This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Poor Mike Lee.

Utah's junior U.S. senator was bored Tuesday night, watching Donald Trump officially become the presidential nominee of Lee's Republican Party — a development Lee labored, in futility, to keep from happening.

So as the roll call of the states droned on, Lee was left to opine about all manner of topics — including the newest craze, the mobile-phone game Pokémon Go.

"I downloaded it thinking it might be fun, because it's all the kids are talking about," Lee said to Jim Newell, a staff writer for the web magazine Slate. "I can't for the life of me figure out what is fun about Pokémon Go. No one has been able to explain it to me. Staffers, my children, neighbors tried to explain why it's fun. It makes no sense. It is not a fun game. Maybe there's something in it that I'm missing."

I can help the senator, because I am one of the millions who downloaded the Pokémon Go app after its release this month — and, unlike Sen. Lee, I have been having fun with it.

For those not up on the game, Pokémon Go takes the familiar Japanese "pocket monsters" characters — which have appeared in video games, trading card games, TV and movies for years — and puts them in an augmented-reality game played in the real world.

You download the app, which uses your smartphone's GPS and camera and turns you into a Pokémon trainer. Trainers search for Pokémon in the wild and capture them using magic red-and-white balls (Pokéballs, of course). In the game, you visit landmarks that are designated "Poké-stops" (where you can pick up supplies, like Pokéballs) or "Gyms," where trainers battle their collected Pokémon against others.

It sounds a bit complicated, but in practice it's simple enough for a 51-year-old newspaper columnist: Walk around until your phone buzzes, look at the screen, use your finger to fling the little balls at the monsters superimposed on your surroundings, and cheer when you actually catch one of the little buggers.

To be fair, Sen. Lee is doing it in all the wrong places. In the Slate article, Lee said he had tried the game during an idle moment on the Senate floor (violating Senate rules, he said), and there were no Pokémon around. When he tried it Tuesday on the convention floor, in the middle of Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena, there wasn't enough signal to play.

The game was released in the United States on July 6 and has since expanded to Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe. Since its launch, news stories have abounded about the game's insane popularity, and technical glitches have made headlines. So have oddball stories about the sometimes inappropriate places — such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. — where people have gone looking for Pokémon, or the fact that the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns have tried (and failed) to look hip by referencing it.

To explain why I enjoy the game, I should first explain my strained relationship with Pokémon. You see, I have teenage boys, 13 and 16, who are Pokémon fanatics — and when they talk about the game, I usually have no idea what they're saying.

My sons have binders filled with their Pokémon cards and buy hard-to-find cards online to fill out their collections. Both play Pokémon video games on their 3DS players and watch the animated TV series on Saturday mornings. They have entered regional tournaments for the trading cards and the video game.

Over the years, I have learned to recognize some Pokémon names (for example, Blaziken, sort of a flaming chicken) and gain a rudimentary understanding of their fighting abilities. With Pokémon Go, though, I can actually participate with my sons in their favorite pastime.

The game has led to several adventures. We have walked around our neighborhood, finding the Pokéstop at the nearby Mexican restaurant or in front of the Vietnamese Buddhist temple. We have toured inside local landmarks, which is a great way to fend off cabin fever without succumbing to the July heat.

The other day, the boys and I went to the State Capitol. When the game was working, we spotted Pokémon on the screen and had fun catching them. When the game's servers gave up the ghost (a common occurrence), we looked around the Capitol, taking in the museum-style exhibits on the ground floor.

Sometimes, in down moments, I'll play the game when nobody else is around. It's a less stressful way to pass time than reading my Twitter feed, especially this week when all the news was about the Trump coronation.

The enjoyable thing about Pokémon Go is that it's a vehicle to get my stir-crazy children to get out of the house, exercise and see parts of the outside world they wouldn't experience otherwise.

Most important, it's something my kids can do with their so-uncool dad that is fun for all of us. That's worth all the overloaded servers and software glitches.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.