An image from the box cover of “Ground Zero” the game, showing Mayor Bloomberg and his girlfriend, Diana Taylor.
Gleason’s game: The scary thing about Peter Gleason’s satirical board game is how real it feels. Tired of the snail’s pace of progress at Ground Zero, Gleason recently launched “Ground Zero” the game, with the tagline “It’s Only a Game to the Politicians.” Players of the board game, modeled after Monopoly, start at Sept. 10, 2001, beside an image of the Twin Towers. It’s all downhill from there, as they traverse spaces that circle an enormous crater marking the hole in the ground at Ground Zero. The board features caricatures of the Clintons (Bill says, “Send me in, I’m a sex bomb!!!”) and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who drags a lumpy bag stuffed with the money he made off of 9/11. Along the way are trivia questions that may be worded lightly but are no joking matter: “Who equipped the firefighters with faulty radios on 9/11?” “Which presidential candidate voted against President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 ‘crusade’?” Gleason and Kevin Doherty, former police officers, hatched the idea for the game to channel their “frustration over the incompetence of our elected officials into a self-deprecating, eye-opening view that the rest of the nation, especially during this presidential race, must comprehend in order to make an informed choice,” according to their Web site. Although Gleason is running for City Council in Lower Manhattan and has been relentless in his attacks against one of his likely opponents, Community Board 1 Chairperson Julie Menin, he pulled his punches against her in the game. There is just a passing dig at the Wall Street Rising group, which was founded by Menin, but she is not mentioned. Gleason said he spent $50,000 to develop the game. It goes for $29.95 plus shipping at groundzerothegame.com.
Wedding bells: Josh Rogers, 41, associate editor of Downtown Express, The Villager’s sister newspaper, said bye happily to bachelorhood last Sunday as he married Sarah Wolff, 42, an assignment editor at Fox News, at the Joseph Ambler Inn in North Wales, Penn. The couple is honeymooning on Martha’s Vineyard. (By the way, Gleason gave Rogers a copy of his new Ground Zero game as a wedding gift.)
