board game

AR: And then this is the angel of the lord. (laughs) I’m in Osco. And, ah, I was like, “Okay, I need to get Candy Land.” (JS laughs) But, like, I don’t want to spend a lot of money. Oh shoot, I should put the price on it! Check this out. (draws in price) And ah--

JS: Oh my god!

AR: Yeah. I was looking at all the games and all the games are like 21 bucks and I’m like, “21 bucks for a board game!” I’ve never had a legitimate child, so I wouldn’t know how much a board game is. (JS and AR laugh) I mean, I wouldn’t know how much it costs to, like, buy kids toys or anything.

JS: All right. And the angel of the lord is on the box?

AR: Yeah. She’s, she’s watching over me. Um, or he—I don’t know.

JS: Okay, I thought that was on the box. Okay. So the boxes are all here?

AR: Yeah, yeah. These are all, like, the different boxes on the shelves and I knew I had to have Candy Land. I was sure of it. I was like, “I need Candy Land.”

JS: Because?

AR: Because Candy Land would work perfect for it. I wanted a game that didn’t have a lot of rules in it. I mean, I only have a certain amount of time to get this done and this is like something where you could easily pick up and draw on it. It already has the trail in it. It already has everything laid out really well so I can just put my own stuff over it. I was like, “This would be perfect.” And the strange little things in the game that complicate the game a little bit, like the secret passage, you know? I could just put, you know, ganja trail over it.

JS: So you knew immediately—from first you had this idea of getting to the palace so, like, Monopoly wouldn’t work?

AR: Um, Monopoly is so complex. Yeah. And Candy Land has the right amount of elements in it for me to be able to do this. Oh, and anonymous smoker is this guy here.

JS: Oh, okay.

AR: Yeah. I had like this picture. But, um, I went there to get Candy Land and I saw all these games and it took me forever to find Candy Land. I saw these games were all like 21 bucks and, like, you know Risk was even more expensive cause it has all those pieces and Castle Risk as well—it was like 35 bucks so I was like, “Oh no! How much is this going to cost me?” And then I see Candy Land, finally. And, like, it had a sticker for like 15 bucks and I was like, “Wow, I can do 15 and then I looked and there’s like a sign underneath it, it’s like, this week, you know, it was like 5.99. I’m like, “Oh my gosh! This is absolutely perfect!” So I knew that, you know, the angel of the lord was speaking. (laughs)

JS: Did you hear her? And wait. You’re saying “Yes, master to the angel of god,” right?

AR: (laughs)

JS: Okay.

AR: And then this is me, just on the computer, like, getting all my sources typed out and everything. You know, bringing it together. And then this is me assembling the project outside of the Allen Hall computer lab. And the reason why I say probably like 50 people have seen the piece is cause I was there all that night. As I’m assembling it there were so many people coming in and out of the computer labs. And everyone that came in, I was like, “Hey, come over—check this out!”

JS: Why did you work there and not in your dorm room?

AR: Um, I think so I could show everybody what I was doing. (laughs)

JS: Did you tell them what it was for?

AR: Yeah. Some people just walked up and thought I was just doing it for fun. Like, as though I’d be out there 2 in the morning, you know, making my own version of Candy Land for, you know, shits and giggles, like, the week before finals.