Sunday Game Night is third-party if you also party on Friday and Saturday

From: Nathan
To: Game Friends

Chris Matthews is looking at me expectantly. “Well, I guess I’m having sort of a Catan moment,” I say.

I should explain. Earlier this month I was asked on live TV about how I would handle the situation with Catan. Obviously I’m familiar with Catan, you can’t host a weekly game night without knowing about Catan. But I thought he was talking about an acronym, CATAN, and I didn’t know what that stood for, so I asked a simple question: “And what is CATAN?”

Let’s just say it didn’t play well in the media.

And now Chris Matthews has asked me to name a foreign game designer I look up to. “Any foreign game designer you respect,” he repeats, and my mind remains blank. I’m supposed to be here promoting the inaugural event in my weekly game night series, which of course is this Sunday at 5pm. I’m supposed to be encouraging my supporters to show up with snacks and drinks. What is the appropriate game designer to segue to my talking points? Right now the only one I can think of is the Parker Brothers. I don’t think they were even foreign!

“Uh, I’m having a brain… thing,” I say.

Matthews turns to my running mate. “What about you?”

Without hesitation: “Rosenberg.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Matthews says.

Tomorrow, I will try to laugh about this. “Still can’t think of a foreign game designer I look up to”, I will tweet from the fetal position. Why couldn’t I have just said Chvatil!