I should have seen this in the theatre. I wanted to - badly. I'd seen the previews and was convinced I'd enjoy it. But, then the reviews came out, and a lot of the ones I saw weren't very flattering. They took issue with the story, the action, the message, whatever. In fact, if you look at a review-aggregator like Rotten Tomatoes, you'll find the reviews are split pretty evenly between positive and negative. People love it or hate it, I guess.
We finally got to watch it this week - we had it as soon as it was available from Netflix. It's a terrific movie.
The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic western samurai movie. It's got the lone wanderer (Denzel Washington) - a blademaster and gunslinger who's traveling west on a vague mission, carrying a book. The wanderer meets the local tyrant, Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who rules a small "wild-west" town, sending out raiding parties in search of a book that he believes will increase his power. The tyrant recognizes the wanderer's skills and tries to recruit him, introducing him to his blind slave-girl Claudia (Jennifer Beals) and ordering her daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) to seduce him as an enticement to stay in the town. Solace discovers the book, innocently informs the tyrant, and then joins the wanderer on the road. Carnegie, desperate for the power he believes the book could give him, sets off in pursuit with a squad of heavily-armed desperadoes in armored cars.
I enjoy post-apocalyptic worlds. The desperation of those living in the shadow of civilization, surviving off of its scraps, is fascinating to me. They're forced to return to the "old ways" of cooking over campfires and hunting with bows, all while surrounded by the shattered remnants of the riches and luxurious excesses that we take for granted today. Which of us, we who have time to read (and write) blogs on our broadband-connected computers rather than toiling in the fields from before sunup till after sundown isn't living like a prince compared to 99.99% of the population of the Earth just a few hundred years ago?
I also like the "lone wanderer" figure, whether it's Clint Eastwood in a Sergio Leone movie or Roland from Stephen King's Dark Tower series or the unnamed protagonist from the Fallout games. This guy is alone against the world, yet he manages to hold his own through skill, discipline, and steely-eyed courage. He refuses to give up - even manages to win - when the rest of us would curl up in weeping, thumb-sucking balls in the corner. The bad guys always have all the advantages - men, weapons, supplies, you name it - yet they just can't... quite... kill... the hero.
And so it is with The Book of Eli. It's a movie about the power of faith in something larger than yourself, but it's not a particularly religious movie and certainly isn't pedantic. It's a movie about the little guy somehow overcoming impossible odds because he's better than the rest and because he keeps the faith even when everything is bleakest. It's a film where you can see yourself as you'd be if you had to live off the ruins of modern society. Would you be the man driven by faith to spend thirty years walking from one side of the blasted continent to the other? Or would you be one of the cannibals, subsisting on the flesh of your fellows?
Speaking of which, there's one other set of notable characters who take a fine turn in the film - that of the old couple George and Martha. Their scene isn't uproarious, but is one of the funnier in the films, made more remarkable by the casting. Old George is played by none other than Harry Potter's Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), while Martha is portrayed by Frances de la Tour, who played Madame Maxime, the giant-sized headmistress of one of the rival schools of wizardry in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
The Book of Eli has the ideal combination of action, memorable characters, message and gritty setting. It's a terrific story (by long-time computer game journalist Gary Whitta), told through superb acting and beautiful cinematography. I regret missing it on the big screen, but enjoyed it immensely on my medium-sized one. I rate The Book of Eli an A and recommend it highly.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Treehouse
When I was a kid, I always kind of wanted a treehouse. You see them on TV and stuff - always built by professional theatrical carpenters, of course - and they just look like the ultimate in cool. In reality, I doubt I'd have had much practical use for one - they seem like they'd be more fun when you have a bunch of friends hanging around and you can use the treehouse as your HQ for all sorts of hijinks, which wasn't the case for me. I made do with the woods out back, which was just as cool in its own way.
My cousins, on the other hand, had the real deal. My uncle - my mother's brother Larry - was a wood-worker and had built a true masterpiece around a large tree on one side of their house. It wasn't exactly what you think of as a treehouse - usually a box on stilts or somehow wedged up in the branches of a tree, but in some ways it was even cooler. This one was more like a tree-deck. It was a two story-swirl of wooden walkways and ladders twining around and between the large boles of a big tree.
It was perfect for running around and climbing up and down and giving chase or rallying the troops. Whenever there was a birthday party (which was most often when we visited), all the kids (which were 95% boys) would charge the tree-house like pirates boarding a rich merchant galley. Alliances would form and break. Rules of engagement would be proffered, accepted, and then violated when they became inconvenient. Battle would ebb and flow from the ship out to their woods, then back to the treehouse, now no longer a ship but a redoubtable fortress of timber palisade and stone battlements.
That was how we played. Sure, we had video consoles (my cousins' Atari 5200 was much nicer than our own beloved Atari 2600), comic books, television and the like, but as much as we liked them, we didn't need them. Sometimes I'm not sure kids still know how to have a good time without gadgets to feed them entertainment. No gadgets for us, but an elaborate tree-house sure didn't hurt.
My cousins, on the other hand, had the real deal. My uncle - my mother's brother Larry - was a wood-worker and had built a true masterpiece around a large tree on one side of their house. It wasn't exactly what you think of as a treehouse - usually a box on stilts or somehow wedged up in the branches of a tree, but in some ways it was even cooler. This one was more like a tree-deck. It was a two story-swirl of wooden walkways and ladders twining around and between the large boles of a big tree.
It was perfect for running around and climbing up and down and giving chase or rallying the troops. Whenever there was a birthday party (which was most often when we visited), all the kids (which were 95% boys) would charge the tree-house like pirates boarding a rich merchant galley. Alliances would form and break. Rules of engagement would be proffered, accepted, and then violated when they became inconvenient. Battle would ebb and flow from the ship out to their woods, then back to the treehouse, now no longer a ship but a redoubtable fortress of timber palisade and stone battlements.
That was how we played. Sure, we had video consoles (my cousins' Atari 5200 was much nicer than our own beloved Atari 2600), comic books, television and the like, but as much as we liked them, we didn't need them. Sometimes I'm not sure kids still know how to have a good time without gadgets to feed them entertainment. No gadgets for us, but an elaborate tree-house sure didn't hurt.
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Mingulay Boat Song
This appears to be a song, like many popular "Renn Faire" folk songs these days, written as if it were an ancient Celtic tune. In fact, it's a creation of the 20th Century. Another example, the very popular "Wild Mountain Thyme," was written in 1957 and is even still under copyright. According to the (completely un-sourced and therefore suspect) Wikipedia entry for The Mingulay Boat Song, the lyrics were written as recently as 1937, though the usual tune is much older.
These two tunes have an interesting history, nonetheless. - at least around the Sterling Renaissance Festival. The final event of each day's festival program is the Pubsing, where the whole cast and many of the musicians gather to sing songs and end the day. It's a very nice gathering, almost a ceremony. You can look at the book of sheet music available at the faire's Remembrance Shoppe to see how much the Pubsing has changed in the last 15-20 years, but while some of the songs may be different, the spirit remains the same. And then, as now, the final song of the Pubsing is dedicated to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I of England, whom the festivities are meant to be honoring.
The cast at the faire, by and large, must audition for their parts every year, and some of the actors and roles change from season to season. Certain of the cast members, however, are consistently the same and, for all I know, have the roles "locked in." Either way, the Queen role has tended to be played by the same actress year after year after year. A few years ago, long-running Queen Baj Burinski retired after some 15+ years, which was sort of a big deal. The new Queen Elizabeth, Maria Wechsler, also has other important jobs in the training of the actors for the faire, and I presume that the prior Queen did as well. As such, this actress is much like the actual Queen in the way she leads the players to success year after year. I have no doubt that her retirement was a major event for the cast. Sadly, I've recently learned that Baj passed away shortly thereafter.
The final song of the Pubsing, as I mentioned, is dedicated to the Queen. Previously, this song had been "Wild Mountain Thyme," a lovely and very popular song of love and togetherness that was a great fit both as a tribute to Her Majesty and as an end to the day's festivities. When the former Queen actor stepped down, the festival actually retired that song, as a tribute to her. They no longer perform it at all during the Pubsing (which is a downer if you're a fan of the song, but most likely you can find it performed by one of the other bands somewhere during the day). For the "coronation" of the new Queen, they introduced a completely different song - one that I'd never heard anywhere at the festival before - the Mingulay Boat Song. The idea was that the Queen was like a ship's captain, sailing the "ship" of England through troubled waters and home to loved ones. Presumably, if Ms. Wechsler retires at some point, they'll retire that song as well. But, for now, it's a very nice end to each wonderful day at the Sterling Renaissance Festival.
The version of the song they perform is, as far as I can tell, unique. It mixes lyrics from at least two different versions of the song that I was able to find online, and changes some of the particulars of the wording as well. For those who might like to sing along at the Pubsing or perform it at home, I give you the Mingulay Boat Song:
Mingulay Boat Song
Intro: [G]
Chorus:
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
[G] What care we though, [D] white the [G] Minch is,
What care [D] we for [G] wind or [C] weather?
Let her [G] go, boys, [D] every [G] inch is
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
Chorus:
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
[G] Wives are waiting [D] by the [G] pier heads, or
Looking [D] seaward [G] from the [C] heather;
Pull her [G] 'round, boys, [D] and we'll [G] anchor,
Ere the [D] sun sets [G] on [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
Chorus:
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
(Softly)
[G] Ship’s return now [D] heavy [G] laden
Mothers [D] holdin’ [G] bairns a- [C] cryin’
They’ll re- [G] turn, though [D] ere the [G] sun sets
They’ll [D] return [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
Chorus (x2):
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
We’re sailing [D] home-ward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
These two tunes have an interesting history, nonetheless. - at least around the Sterling Renaissance Festival. The final event of each day's festival program is the Pubsing, where the whole cast and many of the musicians gather to sing songs and end the day. It's a very nice gathering, almost a ceremony. You can look at the book of sheet music available at the faire's Remembrance Shoppe to see how much the Pubsing has changed in the last 15-20 years, but while some of the songs may be different, the spirit remains the same. And then, as now, the final song of the Pubsing is dedicated to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I of England, whom the festivities are meant to be honoring.
The cast at the faire, by and large, must audition for their parts every year, and some of the actors and roles change from season to season. Certain of the cast members, however, are consistently the same and, for all I know, have the roles "locked in." Either way, the Queen role has tended to be played by the same actress year after year after year. A few years ago, long-running Queen Baj Burinski retired after some 15+ years, which was sort of a big deal. The new Queen Elizabeth, Maria Wechsler, also has other important jobs in the training of the actors for the faire, and I presume that the prior Queen did as well. As such, this actress is much like the actual Queen in the way she leads the players to success year after year. I have no doubt that her retirement was a major event for the cast. Sadly, I've recently learned that Baj passed away shortly thereafter.
The final song of the Pubsing, as I mentioned, is dedicated to the Queen. Previously, this song had been "Wild Mountain Thyme," a lovely and very popular song of love and togetherness that was a great fit both as a tribute to Her Majesty and as an end to the day's festivities. When the former Queen actor stepped down, the festival actually retired that song, as a tribute to her. They no longer perform it at all during the Pubsing (which is a downer if you're a fan of the song, but most likely you can find it performed by one of the other bands somewhere during the day). For the "coronation" of the new Queen, they introduced a completely different song - one that I'd never heard anywhere at the festival before - the Mingulay Boat Song. The idea was that the Queen was like a ship's captain, sailing the "ship" of England through troubled waters and home to loved ones. Presumably, if Ms. Wechsler retires at some point, they'll retire that song as well. But, for now, it's a very nice end to each wonderful day at the Sterling Renaissance Festival.
The version of the song they perform is, as far as I can tell, unique. It mixes lyrics from at least two different versions of the song that I was able to find online, and changes some of the particulars of the wording as well. For those who might like to sing along at the Pubsing or perform it at home, I give you the Mingulay Boat Song:
Mingulay Boat Song
Intro: [G]
Chorus:
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
[G] What care we though, [D] white the [G] Minch is,
What care [D] we for [G] wind or [C] weather?
Let her [G] go, boys, [D] every [G] inch is
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
Chorus:
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
[G] Wives are waiting [D] by the [G] pier heads, or
Looking [D] seaward [G] from the [C] heather;
Pull her [G] 'round, boys, [D] and we'll [G] anchor,
Ere the [D] sun sets [G] on [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
Chorus:
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
(Softly)
[G] Ship’s return now [D] heavy [G] laden
Mothers [D] holdin’ [G] bairns a- [C] cryin’
They’ll re- [G] turn, though [D] ere the [G] sun sets
They’ll [D] return [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
Chorus (x2):
[G] Heel yo ho, boys, [D] let 'er [G] go, boys,
Keep her [D] head 'round [G] into the [C] weather;
Heel yo [G] ho, boys, [D] let her [G] go, boys,
Sailing [D] homeward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
We’re sailing [D] home-ward [G] to [C] Mingu- [G] lay.
Friday, July 16, 2010
[Book Update] Chapter 15 Results So Far
On Tuesday, I lamented my ongoing difficulties with Chapter 15. I wasn't super-happy with it after making major revisions over the weekend, and it wasn't especially well-received on Monday evening at the Writer's Group. Which isn't to say it was panned by any means, just that the group (accurately) noted some significant issues with it that needed to be fixed. The main POV character was too introspective and there was too much imagery and detail, which distracted them, as readers, from the chapter's action. It's a chapter set during a battle that, if not exactly pitched (for the defenders, anyway), still ought to seem tense and dangerous. The chapter I wrote had too much of the POV character looking around and reflecting on his life and otherwise getting off-topic from the battle, which they didn't care for.
I have not written anything since then, this week. That is not a coincidence. My mind is working - at its own speed - on fixing this chapter, but it's a huge task for my wee little brain. It will most likely, once I get my thoughts in the right place, involve starting Chapter 15 with a blank page and reworking it from the beginning, pasting in pieces of the old draft that worked well, interspersing them with new material and cutting out some stuff that didn't work. Doing this hurts my brain, so I find myself having to work up the nerve to start on it. This sort of reconstructive surgery isn't something I feel I'm good at - I often end up with a finished product that's less than I'd hoped it would be, and I find that it took longer to get there than I wanted and, often, that I left out things that I'd badly wanted to include. These may be concepts that are necessary to the story (or just interesting) or, in some cases, well-written selections of text that I failed to carry over from the old draft and no longer fit cleanly into the new draft. These especially tick me off. When I'm lucky enough to write something really well, the last thing I want to do is leave it out not because it didn't belong but because I was negligent and I forgot about it.
So that's where we stand. I've made some progress - I wrote out a page by hand that I think represents how Chapter 15 Mark IV will begin, and I've got some ideas about the order in which to reveal certain information that should (I hope) help to build and sustain dramatic tension. What I really need to do is sit and take notes about the prior/current revision of the chapter so that I can document clearly those things that need to carry into the new draft and, better still, put them into the correct order. But, again, not my favorite thing to do, so I'm procrastinating. Luckily, this sort of procrastination often occurs when my subconscious is diligently chewing on the problem and frequently results in really useful and valuable ideas, so I've learned not to get too upset about it. Still, when the week's over and I've written very little, I'm going to wish I'd gotten more done whether or not my subconscious produced some magic tricks in the interim.
I have not written anything since then, this week. That is not a coincidence. My mind is working - at its own speed - on fixing this chapter, but it's a huge task for my wee little brain. It will most likely, once I get my thoughts in the right place, involve starting Chapter 15 with a blank page and reworking it from the beginning, pasting in pieces of the old draft that worked well, interspersing them with new material and cutting out some stuff that didn't work. Doing this hurts my brain, so I find myself having to work up the nerve to start on it. This sort of reconstructive surgery isn't something I feel I'm good at - I often end up with a finished product that's less than I'd hoped it would be, and I find that it took longer to get there than I wanted and, often, that I left out things that I'd badly wanted to include. These may be concepts that are necessary to the story (or just interesting) or, in some cases, well-written selections of text that I failed to carry over from the old draft and no longer fit cleanly into the new draft. These especially tick me off. When I'm lucky enough to write something really well, the last thing I want to do is leave it out not because it didn't belong but because I was negligent and I forgot about it.
So that's where we stand. I've made some progress - I wrote out a page by hand that I think represents how Chapter 15 Mark IV will begin, and I've got some ideas about the order in which to reveal certain information that should (I hope) help to build and sustain dramatic tension. What I really need to do is sit and take notes about the prior/current revision of the chapter so that I can document clearly those things that need to carry into the new draft and, better still, put them into the correct order. But, again, not my favorite thing to do, so I'm procrastinating. Luckily, this sort of procrastination often occurs when my subconscious is diligently chewing on the problem and frequently results in really useful and valuable ideas, so I've learned not to get too upset about it. Still, when the week's over and I've written very little, I'm going to wish I'd gotten more done whether or not my subconscious produced some magic tricks in the interim.
Poetry
I don't often write poems, yet I am a poet. My poetry is the life-giver, the mother and father joined as one, the plasma-hot sun spark that embraces the people and places in my stories. It enfolds the mere words, exhales over and through them the breath that shocks them off the page and into the living minds of my readers.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
My Junk
Ha! After "My Hair" and "My Arm," you thought this was going to be another up-close-and-personal look at my various body parts, didn't you?! Woo-hoo! That would have been a long one! Er, I mean... never mind.
I have too much stuff. Not as much stuff as my wife and kids, luckily, but still I have stuff I don't really need but cannot bear to part with. Given the egregious lack of storage space in our house, this is arguably a serious problem. Or just a nuisance. Mostly that.
For instance, when I worked at the Turning Stone Casino, I was required to wear "formal business attire" every day - eg. a dress shirt, suit, tie, etc. In order to get maximum life out of my wearing of each suit, I had made for me additional sets of pants for two of them, since you can usually only wear the pants a couple of times between dry-cleanings, but can generally wear the jacket 4-6 times before it needs to be cleaned (this is both because it's got a dress shirt to help keep it clean and also because the first thing you do when you enter a room is remove your jacket and hang it over your chair. The damn things ought to be outlawed. But I digress). I no longer need to dress in formal attire, well, pretty much ever. Funerals every year or so... that's about it. So I don't need my Good Suit, or my two Plain Suits with the Extra Pants, or my Other Good Suit That I Really Liked When I Bought It But Now I Think Makes Me Look Like a Mobster. One or even two might be okay, but I certainly don't need four (plus the extra pants). Moreover, I arguably don't need all of the dress shirts I got at the same time, especially the ones that aren't "wrinkle-free," because hell I'm never ever wearing those. Iron? Me? Bah! Another brief digression:
I used to travel a lot on business, often with my buddy Warren who was the Sales Manager who sold the services that my Service Operation delivered. Warren was ex-military and, unlike a lot of guys, actually did know how to iron. On more than one occasion, I would meet Warren at the door to his hotel room in the morning before a tradeshow or client meeting, he'd take one look at me, and order me to remove my wrinkled shirt (which I had already attempted - and failed - to iron) so he could iron it properly.That should adequately highlight the breadth of my ironing abilities.
So I've got at least three superfluous suits and probably ten shirts that I'll never wear again. And I'm not including things like my Renn Faire garb, my gorilla suit and my Santa suit (shh, don't tell the wee ones) which I wear rarely but do wear at least once a year. It all takes up quite a bit of space, and no doubt contributed to the collapse of my closet rod (and its attached shelf) earlier this year. Attempts to replace said rod with an "easy-to-assemble" closet organizer have been, so far, fruitless.
I also have an entire bookshelf of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons materials from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. It's in the basement so it's not really in the way, but it's one of those "I'd like to have reason to use this stuff again someday, but it's sort of unlikely I actually will" sort of things. You see, it's all 1st Edition and 2nd Edition material, and the game is now up to 4th Edition. I don't like 4th Edition, but I do own some of the basic rulebooks for it. I'd like to introduce my kids to the game at some point, when they're all old enough, but it's a tough call. If I work from 2nd Edition materials, I'd be limited to what I already own because the different versions are largely incompatible. I do have a LOT of stuff, however, so we could probably get by for a long time. What I don't have, though, are some of the newer "get an adventure up and running really really fast" sorts of materials that would be nice since I just don't have time to build an elaborate campaign around a series of interconnected adventures the way I did when I was a teenager.
The alternative would be to use the 4th Edition stuff. It has some nice, easy-to-use materials, but all of my old 2nd Edition stuff would be functionally unusable (I could mine it for ideas, but all of the game-play details would be wrong). On the one hand I really dislike the new rules, which seem to be trying to turn the Pen-and-Paper Role-Playing Game into the offline equivalent of an Online Role-Playing Game like World of Warcraft. Which I think is stupid, but there you are. On the other hand, if my kids ever decide to play D&D with anyone other than me, they would almost certainly be using the most recent set of rules, rather than the 20-year-old out-of-print rules I have, so it might be better to just start them on those. Sigh. Ayway, add that to the list of stuff of dubious utility cluttering up my house.
Related to the above, I have several boxes of Dragon Magazine that I will not throw away. Why not? Who knows? All of the old issues are available online as PDFs at Wizards of the Coast's website, so it's not as if I'm keeping them for the quality of their information (all of which, again, is largely out of date unless I'm using the old 2nd Edition rulebooks. Which, as I noted above, I technically could). I could argue that I'm keeping them for their beautiful cover art, except that I have them in boxes where I can't actually see it, so that's bogus. I could argue that I'm saving them for their potential long-term resale-value, since I have issues going back to the single-digits and, if I remember right, I have pretty much every issue from about #20 through about #200 or so. My gradeschool friend Art Prest traded me all of the really old issues, which I read thoroughly and decided I adored enough to get a subscription, which I maintained for around ten years give-or-take. However I have no idea whether they're worth anything at all, individually or as a collection, and have no intention of finding out anytime soon, so for the moment they're just taking up space.
Likewise, I have some unknown quantity of Dungeon Magazine, also in boxes, and also useful only if I ever decided to run a 2nd Edition AD&D game again. Which, you know, could theoretically happen, I suppose.
Comics! I have comics! Sadly, I got rid of my childhood comic collection when I was 13 and we moved, so all of my old Rom, Spaceknight and Superman Family and Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Justice League and Legion of Superheroes comics are long gone. I'm pretty sure I sold them for a pittance, too. The guy who bought the entire box seemed pretty happy, which is always a sure sign you've underpriced your stuff at a garage sale. Ah well. Luckily (I suppose), I now have several large and medium-sized boxes of comics that I started collecting back in the mid 1990s. I have quite a few X-Men comics, especially spin-offs like Bishop and Cable. I hated collecting X-Men, though, because you had to subscribe to about 8 different titles to get the complete story through all of the cross-overs. I also have dozens and dozens of What If? comics, as well as pretty much every comic that J. Michael Straczynski ever wrote, right up to the brand-new Superman and Wonder Woman comics released last month (including the all new and arguably improved Wonder Woman outfit that was widely covered by the media. No, I don't have the outfit, just the comic she wears it in. Perv.).
I don't know when or if I will ever read these comics again, or if my kids will ever want them, or what to do with them. But I can't just throw them out, I'm not optimistic that they're worth anything, and they won't stand neatly on a bookshelf, so into the boxes they have gone. Boxes and boxes. Sigh.
If you don't include all of the novels in my library (which I cherish and do actually re-read from time-to-time), that's the bulk of my junk collection, but it's enough to be in the way. It pales by comparison to my wife and kids' junk collections, but it's still substantial. As I think about it, though, I am resolved. I'm getting rid of the wrinkle-prone shirts (except the fancy ones that I like and do wear on occasion - there's only three) and probably a couple of the suits. That will free up closet space and be that much less that I need to cram into it when I finish the organizer and have to put everything back.
See how easy that was?
No, I'm not getting rid of the other stuff. I just need to build an additon on the house so there's room for it.
I have too much stuff. Not as much stuff as my wife and kids, luckily, but still I have stuff I don't really need but cannot bear to part with. Given the egregious lack of storage space in our house, this is arguably a serious problem. Or just a nuisance. Mostly that.
For instance, when I worked at the Turning Stone Casino, I was required to wear "formal business attire" every day - eg. a dress shirt, suit, tie, etc. In order to get maximum life out of my wearing of each suit, I had made for me additional sets of pants for two of them, since you can usually only wear the pants a couple of times between dry-cleanings, but can generally wear the jacket 4-6 times before it needs to be cleaned (this is both because it's got a dress shirt to help keep it clean and also because the first thing you do when you enter a room is remove your jacket and hang it over your chair. The damn things ought to be outlawed. But I digress). I no longer need to dress in formal attire, well, pretty much ever. Funerals every year or so... that's about it. So I don't need my Good Suit, or my two Plain Suits with the Extra Pants, or my Other Good Suit That I Really Liked When I Bought It But Now I Think Makes Me Look Like a Mobster. One or even two might be okay, but I certainly don't need four (plus the extra pants). Moreover, I arguably don't need all of the dress shirts I got at the same time, especially the ones that aren't "wrinkle-free," because hell I'm never ever wearing those. Iron? Me? Bah! Another brief digression:
I used to travel a lot on business, often with my buddy Warren who was the Sales Manager who sold the services that my Service Operation delivered. Warren was ex-military and, unlike a lot of guys, actually did know how to iron. On more than one occasion, I would meet Warren at the door to his hotel room in the morning before a tradeshow or client meeting, he'd take one look at me, and order me to remove my wrinkled shirt (which I had already attempted - and failed - to iron) so he could iron it properly.That should adequately highlight the breadth of my ironing abilities.
So I've got at least three superfluous suits and probably ten shirts that I'll never wear again. And I'm not including things like my Renn Faire garb, my gorilla suit and my Santa suit (shh, don't tell the wee ones) which I wear rarely but do wear at least once a year. It all takes up quite a bit of space, and no doubt contributed to the collapse of my closet rod (and its attached shelf) earlier this year. Attempts to replace said rod with an "easy-to-assemble" closet organizer have been, so far, fruitless.
I also have an entire bookshelf of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons materials from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. It's in the basement so it's not really in the way, but it's one of those "I'd like to have reason to use this stuff again someday, but it's sort of unlikely I actually will" sort of things. You see, it's all 1st Edition and 2nd Edition material, and the game is now up to 4th Edition. I don't like 4th Edition, but I do own some of the basic rulebooks for it. I'd like to introduce my kids to the game at some point, when they're all old enough, but it's a tough call. If I work from 2nd Edition materials, I'd be limited to what I already own because the different versions are largely incompatible. I do have a LOT of stuff, however, so we could probably get by for a long time. What I don't have, though, are some of the newer "get an adventure up and running really really fast" sorts of materials that would be nice since I just don't have time to build an elaborate campaign around a series of interconnected adventures the way I did when I was a teenager.
The alternative would be to use the 4th Edition stuff. It has some nice, easy-to-use materials, but all of my old 2nd Edition stuff would be functionally unusable (I could mine it for ideas, but all of the game-play details would be wrong). On the one hand I really dislike the new rules, which seem to be trying to turn the Pen-and-Paper Role-Playing Game into the offline equivalent of an Online Role-Playing Game like World of Warcraft. Which I think is stupid, but there you are. On the other hand, if my kids ever decide to play D&D with anyone other than me, they would almost certainly be using the most recent set of rules, rather than the 20-year-old out-of-print rules I have, so it might be better to just start them on those. Sigh. Ayway, add that to the list of stuff of dubious utility cluttering up my house.
Related to the above, I have several boxes of Dragon Magazine that I will not throw away. Why not? Who knows? All of the old issues are available online as PDFs at Wizards of the Coast's website, so it's not as if I'm keeping them for the quality of their information (all of which, again, is largely out of date unless I'm using the old 2nd Edition rulebooks. Which, as I noted above, I technically could). I could argue that I'm keeping them for their beautiful cover art, except that I have them in boxes where I can't actually see it, so that's bogus. I could argue that I'm saving them for their potential long-term resale-value, since I have issues going back to the single-digits and, if I remember right, I have pretty much every issue from about #20 through about #200 or so. My gradeschool friend Art Prest traded me all of the really old issues, which I read thoroughly and decided I adored enough to get a subscription, which I maintained for around ten years give-or-take. However I have no idea whether they're worth anything at all, individually or as a collection, and have no intention of finding out anytime soon, so for the moment they're just taking up space.
Likewise, I have some unknown quantity of Dungeon Magazine, also in boxes, and also useful only if I ever decided to run a 2nd Edition AD&D game again. Which, you know, could theoretically happen, I suppose.
Comics! I have comics! Sadly, I got rid of my childhood comic collection when I was 13 and we moved, so all of my old Rom, Spaceknight and Superman Family and Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Justice League and Legion of Superheroes comics are long gone. I'm pretty sure I sold them for a pittance, too. The guy who bought the entire box seemed pretty happy, which is always a sure sign you've underpriced your stuff at a garage sale. Ah well. Luckily (I suppose), I now have several large and medium-sized boxes of comics that I started collecting back in the mid 1990s. I have quite a few X-Men comics, especially spin-offs like Bishop and Cable. I hated collecting X-Men, though, because you had to subscribe to about 8 different titles to get the complete story through all of the cross-overs. I also have dozens and dozens of What If? comics, as well as pretty much every comic that J. Michael Straczynski ever wrote, right up to the brand-new Superman and Wonder Woman comics released last month (including the all new and arguably improved Wonder Woman outfit that was widely covered by the media. No, I don't have the outfit, just the comic she wears it in. Perv.).
I don't know when or if I will ever read these comics again, or if my kids will ever want them, or what to do with them. But I can't just throw them out, I'm not optimistic that they're worth anything, and they won't stand neatly on a bookshelf, so into the boxes they have gone. Boxes and boxes. Sigh.
If you don't include all of the novels in my library (which I cherish and do actually re-read from time-to-time), that's the bulk of my junk collection, but it's enough to be in the way. It pales by comparison to my wife and kids' junk collections, but it's still substantial. As I think about it, though, I am resolved. I'm getting rid of the wrinkle-prone shirts (except the fancy ones that I like and do wear on occasion - there's only three) and probably a couple of the suits. That will free up closet space and be that much less that I need to cram into it when I finish the organizer and have to put everything back.
See how easy that was?
No, I'm not getting rid of the other stuff. I just need to build an additon on the house so there's room for it.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My Arm
Yeah, why not. I'm just going to report at length on each aspect of my Greek-god-like physique. If that god is Dionysus. And yes, I realize that there are depictions of Dionysus that look like this:
But I'm more in mind of the version from Disney's Fantasia:
Anyway, it occurred to me in correspondence with a friend over the weekend that while I'd mentioned a couple weeks ago that I'd injured my arm, I never really explained what happened. It's mildly interesting, if only because it's so inexplicable.
Two weeks ago today, I took the kids to Open Swim after lunch and we were there for a couple of hours. Sometime shortly thereafter, I noticed a stiffness in my upper right arm. As I mowed the lawn that afternoon, the stiffness became more pronounced and began to ache. I found I was having difficulty lifting my arm very high, either out in front or to the side. I tried things like grabbing onto the top of my fence and stretching it, but it didn't seem to help and was very painful, so I stopped. I have no idea whether that made it worse or not, but it certainly didn't get any better. Throughout the evening, it stiffened and turned from an ache to pain. And then to intense pain. Agonizing pain. I tried IcyHot - it did nothing. I tried icepacks, which helped a little, but it was like taking a bucketful of water from a full bathtub. Maybe just a cupful. Oh God, it hurt so much.
I know, you're wondering why the heck I didn't go to the emergency room, right? Yeah, me too. All I can say is that it was 8 or 9 PM by the time it started to really, really hurt, and I was averse to dragging my whole family to the ER at that time of the night if it wasn't critically necessary. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to die or suffer irreperable damage to my arm, so it was just a matter of managing the pain. If it had kept getting worse or if it hadn't been any better by morning, I would have gone. I will say that trying to get to sleep that night was incredibly frustrating - there was simply no position I could sit or lie in that was remotely comfortable enough to sleep. Eventually, I got by with Tylenol and a series of ice packs. It wasn't the most restful night ever, but I survived it.
Over the following week - almost exactly to the hour - my arm got incrementally better. In fact, it was remarkable the way it seemed to improve by about 15% per day, both in terms of decreased pain and in how high I could raise my arm. By last Tuesday, it was completely healed, enough that I was even able to go to karate and complete the workout. I still get stiff twinges now and then, but it's close enough.
So what caused it, you might wonder. So do I, because I'm honestly not sure. I've narrowed it down to the following possibilities:
a) Sometime Tuesday morning, my daughter got the mouthpiece stuck in her trumpet. It's happened before, and the official solution is to take it to the music store where we lease it, and they remove it with a special tool. But it really, really looks like you ought to be able to just yank it out, if only you pull hard enough. So I huffed and I puffed and, well, you get the idea. I was using both hands, plus my legs and back and that sucker still wouldn't come out. We ended up having to take it in anyway. So it's possible I pulled or tore something at that time, but I consider it the least likely cause.
b) I mentioned above that the kids and I went to Open Swim for a couple of hours. It was my first time in the pool in a year or so, and while I'm a capable swimmer, it's easy to imagine that going from "zero to full breast stroke" all at once might have ripped something. I wasn't swimming competitively or anything, but I was using muscles that hadn't seen that sort of action in a while. I consider this the second least (or most) likely cause.
c) At one point in the pool, I picked up my youngest son and tossed him. It was an awkward angle and he's getting heavy for a little kid, so I might have pulled something doing that. I suppose I consider this the most likely cause, though I didn't actually feel any discomfort at the time. However, since I felt no snapping, crackling or popping sensations at any point during the day, I have to go with which activity would seem to have had the highest chance of really messing up my arm, and this one seems like the best candidate.
d) Something else - it may be that something I didn't even think about or notice at the time was the true culprit. I'll never know for sure. I include this possibility if only because none of the ones above are sure-things. I truly don't know what caused my arm to inflame with white-hot searing iron pokers of pure agony.
So that's the story of how my arm went from fine to "It hurts, it hurts, somebody please shoot me!!" to fine once again. All I can say is that it sure was lucky all my karate dojos were closed that week, as there's no way I could have exercised rigorously in that condition. I'm glad it's over.
Anyway, it occurred to me in correspondence with a friend over the weekend that while I'd mentioned a couple weeks ago that I'd injured my arm, I never really explained what happened. It's mildly interesting, if only because it's so inexplicable.
Two weeks ago today, I took the kids to Open Swim after lunch and we were there for a couple of hours. Sometime shortly thereafter, I noticed a stiffness in my upper right arm. As I mowed the lawn that afternoon, the stiffness became more pronounced and began to ache. I found I was having difficulty lifting my arm very high, either out in front or to the side. I tried things like grabbing onto the top of my fence and stretching it, but it didn't seem to help and was very painful, so I stopped. I have no idea whether that made it worse or not, but it certainly didn't get any better. Throughout the evening, it stiffened and turned from an ache to pain. And then to intense pain. Agonizing pain. I tried IcyHot - it did nothing. I tried icepacks, which helped a little, but it was like taking a bucketful of water from a full bathtub. Maybe just a cupful. Oh God, it hurt so much.
I know, you're wondering why the heck I didn't go to the emergency room, right? Yeah, me too. All I can say is that it was 8 or 9 PM by the time it started to really, really hurt, and I was averse to dragging my whole family to the ER at that time of the night if it wasn't critically necessary. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to die or suffer irreperable damage to my arm, so it was just a matter of managing the pain. If it had kept getting worse or if it hadn't been any better by morning, I would have gone. I will say that trying to get to sleep that night was incredibly frustrating - there was simply no position I could sit or lie in that was remotely comfortable enough to sleep. Eventually, I got by with Tylenol and a series of ice packs. It wasn't the most restful night ever, but I survived it.
Over the following week - almost exactly to the hour - my arm got incrementally better. In fact, it was remarkable the way it seemed to improve by about 15% per day, both in terms of decreased pain and in how high I could raise my arm. By last Tuesday, it was completely healed, enough that I was even able to go to karate and complete the workout. I still get stiff twinges now and then, but it's close enough.
So what caused it, you might wonder. So do I, because I'm honestly not sure. I've narrowed it down to the following possibilities:
a) Sometime Tuesday morning, my daughter got the mouthpiece stuck in her trumpet. It's happened before, and the official solution is to take it to the music store where we lease it, and they remove it with a special tool. But it really, really looks like you ought to be able to just yank it out, if only you pull hard enough. So I huffed and I puffed and, well, you get the idea. I was using both hands, plus my legs and back and that sucker still wouldn't come out. We ended up having to take it in anyway. So it's possible I pulled or tore something at that time, but I consider it the least likely cause.
b) I mentioned above that the kids and I went to Open Swim for a couple of hours. It was my first time in the pool in a year or so, and while I'm a capable swimmer, it's easy to imagine that going from "zero to full breast stroke" all at once might have ripped something. I wasn't swimming competitively or anything, but I was using muscles that hadn't seen that sort of action in a while. I consider this the second least (or most) likely cause.
c) At one point in the pool, I picked up my youngest son and tossed him. It was an awkward angle and he's getting heavy for a little kid, so I might have pulled something doing that. I suppose I consider this the most likely cause, though I didn't actually feel any discomfort at the time. However, since I felt no snapping, crackling or popping sensations at any point during the day, I have to go with which activity would seem to have had the highest chance of really messing up my arm, and this one seems like the best candidate.
d) Something else - it may be that something I didn't even think about or notice at the time was the true culprit. I'll never know for sure. I include this possibility if only because none of the ones above are sure-things. I truly don't know what caused my arm to inflame with white-hot searing iron pokers of pure agony.
So that's the story of how my arm went from fine to "It hurts, it hurts, somebody please shoot me!!" to fine once again. All I can say is that it sure was lucky all my karate dojos were closed that week, as there's no way I could have exercised rigorously in that condition. I'm glad it's over.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
[Book Update] The Passion of the Chapter 15
I don't really keep track of such things, but I think Chapter 15 has now probably tied or exceeded chapter 6 for the most dedicated, contiguous time invested in a single chapter. And despite what I thought on Friday evening, I'm not done with it yet. This is a problem, by the way, because I'd planned to take it to the writer's group last night. I'm writing this on Monday morning, so I don't yet know whether or not I made it, but it wasn't going to be easy. My plan (as of that time) is to work on it during the afternoon and if I'm clearly not going to finish in time possibly break out one of my older short stories from college and bring that instead - preferably one that's on my list of stuff to use in some fashion.
So yeah, Chapter 15. I kind of liked it in its orginal format. I initiated a re-write because:
a. I knew the writer's group (some of them, anyway) would hassle me (with the purest of intentions, of course - they want to help me make my work better) about not having much/any dialogue and I wanted to pre-empt that. I know from experience that that won't work - some of the readers won't settle for anything less than an entire chapter of people talking to each other. It's also a lousy reason to make a major change, but you get tired of hearing the same feedback week after week after week, and it actually did fit in with some of the other changes so I allowed it in this case. The chapter currently known as Chapter 16, on the other hand, has something like 3 lines of dialogue in the entire 30+ page chapter and I'm not changing that, so it isn't as if I'm willing to sacrifice what's best for this novel to avoid getting beaten up by my writer's group. I'll take a pounding for Chapter 16 and then move on. It's an awesome chapter.
b. I wanted to give the reader a different perspective on both the action of the chapter (it's the first serious battle in the book) and on the main character (who doesn't tell you much about himself, so I'm trying to let the reader see him through other characters' eyes).
c. I didn't feel that the chapter had enough energy or did a good enough job of showing the fear, weariness, and pain of the defenders (who are meant to be sympathetic characters). The bad guys weren't bad enough and the good guys weren't suffering enough for it to feel like a real battle. I would very much like a soldier who's seen combat to read this and go "Yeah, that's how it would feel to be there." This is tough since I haven't ever been in combat myself (which is good news for friendly forces and no doubt a real disappointment to our nation's enemies), but I need to at least make a good effort. I didn't feel as if the first draft even came close.
There were various other concepts I wanted to include in the chapter - a page-long list of changes, in fact - so after taking a couple of months off from Chapter 15, I started re-writing it about two weeks ago. These are summer weeks, however. I only get a few hours a day (if I'm lucky) to write, so progress was slow. Finally, last Friday, major revision #2 was done and read for my wife to critique.
She liked it a lot and had fairly light feedback, but my wife is too soft on my work. I knew I'd failed again to get it right, despite completely rewriting 85 or 90% of the chapter into a different character's POV and addressing much of my page-long list of desired changes. It's still not right, and, again, I wanted it to be done and ready to present to my writer's group on Monday night. By Sunday afternoon, I had reviewed my notes, and the chapter, and had another half-page of changes I wanted to make. And I still didn't feel like I'd hit on the heart of the problems. I just knew I wasn't satisfied.
Sunday night, before bed, I had a series of inspirations. It all sort of clicked and I knew what I had to do. Part of the chapter had to be moved into a later chapter. This was good because it solved three problems.
1. It will result in Chapter 15 being entirely from the new character's POV, rather than split between him and the protagonist in an 80/20 (approximately) split.
2. It resolved a lingering question of where to put some brief but important action involving an antagonist and some key characters. I didn't have a good place to put this, and now I do.
3. It shortens a chapter that I felt was a bit too long. Though I'll probably end up even longer by the time I'm done making other changes.
I mapped out an order for upcoming chapters (currently Chapter 16 remains chapter 16, and will serve as a break between the contiguous action of Chapters 14/15 and the also-contiguous (mostly) action of Chapters 17/18) and figured out some of the key info I still needed to add to Chapter 15 as well as modification's I'll need to the protagonist's POV when he re-appears in Chapter 17.
So that's the good news - I finally feel like I know what needs to happen with Chapter 15. The question remains (as of this writing): can I make the necessary changes AND print copies in time to get everything in place for the Writer's Group. How's that for a cliffhanger? Yeah, it's not much of one, but I've invested all of my creative juices in this confounded chapter, sorry.
So yeah, Chapter 15. I kind of liked it in its orginal format. I initiated a re-write because:
a. I knew the writer's group (some of them, anyway) would hassle me (with the purest of intentions, of course - they want to help me make my work better) about not having much/any dialogue and I wanted to pre-empt that. I know from experience that that won't work - some of the readers won't settle for anything less than an entire chapter of people talking to each other. It's also a lousy reason to make a major change, but you get tired of hearing the same feedback week after week after week, and it actually did fit in with some of the other changes so I allowed it in this case. The chapter currently known as Chapter 16, on the other hand, has something like 3 lines of dialogue in the entire 30+ page chapter and I'm not changing that, so it isn't as if I'm willing to sacrifice what's best for this novel to avoid getting beaten up by my writer's group. I'll take a pounding for Chapter 16 and then move on. It's an awesome chapter.
b. I wanted to give the reader a different perspective on both the action of the chapter (it's the first serious battle in the book) and on the main character (who doesn't tell you much about himself, so I'm trying to let the reader see him through other characters' eyes).
c. I didn't feel that the chapter had enough energy or did a good enough job of showing the fear, weariness, and pain of the defenders (who are meant to be sympathetic characters). The bad guys weren't bad enough and the good guys weren't suffering enough for it to feel like a real battle. I would very much like a soldier who's seen combat to read this and go "Yeah, that's how it would feel to be there." This is tough since I haven't ever been in combat myself (which is good news for friendly forces and no doubt a real disappointment to our nation's enemies), but I need to at least make a good effort. I didn't feel as if the first draft even came close.
There were various other concepts I wanted to include in the chapter - a page-long list of changes, in fact - so after taking a couple of months off from Chapter 15, I started re-writing it about two weeks ago. These are summer weeks, however. I only get a few hours a day (if I'm lucky) to write, so progress was slow. Finally, last Friday, major revision #2 was done and read for my wife to critique.
She liked it a lot and had fairly light feedback, but my wife is too soft on my work. I knew I'd failed again to get it right, despite completely rewriting 85 or 90% of the chapter into a different character's POV and addressing much of my page-long list of desired changes. It's still not right, and, again, I wanted it to be done and ready to present to my writer's group on Monday night. By Sunday afternoon, I had reviewed my notes, and the chapter, and had another half-page of changes I wanted to make. And I still didn't feel like I'd hit on the heart of the problems. I just knew I wasn't satisfied.
Sunday night, before bed, I had a series of inspirations. It all sort of clicked and I knew what I had to do. Part of the chapter had to be moved into a later chapter. This was good because it solved three problems.
1. It will result in Chapter 15 being entirely from the new character's POV, rather than split between him and the protagonist in an 80/20 (approximately) split.
2. It resolved a lingering question of where to put some brief but important action involving an antagonist and some key characters. I didn't have a good place to put this, and now I do.
3. It shortens a chapter that I felt was a bit too long. Though I'll probably end up even longer by the time I'm done making other changes.
I mapped out an order for upcoming chapters (currently Chapter 16 remains chapter 16, and will serve as a break between the contiguous action of Chapters 14/15 and the also-contiguous (mostly) action of Chapters 17/18) and figured out some of the key info I still needed to add to Chapter 15 as well as modification's I'll need to the protagonist's POV when he re-appears in Chapter 17.
So that's the good news - I finally feel like I know what needs to happen with Chapter 15. The question remains (as of this writing): can I make the necessary changes AND print copies in time to get everything in place for the Writer's Group. How's that for a cliffhanger? Yeah, it's not much of one, but I've invested all of my creative juices in this confounded chapter, sorry.
Monday, July 12, 2010
My Hair
Recent articles about Iran's official Islamic haircuts got me thinking about my own hair over the years. Leaving aside for the moment the ridiculousness of the Iranian state's need to control the most minute aspects of its peoples' lives simply because it can, I've actually only had about three or four hairstyles that I can recall in my forty-odd year lifespan.
As a kid, I had a pretty simple cut - it was a classic style that would have fit in just fine in the 1950s. It's also the style I went back to around the time I got married and have had ever since.
But every once in a while, I apparently feel the need to jazz things up. Beginning in the mid 1980s, this meant letting my hair grow long in the back, and then having it cut short in the front, parted in the middle and feathered back on the sides. Now, some people will tell you that this style was, at that time, called a mullet. This is patently false and I've got nothing less than the Oxford English Dictionary backing me up. According to the OED, that awful name was "Apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip-hop group the Beastie Boys" in a song that didn't come out until 1994. By which time everybody who wasn't a redneck had already long-since ditched that 80s hairstyle and moved on to something else. When I was wearing my hair like that, a mullet was simply a fish.
Anywho, I had it down to the middle of my back at one point, but that got old after a few years so I went in the other direction - leaving it parted in the middle but going with a brush-cut in the back. When I started to climb the corporate ladder, I bought myself a real watch (a shiny analog one instead of a cheap Timex) and went back to the more conservative side-part. I did this completely forgetting that it was essentially the same haircut I'd worn in gradeschool.
Lately, I'd begun to feel that it made me look like a junior Rod Blagojavich, the way it hung in front of my forehead when it got long. Since I can only handle the time and expense of a haircut about once every three months, it's often quite long, so this started to seem like a problem. I needed something new.
It's also worth noting that in the last year, my short, reasonably fashionable goatee (technically it's a Van Dyke, but nobody actually calls it that so whatever) has been allowed to grow until it's now a squid-like creature attached to my chin. I don't necessarily prefer it this way, but when I tried to cut it after the 2009 Renn Faire season, my family didn't recognize me and I found that I missed having it to stroke, so I'm kind of stuck. I call it my "writer's beard" because writers are creative artsy-fartsy types and should look odd to normal people.
So I suppose I wanted a new hairstyle to go with my rambunctious facial hair and general ennui. I talked to my barbers, but I was hesitant to switch to any style that required "hair product" such as gels, hairspray, mousse, etc. I'm too lazy for that kind of thing. Well, the head barber talked me into trying it anyway, so that's currently my style - very short in back, and cut on top so I can spike it with gel if I remember (which I usually don't) or so it can lay flat and just look normal the rest of the time.
And that's pretty much it - forty years (nearly) and just those few haircuts. It's arguably kind of a lot for a guy, especially a guy who doesn't really give a crap about how his hair looks for the most part, but there you go just the same. I'm hoping that by the time I hit 50, I'll need a special haircut so I look presentable in the era of robots, jetpacks and flying cars.
As a kid, I had a pretty simple cut - it was a classic style that would have fit in just fine in the 1950s. It's also the style I went back to around the time I got married and have had ever since.
But every once in a while, I apparently feel the need to jazz things up. Beginning in the mid 1980s, this meant letting my hair grow long in the back, and then having it cut short in the front, parted in the middle and feathered back on the sides. Now, some people will tell you that this style was, at that time, called a mullet. This is patently false and I've got nothing less than the Oxford English Dictionary backing me up. According to the OED, that awful name was "Apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip-hop group the Beastie Boys" in a song that didn't come out until 1994. By which time everybody who wasn't a redneck had already long-since ditched that 80s hairstyle and moved on to something else. When I was wearing my hair like that, a mullet was simply a fish.
Anywho, I had it down to the middle of my back at one point, but that got old after a few years so I went in the other direction - leaving it parted in the middle but going with a brush-cut in the back. When I started to climb the corporate ladder, I bought myself a real watch (a shiny analog one instead of a cheap Timex) and went back to the more conservative side-part. I did this completely forgetting that it was essentially the same haircut I'd worn in gradeschool.
Lately, I'd begun to feel that it made me look like a junior Rod Blagojavich, the way it hung in front of my forehead when it got long. Since I can only handle the time and expense of a haircut about once every three months, it's often quite long, so this started to seem like a problem. I needed something new.
It's also worth noting that in the last year, my short, reasonably fashionable goatee (technically it's a Van Dyke, but nobody actually calls it that so whatever) has been allowed to grow until it's now a squid-like creature attached to my chin. I don't necessarily prefer it this way, but when I tried to cut it after the 2009 Renn Faire season, my family didn't recognize me and I found that I missed having it to stroke, so I'm kind of stuck. I call it my "writer's beard" because writers are creative artsy-fartsy types and should look odd to normal people.
So I suppose I wanted a new hairstyle to go with my rambunctious facial hair and general ennui. I talked to my barbers, but I was hesitant to switch to any style that required "hair product" such as gels, hairspray, mousse, etc. I'm too lazy for that kind of thing. Well, the head barber talked me into trying it anyway, so that's currently my style - very short in back, and cut on top so I can spike it with gel if I remember (which I usually don't) or so it can lay flat and just look normal the rest of the time.
And that's pretty much it - forty years (nearly) and just those few haircuts. It's arguably kind of a lot for a guy, especially a guy who doesn't really give a crap about how his hair looks for the most part, but there you go just the same. I'm hoping that by the time I hit 50, I'll need a special haircut so I look presentable in the era of robots, jetpacks and flying cars.
Friday, July 9, 2010
The Sterling Renaissance Festival!
One of my all-time favorite annual summer activities is to attend the Sterling Renaissance Festival. My parents took me for the first time back in 1990 and my wife and I have gone together almost every year since 1992. Hey - that makes this my 20-year anniversary there. Well!
One of the things you notice when you're there is that the people who go in garb (which is what "renn-faire folks" call their period clothing) seem to be having a particularly good time. Plus, it makes the faire come that much more alive in its setting as an English village in the late 1500s to have many people wandering around in Renaissance-style clothes. So, beginning back in 95 or 96, my wife and I borrowed costumes from the Le Moyne College Firehouse Theater at which I'd been a castmember while an undergrad there. They weren't very good costumes (I have pictures somewhere. No, I'm not sharing them here. Well, ok, maybe sometime if I can find them.), at least mine wasn't (Karen looked ravishing as always), but they let us start getting into the spirit in a new way. By the next year we'd bought some cheap costumes online and a couple years later we'd assembled our own. My wife's is particularly lovely - a maroon overdress with detached sleeves over a dark blue underskirt. I wish I could find some decent pics that didn't include the kids (whose pics I don't put online publicly), but there don't seem to be any good ones of either of us anywhere that I can find.
The Faire is such a pastoral place - it's a lush, wooded setting dotted throughout the grounds with stages, food vendors, games and merchants. I love it all and could easily spend several days wandering around. There's literally never enough time to see and do everything you'd like, especially since a lot of the fun is just relaxing and enjoying the people passing by.
There's so much to buy there, and never enough time or money. One of my favorite shops is Potomac Leather, where they sell all manner of leather gear - from pouches to gloves, cloaks and even full outfits all of leather. I can't afford their stuff, but I love to go in and look at it. There are merchants in hats, masks, pewter, elaborate glass and stained glass crafts, and even musical instruments like flutes and drums. I was so busy this year I hardly made it to any of them.
The food, though expensive, is really tasty and fairly portable as well. One of my favorites is "Steak on a Stake" - a good-sized chunk of beef on a wooden skewer. I used to get the Turkey Leg when it was $3, but it's now up to $8 and they don't taste as good as they used to, so I stopped. Potatoes (salted or baked), pizza, fried cheese curds and waffle-cone sundaes usually round out our day. Every year I say we're going to try to get into the Tavern where they sell some different foods you can't get elsewhere, but so far we never have. Naturally, the boys won't eat any of that - they have peanut butter sandwiches, instead.
This year, a fellow named Johnny Fox debuted at the Faire, doing magic slight of hand and swallowing swords. He was quite good. We watched a Don Juan & Miguel show, too, but my kids don't really care for the loud crack of their whips so there was much complaining. Since the kids and I had already seen most of the shows of the Bless the Mark Players (the professional acting troupe who perform many of the acts at the Faire as well as playing the roles of the Queen of England, her court, and the villagers of Warwick) at Mock Faire Day, Fox and the Joust were just about the only non-music performances we watched.
Which was fine by me. I really like the plays, the improv performances and the shows, but for me, the Faire is all about the music. My son and I enjoyed a performance of a trio calling themselves Celtic Spirits - they're new to Sterling this year and we were there on opening day, so we were actually at their debut performance there. We also listened to an impromptu performance by a mish-mash of the festival's wonderful musicians and finished the day with the BTM cast's Pubsing. But the highlight of the day for me was to see the full quartet of Empty Hats finally returning to Sterling for the full season after several years away. They're definitely my favorite musical act at the Faire and I got to sit through three of their sets on Saturday. It was glorious. One of the ways my family gets into the "Renn Faire" spirit every season is to pop in the Empty Hats CDs (plus those of their predecessors, Double Indemnity) and get into their blend of ancient and modern Celtic and Celtic-like music.
It all wraps up at the final Pubsing. The Bless the Mark cast assembles at the main Festival Stage along with a group of the Faire's musicians and they sing us home. The set includes favorites like Auld Lang Syne (a much different version than the one you likely hear on New Year's Eve), So We'll Go No More A-Roving, Three Jolly Coachmen, Drunken Sailor, Tom O'Bedlam, and then finished with the Mingulay Boat Song. My son and I have actually learned quite a few of those tunes on our guitars and practice them almost daily, so it was really nice to hear them live. I don't think I've ever been at the final Pubsing on the last day of Faire for a given season, but I bet it's a terribly emotional experience. The cast is never exactly the same from year to year, and patrons come and go, so Auld Lang Syne surely carries particular meaning on that occasion. It's sad enough at the end of just a typical Faire day.
And then it's a quick stop at the gift shop (usually to buy one of the few Empty Hats CDs that I don't already own. I think I have all the ones I want at this point. I guess they need to record a new one) and we're off for the drive home. We're foot-weary, sweaty, dirty and full, but very contented after a full day of some of the best entertainment anywhere. It's been a terrific twenty years and I'm looking forward to spending many more summer days there this year and in years to come.
One of the things you notice when you're there is that the people who go in garb (which is what "renn-faire folks" call their period clothing) seem to be having a particularly good time. Plus, it makes the faire come that much more alive in its setting as an English village in the late 1500s to have many people wandering around in Renaissance-style clothes. So, beginning back in 95 or 96, my wife and I borrowed costumes from the Le Moyne College Firehouse Theater at which I'd been a castmember while an undergrad there. They weren't very good costumes (I have pictures somewhere. No, I'm not sharing them here. Well, ok, maybe sometime if I can find them.), at least mine wasn't (Karen looked ravishing as always), but they let us start getting into the spirit in a new way. By the next year we'd bought some cheap costumes online and a couple years later we'd assembled our own. My wife's is particularly lovely - a maroon overdress with detached sleeves over a dark blue underskirt. I wish I could find some decent pics that didn't include the kids (whose pics I don't put online publicly), but there don't seem to be any good ones of either of us anywhere that I can find.
The Faire is such a pastoral place - it's a lush, wooded setting dotted throughout the grounds with stages, food vendors, games and merchants. I love it all and could easily spend several days wandering around. There's literally never enough time to see and do everything you'd like, especially since a lot of the fun is just relaxing and enjoying the people passing by.
There's so much to buy there, and never enough time or money. One of my favorite shops is Potomac Leather, where they sell all manner of leather gear - from pouches to gloves, cloaks and even full outfits all of leather. I can't afford their stuff, but I love to go in and look at it. There are merchants in hats, masks, pewter, elaborate glass and stained glass crafts, and even musical instruments like flutes and drums. I was so busy this year I hardly made it to any of them.
The food, though expensive, is really tasty and fairly portable as well. One of my favorites is "Steak on a Stake" - a good-sized chunk of beef on a wooden skewer. I used to get the Turkey Leg when it was $3, but it's now up to $8 and they don't taste as good as they used to, so I stopped. Potatoes (salted or baked), pizza, fried cheese curds and waffle-cone sundaes usually round out our day. Every year I say we're going to try to get into the Tavern where they sell some different foods you can't get elsewhere, but so far we never have. Naturally, the boys won't eat any of that - they have peanut butter sandwiches, instead.
This year, a fellow named Johnny Fox debuted at the Faire, doing magic slight of hand and swallowing swords. He was quite good. We watched a Don Juan & Miguel show, too, but my kids don't really care for the loud crack of their whips so there was much complaining. Since the kids and I had already seen most of the shows of the Bless the Mark Players (the professional acting troupe who perform many of the acts at the Faire as well as playing the roles of the Queen of England, her court, and the villagers of Warwick) at Mock Faire Day, Fox and the Joust were just about the only non-music performances we watched.
Which was fine by me. I really like the plays, the improv performances and the shows, but for me, the Faire is all about the music. My son and I enjoyed a performance of a trio calling themselves Celtic Spirits - they're new to Sterling this year and we were there on opening day, so we were actually at their debut performance there. We also listened to an impromptu performance by a mish-mash of the festival's wonderful musicians and finished the day with the BTM cast's Pubsing. But the highlight of the day for me was to see the full quartet of Empty Hats finally returning to Sterling for the full season after several years away. They're definitely my favorite musical act at the Faire and I got to sit through three of their sets on Saturday. It was glorious. One of the ways my family gets into the "Renn Faire" spirit every season is to pop in the Empty Hats CDs (plus those of their predecessors, Double Indemnity) and get into their blend of ancient and modern Celtic and Celtic-like music.
It all wraps up at the final Pubsing. The Bless the Mark cast assembles at the main Festival Stage along with a group of the Faire's musicians and they sing us home. The set includes favorites like Auld Lang Syne (a much different version than the one you likely hear on New Year's Eve), So We'll Go No More A-Roving, Three Jolly Coachmen, Drunken Sailor, Tom O'Bedlam, and then finished with the Mingulay Boat Song. My son and I have actually learned quite a few of those tunes on our guitars and practice them almost daily, so it was really nice to hear them live. I don't think I've ever been at the final Pubsing on the last day of Faire for a given season, but I bet it's a terribly emotional experience. The cast is never exactly the same from year to year, and patrons come and go, so Auld Lang Syne surely carries particular meaning on that occasion. It's sad enough at the end of just a typical Faire day.
And then it's a quick stop at the gift shop (usually to buy one of the few Empty Hats CDs that I don't already own. I think I have all the ones I want at this point. I guess they need to record a new one) and we're off for the drive home. We're foot-weary, sweaty, dirty and full, but very contented after a full day of some of the best entertainment anywhere. It's been a terrific twenty years and I'm looking forward to spending many more summer days there this year and in years to come.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Trying!
I'm trying to update my blog, I really am. I've managed it a couple of times this week so far. The problem is that I've got Karate every night until really late, then swimming in the morning fairly early. I'm just not finding an appropriate time to do it other than during the rare moments I've been able to snatch in which to write my book. And of the two, it seems as if I ought to put the time into my book first. So there you are - I was working on a blog entry tonight and just ran out of time. I'll try again soon.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
[Movie Review] Zombieland
Zombie-killing goodness and more
First off, Zombieland is not, really, about zombies. And, before I get in too far, I should fess up that I'm biased. No, it's not zombies - I'm okay with them. It's Woody Harrelson I don't care for. He was fine on Cheers, but I don't think I've liked anything he's done since.
But anyway, Zombieland isn't about zombies. There actually aren't all that many of them through most of the movie - a lot fewer than you'd expect after a super-plague has wiped out virtually everyone, infecting them with a disease that drives them into a rage and gives them an insatiable hunger. The movie glosses over the contagion, explaining only that it developed out of Mad Cow Disease.
The film is something of an action comedy. A young nerd is playing World of Warcraft in his apartment as the world falls apart. He ends up alone, surviving through his wits which he catalogs in a series of written rules that include things like wearing your seatbelt and always shooting a zombie twice to make sure it's dead. He's never had any friends or much of a relationship with his family, but decides to travel from Texas to Ohio to see if his parents are all right. Along the way he meets another man who lives only to kill the zombies he hates so much. They, in turn, meet some con artists, and one bona fide celebrity (who I won't give away except to say that he's pretty funny in the film).
The movie does some things really well. Every time one of the rules comes into play, the text of the rule appears somewhat surreptitiously on the screen. Also, none of the characters has a name (well, we learn one of them near the very end). They're called instead by the city they're from or going to - Columbus, Tallahassee, etc.
I wasn't optimistic about this movie, but my sister-in-law recommended it highly so I gave it a spin. And I have to admit, it was pretty good. The violence wasn't actually as over-the-top as I'd expected and, like I said, it wasn't really a movie about zombies. It was a movie about people and relationships, loneliness, trust and friendship. It was just the setting of a post-apocalyptic world that put those issues under the magnifying glass. It wasn't a terribly deep film so there isn't much more analysis I can offer. I liked it and rate it a B.
First off, Zombieland is not, really, about zombies. And, before I get in too far, I should fess up that I'm biased. No, it's not zombies - I'm okay with them. It's Woody Harrelson I don't care for. He was fine on Cheers, but I don't think I've liked anything he's done since.
But anyway, Zombieland isn't about zombies. There actually aren't all that many of them through most of the movie - a lot fewer than you'd expect after a super-plague has wiped out virtually everyone, infecting them with a disease that drives them into a rage and gives them an insatiable hunger. The movie glosses over the contagion, explaining only that it developed out of Mad Cow Disease.
The film is something of an action comedy. A young nerd is playing World of Warcraft in his apartment as the world falls apart. He ends up alone, surviving through his wits which he catalogs in a series of written rules that include things like wearing your seatbelt and always shooting a zombie twice to make sure it's dead. He's never had any friends or much of a relationship with his family, but decides to travel from Texas to Ohio to see if his parents are all right. Along the way he meets another man who lives only to kill the zombies he hates so much. They, in turn, meet some con artists, and one bona fide celebrity (who I won't give away except to say that he's pretty funny in the film).
The movie does some things really well. Every time one of the rules comes into play, the text of the rule appears somewhat surreptitiously on the screen. Also, none of the characters has a name (well, we learn one of them near the very end). They're called instead by the city they're from or going to - Columbus, Tallahassee, etc.
I wasn't optimistic about this movie, but my sister-in-law recommended it highly so I gave it a spin. And I have to admit, it was pretty good. The violence wasn't actually as over-the-top as I'd expected and, like I said, it wasn't really a movie about zombies. It was a movie about people and relationships, loneliness, trust and friendship. It was just the setting of a post-apocalyptic world that put those issues under the magnifying glass. It wasn't a terribly deep film so there isn't much more analysis I can offer. I liked it and rate it a B.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
[Karate] Karate on the Internet
A little feast, mostly famine
There are a lot of karate enthusiasts around the world, but they pale in numbers to followers of "professional' sports like baseball, football, and soccer. As a result, the presence of the Martial Arts on the web is similarly a fraction of what you'll find about those "major" sports.
Which isn't to say there isn't good, useful information there if you know where to look.
What you'll find: I've had good luck finding descriptions and definitions of different martial arts styles and terms. I've had decent results searching for videos that break down katas step-by-step. This isn't true for all styles, however, and requires that you know about about the kata you're looking for. For instance, I know there was a fairly basic sword kata that I learned at my Aikido dojo, but I don't remember its name or much about what it looked like, so I've had no luck finding videos of it online.
What you won't find: analysis and comparisons of local dojos. There are so many of them, you'd think that somebody would break down information on styles, schedules, costs, contracts and customer reviews. There may be cities where this is true, but I can say that Syracuse isn't one of them. Granted, a side-by-side "X is better than Y" comparison would be impossible - it's too subjective both on the part of the reviewer and the potential customer. But there's ample opportunity to summarize different schools on various factors that can be reviewed without significant bias - how big are their classes? How long are their contracts? What's the facility like? Those kinds of factors certainly could be compared and would help potential students who aren't familiar with the martial arts find a place they can train happily.
Surprisingly, what you also won't find for some dojos is a useful website. And by that, I mean that they may not have a website at all, or they may have one so badly designed as to be unreadable (one that I found in this area had a background image of flames that made it impossible to read 80% of the text on the site. And consider - the guy who created that site HAD to have looked at it at some point and judged it both finished and acceptable. Gah!) or they may be missing key information, such as the days and times when classes are in session.
It's interesting, though, that for the thousands of people in even a mid-sized city like Syracuse who practice the martial arts or have an interest in them, there's no local online presence where they discuss their common interest. Nor does there seem to be such a beast on a regional, national or international level. If there's a really good, well-attended and active message board or discussion group anywhere on the internet where people come together and discuss the martial arts, I've certainly been unable to find it.
Which isn't to say that nobody has tried. There's a local Facebook group called "Syracuse Karate Enthusiasts" that's existed for about three months as of this writing. It has almost 50 members, which isn't bad. However, only about three of them have ever posted anything to it, which isn't great. It's not unusual, though.
I found a really nice site in my web searches - Lyon Karate.com. It's a traditional Okinawan Goju-Ryu dojo in Perth, Australia, that's one of the better website's I've seen anywhere. It tells you a lot about the dojo and the lead instructor's philosophy, it contains information on karate in general and even defines a long list of common karate terms. That dojo has had an online forum since 2003, which is a fairly long time in Internet terms. However, in all those years, only a few hundred total messages have been posted in that forum. Compare that to other sports where, for example, you can find extremely active forums for all aspects of participation and fandom, up to and including things like baseball cards. To be fair, it looks as if the Lyon-Karate forum owner created a sister site - All Karate.com - with its own forum and made itself arguably obsolete by doing so. The All Karate forums are the most active ones I've seen.
For my purposes, the site Black Belt at 50 was very useful because the author had uploaded videos of every LaValle's Karate kata, along with step-by-step instructions for each. Now that I'm also training at Syracuse Jundokan, the videos posted to Facebook by Paul Enfield were helpful in remembering katas like Gekisai Dai Ichi. There can be quite a bit of information on the web, but you kind of have to know where to look for it - it's not as abundant or prevalent as other sports and activities, and you're not as likely to just stumble across it as you would for football or somesuch.
The problem is that there's likely not an easy way to fix this. Communities can't be manually assembled - they have to grow somewhat organically, I think, deriving from a desire to interact socially online about a shared interest. Some shared interests just don't seem to inspire this interaction and sharing, while some - like the broad category of "parenting," spawn hundreds and hundreds of very active, popular and even lucrative websites.
It may be that at some point somebody will combine skills at web design and marketing with personal magnetism to start an internet community that actually draws large numbers of active participants and provides an outlet for information shared by martial arts enthusiasts from around the world. If it's out there now, it's hiding where I haven't found it.
There are a lot of karate enthusiasts around the world, but they pale in numbers to followers of "professional' sports like baseball, football, and soccer. As a result, the presence of the Martial Arts on the web is similarly a fraction of what you'll find about those "major" sports.
Which isn't to say there isn't good, useful information there if you know where to look.
What you'll find: I've had good luck finding descriptions and definitions of different martial arts styles and terms. I've had decent results searching for videos that break down katas step-by-step. This isn't true for all styles, however, and requires that you know about about the kata you're looking for. For instance, I know there was a fairly basic sword kata that I learned at my Aikido dojo, but I don't remember its name or much about what it looked like, so I've had no luck finding videos of it online.
What you won't find: analysis and comparisons of local dojos. There are so many of them, you'd think that somebody would break down information on styles, schedules, costs, contracts and customer reviews. There may be cities where this is true, but I can say that Syracuse isn't one of them. Granted, a side-by-side "X is better than Y" comparison would be impossible - it's too subjective both on the part of the reviewer and the potential customer. But there's ample opportunity to summarize different schools on various factors that can be reviewed without significant bias - how big are their classes? How long are their contracts? What's the facility like? Those kinds of factors certainly could be compared and would help potential students who aren't familiar with the martial arts find a place they can train happily.
Surprisingly, what you also won't find for some dojos is a useful website. And by that, I mean that they may not have a website at all, or they may have one so badly designed as to be unreadable (one that I found in this area had a background image of flames that made it impossible to read 80% of the text on the site. And consider - the guy who created that site HAD to have looked at it at some point and judged it both finished and acceptable. Gah!) or they may be missing key information, such as the days and times when classes are in session.
It's interesting, though, that for the thousands of people in even a mid-sized city like Syracuse who practice the martial arts or have an interest in them, there's no local online presence where they discuss their common interest. Nor does there seem to be such a beast on a regional, national or international level. If there's a really good, well-attended and active message board or discussion group anywhere on the internet where people come together and discuss the martial arts, I've certainly been unable to find it.
Which isn't to say that nobody has tried. There's a local Facebook group called "Syracuse Karate Enthusiasts" that's existed for about three months as of this writing. It has almost 50 members, which isn't bad. However, only about three of them have ever posted anything to it, which isn't great. It's not unusual, though.
I found a really nice site in my web searches - Lyon Karate.com. It's a traditional Okinawan Goju-Ryu dojo in Perth, Australia, that's one of the better website's I've seen anywhere. It tells you a lot about the dojo and the lead instructor's philosophy, it contains information on karate in general and even defines a long list of common karate terms. That dojo has had an online forum since 2003, which is a fairly long time in Internet terms. However, in all those years, only a few hundred total messages have been posted in that forum. Compare that to other sports where, for example, you can find extremely active forums for all aspects of participation and fandom, up to and including things like baseball cards. To be fair, it looks as if the Lyon-Karate forum owner created a sister site - All Karate.com - with its own forum and made itself arguably obsolete by doing so. The All Karate forums are the most active ones I've seen.
For my purposes, the site Black Belt at 50 was very useful because the author had uploaded videos of every LaValle's Karate kata, along with step-by-step instructions for each. Now that I'm also training at Syracuse Jundokan, the videos posted to Facebook by Paul Enfield were helpful in remembering katas like Gekisai Dai Ichi. There can be quite a bit of information on the web, but you kind of have to know where to look for it - it's not as abundant or prevalent as other sports and activities, and you're not as likely to just stumble across it as you would for football or somesuch.
The problem is that there's likely not an easy way to fix this. Communities can't be manually assembled - they have to grow somewhat organically, I think, deriving from a desire to interact socially online about a shared interest. Some shared interests just don't seem to inspire this interaction and sharing, while some - like the broad category of "parenting," spawn hundreds and hundreds of very active, popular and even lucrative websites.
It may be that at some point somebody will combine skills at web design and marketing with personal magnetism to start an internet community that actually draws large numbers of active participants and provides an outlet for information shared by martial arts enthusiasts from around the world. If it's out there now, it's hiding where I haven't found it.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Schedule Update
I finally managed to get a post up this morning, albeit quite late. But there it is, just the same. I wasn't home all day on Thursday, so I had more catching-up to do than I'd anticipated and it slowed me down.
My shoulder is about 60% healed at this point. It seems to get around 20% better with each passing day - yesterday I could raise my arm about a foot or so, today I can get it almost out straight before I hit the pain threshold. I'm hopeful that by Sunday or Monday it should be almost back to normal if it continues at this rate.
Speaking of Monday, I'm planning to take the holiday weekend off from blogging. Look for a fresh blog post on Tuesday, hopefully dealing with our trip to the Renaissance Faire this weekend. In addition, I've got articles in mind on several novels I'd like to review, plus a very old TV Miniseries my wife and I just finished watching, so keep an eye out for those. Sadly, I've hardly touched my novel this week at all, so nothing new to report there. Chapter 15 is still undergoing major reconstructive surgery and I expect that to continue well into next week.
Have a lovely Independence Day!
My shoulder is about 60% healed at this point. It seems to get around 20% better with each passing day - yesterday I could raise my arm about a foot or so, today I can get it almost out straight before I hit the pain threshold. I'm hopeful that by Sunday or Monday it should be almost back to normal if it continues at this rate.
Speaking of Monday, I'm planning to take the holiday weekend off from blogging. Look for a fresh blog post on Tuesday, hopefully dealing with our trip to the Renaissance Faire this weekend. In addition, I've got articles in mind on several novels I'd like to review, plus a very old TV Miniseries my wife and I just finished watching, so keep an eye out for those. Sadly, I've hardly touched my novel this week at all, so nothing new to report there. Chapter 15 is still undergoing major reconstructive surgery and I expect that to continue well into next week.
Have a lovely Independence Day!
A Health to the Company!
When I woke up and came downstairs this morning, my sons were quietly singing this song while they played. That's the power of Mock Faire Day!
The Sterling Renaissance Festival is a magnificent way to spend a summer day. Mock Faire Day is the final dress rehearsal for the Bless the Mark Players - the cast of the festival who perform the roles of Queen Elizabeth, her court, the Town of Warwick notables and the villagers. They present many of the Festival's shows - the Public Execution, the Trial and Dunk, the Mudbegger's Show, and the Washer Wenches, among others. They also perform improvisational street shows throughout the day, usually pulling the faire's patrons into their routines.
They're all professional or aspiring actors and they get several weeks of intensive training from the same folks who have been directing at the Festival for decades. However rehearsing improv isn't easy in the best of cases, and it's worse when you're trying to incorporate audience participants who may be shy or reluctant, or may derail your skit in a direction you hadn't imagined. The partial solution - costumed patrons are invited to join the cast for their final dress rehearsal on the Thursday before opening day, so that the actors have real, live people to rehearse with.
This is my second year attending, and for a fan of the festival it's about the most glorious day ever. There's no musicians (well, very few), none of the "traveling" acts are there, the shops are all closed, and there's no joust. Or food. If you're thinking, "But Mike, those are most of your favorite things!!" you're correct. In spite of all of that, I enjoy it immensely.
One of the main things I like about Mock Faire Day is fairly altruistic - I like the fact that I'm able to support these fine actors by helping them prepare their performances.
The rest of my reasons, though, are purely personal. I enjoy walking freely about the grounds without fighting my way through a throng of other visitors. I like getting an advance preview of the changes that have been made to the grounds and buildings. I enjoy getting to interact one-on-one with the actors. And, best of all, I like the added visit to the Festival (for free!) because there's simply never enough time to see everything when you go. It's painful to have to choose between a "Bless the Mark" show and one of our favorite musical acts, for instance. By attending Mock Faire Day, we get to see eight or nine of the BTM shows all at once. Then, when we go for a "real" faire day, we don't feel as torn up about having to miss one of those performances.
So yesterday the kids and I packed ourselves a lunch and a whole lotta snacks and drove on up to Sterling. My sons are getting older, but they're still very young and I wasn't really sure how well they'd handle Mock Faire Day. Quite well, as it turned out! We were there from the opening ceremony to the final pubsing and they had a great time. Granted, they got a bit cranky during the last hour when they were cold and tired and bored (there was a lengthy break before the final pubsing, since no BTM player performances are scheduled during the timeslot just before it), but otherwise they were excellent and seemed to really enjoy the performances.
My older boy even came away with a piece of Festival history. I was taking pictures of the kids in the fancy wooden lion-carved chair outside the costume shop when the operator came out to see us. She said, "Oh, I have a doublet that would be perfect for this lad!" and began to rummage in a large bin of fabric marked "Free, please help yourself!" It turns out that it was full of older, somewhat worn costume pieces that were being retired after many years of service. She emerged with a lovely green-and-yellow doublet that did indeed fit my boy perfectly, and matched his yellow shirt and general coloring marvelously. She said that it had once been worn by one of the actors and had gradually moved into the rental shop and been sized down over the years. In my mind's eye, I can almost picture the actor wearing it when it was new, as I'm certain I must have seen it then. Anyway, my son and I were both excited to get it and we're grateful to the woman and her expert eye for picking it out for us.
Overall it was a most excellent day. We talked with many of the actors, in character, of course, including the German Landsknecht in red (Doug Keyes, I think), the Sheriff, the Astrologer, the Poet, the Mudbeggers and the Thieves. One of the thieves even serenaded my daughter and one of my boys on his lute before tragically dropping the old instrument. It was a terribly gentle mishap - one you never would have expected to cause damage - but the lute's neck snapped in half just below the nut. It was heartbreaking, but there was considerable optimism that it could be repaired.
We saw the Mudshow three times, the Pirate Show, the Trial and Dunke, and the Washer Wenches twice. We watched one Public Execution (I even danced a jig) and then sat for a verbal-only walkthrough of a second, as the Execution stage was being painted. I think the kids actually enjoyed that one more, as the actors were very relaxed as they sat around a picnic table and recited their lines. At one point, Joseph Regan, the Executioner, placed his hat over his axe and used it to perform his role as a puppet show, which was very funny.
At long last, it was time for the pubsing. The pubsing is a grand finale in so many ways. During the run of the festival, it represents the end of a long day of hard work for the actors and, on Sundays, the end of a hard weekend. On August 15th, the final pubsing will be the very, very last performance of the entire season.
Yesterday, though, the pubsing was the final performance of the months-long audition and rehearsal process for the cast. It was their "graduation" ceremony before the gates open on Saturday morning and they "go live" at last. There was some ad-libbing from the Queen, the Master of Revels, and others that I don't expect we'll hear on Saturday. They commented on the Queen's new gown, on the Merrymaker's experience over the last three summers (which was very heartfelt and emotional), and on the joy and pleasure they take in working with such a terrific cast of actors. You could really feel the depth of feeling they conveyed in songs such as Auld Lang Syne and Health to the Company. It was a privilege for us to be there to share it.
And then it was done. The actors trooped out the front gates and formed "the gauntlet" outside. They got some final instructions from the directors and then streamed back inside. Several of the actors as well as assistant director Doug Kondziolka made a point of thanking us for our help. Which, considering how much we'd enjoyed it, was humbling and a bit backwards indeed. It was our pleasure. A health to the company, indeed!
The Sterling Renaissance Festival is a magnificent way to spend a summer day. Mock Faire Day is the final dress rehearsal for the Bless the Mark Players - the cast of the festival who perform the roles of Queen Elizabeth, her court, the Town of Warwick notables and the villagers. They present many of the Festival's shows - the Public Execution, the Trial and Dunk, the Mudbegger's Show, and the Washer Wenches, among others. They also perform improvisational street shows throughout the day, usually pulling the faire's patrons into their routines.
They're all professional or aspiring actors and they get several weeks of intensive training from the same folks who have been directing at the Festival for decades. However rehearsing improv isn't easy in the best of cases, and it's worse when you're trying to incorporate audience participants who may be shy or reluctant, or may derail your skit in a direction you hadn't imagined. The partial solution - costumed patrons are invited to join the cast for their final dress rehearsal on the Thursday before opening day, so that the actors have real, live people to rehearse with.
This is my second year attending, and for a fan of the festival it's about the most glorious day ever. There's no musicians (well, very few), none of the "traveling" acts are there, the shops are all closed, and there's no joust. Or food. If you're thinking, "But Mike, those are most of your favorite things!!" you're correct. In spite of all of that, I enjoy it immensely.
One of the main things I like about Mock Faire Day is fairly altruistic - I like the fact that I'm able to support these fine actors by helping them prepare their performances.
The rest of my reasons, though, are purely personal. I enjoy walking freely about the grounds without fighting my way through a throng of other visitors. I like getting an advance preview of the changes that have been made to the grounds and buildings. I enjoy getting to interact one-on-one with the actors. And, best of all, I like the added visit to the Festival (for free!) because there's simply never enough time to see everything when you go. It's painful to have to choose between a "Bless the Mark" show and one of our favorite musical acts, for instance. By attending Mock Faire Day, we get to see eight or nine of the BTM shows all at once. Then, when we go for a "real" faire day, we don't feel as torn up about having to miss one of those performances.
So yesterday the kids and I packed ourselves a lunch and a whole lotta snacks and drove on up to Sterling. My sons are getting older, but they're still very young and I wasn't really sure how well they'd handle Mock Faire Day. Quite well, as it turned out! We were there from the opening ceremony to the final pubsing and they had a great time. Granted, they got a bit cranky during the last hour when they were cold and tired and bored (there was a lengthy break before the final pubsing, since no BTM player performances are scheduled during the timeslot just before it), but otherwise they were excellent and seemed to really enjoy the performances.
My older boy even came away with a piece of Festival history. I was taking pictures of the kids in the fancy wooden lion-carved chair outside the costume shop when the operator came out to see us. She said, "Oh, I have a doublet that would be perfect for this lad!" and began to rummage in a large bin of fabric marked "Free, please help yourself!" It turns out that it was full of older, somewhat worn costume pieces that were being retired after many years of service. She emerged with a lovely green-and-yellow doublet that did indeed fit my boy perfectly, and matched his yellow shirt and general coloring marvelously. She said that it had once been worn by one of the actors and had gradually moved into the rental shop and been sized down over the years. In my mind's eye, I can almost picture the actor wearing it when it was new, as I'm certain I must have seen it then. Anyway, my son and I were both excited to get it and we're grateful to the woman and her expert eye for picking it out for us.
Overall it was a most excellent day. We talked with many of the actors, in character, of course, including the German Landsknecht in red (Doug Keyes, I think), the Sheriff, the Astrologer, the Poet, the Mudbeggers and the Thieves. One of the thieves even serenaded my daughter and one of my boys on his lute before tragically dropping the old instrument. It was a terribly gentle mishap - one you never would have expected to cause damage - but the lute's neck snapped in half just below the nut. It was heartbreaking, but there was considerable optimism that it could be repaired.
We saw the Mudshow three times, the Pirate Show, the Trial and Dunke, and the Washer Wenches twice. We watched one Public Execution (I even danced a jig) and then sat for a verbal-only walkthrough of a second, as the Execution stage was being painted. I think the kids actually enjoyed that one more, as the actors were very relaxed as they sat around a picnic table and recited their lines. At one point, Joseph Regan, the Executioner, placed his hat over his axe and used it to perform his role as a puppet show, which was very funny.
At long last, it was time for the pubsing. The pubsing is a grand finale in so many ways. During the run of the festival, it represents the end of a long day of hard work for the actors and, on Sundays, the end of a hard weekend. On August 15th, the final pubsing will be the very, very last performance of the entire season.
Yesterday, though, the pubsing was the final performance of the months-long audition and rehearsal process for the cast. It was their "graduation" ceremony before the gates open on Saturday morning and they "go live" at last. There was some ad-libbing from the Queen, the Master of Revels, and others that I don't expect we'll hear on Saturday. They commented on the Queen's new gown, on the Merrymaker's experience over the last three summers (which was very heartfelt and emotional), and on the joy and pleasure they take in working with such a terrific cast of actors. You could really feel the depth of feeling they conveyed in songs such as Auld Lang Syne and Health to the Company. It was a privilege for us to be there to share it.
And then it was done. The actors trooped out the front gates and formed "the gauntlet" outside. They got some final instructions from the directors and then streamed back inside. Several of the actors as well as assistant director Doug Kondziolka made a point of thanking us for our help. Which, considering how much we'd enjoyed it, was humbling and a bit backwards indeed. It was our pleasure. A health to the company, indeed!
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