star bitch

Aw, February. We finally made it past January 1526th. Valentine’s Day is around the corner and love is in the air...or maybe not. Maybe it’s drought season for you, I don’t know. I do know that Mercury has gone retrograde and it’s here to wreak havoc on your communication and technology, as well as breakdown the very foundations that your life is built on. Fun! Let’s see what the stars have in store for us.

Aries - You’re seeking love and human connection, but alas your intensity and inexperience with compromise may get in the way. Add Mercury retrograde to the mix and it’s just a mess waiting to happen. Do your best not to put your foot in your mouth this month.

Taurus - Surprise, your control issues are blocking you from joy and peace. Do yourself a favor and get out of your own damn way. Sure, it’s nice to have everything in its place and work at your own pace without having to rely on anyone else, but that’s not what this month is about. This month is about feeling out of control and relaxing into it. The sooner you accept that you can’t have it all your way, the sooner you can start enjoying things like people...and clutter...and chaos...oh god.

Gemini - Gemini, you were made for these times. Your already chatty mind and buzzing enthusiasm is perfect for enduring this Mercury retrograde. You’ll still want to be mindful with your words and fact check your shit before blasting it online (you’re not perfect) but you’ll probably skate through this month with more ease than most. Could be wisdom and life experience, could be blind optimism. I mean, who really cares at this point, just enjoy it buddy.

Cancer - Fatigue, exhaustion, drained...that’s you little crab. This retro-merc is asking you to look at what the heck you’re even doing with your life. Feeling drained is a natural response to overextending yourself. Just because you’re naturally nurturing doesn’t mean you have to give all of your energy to everyone else. Save some for yourself, little crab. I have nothing smarmy for you. Take care of yourself, even if that means completely withdrawing from the world for the next month.

reach out to me daily telling me how happy something made them, or how they laughed at an image I created. That means the world to me. I guess we all need our doses of happiness, especially right now.

Are you good with staring at a blank canvas or screen and forcing something out of the ether or do you need some spark of inspiration before you start working?

If I have to force it, it looks awful. I have to let the muses come play in my head. And I never know when that will happen.

Do you show work at galleries often, or are you more geared toward the commercial art world?

I haven’t done any shows since February of 2020. And my work honestly is better geared towards being in restaurants. I exhibited in a well known place about four years ago and still get people who tell me they remember my work when it was there. With the shutdown of restaurants, etc, that hasn’t happened much this past year. Bagels And Locks

love the opportunity to tackle but haven’t yet?

I’d like to sculpt some of my characters in clay. When I was 14, I used to make miniature food for a dollhouse store. So the medium isn’t completely foreign to me. Perhaps sometime if I have extra time on my hands.

Anything (sales, shows, projects) coming up we should know about?

As of now, I am scheduled to show work at Viva! in Las Vegas in October. But we will see where the world is by then. I dearly LOVE meeting new folks and customers in person. And I have so missed exhibiting in markets due to the pandemic shuttering them for now.

Links and social media:

instagram.com/kitschydelish kitschydelish.com/ facebook.com/kitschydelish C Leo - This month you find yourself exceptionally charming and good at sweet talk. Exploit the hell out of that! Why actually solve the problem when you can just glaze over it with allure and flattery? Maybe there will be long term repercussions, but you don’t care about those. Good thing you’re cute. Enjoy the shorterm, unsustainable charm while it lasts.

Virgo - Oh dear, rest is on the agenda for you. I can imagine you squirming in your seat and even dry heaving at the thought. But how will I finish the millions of projects that I’m working on and how will I meet my unreasonably high expectations AND impossibly short deadlines that I’ve created for myself?!? I know Virgo, it’s scary. But it is your work this month, and if you allow for it, you may have a new found energy to throw at future projects.

Libra - This month is all about pleasure and play for you. Now, I’m not suggesting you ignore your responsibilities and only do things that bring you joy. Try to find little ways throughout the day to incorporate fun. Maybe get a little crazy and try expressing your feelings as they come up insteading of stifling them down (fun!). Or perhaps spice things up by not brooding so hard in self-pity. Amazing what a little joy can do for ya!

Scorpio - This Mercury retrograde is really messing with your sense of comfort and home. Don’t let little hang ups deter you from moving forward. Life doesn’t always feel comfortable; you of all signs should know that. As a water sign, you might feel like you’re swimming upstream or even drowning, but the truth is you’re probably just hanging on for dear life to something that no longer serves you. Try to shift your perspective. Not everyone or everything is out to get you.

Sagittarius - Brain fog, dissociation, irritability. It’s not your fault sweet Sag, it’s written in the stars baby. Not even your most well trained, locked in routine can keep you from faltering this month. But you can get through this. You just need patience, flexibility, self-restraint, adaptability, a positive attitude and...ok so it might be harder than I thought. I’m almost certain you can handle it. You got this..?

Capricorn - This month will be tricky for you, my stability loving Capricorn. You see, nothing is certain right now, especially with Merc in retrograde. Try not to stress about money or security. Sure everything is up in the air and there’s no concrete evidence or viable numbers to base your 10 year plan on, but it’s just one month of discomfort. You’ll survive this.

Aquarius - Self-care is on the docket, little water bearer. Really embrace those Venus vibes. Get yourself some rose colored glasses and start pretending like everything is fine. Take lots of baths, wash away last month’s self-doubt and grime and nurture yourself (not to be confused with your usual hyper-critical self-analyzing). Best of luck to you.

HOW BIZARRE: the crazy yet perfect history of monopoly

Lizzie Magie

Charles Darrow All images - Wikimedia Creative Commons

BY RON EVANS

Monopoly has had an insanely long run as the king of the board games. It’s the most popular licensed board game of all time, only non-licensed public domain games like chess, checkers and backgammon top the sales of Monopoly. Since its introduction to the market in 1935, over 250 million Monopoly games have been sold, and the game has been played by more than 1 billion people worldwide. Nobody could have foreseen that. Especially given its origin tale.

To tell that (truncated) story we have to go back even further than 1935. The true inception of the game occurred in 1903 when an American woman by the name of Elizabeth (Lizzie) Magie invented a board game called The Landlord’s Game - a fun but educational tool to warn of the negative aspects of capitalism, specifically concerning monopolies and large parcels of land being owned by only one or two people or organizations. Magie was a feminist and a Georgist. I won’t attempt to explain all aspects of Georgism here but suffice to say it’s founded on some of the core beliefs of Henry George, an American economist and social reformer. The main takeaway for the purposes of this story is that these people were ANTI-monopoly. Which is really curious when you consider the future of the board game. So Magie patented her game and began self-publishing small runs of them, mostly to teachers. It was pretty complex for the day and it included properties to buy or sell, railroads, utilities spaces and a jail. In Magie’s version, you could play under one of two sets of rules. The typical ‘conquer and destroy to make yourself insanely rich and powerful’ option or the ‘Anti-monopoly’ variation - where all players benefitted from the accumulation of wealth. Over the years this game became fairly popular at least in Magie’s circle of peeps, and back in those days it was very common to invent house rules for even well-established games. Something we still see today, but not on the level you used to. Now we mostly stick to the rules unless we add booze into the mix.

As the game circulated, some people made their own variations and additions and eventually many of these got back to Magie who agreed that they were improvements. So she modified the game and applied for a new patent to reflect those changes. Cardboard houses were added, rents were adjusted for inflation etc. One of the things that changed over the years outside of Magie’s control was the street names and some of the properties to fit the local East Coast region the game was mostly being circulated in. Names that prevail to this day in many cases.

By 1930, the game was quite popular in colleges especially, again as a tool of teaching. Her hope was that people who played the capitalist way would feel guilty about financially “ruining” everyone else in the game and this would help drive home her Georgian principles. But instead of playing the prosperity rules, more people were drawn toward the monopoly aspect. People simply had more fun being the asshole in the game.

Speaking of assholes, around this time a teacher in Philadelphia who was a big fan of the game had invited some friends over for dinner and a round of The Landlord’s Game. These friends were Esther and Charles Darrow. Charles was captivated by the game and they ended up playing several rounds of it that night. Darrow asked if he could take the rule sheet home to look over. He later used that rule book to draw out his own version of The Landlord’s Game with a few modifications. He made the board a larger circle, and started painting little icons onto it to dress it up a bit from the more rudimentary and academic version Magie had designed. Darrow then began hand-making his own version of the game he called Monopoly, disposing of the prosperity part of the rule set.

Darrow was unemployed at the time so he was spending his days crafting these sets and then he’d hit the streets trying to sell them for $4 each. And sold they did, even during the Depression which was pretty extraordinary. One theory about that (and it’s a sad one) is that this was the ultimate escape from the poorhouse life. You got to actually handle “money” and buy things and grow your wealth. That’s about as far of an escape as you could get from the Great Depression. Bros. to sell them on the idea of The Landlord’s Game, but they declined. Years later Darrow approached them as well looking to sell his game outright - and also got a no. So Darrow just went directly to the stores where they began flying off the shelves as the holiday season approached. Darrow could hardly keep up with the demand. Word of this got back to the Parkers and they were like… “oh, shit that’s the dude we just blew off.” So they called Darrow in for another meeting where they said they’d changed their minds and they now wanted to buy Monopoly. Darrow said “Great. I’ve changed my mind too. I now don’t wanna sell it outright. I want a royalties deal.”

They agreed and that one adjustment to the deal made Darrow and his family for generations to come as rich as the Monopoly mascot “Rich Uncle Pennybags.” Who, by the way, was added to the box not long after Parker Bros. acquired the game.

One of Darrow’s additions to the game had been the idea of using different charms to represent each player on the board. The idea was you used whatever you wanted from around the house. Charms from a kid’s bracelet, little toys, jewelry. Whatever really. The items weren’t in the box of his early versions of the game to save money. Darrow’s favorite thing to use was a thimble, which is why it ended up in the Parker Bros. version. As did the little shoe that came off of his daughter’s charm bracelet.

Darrow’s game taking shape in the early days. Lizzie Magie looking over the ‘other’ version of her game.

Ralph Anspach’s Anti-Monopoly.

While Darrow was swimming in his Uncle Scrooge-esque money bin, Magie was still trying to get her Landlord’s Game into wider distribution without even knowing about the game Monopoly.

About this time a little event was unfolding... World War II. Now, this is my favorite part of the entire Monopoly story. As soon as there was a war there were POWS stuck in camps and jails out in the field somewhere. However, the prisoners were often allowed simple items like cards, approved books and board games, to help keep them from revolting I suppose. Parker Bros. had licensed Monopoly overseas by this point and one of the companies producing the games in England was Waddington LTD. The British Intelligence Agency contracted Waddington LTD. to make up some special POW Monopoly boards that had secrets tucked away in them. Hidden inside these games were maps, compasses, real money, and other objects useful for escaping. The agency then created a fake charity service that went around delivering the games to occupy the POWS. And apparently there are many stories of successful escapes using the hidden contraband. I just find that fucking incredible.

By the time the USSR was in full swing these games were banned for pretty obvious reasons. And it’s ironic because the original inventor was an anti-capitalist. And here the game she invented to warn people of the dangers of a capitalist society had become sort of a celebration of the idea. But, even under scary evil regimes the people will find a way. There have been some amazing bootlegged and even handmade versions of Monopoly brought to auction in recent times - made by the people behind the Iron Curtain so they could get their Monopoly fix in spite of the State.

Also around this time people had started reaching out to Parker Bros. to say “wait a tick. we’ve played this game before.” And eventually the company learned about Lizzie Magie so they asked Darrow about it. Of course Charles Darrow never said anything to them about Magie and in fact never even said he had first played the game with his friends. He claimed he invented it all in his basement. But that earlier copy of The Landlord’s Game included a misspelling of a real location, Marven Gardens using an “i” instead of an “e.” Darrow’s version had even copied that typo, which is hilarious. It became clear to Parker Bros. that Magie had at the very least co-invented the game. So they bought her patent outright for 500 bucks. Which was a chunk of dough back then but considering the deal Darrow got...not so grand. Not long after that buyout Magie passed away. There was really no mention or credit for her contribution to Monopoly at all. In fact, it wouldn’t be until decades later that the story of Lizzie Magie would become well known. And it happened in such a fitting way. More on that in a bit. any popular movie or tv show has a Monopoly set. This was a brilliant move because you now suddenly have people with zero interest in playing Monopoly buying the game because it has Frodo in it. Or Yoda. Or Homer. The other Homer. And that Homer too probably.

In 1987, McDonalds teamed up with Hasbro (who now owned the game - also more on that in a bit) when they launched the pull and play Monopoly game. By now it’s well known that that game was tainted pretty early on when the head of security for Simon Marketing (the company that McDonalds hired to promote, print and run the game) started stealing winning game pieces and giving them to other people to win with if they gave him a percentage. It’s a crazy and convoluted tale and I’ll only add that you should just watch the series “McMillions” on HBO for the full story of that incredible saga.

So... how do we know about any of this early history? In the early 1970s, San Francisco State University economics professor Ralph Anspach (who was a bit of a kindred spirit to Lizzie Magie) wanted to make an Antimonopoly board game for pretty much the same reasons Magie did. And when it became popular at the school Anspach started selling them to a larger market. He was then sued by Parker Bros. for infringement and it led to a really strange trial that lasted 10 years. During which Anspach discovered the original patents filed by Lizzie Magie back in the early 1900s. The court determined that Monopoly and its history were a bit too generic (or chaotic) to be trademarked correctly. So Anspach was allowed to continue selling his Anti-Monopoly. Parker Bros. later fought back and they ended on a settlement that allowed Anspach to continue selling Anti-Monopoly but allowed Parker Bros. to snug up their trademark a little bit tighter. They later sold the game rights to Hasbro who, interestingly, still honors that agreement to allow Anti-Monopoly to be sold.

So this was how the world at large learned that Charles Darrow did not invent Monopoly. He certainly made many adjustments and enhancements that stuck. But he straight up stole the idea, sold it for an eternity of riches and never told anyone the truth. Too little too late to be sure, but ol’ Lizzie Magie got her acknowledgment in the end at least.

A perfectly American history for the perfectly American board game. C