Stephen Mark Rainey's Blog, page 123

Nearly a Non-Starter

It's always a treat to get together with writer Beth Massie and artist Cortney Skinner, who are two of the world's finest folks — well, mostly — and we've been hoping to work out a visit for quite a while. Ms. B. and I had calculated doing this thing a few weeks ago, but we ended up having to postpone our visit due to her cat suffering some unfortunate feline infirmities. Things on that front improved, so we rescheduled a trip to the Massie-Skinner homestead in Waynesboro, VA, this weekend. Everything looked good, so we took off work a bit early on Friday afternoon and hit the road.

About halfway there, the old Rodan Mobile decided it had had enough of the road for one night. After stopping for a cache just south of Lynchburg, VA, I put the key in the ignition to crank her up and go, only to be greeted by a wall of resounding silence.

Starter is dead. Graveyard dead. Beyond resuscitation dead.

Now, I must say, break downs suck — they SUCK — but if one must break down, one can only hope for things to work out as smoothly as they did this go-round. I got AAA on the horn — best investment I ever made, especially with all the history the Rodan Mobile has seen — and managed to reach a fellow at a garage, even though it was past their closing time. He said he could get to my car first thing Saturday morning, which was a blessing, since most of the shops we looked up were closed all day on Saturday. Ms. B. called around and found a decent enough hotel not too far away. The tow truck arrived within minutes and got us to the garage — and then the driver was kind enough to actually take us to the hotel after we got my car dropped off.

Once ensconced in our hotel room, Brugger and I checked maps for some nearby food. Ah... McDonald's. About a mile up the road. No sweat... we have feet. So we put them to good use and hiked up the way toward a late-night meal. Coming upon Spring Hill Cemetery — a large, very old, and agreeably eerie bone yard — was the evening's highlight. The gates were locked, so we couldn't go inside, but we had a great view of the stones and markers from just outside the fence. Quite enjoyed the serenity of the place after a rather stressful evening.


Yesterday morning, as promised, the garage guy promptly got a new starter put in. One quick cab ride later, we had a working automobile and soon enough were back on our way to Waynesboro. When we arrived, it was to find yet more fucked machinery: Cortney's computer had committed stupidcide, right when he was in the midst of a project with a deadline of immediately. Thankfully, eventually, he got things sorted out enough for stress levels to subside to critical. After a wee spot of geocaching with Beth and Brugger — including a most amusing visit to another graveyard — we went for a tasty Mexican dinner, a spot of ice cream, and a bit more caching.


This morning, it was off to Starbucks, where we met some more of our fabulous fiends from the area: Nanci & Phil Kalanta and artist Keith Minnion, who had provided some devilish art for Deathrealm back in the day. The shooting of shit and what not went on for some time, but then Nanci gleefully tortured us with a dramatic reading of Damn You, Demon! — the latest non-childen's children's book by Beth and her sister, Barb Lawson. Following this, we became embroiled in a long, profound discussion, which involved the waylaying of total strangers, about whether Starbuck's interior walls were painted brown or green. Unable to withstand this torture further, Ms. B. and I hastened to depart — but only after I found Beth and Cortney's geocache, "Queequeg" (GC4ARE1)... or Quohog or Hedgehog, or whatever it's called... which is on the premises.


The hunt for a couple of more caches took Ms. B. and I to a picturesque, rustic spot or two nestled in the mountains around Fairfield, VA, and then we hit Roanoke for a great lunch at Blues BBQ Company, which we had discovered last February when we were in town for Shevacon. And then, on to Valhalla Vineyards, atop a mountain just outside of Roanoke. As scenic as a location comes, we quite enjoyed the wines here, especially their 2007 Valkyrie — a blend of Cabernet Savignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Vedot — and 2001 Cornucopia blend, all of which come from their own grapes. The staff we met were quite personable, and Brugger and I would both recommend the place highly, with the possible caveat that quite a few of the clientele, at least while we were there, were ungodly rowdy and inconsiderate — some playing board games, which, at a winery, ought to be forbidden by at least thirteen statutes and a possible constitutional amendment. Hopefully, this was merely an anomaly, for a place as distinctive and atmospheric as Valhalla deserves more respectful treatment. It ain't no downtown bar and grill.

So, I'm back home now, where I've been trying to suppress food riots amid the feline general population for the past few hours. That's all kinds of rough, I gotta tell you.

Halloween Horrors in Wake County

During the month of October, the Wake County Public Library System will be hosting several panel discussions with North Carolina authors who specialize in dark and speculative fiction. Guess who fits that bill....

The events will take place at various of the library branches, and I am scheduled to participate on Sunday, October 13, at 2:00 PM at the Eva Perry Regional Library in Apex, NC, along with Jenna Black, Clay & Susan Griffith, and Lisa Shearin. Authors will discuss speculative fiction, their writing processes, and more, with an audience question-and-answer session following. If you're in range, please come on out and join the discussion. The library is located at 2100 Shepherd's Vineyard Drive,Apex, NC 27502 (View Map). For more information, visit the Wake County government's library event site here.

I'm pretty sure there will be geocaching for afters. I hope to autograph several log sheets.

UProoted

UProoted. Can you see the geocache?
(Click image to enlarge.)
Geocaching forever takes me to some mighty neat places, and this past weekend, I found another cool hiking trail a few miles up the road — on the campus of Rockingham Community College, in Wentworth, NC. Several years ago, I did a presentation about creative writing to the writers group there (indoors, not on the trail). The campus is not terribly large, but there's about five miles of trail through the surrounding woods, and they're fairly scenic, with lots of variation in terrain and a rocky creek with a neat little waterfall. Near the trail head, there's a quaint little reconstructed village featuring several structures, some built as far back as the mid-1800s, which were moved from various locations in Rockingham County. A few new caches came out on the trail the other day, and when I went after them, I enjoyed the area so much I put out a couple of my own. Alas, one of them turned out to be too close to another one that had already been hidden but not yet published, so I had to retrieve the container — a nice decon box I found at the Liberty Antique Festival, of all places. I'll head back up there soon enough to put it out in a new location, hopefully free of proximity issues. The other one was published yesterday — "UProoted," it's called (for good reason), and if you have sharp eyes, you might be able to spy it in the photo at left.

Four more cache finds to mini-milestone #6,300. This weekend, no doubt.
The reconstructed village at the trail head. The buildings consist of tobacco factory, a tobacco barn,
a corn crib, and a one-room school house. The little waterfall along the trail. The nearby cache is aptly named "Not Quite Niagara."

Damned Rodan's Ribs of Fire

Back when I was a fry cook at Shoney's — 1978–1979, there or about — I would never have imagined I might actually derive pleasure from cooking. Somewhere along the line, though, I took a liking to preparing simple but satisfying dinners for me and the occasional guest. Grilling up dead animal has always provided some measure of satisfaction, largely because my dad, when I was a kid, cooked mighty mean steaks and spare ribs, and it was a rare dish that could compete with them. His barbecued beef ribs in particular used to send me swooning, and it was only recently that my attempts to replicate them found even the smallest measure of success. My means to this end, however, could hardly be more different.

A while back, I was listening to The Splendid Table on NPR — a hopelessly stuffy and dry show, though nonetheless occasionally informative — and one of the segments highlighted a particular chicken joint where, after frying their bird, they dipped it in boiling barbecue sauce. Something about this process fascinated me, so I decided to give the same thing a try with my beef ribs. What a joyful decision this proved to be!

Needless to say, being an aficionado of the supremely hot, I doctor up the critter something fierce. Here's how I do it, in case you'd like to try. Note that the ingredients vary a bit, based on what I have floating around in my fridge and spice cabinets. I no longer have a gas grill, which is fine because I much prefer grilling on charcoal.

DAMNED RODAN'S RIBS OF FIRE (serves 1–2)
What You Need:
4–6 beef short ribs
approximately 2 cups fiery barbecue sauce (see below for ingredients)
garlic powder
salt & pepper

The Sauce:
The exact recipe varies from occasion to occasion, but the hot stuff is always prevalent. Measures are approximate, to say the least.
1 cup basic barbecue sauce (I prefer hickory or honey flavor)
1/2 cup A-1 steak sauce
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp hot sauce (favorites include Blair's After Death, Iguana XXX habanero pepper sauce, Krakatoa hot sauce)
1–2 minced hot peppers (ghost pepper, habanero, serrano are favorites)

What You Do:
Mix the ingredients for the sauce thoroughly. Liberally dash garlic powder, salt, and pepper on the ribs (this is the only preparation I do prior to putting them on the grill). Once the grill is ready, place the ribs on the coolest part of the surface and cover. Turn frequently, keeping the smallest ribs farthest from the most direct heat. Just before they're ready to come off the grill — about 20 to 25 minutes, depending on their size — I put them all in the hot center, uncovered, for a few minutes to let the outside get crispy.

Shortly before removing the ribs from the grill, start the sauce boiling at very high temperature. Once it's bubbling furiously, dip each rib in the sauce for about one minute, so that each is nicely glazed.

Serve immediately. A cold beverage goes exceedingly well with these — though, when I'm feeling masochistic, I've been known to accompany them with a Damned Rodan's Dirty Firetini.

Try 'em... you'll like 'em.

Lyra's Lair 4

Old Rodan signs Lyra's log.In 2007, I discovered geocaching when I went searching online for some information about the trail system at Doe Run Park in Martinsville. I have always enjoyed trail hiking, as it can be particularly inspiring when I'm brainstorming ideas for a book or story, as I was at the time. The first link that came up when I Googled the trail was for something called "Lyra's Lair" at Geocaching.com. As read through the listing, I learned that geocaching is a kind of high-tech scavenger hunt, in which you use a handheld GPS to locate hidden objects, each of which contains a physical logbook you sign when you find it. This whole premise fascinated me, and I discovered that the number of geocaches lurking around me, no matter where I went, was prodigious. Even before I owned a GPS, I set out to find a few, and once I did — in early 2008 — I was hooked. And, if you have ever visited this blog, you probably know that I've been hard at it ever since.

There were actually several "Lyra's Lair" caches, all numbered, hidden in and around Martinsville (and elsewhere in Virginia, for that matter). There is one — number 4 — that has been leering at me since I started caching. It was hidden back in 2002, and it resides up on Turkeycock Mountain, a few miles northeast of town. The cache location is pretty remote — about four miles from the nearest gate, and the gates are closed when it's not hunting season. Last night, a fellow geocacher, Mr. Todd "ttbiker" Briggs, sent me a message, wondering whether I might be interested in attempting this long-lurking oldie. Since, fortuitously, I happened to be in Martinsville at the time, I figured sure, why not.

Now, since I was a youngster, I've heard tales of the Turkeycock Mountain rattlesnakes. The place is supposed to be infested with them. Even last night, a friend of Todd's admonished him to beware of rattlesnakes. However, there's a cache in those woods, and when there's a cache in the woods, the rattlesnakes are just going to have to suck it up. Sulk if you must, snakes.

The morning proved drizzly and foggy, but we both preferred this to hot, muggy weather. Turns out, we both quite enjoyed the rather eerie atmosphere the dense mist provided. The hike out to the cache was virtually all uphill, but mostly on gravel surface, with little bushwhacking until we actually reached ground zero. It took several minutes of hunting, but soon enough, Todd called "Found it!"

Those are welcome words when you've undertaken a four-mile hike uphill specifically to find a cache.

The hike back was a bit easier, since it was mostly downhill. The fog remained with us for the entire journey, at times getting so thick we could barely see a thing beyond the road's edge. We did notice one object we had failed to see on our way to the cache — a sign for a graveyard dating back to the 1800s. Of the graves themselves, we could find nothing apart from an ancient, weathered stone that might or might not have been a grave marker.

Nor did we find any rattlesnakes. It was almost disappointing — though I can safely say I'd just as soon not tangle with a rattlesnake if he insists on being in a foul mood. Other than fantastic numbers of spiders (shades of Spider Finch Park), a box turtle was one of the few wildlife specimens we encountered during our time out there, though there were plenty of signs of others — deer, opossum, raccoon, and horse tracks, not to mention bizarre human footprints in the mud, heading inbound while we were on our way outbound. Whose could those have been, I wonder!

Conquering Lyra's Lair 4 couldn't have been much more gratifying. And in such good company.

Maybe next time, snakes.
The creeping fog remained with us for the whole journey. One of the few wildlife specimens we encountered Lyra's Lair 4 peeking out from its hiding place Mist obscuring the mountainside beyond the lake

Spider Finch Park

It's been some time since I undertook a pretty big geocaching outing all by my lonesome. I was hoping for the company of a couple of distinguished cachers of my acquaintance today, but, sadly, circumstances didn't work out. So, since I have to travel some distance to hike after caches I haven't already found, I made my way solo toward Lexington, NC, to explore a couple of geocache-rich trails. First was Finch Park, along Abbott's Creek. It's named for the Finch family, but it is apt, considering the proliferation of finches I saw flitting all about the place. In even greater proliferation, however, were spiders, with webs stretched between just about every tree in the woods — most of which I managed to personally discover. Sure enough, it's the season for them, but I've hiked in the woods every spider season for I can't count the years, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen them in such vast numbers. Big ones, little ones, hairy ones, bald ones, dull-colored, bright-colored. Now, I didn't see any of those gigantic, Buick-chomping wolf spiders hanging about, but come nightfall, I guarantee you, those woods will be crawling with them. It would be most interesting to go out there spider hunting at night with a bright flashlight....

Upon my egress from the trail, I found myself wrapped like a mummy in spiderweb, so I took the opportunity to de-web myself. From there, I headed over to City Lake Park, a few miles to the north, which is a bit more extensive, trail-wise. The terrain is generally moderate, certainly compared to the Haw River Trail I hiked a couple of weeks back (see "Haw River Bison," September 2, 2013), though once you get out a ways, the trail peters out, and the bushwhacking occasionally requires considerable effort. I was most taken with one particular cache that required an enjoyable tree-climb; it's not as high as all that, though you sure as hell wouldn't want to fall out (unless you're one of those who bounce when dropped from the heights).

At the end of the day, I had put in about six miles, plus the climb, and added 27 caches to my total (which now stands at 6,274). I will tell you this, I haven't been this sore in a long while; the legs are aching as if King Kong gave them a couple of good tugs. When I got home, I rounded out the evening with some of the best barbecued spare ribs I ever made — even better than my dad's, which I didn't think I would ever manage. Perhaps when I'm not quite so exhausted, I'll post the recipe.

I sleep now.

Click images to enlarge.
Looking up from the base of a massive, three-trunked ghostwood tree. Wow, Bob, Wow! The dam at Lexington's City Lake Park King Kong's water faucets Big mama tree at Finch Park, which towers over everything else in the woods. L: Vampire tree at Finch Park; R: Yeah, the cache is on up there a ways. Ahh! Another slimed ammo can. Shoggoths?

The Captured Bird

On the heels of The Hound, here's another rather Lovecraftian short film for your enjoyment. This one is The Captured Bird, written and directed by Canadian writer/filmmaker Jovanka Vuckovic, produced by Jason Lapeyre, and executive produced by Guillermo del Toro. In this one, the atmospheric music and visuals come together to create a perfectly creepy mood — to me, it's just the ticket for a Friday the 13th, not to mention a fine lead-in to the Halloween season (my favorite time of year). The ending quite makes me smile.

The complete seven-and-a-half-minute film is available on YouTube (The Captured Bird) and can be downloaded or purchased on CD with a selection of extra features directly from watch.thecapturedbird.com.

Looky looky.

Anthony Penta's Adaptation of HPL's "The Hound"

I had no idea this amateur production existed until it was recently shared on Facebook. H. P. Lovecraft's 1922 short story "The Hound" is rarely considered among his major works, but I have always enjoyed its grim tone, Poe-esque prose, and rather amusing depiction of human decadence. This 1997 video adaptation, originally produced by Anthony Penta on SVHS tape, has been digitally restored and is available for free streaming or download on Vimeo. It stars Scott Hoye and Steve Toth (who also composed the eerie score). I'm not overly fond of the narration, but the imagery and overall atmosphere could not better capture the story's deviant characters and overwhelming sense of impending doom. The combination of music, deeply shadowed visuals, and slow, tense pace make this little production far more effective than any single big-budget adaptation of Lovecraft's work. It runs about 18 minutes long, so it's less than a third of an hour of your time well spent. Give 'er a look: H. P. Lovecraft's The Hound

Things That Go Bump...

...and thump and thud and rumble and scrabble and crash and scrape and bang and growl. Yeah... last night. 2:40 AM. I awake to a sudden heavy thud against the house. First thing I do is consult the FEWS (Feline Early Warning System). If cats are paying attention, I pay attention. Sure enough, all four of them are on the alert. Another heavy thump, and cats tear downstairs, clearly alarmed. Before I know it, there are sounds of something moving around the house, though it's difficult to tell where the racket is coming from. It's everywhere, all at the same time — around the side by the fence, on the front porch, on the back porch, up on the roof. Then there's growling. Deep, angry growling. On and on it goes, and I turn on all the outside lights, trying to get a glimpse through the windows of whatever is out there. But no... it's definitely on the roof, and now it sounds like it's tearing its way into the house....

Another rapid scrabbling, and a final thump out by the fence. I wait with bated breath, but no further sound comes from out there. Eventually, the cats slink out from under the kitchen table, behind the couch, under the dining room chairs... all the places the bravest souls go to defend Dad against deadly attack. Then they remind me that, since I am awake, it is only proper I should fill the dinner bowls.

I'm guessing the ruckus was a couple of riled coons or possums, but from the noise, you'd think Larry Talbot was out there on a bender — though I'm pretty sure it wasn't a full moon last night. At least I can take comfort knowing the alarm system is functioning beautifully.

A Romp... or a Stomp... Through the Atomic Age

About a year ago, I had an advance look at Atomic Drive-In, a novella by fellow kaijuphile Mike Bogue (see "Coming Soon to an Atomic Drive-In Near You," July 30, 2012). At the time, its release details were still a bit sketchy, but the book is now available as a trade paperback and is soon to be released for Kindle at Amazon.com.

Here's the author's description:

"A world-bridging ’57 Chevy whisks friends Brent Sanders and Jerry Mahon to a nuke-ravaged USA. There, Brent and Jerry join the patrons of a drive-in movie theatre to wage nightly combat against gigantic mutant monsters. Amidst this life and death apocalypse, Brent falls in love with Lori Carpenter, a mysterious young woman who conceals a terrifying truth. For despite the atomic horrors Brent has already confronted in this post-nuked America, he doesn’t know the true meaning of fear until he discovers Lori’s dreadful secret, and then there is no turning back.

"In addition to Atomic Drive-In, the book includes five short stories featuring — in order of appearance — paranormal plants, roads not taken, Kaiju infestation, nanotech revenge, and Frankenstein’s Monster at Christmas."

The striking cover art is by Todd Tennant. To check out the whole package, go here: Mike Bogue's Atomic Drive-In. It's a heap o' good fun.