Richard Dansky's Blog, page 18
February 8, 2012
Kangaroo For Dinner?
There's a restaurant down the block from my hotel that apparently serves kangaroo.
I don't know why. I don't know who might have said to themselves, "Hello. If I open a restaurant in the midst of dozens of other restaurants, perched between the financial and theater districts along King Street, the best way to make my restaurant stand out is to serve kangaroo." I really can't imagine any circumstances under which one says to one's self "I think I will attempt to make a living serving roast kangaroo" if one is not A)in Australia and B)surrounded by a readily available supply of kangaroos.
I have never had kangaroo. I have no idea what kangaroo tastes like, or how healthy it is, or whether it, like every other exotic meat out there, can be compared to chicken. I do know that I do not find myself the slightest bit interested in finding out.
And I know that while I remember that a nearby restaurant serves kangaroo, I couldn't tell you the name of the place on a bet.
I don't know why. I don't know who might have said to themselves, "Hello. If I open a restaurant in the midst of dozens of other restaurants, perched between the financial and theater districts along King Street, the best way to make my restaurant stand out is to serve kangaroo." I really can't imagine any circumstances under which one says to one's self "I think I will attempt to make a living serving roast kangaroo" if one is not A)in Australia and B)surrounded by a readily available supply of kangaroos.
I have never had kangaroo. I have no idea what kangaroo tastes like, or how healthy it is, or whether it, like every other exotic meat out there, can be compared to chicken. I do know that I do not find myself the slightest bit interested in finding out.
And I know that while I remember that a nearby restaurant serves kangaroo, I couldn't tell you the name of the place on a bet.
February 6, 2012
Travel Woes
The only real travel hiccup today was an hour-plus delay out of New York, some of it inside and most of it sitting on the tarmac. It's like LaGuardia isn't even trying any more.
February 5, 2012
The Woman In Black
Saw this Friday night with Melinda. It's pretty good, and a bit more subtle than the reviewers are giving it credit for. Very subtle, really, for a movie that keeps on relying on shock cuts to a screaming ghost going SKREEE! in the viewer's face. Daniel Radcliffe is rather good in the role of David Tennant, err, Mr. Kipps, a lawyer who's been stumbling through life since the death of his wife four years prior, and who gets one last chance from his employer to pull himself together.
The chance, of course, takes him to a spooky house in a spooky town in spooky countryside, where a vengeful ghost has been offing the local kids in gruesome ways for years. Of course, none of the locals will give Kipps so much as a declarative sentence as they try to hustle him out of town, but he's fighting for his job, and so things go predictably sideways.
Positives include the performances from Radcliffe and Ciaran Hinds, the nods to spiritualism and automatic writing, and an absolutely heartwrenching performance from Mary Stockley as a woman who lost her child to the ghost years ago. There are a few real shocks, and the conventions of the English ghost story are nicely respected. Negatives include way too many shots of creepy monkey toys and Radcliffe staring pensively down a dark hallway, along with some slightly dodgy continuity. On the whole, it's a solid first effort from the new Hammer studios, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes horror movies but doesn't need a couple hundred gallons of blood onscreen to get in the mood.
The chance, of course, takes him to a spooky house in a spooky town in spooky countryside, where a vengeful ghost has been offing the local kids in gruesome ways for years. Of course, none of the locals will give Kipps so much as a declarative sentence as they try to hustle him out of town, but he's fighting for his job, and so things go predictably sideways.
Positives include the performances from Radcliffe and Ciaran Hinds, the nods to spiritualism and automatic writing, and an absolutely heartwrenching performance from Mary Stockley as a woman who lost her child to the ghost years ago. There are a few real shocks, and the conventions of the English ghost story are nicely respected. Negatives include way too many shots of creepy monkey toys and Radcliffe staring pensively down a dark hallway, along with some slightly dodgy continuity. On the whole, it's a solid first effort from the new Hammer studios, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes horror movies but doesn't need a couple hundred gallons of blood onscreen to get in the mood.
February 2, 2012
Happy Birthday to The Beast
That's what I started calling Wraith 2nd Edition midway through development, and for the folks on Wraith-L, it stuck. It's sixteen years old now. Old enough to drive, probably old enough to try to use a fake ID to buy beer, and definitely old enough to be trouble.
Wraith 2nd was the first big project I was a creative lead on. It was also a full-on manifestation of the legendary Wraith Curse, as writers got flooded out, had their computers hit with lightning, got chased by the IRS, and worse. Things happened. 36 hour shifts were worked. Playtests freaked observers out so much they fled the room, too creeped out to continue. Key paragraphs got dropped. Floaty guy art arrived, caused a ruckus, and got replaced.
It's a long story.
But it's one that, nearly two decades on, I've glad to have been an author of. So, happy birthday, Beast. And thank you to all the writers, artists, and developers who made that book happen, and to all the fans who read, played and enjoyed it.
Ashtrays for everyone, kids*!
*If you don't get that joke, you probably didn't play Wraith. It's OK. I still like you**.
**Probably.
Wraith 2nd was the first big project I was a creative lead on. It was also a full-on manifestation of the legendary Wraith Curse, as writers got flooded out, had their computers hit with lightning, got chased by the IRS, and worse. Things happened. 36 hour shifts were worked. Playtests freaked observers out so much they fled the room, too creeped out to continue. Key paragraphs got dropped. Floaty guy art arrived, caused a ruckus, and got replaced.
It's a long story.
But it's one that, nearly two decades on, I've glad to have been an author of. So, happy birthday, Beast. And thank you to all the writers, artists, and developers who made that book happen, and to all the fans who read, played and enjoyed it.
Ashtrays for everyone, kids*!
*If you don't get that joke, you probably didn't play Wraith. It's OK. I still like you**.
**Probably.
February 1, 2012
Concertgoing: Kathleen Edwards
Went to see Kathleen Edwards at the Cat's Cradle tonight. It's been ages since I went to the Cradle, long enough for them to have remodeled the place. The front door's now for artists; the audience has to go around the side. The bleacher-like construct in the back is gone, the whole thing's been repainted, and the graffiti of Cheese Rule #4 has been removed from the exterior of the door to the women's bathroom forever.
I'd half-expected I'd be one of the oldest folks at the show. Recent popularity notwithstanding, Edwards is sort of a tough act to pigeonhole; a little rock, a little folk, a little country. Not a lot of happy relationships in Kathleen Edwards songs. The best ones are lopsided, the worst end with the narrator sending her no-good boyfriend off to jail for a couple of dimes. But there's a mixed crowd, and a good one, streaming in steadily through opening act Hannah Georges' set. More than half women, lots of them miniatures of Edwards' album covers - cotton blouses, work shirts, gingham dresses. The men are split, older guys with shaggy silver hair or no hair at all, younger guys with remarkable beards. Folkies, meet hipsters, and generally they do, at the bar. It's well stocked, incidentally, with an actual decent non-alcoholic selection and enough bartenders to keep things moving. I grab a Boylans and head back to my spot against the left-hand wall; as I go, I hear someone shout excitedly, "They have Stella Artois!"
Georgas isn't bad. She reminds me a bit of Karen Peris, from Innocence Mission. It's her and a guitarist/keyboardist. The sound's a bit thin, the songs could use a little more tempo variation, but it's not bad. The crowd claps loudly after each one, which shows they were paying some kind of attention, but it's a crowd. You can hear the buzz of conversation under each song. People are checking smartphones. People are tweeting.
And then she wraps up and the roadies come out and set up for Edwards, and everyone mills around a bit. The roadies are all painfully thin. I think back to the days when it looked like the road crew killed mastodons for sport, and then ate their flesh raw, and I realize that while I might not be the oldest guy present, I'm still getting old.
Edwards comes out a refreshingly short time later, none of this "make 'em wait until the keyboard player sleeps off his hangover" nonsense you get from some other acts. She's got a full band with her, the drummer tucked in back where the stage lights can't reach him, and she's got her hair braided up and piled in back. She looks like a frontier schoolmarm; she also looks like she'd take her guitar, brain a charging cougar, and then pick up the next verse without missing a beat or having it go out of tune.
And about five seconds after she launches into the first song, she owns the room. The crowd becomes an audience. Heads bob all over in time with the kick drum. We're hers and she's ours and it's fantastic.
Justin Vernon comes out for a few songs, starting with "Wapusk", which leads off with a story about polar bears. There's a transcendent guitar solo duel on "Goodnight, California"; Vernon and Edwards' guitarist and Edwards herself slamming away on an acoustic, and it's just the slightest bit like classic lineup Drive-By Truckers, and, well, wow. I may have to pick up some Bon Iver.
There's a flying wedge of drunk women that pushes past me to the right about six songs in. Ladies night out, I'm guessing - they're wobbling and grinning and whispering things to each other at 90 decibels all through every song. When there are lyrics they particularly like, they repeat them, giggling and throwing shapes. "Hockey skates," I hear. "Hockey skates!" About every third song, two of them run back to the bar for another round.
But Edwards is in rare form, joking back and forth with the audience, mocking the guy who goes, "oh, here comes the quiet part" when the rest of the band troupes offstage by doing a few bars of "Barracuda", and just generally being marvelous. And the band wraps up, and the room calls everyone back out for a two-song encore, and then they wrap up again.
The room won't let them go. After a minute, Edwards leads the band back out again. Her braid's partially collapsed; she shook it loose during a killer rendition of "Back to Me". And so help me, she looks like she's actually tearing up that we want a second encore. "You're not supposed to call us out for a second encore," she says, just before launching into another song.
That one's the last song of the night, really and truly the last song of the night, and the lights come up to reinforce that in no uncertain terms. I go back to the coat check and grab my jacket, a copy of the new CD in the pocket. I like buying at shows; more of the money gets to the people who make the music, and I'm getting too old for concert t-shirts anyway.
The crowd melts out, in ones and twos and fours. The doorman at the exit offers concert schedules for upcoming shows, Feist and TMBG and a bunch of people I probably would have hear of if I hadn't stopped reading Q. I head past and turn the corner. If I'd had the laptop with me, I would have wandered over to a coffeehouse, maybe, or a pub, and set up and written for a while. But it's late, and it's a school night, and I've got nothing to write with on me. So I head for the car.
A few steps past the corner, there's a guy standing there, hand out. He's got a pile of CDs in it. "Free CD?" he says. "Free CD?" I don't take one. Someone to my right says, "Why not," and does. A couple walks past, commenting that it's a not a bad way to get your music in people's hands. Meanwhile, the tour bus idles loudly a few feet away. Time for the band to pack up and get on the road. The guy hands out more CDs. People look at them as they walk away. Maybe he's starting something. Maybe next time round, he'll be the opening act inside. Maybe the time after that, the headliner. Maybe he'll get a second encore someday.
It all starts somewhere.
And I get in my car, and fire up an "official" bootleg of a concert from 25 years ago and half a world away, and drive off.
I'd half-expected I'd be one of the oldest folks at the show. Recent popularity notwithstanding, Edwards is sort of a tough act to pigeonhole; a little rock, a little folk, a little country. Not a lot of happy relationships in Kathleen Edwards songs. The best ones are lopsided, the worst end with the narrator sending her no-good boyfriend off to jail for a couple of dimes. But there's a mixed crowd, and a good one, streaming in steadily through opening act Hannah Georges' set. More than half women, lots of them miniatures of Edwards' album covers - cotton blouses, work shirts, gingham dresses. The men are split, older guys with shaggy silver hair or no hair at all, younger guys with remarkable beards. Folkies, meet hipsters, and generally they do, at the bar. It's well stocked, incidentally, with an actual decent non-alcoholic selection and enough bartenders to keep things moving. I grab a Boylans and head back to my spot against the left-hand wall; as I go, I hear someone shout excitedly, "They have Stella Artois!"
Georgas isn't bad. She reminds me a bit of Karen Peris, from Innocence Mission. It's her and a guitarist/keyboardist. The sound's a bit thin, the songs could use a little more tempo variation, but it's not bad. The crowd claps loudly after each one, which shows they were paying some kind of attention, but it's a crowd. You can hear the buzz of conversation under each song. People are checking smartphones. People are tweeting.
And then she wraps up and the roadies come out and set up for Edwards, and everyone mills around a bit. The roadies are all painfully thin. I think back to the days when it looked like the road crew killed mastodons for sport, and then ate their flesh raw, and I realize that while I might not be the oldest guy present, I'm still getting old.
Edwards comes out a refreshingly short time later, none of this "make 'em wait until the keyboard player sleeps off his hangover" nonsense you get from some other acts. She's got a full band with her, the drummer tucked in back where the stage lights can't reach him, and she's got her hair braided up and piled in back. She looks like a frontier schoolmarm; she also looks like she'd take her guitar, brain a charging cougar, and then pick up the next verse without missing a beat or having it go out of tune.
And about five seconds after she launches into the first song, she owns the room. The crowd becomes an audience. Heads bob all over in time with the kick drum. We're hers and she's ours and it's fantastic.
Justin Vernon comes out for a few songs, starting with "Wapusk", which leads off with a story about polar bears. There's a transcendent guitar solo duel on "Goodnight, California"; Vernon and Edwards' guitarist and Edwards herself slamming away on an acoustic, and it's just the slightest bit like classic lineup Drive-By Truckers, and, well, wow. I may have to pick up some Bon Iver.
There's a flying wedge of drunk women that pushes past me to the right about six songs in. Ladies night out, I'm guessing - they're wobbling and grinning and whispering things to each other at 90 decibels all through every song. When there are lyrics they particularly like, they repeat them, giggling and throwing shapes. "Hockey skates," I hear. "Hockey skates!" About every third song, two of them run back to the bar for another round.
But Edwards is in rare form, joking back and forth with the audience, mocking the guy who goes, "oh, here comes the quiet part" when the rest of the band troupes offstage by doing a few bars of "Barracuda", and just generally being marvelous. And the band wraps up, and the room calls everyone back out for a two-song encore, and then they wrap up again.
The room won't let them go. After a minute, Edwards leads the band back out again. Her braid's partially collapsed; she shook it loose during a killer rendition of "Back to Me". And so help me, she looks like she's actually tearing up that we want a second encore. "You're not supposed to call us out for a second encore," she says, just before launching into another song.
That one's the last song of the night, really and truly the last song of the night, and the lights come up to reinforce that in no uncertain terms. I go back to the coat check and grab my jacket, a copy of the new CD in the pocket. I like buying at shows; more of the money gets to the people who make the music, and I'm getting too old for concert t-shirts anyway.
The crowd melts out, in ones and twos and fours. The doorman at the exit offers concert schedules for upcoming shows, Feist and TMBG and a bunch of people I probably would have hear of if I hadn't stopped reading Q. I head past and turn the corner. If I'd had the laptop with me, I would have wandered over to a coffeehouse, maybe, or a pub, and set up and written for a while. But it's late, and it's a school night, and I've got nothing to write with on me. So I head for the car.
A few steps past the corner, there's a guy standing there, hand out. He's got a pile of CDs in it. "Free CD?" he says. "Free CD?" I don't take one. Someone to my right says, "Why not," and does. A couple walks past, commenting that it's a not a bad way to get your music in people's hands. Meanwhile, the tour bus idles loudly a few feet away. Time for the band to pack up and get on the road. The guy hands out more CDs. People look at them as they walk away. Maybe he's starting something. Maybe next time round, he'll be the opening act inside. Maybe the time after that, the headliner. Maybe he'll get a second encore someday.
It all starts somewhere.
And I get in my car, and fire up an "official" bootleg of a concert from 25 years ago and half a world away, and drive off.
January 31, 2012
Kneel And Sorbet
Tried a couple of experiments, with the following results:
When it comes to coloration of sorbet, kiwi don't mess around. Grapefruit-kiwi, which is impressively tart and very difficult to keep from locking into "solid glacier" form, any amount of kiwi added to the mix above "wave a kiwi fruit at the bowl and then pull it away rapidly, muttering 'ha ha, fooled you again'" is liable to turn the whole mass green. And by green I mean dull, institutional green, with a nod toward "Sea Foam". It's not a bad palate cleanser, but I highly recommend putting on some Bay City Rollers or something when you eat it, to get into a 70s vibe that matches the coloration. As always, the real issue is insufficient pulp from the grapefruit to keep it from just going straight to "iceberg"; the kiwi was an attempt to drop something suitably pulpy in there for it to form around. Next time, more kiwi. Or perhaps, mango. In the meantime, bow-chicka-bow-chicka-sor-bettttttt
Strawberry/blueberry is the old standby. I can make it in my sleep, and I'm fairly certain at this point, I have, several times. The twist this time was that I dumped a bunch of un-pureed strawberry chunks and blueberries into the mix during the churn, in hopes of changing up the texture a bit (and in fear of all of them just sinking to the bottom like some fruity sedimentary deposit, no doubt laden with tiny seeds shaped like trilobite fossils). The verdict? Success. Great color, great consistency, great flavor, and the unexpected change of texture from some actual fruit. It's a win, and I suspect it's going to be my fall-back party sorbet.
And the fact that I can even think about which is my "fall-back party sorbet" tells me that I have a problem. But in the meantime...sorbet?
When it comes to coloration of sorbet, kiwi don't mess around. Grapefruit-kiwi, which is impressively tart and very difficult to keep from locking into "solid glacier" form, any amount of kiwi added to the mix above "wave a kiwi fruit at the bowl and then pull it away rapidly, muttering 'ha ha, fooled you again'" is liable to turn the whole mass green. And by green I mean dull, institutional green, with a nod toward "Sea Foam". It's not a bad palate cleanser, but I highly recommend putting on some Bay City Rollers or something when you eat it, to get into a 70s vibe that matches the coloration. As always, the real issue is insufficient pulp from the grapefruit to keep it from just going straight to "iceberg"; the kiwi was an attempt to drop something suitably pulpy in there for it to form around. Next time, more kiwi. Or perhaps, mango. In the meantime, bow-chicka-bow-chicka-sor-bettttttt
Strawberry/blueberry is the old standby. I can make it in my sleep, and I'm fairly certain at this point, I have, several times. The twist this time was that I dumped a bunch of un-pureed strawberry chunks and blueberries into the mix during the churn, in hopes of changing up the texture a bit (and in fear of all of them just sinking to the bottom like some fruity sedimentary deposit, no doubt laden with tiny seeds shaped like trilobite fossils). The verdict? Success. Great color, great consistency, great flavor, and the unexpected change of texture from some actual fruit. It's a win, and I suspect it's going to be my fall-back party sorbet.
And the fact that I can even think about which is my "fall-back party sorbet" tells me that I have a problem. But in the meantime...sorbet?
January 30, 2012
An Encounter With Angry Mutton
Cross-posted from Sportsthodoxy - http://sportsthodoxy.blogspot.com
------
So it's Saturday afternoon, and I'm in Chapel Hill with my Delicate Bellicose Flower, i.e. my wife Melinda, for brunch. We are having brunch in Chapel Hill (home of the UNC Tar Heels, for those of you who are unable to hear the frequencies Dick Vitale broadcasts at) because we have tried and failed to have brunch in Durham multiple times, and because the restaurant at local landmark foodie haven A Southern Season does good brunch, and there's a big store to wander around in while we wait for our table.
Melinda (that's the Delicate Bellicose Flower, for those of you keeping track) starts looking at the tea. I wander off to try to find the restrooms, and instead I find Rameses, over by the deli meats.
Rameses, as the initiated know, is the mascot of the UNC-Chapel Hill Tar Heels. He is, in this incarnation, an anthropomorphic ram, as having real livestock on the court during a basketball game is generally not a good thing, and undergraduates in ram costumes tend to be better about relieving themselves than farm animals. Why a team named the Tar Heels uses an anthropomorphic sheep as a mascot is a story for another time; in the interim, readers are invited to ask themselves if they really want to see a sophomore botany major from Mebane or Elizabeth City dressed up like a giant foot with some gunk on it, doing pushups on the court at halftime.
In any case, there Rameses was, cavorting in the aisles, doing photo ops with small children and Heels fans of all ages, and more importantly, impeding my forward progress. Behind me, a guy nodded and smiled approvingly and said, as a statement of presumed solidarity, "Go Heels".
In retrospect, I probably should not have done what I did next. I channeled the fact that my aforementioned wife has a PhD from NC State, and said, "Go Pack." The gentleman was horrified. And I got Rameses' attention.
He took a few steps toward me. His mascoty eyes, unblinking, locked in on mine. "Actually," I said, "I'm a Boston College fan." Which, for the record, is true. BC School of Arts and Sciences, MA in Literature with Distinction, 1994. You can look it up; I'm not sure they ever sent me the piece of paper but they do occasionally send me the alumni magazine and offers to buy Christmas tree ornaments shaped like the football stadium.
Well, that was enough for Rameses. He dropped into a fighter's crouch, cocked his head belligerently and started shadowboxing in my direction. I looked at the large anthropomorphic ram making Rocky shapes, thought about the basketball season so far (you don't mention football in Chapel Hill these days. It's still kind of a sore spot, apparently) and said, "C'mon, man. Boston College."
That would be 7-14 Boston College, with losses to 9-12 Holy Cross, 4-18 Rhode Island, 11-12 Boston U, and the second-worst Wake Forest team of recent memory. (Jeff Bzdelik's squads have bzeen bzad). I mean, look. I'm an alum. I'm a fan. But we're a long way from the Al Skinner glory years here, people. A looooong way.
Rameses stopped. He thought about it. Quite possibly, inside his suit he was checking the ACC standings. And then he dropped his hands and patted my head, in woolly pity, and moved on.
January 27, 2012
We're Number One! (Who Said That?)
Very, very proud to announce that Haunted: Eleven Tales of Ghostly Terror won the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll for Best Anthology of 2011. Kudos to the folks at Flames Rising Press, to editor Monica Valentinelli, and to my thoroughly talented fellow authors on this one (Jess Hartley, Chuck Wendig, Bill Bodden, Jason Sizemore and more). My own contribution is called "The Man Who Built Haunted Houses", and I like to think it's a bit of a twist on the traditional "creaky old house in the country" story. In any case, I'm glad folks enjoyed the book, and I want to say thanks to everyone who voted for it.
And now: the fine print. Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror is available in eBook (PDF, ePub and Mobi/Kindle) and Print formats atDriveThruFiction.com. It is also available at the B&N Nook Store.
And now: the fine print. Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror is available in eBook (PDF, ePub and Mobi/Kindle) and Print formats atDriveThruFiction.com. It is also available at the B&N Nook Store.
January 26, 2012
Some Thoughts On Being A Game Writer
Right here, where anyone can see them, over at the illustrious Jordan Mechner's blog.
January 25, 2012
Silly Wizard, Live in America, 18 Years On
When I first moved to Boston in 1992, I stayed at my cousin Harlene's house. I was doing a MA at BC, she was doing a PhD at OSU, and somewhere in that combination of letters I took care of her place while she was gone. It was a great house to live in, three stories (two of which I had the run of, one of which was a separate apartment) down in Jamaica Plain at the end of a little cul-de-sac within walking distance of "downtown" JP. It had steep stairs and dim hallways and a thorough New England-ness to it, all of which made it the perfect place for me to be while reading Derrida and writing academic papers on Lovecraft and Octavia Butler. In the house, Harlene had, among other things, an excellent library, an intimidating wine cellar, and a record collection straight out of the Newport Folk Festival, which I occasionally dug into. (The wine cellar intimidated me and the library got back-burnered by the gargantuan reading lists for my MA, so really the records were about all I felt safe dipping into.)
The one I played most often was Silly Wizard, Live in America. For those of you not familiar with Silly Wizard, they were a Scottish trad-style folk band that had absolutely nothing to do with Harry Potter, and they're probably best remembered in the US for a live concert that got broadcast occasionally on PBS during pledge weeks, wherein the fiddler (the late, lamented Johnny Cunningham) went off on a voluble discussion of how Shamu the killer whale was, and I quote, "leal".
The things you remember after 20-some-odd years.
Anyway I lived there for two years, while I wrapped up my MA and all the insanity that entailed. There are other stories there - parties and muggers, late night writing jags and grilling on the back porch during a certifiable blizzard, and God knows what else. But there are other stories, and this one's about a record. You see, after two years, Harlene wrapped up what she had to do in Columbus and came home, and it was time for me to move on. I got a job at an executive outplacement firm on Newbury Street, rented a house with a friend up in Somerville - across the street from Bim Skala Bim, or so we were told - and lasted another year and change in Boston before a combination of bad weather, bad professional prospects, and the chance to go work in the fabulous RPG industry drove me south to Atlanta.
I did try to take care of Harlene's place while I lived there. Kept it tidy, polished the furniture, didn't let dishes pile up. The garden, I wasn't so good with, but to be honest, I hadn't really realized I was supposed to do anything other than make sure no wildlife larger than squirrels took up residence. But all in all, I tried to be a good renter/houseguest, and I tried to replace the things I used, and to put away the stuff I took out.
One of the things I didn't put away was Silly Wizard, Live in America. I'd listened to it a day or two before I moved out, and I put it back in the sleeve, but I never got around to putting it back in the crate. I did put it on top of the crate and tell myself I was going to put it away later, but there was moving to do and things got in the way, and I never got around to it.
Harlene died last year. Roughly a year ago from today, give or take a few. In February, after the funeral, my father and I went up to Boston, back to her house, to start cleaning up her affairs. Again, other stories, many of them not might to tell. But as Dad settled in to look at papers I wandered through the halls, and I mentally noted the changes and the things that had stayed the same. And then I found myself in the room with the stereo, and there, on top of the records, was Silly Wizard, Live in America.
I don't know. Maybe she'd played it herself in the intervening years. Maybe she'd put it back and taken it out, maybe multiple times. Maybe other records, the Pentangle and the Judy Collins and the vintage copy of Blows Against The Empire, they all got played, too. But it looked like it was right where I'd left it, nearly twenty years before.
Eventually, I took it home with me. Not that trip, and not the next one. Too many ghosts, too many other things to deal with. Too much in general, really. But eventually, I took it home.
It's here now, on the shelf, hopefully a safe distance from a Rex Smith record my sister bought when she was maybe 12 and which I've never had the heart to throw out. But it's here.
One day soon, I'll take it out and play it. And then I'll put it back.
Most probably.
The one I played most often was Silly Wizard, Live in America. For those of you not familiar with Silly Wizard, they were a Scottish trad-style folk band that had absolutely nothing to do with Harry Potter, and they're probably best remembered in the US for a live concert that got broadcast occasionally on PBS during pledge weeks, wherein the fiddler (the late, lamented Johnny Cunningham) went off on a voluble discussion of how Shamu the killer whale was, and I quote, "leal".
The things you remember after 20-some-odd years.
Anyway I lived there for two years, while I wrapped up my MA and all the insanity that entailed. There are other stories there - parties and muggers, late night writing jags and grilling on the back porch during a certifiable blizzard, and God knows what else. But there are other stories, and this one's about a record. You see, after two years, Harlene wrapped up what she had to do in Columbus and came home, and it was time for me to move on. I got a job at an executive outplacement firm on Newbury Street, rented a house with a friend up in Somerville - across the street from Bim Skala Bim, or so we were told - and lasted another year and change in Boston before a combination of bad weather, bad professional prospects, and the chance to go work in the fabulous RPG industry drove me south to Atlanta.
I did try to take care of Harlene's place while I lived there. Kept it tidy, polished the furniture, didn't let dishes pile up. The garden, I wasn't so good with, but to be honest, I hadn't really realized I was supposed to do anything other than make sure no wildlife larger than squirrels took up residence. But all in all, I tried to be a good renter/houseguest, and I tried to replace the things I used, and to put away the stuff I took out.
One of the things I didn't put away was Silly Wizard, Live in America. I'd listened to it a day or two before I moved out, and I put it back in the sleeve, but I never got around to putting it back in the crate. I did put it on top of the crate and tell myself I was going to put it away later, but there was moving to do and things got in the way, and I never got around to it.
Harlene died last year. Roughly a year ago from today, give or take a few. In February, after the funeral, my father and I went up to Boston, back to her house, to start cleaning up her affairs. Again, other stories, many of them not might to tell. But as Dad settled in to look at papers I wandered through the halls, and I mentally noted the changes and the things that had stayed the same. And then I found myself in the room with the stereo, and there, on top of the records, was Silly Wizard, Live in America.
I don't know. Maybe she'd played it herself in the intervening years. Maybe she'd put it back and taken it out, maybe multiple times. Maybe other records, the Pentangle and the Judy Collins and the vintage copy of Blows Against The Empire, they all got played, too. But it looked like it was right where I'd left it, nearly twenty years before.
Eventually, I took it home with me. Not that trip, and not the next one. Too many ghosts, too many other things to deal with. Too much in general, really. But eventually, I took it home.
It's here now, on the shelf, hopefully a safe distance from a Rex Smith record my sister bought when she was maybe 12 and which I've never had the heart to throw out. But it's here.
One day soon, I'll take it out and play it. And then I'll put it back.
Most probably.
