatever was the weird adjective mean or whatever it was, whatever was the weird adjective on it. I mean, linguistically, from a syntax, what's another word? Verbiage. There's the potential to be quite exciting with a trading card game. Anyway, I was on the fence. I was like, ah, look, I've got a lot else on. Now's maybe not the best time for me to start a trading card game in order to make enough money to buy a boat. And then I just started thinking up, I want to share them with you. Oh, I started having so many ideas for names of cards. That would really be my contribution. If I was to start a trading card game, I wouldn't be able to do the drawings. I wouldn't be able to do the rules. I wouldn't

really be able to do the marketing. What I would like to come up with is the names. Lugubrious Huckster. Isn't that fun? I just went for a walk and all these names for cards in a trading card game started coming to me. Lugubrious Huckster. Confounded Wastrel. And I also like that you have the name of the trading card and then you have the description. You have like one sentence talking about the confounded wastrel. Why he'd really do some damage if he could get it all sorted out. Venomous creole. I don't know if you can say venomous creole. I don't know if you can say Venomous Creole, I don't know if that's allowed

man if we do have a trading card game think of what that'll open up apps on the telephone machine perhaps we could have our own graphic novel slash anime perhaps there could be a live action movie

I think a trading card game, I mean, it's such good business, it's such good business to do a trading, I'm just going to talk out the cons and the pros, let's start with, and then I'll get back to the names, of which I have so many, Scandalized Luminary, my favorite remains Ligubrious Huckster, okay, let's start out with the pros, you know? Because to do anything, there must be good reasons, and then we can try and chip away at that and take the good reasons away with the cons.

The pro is financially unbelievable. Really, I mean, just the profit margin on a trading card, you pay for printing and a little bit of holographic foil and the price, wildly disproportionate, you know, the value, excuse me a little bit there, the value comes in it being official, you know, meaningful, like it's, basically it would be like having our own currency where we can print currency for the catamaran we're going to get to the cons of that being hugely immoral and evil in a moment but let's talk out the pros before we dispense with this idea if we do indeed so dispense

and i think we might have to dispense i'm not sure about it another pro I remember playing these games as a child you know the trading card games and I had a very nice time I found that a you know I I wouldn't say I it was as good as if I had just played competitive sport. But I was also so deeply uncoordinated as a child. Things started to snap into place during puberty. Couldn't catch a ball. There wasn't much going for me in competitive sport. I was about to say confederate sport.

My goodness gracious me boys! No, competitive sport. So for the spastic-micated youth youth i think having a trading card game is not not a bad way to enjoy some of the fruits and shouldn't they have fruits as well shouldn't the spastic mckay did youth have some fruits okay so there's that so it's like it's a nice thing to do as a child here's the con on that one uh kind of gross when people keep doing it later into life. I know we had Alex Milenkovic on the last episode, and he loves it. I'm not saying that he's disgusting, but he did take us to a trading card game shop,

and Sam Clark refused to go in. He would not walk down into the shop. I went in, and yeah, there's a smell. There's definitely a smell to those places, and a vibe, and you know, but let's, I'll just flip that around again, and have a pro to the con that was on the back of the pro that we just came up with, what's the alternative, what's the alternative what's the alternative to the people in that smelly dungeon uh getting together in a trading card game uh playing a shop what's that they're on their computers and then they're even more alone i think that's probably the other thing that they do and that's

probably the thing that's causing a lot of the trouble, is the computers and the being alone. It's quite nice, you know, board games, Dungeons and Dragons, chess, playing card games, these things at least get the nerds out of the house, and it's important to get the nerds out of the house, and to the extent that this would get the you know having our own trading card game that gets our beautiful nerd fans uh excited i don't think of myself as a nerd i think of myself as a movie star but uh yeah definitely i am a big big nerd about oh so many things and i definitely have the nerd look and the nerd social skills i think a a trading card game might, you know, it introduces a sense of play and competition and gets the nerds out of the house.

That's good for the nerds. So we're doing a good in that regard. I don't think I'm fooling myself about that being a pro. I've forgotten more of the pros and cons I wanted to go through, so let's go through some more of the names that I've come up with for this trading card game. Blythe Grotesque. He's an awful man, but he doesn't seem to care.

That'll be the little bit in italics. 400 attack points. You know, I don't want to come up with how it all works. Slippery Homunculus. Slippery homunculus. Slippery homunculus. Gypsy boy. We definitely... Gypsy boy is one we'll have to apologize for, but I think it's important to imagine that in the anime, you know?

I play gypsy boy. And there's the Joey-like character standing nearby and going, Wow, he's playing Gypsy Boy. That's a really strong card. What? It just looks like a little Gypsy Boy. No, he has a special ability. Steel.

We're not going to do that. Gypsy Boy is a good boy. Oh, Gypsy Boy. Good boy, Gypsy Boy is a good boy, oh, Gypsy Boy, good boy, Gypsy Boy, that could be his longer name, Randy Dauphine, Randy Dauphine, I love coming up with the names, succulent linguist, I'm having a good time with the names, all right, here's another, I mean, here's a pro, I think strategy and games, really good, probably, you know, chess, the gymnasium for the mind, here's a con, trading card games, they involve chance, and that's not,

that takes it closer to gambling than strategy, depending how much chance there is in the game. But here's another. And then there's a positive because life is full of chance and unknown unknowns and whatever. So that can be maybe good as well. My bigger issue is it's the – I like that in chess, it's very even for a game, you know, you start out basically, white goes first, so wife, you know, wife, hello, white has the tempo, and that is a very, very,

it's a small advantage that will, small advantage that plays out in general. But basically, if you're black, you can at least play for a draw, and then you get to play as white later on. Very often you get to play for a win. But the thought of starting out with the, you know, your knowledge is different. The amount you've invested in yourself is different when you sit down to play chess. But what you're actually starting out with, you with, two rooks, two bishops, a whole gaggle of pawns, king and a queen, and the other guy. In a trading card game, people can buy their way to a better deck.

And this is one of the things that when I was a kid, it got me out of playing trading card. I stopped playing Magic the Gathering after my first Magic the Gathering tournament when I found that kids who had parents who were willing to bankroll their Magic the Gathering habit to a greater extent than mine would win every time because they've got cash and they're buying, you know, the equivalent would be in chess, just buying a whole row of queens. And then when I was speaking with Alex Milinkovic, he was talking about something underhanded that they do in like Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic the Gathering is that they'll have a way to play a certain deck. You know, maybe it's the octopus deck

where all your cards are octopuses. Whatever. And maybe in our case, that would be the homunculus deck slippery homunculus dry homunculus very slippery homunculus the point being uh that they'll you know they'll sell the deck and they'll sell all the boosters and the cards but if you want the one card that you really need to make that deck work, maybe it's a super boosted card that only works for that, you build scarcity. You construct scarcity, and then you make that one card that everybody needs who has that deck extremely expensive.

So as you go on your journey of playing the trading card game you've invested whatever 100 110 120 dollars and all these cards you're having a good time then you realize oh no for any of this to work in a meaningful competitive sense i need to spend 500 on card, and I don't like that, and that seems evil and wrong. So if we were to have a trading card game come out, boy, it would be necessary for me that we did not go down that path and that it was somehow egalitarian. Now, without taking away the thrill of having something that seems rare and fun and exclusive, but that rare and fun and exclusive thing, I don't want that actually to be important. You know, people can spend, you don't want to say, don't give me more money, don't spend

more money on the cards, but it shouldn't actually impact the game. And that should sort of be a tax on the ridiculous, where maybe you're getting a card that does the same thing. But this one's shiny. But then if I'm involved in that, is that, you know, good? But then I think, well, I remember Holographic Charizard, my brother found one, and then we played with it, and I played with it too much, and we should have put it in a case,

and it got all scratched up, and now it would be worth incredible money but it did feel meaningful to have a shiny chain felt really nice and maybe that was wrong and it shouldn't have felt nice but even now when i see a holographic charizard you know on someone's wall in a frame i go yeah or when that oh i tell you i mean this is probably what got me kicked off thinking about it Holographic Charizard. You know, on someone's wall in a frame, I go, yeah. Or when that, I mean, this is probably what got me kicked off thinking about it, was when that American 100-meter sprinter, when he was at the trials and he had like a blue-eyes white dragon in his top and he pulled it out. I thought that was quite sweet. I couldn't hold that against somebody.

Statuesque clump. That's another card idea. Statuesque clump. Fatty boom batty. That one is just taken directly from a Tim Dillon who says fatty boom batty all the time. And I'm sort of saying it the way he says that as well. I think we're both going for the same Orson Welles-ian tone.

Resplendent Mendicant! I'd also like to do the voiceover for... I'd like to do some sort of voiceover for a card game. Before I go on, before I go on, Lugubrious Huckster is my name that I put in when I started a Magic the Gathering video game account. I'm on tour, and to fill up the day and to think out whether or not it was moral to have a trading card game of my own, I thought, well, let's have it.

Let's have a little play. Let's have a little play of the Magic the Gathering. I'll play it just for free online. It's a Magic the Gathering arena. It play it just for free online, it's a Magic the Gathering arena, it's on the computer and the telephone, and yeah, look, it was a nice frivolous way to spend two hours, I probably spent two hours on it, managed to stop at that point, because at that point it became complicated, it was, there's a barrier to entry after the tutorial, where there's so much reading and thinking that has to go into it, and I didn't

like that, I didn't, I didn't really want to read too much, but I can see that if you're really in the game, and you're really in the cards, that's the highest strategy, I just sort of like, want to get a card, and go like, wow, he's strong, I have I just sort of like want to get a card and go like, wow, he's strong. I have a strong man. But then it's all that stuff like if you play strong man, then you get some food. And if you sacrifice the food, then a little man comes out.

And the little man, he gives you plus one to life points, and he also does a little dance for you. Then you are able to go into your deck and find the doing a little dance card, and a whole bunch of little dancers come out, and then, now, if you have extra food, they can eat the food, and then you can play the card, satisfied dancers, who've all had enough to eat, and then, you can have equivalent damage to however many meals the dancers eat, it's like, come on, man, Many meals, the dancers. It's like, come on, man.

I'm too old. I've hopped off the thing. It's not for me. Here's the other thing. I would not see myself, really, as someone who would want to play the game. I'd have to be honest about that. And that seems like a con, but I think it's a pro. The Greasy One.

That's another name that I've come up with. Zealous Prude. In fact, perhaps I'm being a little bit of a zealous prude by coming up with reasons that it would be a mistake to come up with a trading card game. Suspect Parvenu. That's the last one that I came up with. Here's why I think me not wanting to play a trading card game would not be a problem with me setting up a trading card game as a way to make

money to have a boat. The 1960s. In the 1960s, the music executives who paid for and got behind a lot of the great music, they didn't't care they didn't want to be involved uh it was only later that the money men started thinking that they should also have a creative opinion in the matter and and so as a result you let something beautiful and good happen uh that you don't actually know too much about and if you did know too much about it you might have some opinions and you might choke the people who really know what they're doing. So in this instance, someone like Alex, if he wanted to design a trading card game, I would say, Alex, this is a great passion for you. You think this is good. Emerging network to really get the TCG out there. And it might make people very happy.

We might make some money. And I might get to buy a boat. Maybe it's all good and it's all positive. I might have to be a bit quiet. They're going to come in at some point and try and clean this room. I do have to start packing up and heading to the airport. I'm recording this very last minute. What was I going to say?

Yes. So potentially not knowing about it could be a strength. And maybe that's sophistry. But sophistry that I'm willing to embrace for the time being. Here's another thing I didn't like about playing the trading card game. It's what I don't like about video games in general. Is that it tricks you into thinking you're getting better at it you're not getting better at it you're leveling up in the game like the time you spend doing it is making you more powerful this is okay this is more to do with the video game version of

the trading card game thing but also uh just it's my big complaint about video games in general is that you're not getting better you're being drip fed dopamine you know you you go up a level you're actually your ability to move the the thumb pads around press the buttons in the right way, or think strategically, that's not necessarily getting better, but, you know, you're playing Call of Duty, and you unlock a new gun, and, and, oh, I'm getting better, but you're not, they're tricking you into thinking you're getting better, and you actually stay the same, this is shadows on the wall type stuff, and it's repulsive, and I don't like, and I think it's destroying a generation.

Okie doke. Or it's at least pacifying people from achieving. You know, but then who needs to achieve? Isn't leisure important? Shouldn't we just not achieve? Shouldn't we just sit around and play the James Donald Forbes McCann trading card game? it would be nice if it if if we did do a trading card game if it could feel more i was tossing and turning i was tossing and turning and thinking about it you can maybe you can tell that i'm in a i'm in a mood uh because on the one hand i think it would be fun on the other hand we've got a lot

of other stuff to do on the third hand it would be a great merchand, I think it would be fun. On the other hand, we've got a lot of other stuff to do. On the third hand, it would be a great merchandising opportunity. And it would be an interesting merchandising. Merching? Merching? Merchandising? Merchandising. Wife? White? Merchandising? Opportunity. There was one more. I forget. I just don't want to do something that's bad, that's morally bad. And I think doing a board game, there's nothing wrong with it. I love board games. I love playing board games.

I would very happily bring out a James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan board game that people could sit down with and compete and play with each other, bringing relationships and communities together. I see no problem with a board game. With a trading card game, I can see many more opportunities for money, and I can also see many opportunities for that to go bad. So I've got to think about that. would have to it would have to be very thoughtfully made trading card game that did not give an advantage to people who spent a lot of extra money that still for the finances would be if you want to spend a lot of money they can but it doesn't give them a competitive advantage that's very important that also that you you could get better

at uh not just because you've been playing it and accumulating more cards, but because you actually are growing and developing as a person. And also that helps get nerds out of the house. Those would be the goods that it would be nice to, and I make a lot of money. These are the big five that would be good to achieve if we did a trading card game. Can we achieve those five? I'm going to have to bring those five to Alex and see if he can start working on a game that does all of those things.

Because I won't get involved if it can't. But I will happily sell some of these beautiful names that i've come up with my favorite remains lugubrious huckster and indeed i think of myself as being a lugubrious huckster clearly a huckster trying to sell a trading card game and get enough money to buy a boat but lugubrious in that it's a mournful experience for me. Almost levelling up to be one of the zealous prudes. Randy Dauphine, the greasy one, gypsy boy. Man, is it possible just, maybe I should just get in contact

with Magic the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh! and offer to sell them some names. Because that's frankly where my enthusiasm truly lies. I love you. I miss you. I want you. I need you. Catamaran Ho! Outro Music