Jeff Grubb's Blog, page 18

Books: Beyond Bond

 Forever and a Death by Donald E. Westlake, Hardcase Crime Imprint, Titan Books, 2017

Provenance: A gift from the Housemates. They have been here a year, and in thanks, Anne tracked down a pristine copy of the Lovely Bride's Favorite Cookbook, the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from 1976. She had worn the previous version to tatters, the spine shattered and the pages held together with a thick rubber band. In addition, because I have been reading some Westlake, she hunted down this edition for me.

Review: Westlake is an impressive author. There is the funny Westlake that's on display here. There is the hard-boiled Westlake of the Parker stories. And here we see the action-adventure Westlake.

This is a lost manuscript found among the writers' papers, written sometime between 1997 and the author's death in 2008 (though probably towards the start of that period). Westlake had been contracted to write a treatment (an outline, effectively) for a new James Bond picture. The work came to nothing ultimately, but the author liked a lot of the component parts, and refashioned them into this book, published by his estate.

And while it is a very different book, the spirit of James Bond (the movie versions) hangs over it.

What was kept? The exotic locales, the master plan, the super science, the plucky young woman (a blonde scuba diver here, but Asian in the treatments). Bond himself is missing, replaced by more of a ensemble of characters, including a two-fisted engineer, the aforementioned young woman, a gay pair of environmental activists, and various members of police forces scattered across the southwestern Pacific. 

Here's the summary: Richard Curtis (no relation) is multi-millionaire running on economic fumes. He lost most of his fortune when Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule in 1997, and has an outrageous plan for revenge. He intends to rob the banks in Hong Kong of their gold reserves, then pull down the buildings behind him in a way to cover his tracks. To do this he has an earthquake machine, created by two-fisted engineer George Manville, who is unaware of the plot. They are testing the earthquake machine on an abandoned atoll at the north end of the Great Barrier Reef. The Greenpeace-like activists arrive, and the plucky young woman puts on her scuba gear and swims towards the island, hoping to convince them to call off the test.

They don't, and the island is leveled. The plucky young woman is assumed dead, but is instead pulled out of the ocean by Curtis's yacht. She and the two-fisted engineer hook up and discover that millionaire is up to no good. They manage to escape and the rest of the book is various members of the group criss-crossing the South Seas (Sydney, the Outback, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) trying to discover what exactly the nefarious plot is and how to foil it.

But what is interesting (and very non-Bond) is that Westlake spends a lot of time inside Curtis's head. He's the secret protagonist here. He thinks nothing of the devastation he will unleash on the landfill islands of Hong Kong, but has to steel himself to kill (or at least order the deaths) of individuals like the plucky young woman and the two-fisted engineer. You can see every step he takes as he moves into full super-villaindom, and it is the most interesting thing to watch.

Its a genre tale, and there are some things that place it firmly within the genre. There are way too many cases of chance encounters and people being right there when they need to be (including a case where the environmentalists and the millionaire are on the SAME PLANE flying to Singapore). There are gay characters (yay) who are mostly tortured or killed (not so yay) because the leads can be threatened but never killed. And there are a lot of office meetings with various police agencies and lawyers as they attempt to prove that the evil millionaire is up to no good.

So how is it? Its better in many ways than a Bond film. It holds together for all its serendipitous plotting. And its a good thing to see it see the light after all these years. And yeah, its a lark, a genre peace, but shows the versatility of Donald Westlake.

More later,  

This Just In: Attack of the Tchotkes

 A lot of stuff has arrived at Grubb Street over the past few months, as Kickstarters resolve and the global supply snarl continues. Many are late, but not horribly so. But because of the nature of Kickstarters, a lot of them have extra STUFF attached to them. Counters. Plastic miniatures. Separate maps. Bonus Booklets. Pdfs (not shown, of course), STLs (3D printer stuff). Art prints. Dice. Stickers! And all these components they have a nasty tendency to go walkabout once they are sprung from their original containers.

And to be honest, while all of this is nice, I just want the book most of the times. Unless the maps are a vital part of the adventure, don't send them separately. Yeah, we had this problem going all the way back to TSR, which was one reason to shrinkwrap everything back in the day. 

Anyway, here's the current haul. These are not reviews as much as "Received and Flipped Through"

Meeples and Monsters - (Ole Steiness, Designer, Paul Grogan Rules, AEG, Two inch deep box) This was a Kickstarter, and I don't do a lot of Kickstarters for boxed games, primarily because it is a high risk factor as to if I'm going to like it. The original Kickstarter did well enough to include an expansion in the shipment, and as such the box is over-full (hopefully it will be less clogged when we punch everything out). The game itself is themed around raiding different types of troops to defend a town against monsters. A lot of mechanics echo other games (Lords of Waterdeep, Alhambra). Looks interesting. 

The Seeker's Guide to Twisted Taverns - (Logan Reese, Lead Designer, Eldermancy LLC/Ghostforge, 320 page Hardback). Seventeen fantasy taverns that cover just about every fantasy genre you want to hit. We've got elven taverns, dwarven taverns, creepy taverns, Asian-themed taverns, Arabian Nights-themed taverns, underwater taverns, and dream taverns. We even have a traditional Tolkienish tavern - "The Dancing Horse" . Complete with staff, menus, maps, and adventure hooks. Came with stickers and a map pack, and a separate map for an additional tavern that was added as a stretch goal. Trying to try to keep it from being scattered through my office.

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos - (Amanda Hamon, Lead Designer, Wizards of the Coast, 224 pages hardback). Picked this up at the Page Turner, a nice used and new bookstore in downtown Kent with a lot of genre material. The book is Harry Potter strained through a Magic:The Gathering card set. As such it represents the versatility of the 5th edition, where everything is NOT going down into the dungeon and taking stuff from evil creatures. It is not my brand of playing, I will admit. The Lovely B, however, has been running adventures of a modern magical academy on one of the islands in Puget Sound, so there is a genre to be supported here.

The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of The Lord of the Rings - (Francesco Nepitello, Lead Writer, Free League, 240 page hardback) Is a Free League operation, so it means it is a luscious-looking volume of thick paper and beautiful art. Has a new system to learn which uses d6s and d12s. Came with a Starter Box set with condensed rules, character sheets, full map of the shire, and adventures, among other things. Also included in the Kickstarter were customized dice sets, which they got slightly wrong and have to send NEW dice sets. Oh, well.

Fateforge: Epic Tales in the World of Eana, - Creatures (Joelle "Iris" Deschamp and Nelyham, Editorial and Conception, Studio Agate, 416 pages) and Encyclopedia (Joelle "Iris" Deschamp and Nelyham, Editorial and Conception, Studio Agate, 360 pages) These are books 3 and 4 in the series (1 and 2 are the worlds' Player's Handbook and DMG), and were ordered separately on Kickstarter, but arrived with all manner of additional material. Art prints, maps, an adventure by Ed Greenwood, additional booklets, pdfs, stls, and miniatures. They are very hefty and impressive, but I prefer the Encyclopedia to the Creature book. The former is a worldbook for the campaign, while the latter, while containing new monsters and fitting old ones into their ecosystem, uses stats direct from the Monster Manual's SRD. On the other hand, why reinvent the wheel if you're going to use ogres and minotaurs and tie them into your cosmology? Also a challenge for Creatures is that they split them up by biome and geography as opposed to a straight alphabetical run, so finding that particular monster may be a challenge. On the plus side, with all the additional material, they provided a stylish BOX so it doesn't go all over the place. And I greatly appreciate that. 

Occam's Razor -  (Brian M Sammons, Stygian Fox, Softbound 156 pages)  Another Kickstarter, the but one is a singular book (Huzzah!) of Modern-day adventures for Call of Cthulhu, noted for Mature Gamers. And it deals with non-mythos horror and the supernatural. High production values, perfect thing for small adventures, and incredibly creepy.  

BranColonia - Setting Book (Samuel Marolla, Acheron Games, 192 Pages) and Macaronicon  (Samuel Marolla, Acheron Games, 160 page hardback). These were a Kickstarter I missed, the first being a settings book for D&D 5e, the second being a collection of all the stretch goals from that same Kickstarter, but picked them up at Olympic Cards and Comics down in Lacey. These are interesting, not only because they delve deep into Italian folklore, history, and humor, but also because they concern themselves with the Epic 6 school of RPG design - that the INTERESTING stuff in roleplaying is in the first six levels, so they concentrate on those, and let the players plateau after that. The result is a permanently low-level campaign of rogues and rapscallions, grimier though not grittier, than many other campaigns. A lot to consider here. 

Tak'Dorie Reborn - (Mathew Mercer, Hannah Rose, James J. Haeck, Darrington Press, 280 page hardback)? OK, I will confess - I never watched any of Critical Role, nor its animated spin-offs, and I really should, since the DM, Matt Mercer and some of his players were voice talent on Guild Wars  as well a whole host of other computer games. And I had picked up the WotC Wildmount book earlier. But getting this volume at the Fantasium, my local comic book store, I found the opening sections of Tak'Dorie Reborn, which cover some of the same ground as the Wildmount book, to be incredibly readable and addictively engaging. Really nice production values, and shows off a personal campaign wonderfully. This one does go on the read pile.

Looking at this particular haul, I am stunned by the international nature of it - Italy, France, England, Australia, Denmark, and the US. That's kind of nice. Also nice is the fact that, despite getting a good chunk of these from Kickstarter, there feels like there's a healthy biome of brick and mortars in the area as well. You never know you're in a golden age until it passes, but I'm going to call it - it is good time to be a gamer.

And yet more games will arrive soon. More later.

Theatre: Those Girls

This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing by Finegan Kruckemeyer, Directed by Johamy Morales, Arts West, through 10 April.

Another expedition to the Hermit Kingdom that is West Seattle. Last year, the main span to that region from the mainland was shut down, forcing traffic to approach by lesser roads from the south. This particular trip we did not get lost, but the traffic was slow and jammed along those routes. However, we had an excellent meal at Mashiko Sushi (tuna tartar, grilled squid, and the Lovely Bride's favorite, spider roll (actually a soft-shelled crab)). Then the play itself, just next door.

How was the play? I liked it a lot. The LB felt it lacked depth and gravitas, and was more suitable to children's theatre, and indeed both the award-winning writer and director have serious chops working with young audiences. But after musical plays, improv rap, and blocking set dressings, I was ready for a simple, straightforward play, and I thought it was great.

The play itself is as linear and as convoluted as a faerie tale. There are three sisters, triplets at birth, identical but different. Their mother dies, their father remarries, the stepmother is of the evil variety and (it is supposed) commands the father to lead the children (Age 13) out to the forest and abandons them. The sisters are distraught and go their separate ways into the wider world. One goes East and has adventures. One goes West and has adventures. One remains in place and has adventures. Eventually they come back together, both united and changed.

And it works. I complain about actors who have to fight with tough material, who are visibly struggling with the lines and characterizations. Not here. The ensemble grasps, internalizes, and conquers their world. They dance, sing, laugh and make the world a living and (mostly) pleasant place. The roles are broad and yes, it is a fairie tale, a fable, a simple thing, but they nail it. 

The company is great and many of them are making their first appearance on the ArtsWest Stage. Mara Palma, Bella Orobaton and Lola Rei Fukushima are the triplets, who sell their unity and their differences wonderfully. Anjelica McMillan has the quicksilver ability to shift characters, ages, and genders smoothly and effectively. Tyler Campbell is equally versatile as heartbroken father and a very unpleasant badger. All fill in the other roles and encounters that the daughters encounter, effortless dropping one guise and taking on another. 

And yeah, the set works this time. a collection of 20-odd stools, tables, trunks (with additional props within) and a ship's wheel are transformed and re-transformed through the play. The stick is a cane. The stick is a sword. The stick is mixing spoon. The props are just tools in the hands of capable actors. 

So. A wonderfully pleasant play delivered by talented and capable actors. An excellent evening. And yes, if you have daughters, this is a great play to take them to (most of the Friday evening house was traditional mix of middle-aged local supporters and some folk in their 20s). A good yarn, with excellent actors. A nice fable. Worth seeing. 

More later,

Tekumel: Ditlana

 What happens when bad people make good things?

The latest serious discussion on this subject
involves M.A.R. "Phil" Barker and Empire of the Petal Throne. It turns out the creator of this classic RPG setting was a full-on, deeply engaged Nazi. Wrote under a pen-name a Third-Reich wish-fulfillment novel that was published by a notorious white supremist publisher. And he sat on the board for a holocaust-denier group. Yeah, definitely a bad person.

And yet there is a good work. The original Empire of the Petal Throne campaign setting was a marvel of its age. Published by TSR in 1975, at a time when D&D was still emerging from its "little brown books", it was an amazing product: the first full campaign setting in a box, with detailed maps, tons of lore, and a high price tag. In a genre already dominated by Western Medieval tropes, it carved a non-western, exotic, unique setting. I have been a fan, and EPT's very publication has had deep repercussions within the gaming hobby about how to do this sort of thing. Since its release, there have been numerous attempts to simulate the world with a number of game systems, but the core world remains as Barker laid it down.

A horrible person created something worthwhile. And his work will forever be tainted by the failures of its creator. I want to separate art and artist, but that just doesn't fly in a world where we bind the two together, for the purposes of analysis, enlightenment, and more mundane marketing. How we live affects how we write. The creator infuses the creation. So, what to do? 

Nine years ago in this space, in the midst of another tempest involving another author, I wrote about Lovecraft, who was definitely problematic. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that while we cannot fully separate creation from creator, we can TAKE the creation away from the creator. We recognize Lovecraft's racism, and will not excuse or bury it. But moving forward, we take the good parts and evolve them fully, and leave the worst behind. In RPGs, in the modern interactive tradition, that can be done more easily than in other media. RPGs are ultimately a group activity, and the bad actors can be overwhelmed by the common good.

I wrote that in 2013. How has it worked out in Lovecraft's case? Well. in 2017 the award winning RPG product Harlem Unbound showed up, which deals with marginalized populations in Lovecraft's universe. Originally from Darker Hue studios, the book has been expanded upon and republished with Chaosium, publisher of Call of Cthulhu putting an official mark on it. The novel Lovecraft Country deals with this in fiction, and has not only been a best-seller but turned into a TV series in 2020. And Alan Moore produced a decidedly creepy comic called Providence dealing with sexual issues within the straight-laced original stories. None of this would have met the approval of the original dead racist.

So yeah, take the ball and run with it. Jeff Dee, who wrote an excellent set of recent rules set in Tekumel, Bethorm, has posted the suggestion to OCCUPY TEKUMEL Challenge or remove the violent, authoritarian, and unchanging nature of the empires. Give it a cleansing scrub. I think this would work. I get the feeling that, much like our own histories, the illusion of a continuous civilization is misleading, as looking at it hard reveals civil wars, uprisings, revolutions both quiet and violent. Yan Kor not only wins its war but inspires other breakaway chunks of Tsolyanu to find their own paths. Let the PCs lead a revolution for a city state within one of the Empires, and forge their own destinies.

The interesting thing is, Tekumel has a couple things already hard-wired into it that encourages this approach. There is the custom of ditlana, a renewal process where cities are literally razed, buried, and new structures place atop them. In game terms, this process creates a a huge number of underground areas with ancient treasures and lost tombs, which facilitates the entire "Go Down In the Dungeon" aspect of play. I have noted in an essay in the Kobold Worldbuilding Guide ("Apocalypso: Gaming After the Fall") that traditional fantasy by its nature is a post-apocalyptic world, in that there were previously great fallen empires that overshadow the "modern day" as well as provide a location to create new adventures in.

In addition, Barker himself spoke of alternate universes, and the desire to let players make the campaign their own. Part of this always sounded like not having to be the "authoritative" source for all things Petal Throne, but also to recognize that others will want to further develop. So be it. The Tree of Time has many branches, and it does us little good to adhere too closely to the main trunk..

The World of Tekumel may need a ditlana and a rebirth after all this. Not to forget the foundations, nor to excuse its original creator, but rather to distribute the depth and potential of the world among others, and let them continue to create and, more importantly, to grow. 

More later, 

A Change in the Life

 So, long-term readers (both of you) may have noticed that I rarely talk about my personal life up here on Grubb Street. Yeah, I talk about the effects of the recent pandemic on our daily lives, and often talk about the weather, the seasons, and local wildlife. Sometimes I talk about food. Sometimes I talk about adventures with the Lovely Bride But mostly it is book reviews, theater reviews, collectible quarters, and the ongoing saga that is local politics. I know, boring stuff.

However, it this is a good place to mention a major change in my life. As of last Friday, I am no longer with Amazon Games. It was a good run, and really like the people I was working on and the projects I have contributed to. I have great hopes that the current project I left will be a smashing success. You want any gossip, the deal is you have to buy me a beer. Several beers. 

As of today, I have joined Tempo Games, and am working on The Bazaar, and new game they have under development. I remain a Senior Narrative Designer, responsible for sorting out the lore and minimizing the typos. My new team includes a lot of new folk, but also a lot of veterans I have worked with before at ArenaNet and Amazon Games. I'm looking forward to it, and not just because I spent the bulk of the afternoon playing the game intensely. I like it, and I think a lot of other people will like it as well.

I am also serving as a design consultant on a new RPG called Everyday Heroes. A descendent of D20 Modern brought up to date for the 5th Edition, I serve as the "old guy" walking around behind the others and giving various warnings about how we used to do things. I am not the primary designer - those roles are Sig Trent and Chris "Goober" Ramslay, and they're doing a bang-up job. But beyond that, I will say nothing (OK, there's a Kickstarter coming. There. You happy?)

And that's about it for right now. I didn't have a lot to say about what I was working on before, and probably will not have a lot to say about it right now. And a big part of it is that most of what I am working on is "in process", which means it can change, evolve, revise and otherwise mutate between now and when it seems like the light of day, and I don't want to say things on Monday I will have to correct on Friday.

Back in the old days, before everyone carried a recording device in their pocket, the TSR gang could go to GenCon and say any number of things to small rooms of people, confident that we would not be called upon to make corrections when things changed. And often, things WOULD change after we talked about them, because our bosses would ALSO be at those conventions and listen to a lot of fans about what THEY would want us to do. Such things are a part of the past, since we live in a real-time world these days, so I will wait until the cake is done and iced before inviting everyone in for a slice.

That's about it. It's a new adventure, and I am looking forward to it.

More later,

Theatre: Little Richard

Teenage Dick by Mike Lew, Directed by Malika Oyetimein, Seattle Rep through 3 April.

Lord, let me get through this one without an off-color joke. 

OK, Teenage Dick is one of those "Shakespeare Adjacent" plays you might find at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Not the Bard, nor even his verbiage in a new setting, but still related to the Shakespearean canon to that playgoers go in with something that feels like a reference point. 

In this case, Richard III set in a high school. 

Yeah, I know. It has been done. 10 Things I Hate About You. West Side Story.  Heck, the play itself even references Clueless, which was an updated Jane Austen's Emma, for god's sake. It is everything old is new again, filtered through high school melodrama and twitter-based technology.

Except it isn't. Yes, Richard Gloucester is a disabled young man (cerebral palsy), bullied and picked on, and has evolved a nasty attitude that mirrors that of his Shakespearean namesake. And he sets his sites on wresting the senior presidency from pretty boy jock Eddie Ivy (Edward IV), and part of his plan involves going to the big dance with the Eddie's ex-girlfriend, Anne Margaret (Anne Neville). Richard is mentored by off-kilter teacher Elizabeth York (Elizabeth of York), aided by fellow disabled frenemy Barbara Buckingham (Duke of Buckingham), and opposed by christian student Clarissa Duke (Duke of Clarence). The names are familiar, as is the starting point for the play. Here is man who feels himself scorned, who plans for vengeance, pulls out all stops to get it, and ultimately dies for it. His twisted mortal form that hides a black heart.

But. This is set in a high school and the stakes are slightly lower (and in reality more intense) than England's throne. And Richard, unlike the black-hearted villain of Shakespeare's history, actually has serious doubts about what he truly wants as he starts to break out of his self-imposed shell, such that actually, his decisions carry some weight, and we start to wonder - can the blackguard be redeemed?

But this is Shakespeare, and you know the answer to that. Much of the play is Machiavellian Chess with Teenage Richard putting his plans into motion, wallowing in his own cleverness. Then he falls for a dream he did not see coming and, once he makes his resolution, things turn very savage very fast. There is no Earl of Richmond here to carry home the point here, to make better promises for the future. The ultimate damage is self-inflicted. It is very much a tragedy.

The actors are excellent. MacGregor Arney is a transformed Richard, his twisted body turning more controlled and mannered when he turns from his fellow actors to soliloquize to the audience, selling the double-faced nature of Richard's treachery. But Rheanna Atendido is absolutely fantastic in a role (Ann) that, under Shakespeare, was merely a stepping stone for Richard's conquest.  Here playwright Lew gives her the moment she needs to drive Richard's cruelty home, and she kicks everything up several notches in the process. The Rep is pushing the play as satiric, which seems to undersell it. It takes the tropes (both Shakespeare and high school PTSD) and melds it into something stronger than either.

The original play was propaganda, of course. Richard was the last of the York rulers, and succeeded by the first of the Tudors (Richmond becomes Henry VII), of which the then-current ruler Elizabeth I was very much in present tense. So any historical play which blackened the name of the last York King would be well-received in court, and Shakespeare hangs a brace of bodies around Richard's neck. And in the centuries since, there is a lot written on how most of Shakespeare's reporting on the man was invention, or stealing from other sources that were equally skewed. Yet it is the theatrical Richard that survives in our minds, and the source which this play mines.

Teenage Dick succeeds in that it builds from a known base, and takes the discussion in a new direction. Lew internalizes Richard's own struggles even more than Shakespeare does, both broadening and deepening his emotions and reasons. Young Richard is hot garbage in a shirt, but a sympathetic villain none the less. It is a hard thing to pull off, and the play does so admirably. 

More later.

Candidates

A box arrived this week the contents that you see. They are all candidates for the Three Castles Award.

The Three Castles Award is an award given every year at the North Texas RPG convention (NTRPGCon) in Dallas IWell, Irving, within sight of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. It is awarded to Old School RPGs/ Revival/ Renaissance/ Reformation projects (OSRs for short). The category of OSR is not reserved to just early editions of D&D, but include a wide variety of related works, other elder games and derivative projects thereof. The award's steering committee put together a short list, and it went out to a team of esteemed designers.. 

I am one of those esteemed designers this year. I will leave it to others to identify themselves, should they see fit. We have received detailed instructions on judging Presentation, Organization, Content, playability, Uniqueness, and Art.

Why yes, we take this seriously.

The candidates for this year's awards are: 

A Time For Sacrifice by Ben Burns, Brian Courtemanche, Jonathan Bagelman, For Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, New Comet Games

Moon Daughter's Fate by Alive Peng - for 5th Edition Compatible, Necromancer Games

An Occurrence at Howling Crater by Levi Combs, for 5th Edition Compatible, Planet X Games,

Seekers of the Un-K'Nown by Louis Hoefer, for MCC RPG, Dand Y Line Games

Crypt of the Science-Wizard by Skeeter Green, for DCC RPG and MCC RPG, Skeeter Green Productions,

The Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG, By Robert S. Conley, Bat in the Attic Games.

I'm not going to review them in this space - that is reserved for the award ceremony itself, but the convention is June 2-5, 2022. I cannot make it, but there are a lot of people who can. So we'll see what we/they decide when the day comes.

 More later, 

Theatre: Beat Box Baby

Freestyle Love Supreme - Conceived by Anthony Veneziale, Created by Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale, Directed by Thomas Kail, Seattle Rep through 13 March.

So, let me be honest with you. I go into these plays pretty blind. I may read the summary when we ordered season tickets, but that was months ago. I don't read the preliminary press, the interviews in the Seattle Times, the promos over on the Stranger. Yeah, Lin-Manuel Miranda's name is evoked for this one in that awed "before he got famous" tone. My first warning of what is to come is usually the program book. Of course I still get a program book. I'm not an animal, you know.

In any event, my first warning for Freestyle Love Supreme (FLS from here on in) was the magenta and blue lights that swept the audience and got in our eyes. The stage itself is a wall of speakers with FLS logoed prominently (All about the branding). The actors all have rap names. The program book has a bug-splat qr code that allows you to suggest a word to be worked into the performance. The crew arrives, and, after a number on "Mike Check" introducing the team, start taking suggestions from the floor on what to rap about.

Yep, it is hip-hop improv. Lord have mercy on us all.

And yet, despite settling deep into my seat, pulling my cap down to protect my eyes, and preparing to grumble my way through the hour and half performance, I had a good time, and by the end was bopping and rocking with the rest of the audience, a mix of older regulars and younger families (I blame Encanto). It was light. It was fluffy. The rhymes were dope without being dopey. One of the suggested words was "narwhale". It was cute, and most of all, it was entertaining.

The crew is tight without being a fright (OK, I will stop doing that). Andre (Jelly Donut) Bancroft is one of the founders of the FLS academy and acts as MC, wheedling words and situations out of the audience, who in turn quickly warms to him. Anthony (Two Touch) Veneziale is a founder and one of the show's creators, and comes off as sort of the Dad of the group. Jay C (Jellis J) Ellis is the most physical of the assembly, twisting and turning as he raps. Aneesa (Young Nees) Folds has a wonderful, powerful voice, but the breakout is Kaila (Kaiser Roze) Mullady, who is a fantastic beat-boxer. Yeah, yeah, for all you folk who haven't thought about beat-boxing since the guy on Police Academy, let me say the craft has advanced and she's a wonder to behold. Musical beats are provided by Richard (Rich Midway) Baskin Jr and James (Not Draggin) Rushin. 

So, Jelly Donut wraggles words and situations out of the audience, and they tangle their raps around it. Word choices, things you hate (Big score there with "Girl Pockets"), things you love (Nature), embarrassing situations (someone who as a kid confused exlax with chocolate), and wrapped up with rapping about someone's day so far. They hit gold with that one - a young woman who was attending the show with her mom, boyfriend, and five aunts, who had been teaching belly-dancing that morning and had a local-legend, now-retired belly dancer named Mish-Mish attend the class. Those are the mileposts of this particular show, and the journey the crew weaves through them is both entertaining and impressive. Your mileage WILL vary, because that's the point of it all. 

So. Not the deepest of dives ever to develop on the Rep stage, but still pure enjoyment and a very pleasant way to spend an overcast, rainy day in Seattle. Just keep the lights our of my ancient eyes.

More later, 

The Political Desk: Quick Shot Results

You folks know the drill. It takes a while to process all the ballots for a mail-in election, so it will be a little while before know for certain. Still, early results see that most of the School Board measures are passing, including Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Replacement of Expiring Educations Programs and Operations Levy.

The KCD results are a little quicker, in that they were totally on-line this year. Kirsten Haugen is dominating the race with 70% of the vote, but only three-quarters a percent of eligible voters (of less than 10,000 voters total) cast their ballots. That ain't a great result.

But here's an interesting thing. One of the candidates, Dominique Torgeson, gave a nice, balanced candidate statement, finishing up with "KCD is a non-partisan organization. I shall not seek the endorsement of any politician or political party." She may not has sought it out, but this spam DM showed up on my phone right before the deadline.

"Hi, Richard. I am Jay for ElectTorgeron-R. Official Online Election of King Conservation District has begun. You will not get a ballot in the mail., We need every conservative Vote for Torgerson! Please go to the official website [Link] Tks STOP to Stop"

Yeah, first of all, I'm not Richard, but I get messages for him all the time - usually conservative pitches. But that's not the thing - The thing is that while such positions are listed as non-partisan, the candidates may be as partisan as they choose to be - they just don't have to tell you. So we have to dig a bit more to find out where the support is coming from. 

So NOW we're done. At least until the next primary. I hope.

More later,

Theatre: They Did The Mash

Monsters of the American Cinema by Christian St. Croix Directed by Lamar Legend, Arts West, through 20 February

Let me not bury the lede on this; The Lovely Bride loved this play. I did not care much for it. Yes, our marriage will sustain such a bitter disagreement.

Let me tell you what The LB liked about it. The actors were excellent, the characters felt real, and the story was poignant. Lamar Legend (also the director) is Remy, a 30(mumble) gay black man who runs a drive-in in the deeper-red part of San Diego County. He got the drive-in from his late husband. He also got a white, straight step-son, in the process - Pup (Alexander Kilian). And the two have a great relationship, bound together both by their love of monster movies and the ghost of their deceased spouse and father. Legend brings out all of Remy's mother-henning and protectiveness, while Kilian get's Pup's gangly teenagehood and affability as well as his haunting nightmares. But when there is a gay-bullying incident at a homecoming dance, Remy has to face up that Pup is growing up, and not in the best possible way.

All of the above is true. So what's my problem?

It's all in the delivery. The set design, of the interior of their trailer, including the roof where they watch monster movies on the big screen has too many blocking sight lines for the seats. One of the climactic scenes of Pup crawling about on the floor would be more poignant if the sink hadn't been blocking the view. The final scene, on the roof of the trailer, might as well have been on radio. There may have been great acting involved (and no doubt there was), but I didn't see it. 

Theatre in the round often demands a sparsity of props and the ability to play to all angles easily. We've Battled Monsters Before did this. The wood-frame of the trailer basically forced the actors to the perimeter and held them there, so they played to a fraction of the small audience at a time. 

But wait, their's more. Protracted blackouts between scenes for minor set changes broke up the flow. The pacing of the play itself was a collection of present-action, monologues, memories, and nightmares, and telling which one was currently running and how it fits into the larger story was difficult. Putting the audience off-balance is not a bad thing, but too much of it became frustrating. 

The worst of it was that, during the play, I started thinking about what would fix this. That's a terrible thing, and something I do while watching movies too much (which is why you don't see a lot of movie reviews here). Probably a more traditional stage design, pushing the stage back into the north seats would provide better sightlines (I know they've done that before). But the point is, I should not be trying to implement change when the play is in motion. It is not quite as bad (or as visible) as falling asleep in a performance, but still bad in view of what is happening on stage. 

And that's frustrating, because what the Lovely Bride said was right. Legend and Kilian have a great chemistry together, and both created characters that were very human in their mix of strengths, passions, and flaws. But their expression of their personal baggage was blocked, like the sight lines, by the amount of structural baggage dominating the stage.

More later,