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Mini-Review: Jet Lag: The Game

An American travel competition series, each season features a contest that sends players to achieve a geographical objective in different parts of the world, some of which are inspired by board games. Whether it's teams traveling to to US states to claim a Connect Four-style row or column, circumnavigating the globe via air travel, playing tag across western Europe, or driving the vertical length of New Zealand, players will race against each other and the reliability of transit to get the win.

Imagine: you are an adult, collapsing into a hotel bed after a long day of getting lost on the public transit of your vacation city. You're about to stream something funny and not difficult to follow—maybe Nailed It!, maybe Taskmaster—when you companion interjects, says they've been watching this really fun travel race show, and starts a playlist where a quartet of people in predawn darkness run away six seconds into the video, and suddenly you're watching people race to circumnavigate the world?

That was my introduction to Jet Lag: The Game.

Each season is a self-contained game, and they mix it up: the first season (which, for some reason, is the second playlist on YouTube) is a game of "Connect Four" across America, where teams must "claim" four states in a horizontal or vertical row by traveling to each one and completing challenges, while the second game is a race to circumnavigate the globe, and the third season is a game of tag across western Europe, primarily using train systems.

Sidequest-like challenges are an integral part of these games. In most of them, players must unlock coins or money (as in a video game) to have the in-game balance to buy tickets, or unlock information about opponents, etc., so the series is never a straight race. The challenges vary by season and location, but include things like:

Logic or trivia challenges

Go to a museum for half an hour and tell the camera 5 fun facts you learned

Eat a menu item at McDonald's you can't get in the US

Get 1000 feet from any building

Get a hole in one in mini golf

Find [animal] at [local attraction famous for animal]

Make cheese

Cursed! Listen to Tom Lehrer's "Element Song" on repeat until you reach the next city [over an hour away]

Cursed! Only take trains that leave at odd-numbered times

Acquire any food produced in your current state and mail it to your family

Explain the birds and the bees to a bird or a bee

Ride a horse

Get goosebumps while at least one goose is in the camera frame

Because the challenges are random (usually drawn from a shuffled deck of cards), it adds tension to the games: the player or team needs money/coins/points in order to travel, or thwart their competitors, and there's a real risk that they'll fail because it's physically impossible or there's not enough time to complete.

If you, like me, are wary of YouTubers™, worry not. The focus here is the game, and the players do a decent job trying not to bother other people: most faces of passers-by are blurred, players try to set up in out-of-the-way corners when filming, and when they need to interact with people, like at a customer service desk, the camera is usually pointed at the player. There's also a lot of being very polite to customer service, drivers, and others they interact with. You can see them get strange looks sometimes, but overall they do a good job of trying not to be Social Media Personalities™ disruptively.

And the players themselves also seem to be nice people to watch; they'll send "curses" or other interruptions when the game allows for it, but there's no out-of-game interpersonal unpleasantness that makes it into the show. Also, one player, Ben, consistently wears the brightest, most funky clothes. He has no camouflage in a crowd, but who cares.

Final comments: Highly recommend. It's fun, safe for most ages—swears stronger than "damn" get bleeped—and you can tell that a lot of planning and thought has gone into game development to balance things. If you like the idea of race-type reality shows combined with good attitudes and sportsmanship, you'll probably enjoy this.

Subtitle availability: English closed captions are available and very well-done, sometimes including different font colors to indicate different people in conversations, and some excellent phonetic spellings of mispronunciations! However, for the first two seasons (Connect 4 and Circumnavigation), only auto-generated captions on YT are available.

Where to watch (USA, as of December 2024): YouTube (playlists link [X]) and Nebula (which was partially founded by the game's creator)—which also has recap/discussion podcasts, and series outtake video tarting with season 8, and the service gets new episodes a week early.

Start watching with: The friend who introduced me started me with the first playlist that shows up on YouTube, Circumnavigation, so I feel like if it worked on me, it'll work on others. But if that doesn't appeal to you, starting with either the next playlist—Connect Four Across America (which is actually the first season) or the third season, Tag Eur It, would be good. I started my parents on Tag Eur It, a game of tag across multiple European countries, because I think it's got one of the strongest hooks of any early series, explains the rules very quickly, and the immediate urgency (runner must run; chasers start to follow soon after) draws you in very quickly.

But really, starting anywhere will work. However, because the creators sometimes reference outcomes from earlier games, especially when they are playing near the location of previous games, I recommend watching any similar-geography games in order (Tag 1 before Tag 2 or Hide and Seek, and New Zealand [Race to the End of the World] before Australia).

Status/Frequency: There are currently 11 complete seasons on Youtube (12 on Nebula), and so far new seasons premier roughly 3-ish times a year, with most seasons lasting 5-6 episodes, and episodes tend to be 30-45 minutes each. As of this review, there is no indication that this is likely to change anytime soon, and the 12th season premiers this month.

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

Hey guys let me tell you about advance fee scams

I hope y'all are familiar with these in this day and age, especially my artists out there, because they're incredibly common.

About half an hour ago I posted a drawing and tagged it #artists on tumblr, and very quickly received this comment.

My scam radar went off immediately, due to the generic blog name and lack of any emotion in the comment, but I decided it might be an entertaining venture so I dmed them. They asked for a drawing "of these", and sent me a random selfie. I got the details and told them it would be $15, and they promptly offered me $300. At this point I know it's a scam, but I play along for funsies and give them my paypal. Shortly, they send me this image for "confirmation" (I blocked out my email)

And they began to insist that I checked my email. I looked in my spam folder and found the following email.

This is fake. This is not a thing. And the "you're to refund the $200.00 back" is the scam. They send vaguely official-looking emails at you to "prove" that they sent you the money, then have you send them $200 (or however much the scam is for). Then, surprise surprise, you're out $200.

I continued to play along for a bit, and in the second email "Paypal" told me that I had to refund the $200 before they could "credit the $300 to my account", along with these lovely threats.

And yeah, it's silly. But it's not silly if you don't know and get scammed. So. Spread, please! And thank you very much to @mlaurel for the opportunity to get these screenshots.

Custom bookmarks, front and back, commissioned by the spouse of a big fan for her Christmas set of the anniversary editions. Bonus lenticular bookmark for The Black Cauldron.

Listen, if you’re looking for a new show to watch, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D has everything. Found family, including a mother and father figure? Comedy? Slow burn romances and also a bickering divorced couple who get back together? An insane amount of hurt/comfort? Characters who get superpowers? Plot twists? Action/adventure? Alternate universes and time travel? Strong platonic love? Characters with flaws? Fleshed out storylines? Autistic-coded characters? Characters dying and coming back to life? 136 episodes to watch the characters grow together and become a family? It’s the ultimate show

Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez from Marvel's Agents of S.H.E.I.LD. is disabled

Elena is a double amputee.

Day 138

(Requested by anon)

God grant me the strength to do the things I enjoy

In the spirit of the “picnic of hobbits” post—and with the help of the genius mind of @redbootsindoriath—I give you MORE funny group names for the various races in Middle Earth:

A stone of dwarves

A dirt of Rangers

A yeehaw of Rohirrim

A keg of Breelanders

A gumption of Gondorians

A desolation of Laketowners

A murder of elves (Silmarillion)

A song of elves (The Hobbit)

A contemplation of elves (LotR)

A troll of goblins

A gobblin’ of trolls

A staff meeting of wizards

And you might think that a group of ents is called a “moot”, but there’s actually a different term that I would tell you if it wasn’t incredibly long and impossible to pronounce

Thinking about this quote in light of Christmas:

"And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got—you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?"

There's no glass filled with the light of the Christmas star, but the light of the world that arrived at Christmas is still shining in and among us. The tale is going on, now and for always.