I remember having been around for their first anniversary, but missing the second one after I moved out, and I’m really quite happy that I have gone for the third. Only missing from this footage is “Game Show”, once a weekly feature hosted by the extraordinary entertainment provider that is Giuseppe Spicoli. Damn that because, though I personally much preferred the “Match Game” that Giuseppe introduced later (see real life version here), this in general was always my favourite part of Saturdays in the Wastelands (along with watching really hilariously dumb movies at Burnt Oak). They’re basically both TV-based games, with a host, a stage, a couple of participants on a podium, and rowdy people bantering from an arena. Invariably, lots of fun. But I’m recounting souvenirs mostly from 2008 here, because after that I left in August of that year, I don’t think I can have set foot in The Wastelands more than ten times since. But then yesterday was pretty terrific and just like the old times, and once in a while, a blast from the past can’t hurt.

Just let me make this clear, though, before you go and get the wrong idea: I was never ever a warrior, I never fought once or role-played anything. But, as once an owner of one of the first homesteads offered to the residents, what I chose to put out on my land, had a leeeettle bit of impact, I imagine, on the general landscape of the area, so I always toed the line between what made me comfortable, what I liked, and what would be acceptable to the rest of the community within a certain context of destruction, survival and, yeah, let’s say the word, post-apocalypse. What (partly) amused me all along, I guess, was to wonder how long it would be before someone came up and told me to go take a hike. But that never really happened. All in all, good times. ❤

A few teleports: the court of skulls, the fighting arena, the Junkyard stage, the swamp, and the drive-in.

PS. Particularly in The Wastelands, sepia windlight settings make a lot of things look better, like “Dusty”, “London2026″, “Verdigris”…