We're out of town, you know how it is. Before we left though, our boys in tow, Gabriel and I talked about how at his house everybody wants to play Didney Infinty but for different reasons.

I feel confident he'll break it down in more detail for you when we get back. But between the main course "playset" content, Toy Box mode, and tiny men, women, and… trees, and raccoons to smash together, shit is apparently quite real.

These things are much more His Games than Mine. I didn't do too much Skylanders, and the initial content in the old Disney Infinity set didn't endure - even with The Incredibles on deck, which is probably my favorite Pixar thing. If my family is gonna play a game, it's probably going to be something like Dixit. It's not a judgement. He and I have different mechanisms for governing electronic entertainment, and mine - in its current incarnation a least - strongly privileges machines as venues for solitary entertainment.

Come to think of it, my kids don't play console games at all. They might watch me, maybe. Mario Kart 8, or Rayman Legends. But Consoles are essentially frontends for Netflix as far as they're concerned, and I do something with these artifacts when they're not around maybe, or it's possible that they come in and I scramble to get the pause screen up so they aren't doused in arterial blood.

I would never say that Consoles are bad, or "over" to coin a phrase; I've just given the counterexample in this very post. But they're… and I have to laugh at this. In my family they're something dad does, like befriend waiters or swear in the garage.

(CW)TB out.