Started the new biologic psoraisis medication tuesday, its interesting to see how its side effects clash with my other current medication side effects. Wackiness ensues.
Tomorrow, Orycon, last of its kind.
I have a praying mantis living in the space between my front door and my storm door. every time I go in or out I make sure I know where it is so I dont hurt it.
Tomorrow, Orycon, last of its kind.
I have a praying mantis living in the space between my front door and my storm door. every time I go in or out I make sure I know where it is so I dont hurt it.
I love my state.
I just walked into CVS, asked for the booster, and got it. No fuss, no cost.
Of course, now the RFK, Jr. is trying to take the aluminium out of vaccines, I kind of think I should just walk in every day and ask 'em what they've got for me and just take it. Hopefully, at some point the booster will show up on Docket, the vaccine tracker app that I downloaded. Also, I hope that at some point Wisconsin will join the states that are reporting and I can see all the things I had as a child.
Anyway, how are you?
I never ended up writing up my Wednesday reading blog so I will tell you about my feelings about How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu which I listened to via audiobook. This was another book that felt to me like mainstream fiction masquerading as science fiction. It was BETTER at being science fiction than, say, Station Eleven, by which I mean that the future seemed slightly more thought out/plausible. Although, like all of these fake SF books (and I shouldn't call them that, but they're lit fic SF, not SF SF), the SF elements were entirely backdrop to the emotional stuff--and then there were the occasional suspender snapping moments, like the weird place people seemed to go when they were in a disease induced coma.
So, the plot, simply, was: "I want to write about COVID without writing about COVID, so how about a plague that comes from a melting permafrost that is actually far more deadly?" And, then Nagamatsu wrote a bunch of vignettes about death, dying, and grief with vaguely science fictional settings, like the Disney World death park, where parents would take terminally ill children to give them one last happy day before murdering them on a rollercoaster. I mean, this was a tough book to get through? But, there was a lot that I ended up finding compelling because this is one of the few books we have that address our collective trauma over COVID. There is literally a couple in one of the chapter vignettes which is comprised of an EMT worker and a pathologist and it's about how, really, this is the worst timeline for both their jobs and it f*cks them up in different ways.
( Spoiler for the end of How High We Go in the Dark )
The book I'm listening to now is Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson, which is 100% a Murderbot fanfic, again, masquerading as lit fic. The schtick here is that robots now live among us, but really don't. (This is clearly the Preservation side of things, where people sort of accept that robots are human-like, but also treat them as disposable, etc.) Robots now do the jobs no one wants--in the protag's case, it's dentistry. They are programmed to be perfectly pleasant enough and human enough, but have a definite termination date. This robot wakes up one morning with an error, it has spontaneously generated the number of teeth, on average, it will clean/care for until its retirement (which in this case is PERMANENT retirement, not freedom from service.) And the number is counting down with every new day. The robot immediately requests to have a hard reboot, but the error isn't considered significant enough to warrant a memory wipe. I've only just started this novel, but it's clear that this is an exploration of mortality and community--as the robot isn't supposed to have feelings, but it's clearly developing them.
I've been sticking with it, because who doesn't love a Murderbot fanfic?
Up at the cabin, I also read a bunch of manga. Probably nothing to really write home about, however? (As always, I am keeping tabs over at Mangakast--https://mangakast.wordpress.com/-- if you do want ot know the details.) The guy who wrote that weird little second chances manga, Hirayasumi, that I loved has (or had, I don't actually know which came first off the top of my head) another short series about two aliens who come to Earth on an invasion scouting mission, but decide (as one does) that Earth is kind of too cool to try to oppress called Tokyo Alien Bros. Although, interestingly--and I'm not sure I've seen this really dealt with in another manga--one of the aliens decides it would be fun to be the other gender for a day, nearly gets raped, and has a profound change of heart about the goodness of humankind. What is notable about this, is that previously this particular character was the playboy of the two brothers and was kind of a love 'em and leave 'em sort. So, it's shockingly self-reflective for this kind of humor manga, actually? I am very on the fence about whether I liked Tokyo Alien Bros because, where Hirayasumi has this lovely, slow pace, Tokyo Alien Bros is kind of all over the place.
Otherwise, I've been catching up with the anime that they made of The Summer Hikaru Died, which is a weird combination of horror and gay romance. The anime is now past where I've read in the manga and I'm getting the vibe that maybe part of the tension in the story is that the not-Hikaru character, the guy who loves the monster that returned in Hikaru's body--his dad might be gay, too? Which... would be kind of a cool twist because it would explain why the main character is so gloomy and depressed. It seems like maybe the family is split/not split. Dad has taken a job as a lumberjack and that keeps him away from home a lot, and mom is clearly DONE with dad on some level, but this is a small, SMALL village and so they aren't broken u/separated. And, it's been a weird thing in the background that I'd been reading as "oh, an affair," but after a scene from last night's episode, I'm thinking, "OH! A gay affair!"
Anyway, I'm probably wrong. But, it will be interesting to see if they go there.
I should probably read the manga again and see if I can suss it out. It looks like the manga is maybe still ongoing, though.
So, yeah. I'm about to head into my writers' group Zoom. Tonight is Pendragons (not Wyrdsmiths.) Pendragons is a group I started during the pandemic and includes folks from all over the country. When Laurie Winter was still in Montana, I think we had all the continental US time zones covered, which is kind of cool.
K. Goodnight. Hope you have a good one.
I just walked into CVS, asked for the booster, and got it. No fuss, no cost.
Of course, now the RFK, Jr. is trying to take the aluminium out of vaccines, I kind of think I should just walk in every day and ask 'em what they've got for me and just take it. Hopefully, at some point the booster will show up on Docket, the vaccine tracker app that I downloaded. Also, I hope that at some point Wisconsin will join the states that are reporting and I can see all the things I had as a child.
Anyway, how are you?
I never ended up writing up my Wednesday reading blog so I will tell you about my feelings about How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu which I listened to via audiobook. This was another book that felt to me like mainstream fiction masquerading as science fiction. It was BETTER at being science fiction than, say, Station Eleven, by which I mean that the future seemed slightly more thought out/plausible. Although, like all of these fake SF books (and I shouldn't call them that, but they're lit fic SF, not SF SF), the SF elements were entirely backdrop to the emotional stuff--and then there were the occasional suspender snapping moments, like the weird place people seemed to go when they were in a disease induced coma.
So, the plot, simply, was: "I want to write about COVID without writing about COVID, so how about a plague that comes from a melting permafrost that is actually far more deadly?" And, then Nagamatsu wrote a bunch of vignettes about death, dying, and grief with vaguely science fictional settings, like the Disney World death park, where parents would take terminally ill children to give them one last happy day before murdering them on a rollercoaster. I mean, this was a tough book to get through? But, there was a lot that I ended up finding compelling because this is one of the few books we have that address our collective trauma over COVID. There is literally a couple in one of the chapter vignettes which is comprised of an EMT worker and a pathologist and it's about how, really, this is the worst timeline for both their jobs and it f*cks them up in different ways.
( Spoiler for the end of How High We Go in the Dark )
The book I'm listening to now is Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson, which is 100% a Murderbot fanfic, again, masquerading as lit fic. The schtick here is that robots now live among us, but really don't. (This is clearly the Preservation side of things, where people sort of accept that robots are human-like, but also treat them as disposable, etc.) Robots now do the jobs no one wants--in the protag's case, it's dentistry. They are programmed to be perfectly pleasant enough and human enough, but have a definite termination date. This robot wakes up one morning with an error, it has spontaneously generated the number of teeth, on average, it will clean/care for until its retirement (which in this case is PERMANENT retirement, not freedom from service.) And the number is counting down with every new day. The robot immediately requests to have a hard reboot, but the error isn't considered significant enough to warrant a memory wipe. I've only just started this novel, but it's clear that this is an exploration of mortality and community--as the robot isn't supposed to have feelings, but it's clearly developing them.
I've been sticking with it, because who doesn't love a Murderbot fanfic?
Up at the cabin, I also read a bunch of manga. Probably nothing to really write home about, however? (As always, I am keeping tabs over at Mangakast--https://mangakast.wordpress.com/-- if you do want ot know the details.) The guy who wrote that weird little second chances manga, Hirayasumi, that I loved has (or had, I don't actually know which came first off the top of my head) another short series about two aliens who come to Earth on an invasion scouting mission, but decide (as one does) that Earth is kind of too cool to try to oppress called Tokyo Alien Bros. Although, interestingly--and I'm not sure I've seen this really dealt with in another manga--one of the aliens decides it would be fun to be the other gender for a day, nearly gets raped, and has a profound change of heart about the goodness of humankind. What is notable about this, is that previously this particular character was the playboy of the two brothers and was kind of a love 'em and leave 'em sort. So, it's shockingly self-reflective for this kind of humor manga, actually? I am very on the fence about whether I liked Tokyo Alien Bros because, where Hirayasumi has this lovely, slow pace, Tokyo Alien Bros is kind of all over the place.
Otherwise, I've been catching up with the anime that they made of The Summer Hikaru Died, which is a weird combination of horror and gay romance. The anime is now past where I've read in the manga and I'm getting the vibe that maybe part of the tension in the story is that the not-Hikaru character, the guy who loves the monster that returned in Hikaru's body--his dad might be gay, too? Which... would be kind of a cool twist because it would explain why the main character is so gloomy and depressed. It seems like maybe the family is split/not split. Dad has taken a job as a lumberjack and that keeps him away from home a lot, and mom is clearly DONE with dad on some level, but this is a small, SMALL village and so they aren't broken u/separated. And, it's been a weird thing in the background that I'd been reading as "oh, an affair," but after a scene from last night's episode, I'm thinking, "OH! A gay affair!"
Anyway, I'm probably wrong. But, it will be interesting to see if they go there.
I should probably read the manga again and see if I can suss it out. It looks like the manga is maybe still ongoing, though.
So, yeah. I'm about to head into my writers' group Zoom. Tonight is Pendragons (not Wyrdsmiths.) Pendragons is a group I started during the pandemic and includes folks from all over the country. When Laurie Winter was still in Montana, I think we had all the continental US time zones covered, which is kind of cool.
K. Goodnight. Hope you have a good one.
My mom was in town last weekend for her high school reunion, and it was a pretty great visit. Friday evening had dinner with cousins Amy, Josh, Sylvie, and my Aunt Milly at Dosa & Curry. There was a lot of stuff going on for HONK! Fest all weekend. Julie and I took Erica to the festival in Davis on Saturday, and we all went with my mom to the Harvard Art Museum on Sunday morning before going to the parade.
Monday was a rainy, quiet day at home, but I decided to do a cooking project Erica had been planning, she wanted tomato soup with pesto grilled cheese. So we baked milk bread and made pesto and made the soup with fresh tomatoes and herbs. I made the soup more or less according to this recipe, but I didn't broil the veggies after baking, added more garlic and herbs, used a can of coconut milk instead of cream, and also added a can of tomato paste. For the fresh herbs, I used all the fresh tarragon and sage in the packets I got from the supermarket. Which was an ounce each, so a questionably large amount, and I would have felt like a fool if I'd ruined the soup on that account. I thought it turned out great, though, and fortunately everyone else liked it, too. I really love sage, though. Season your food more, it's fine.
New people are starting on my team at work this week. Busy, busy.
Monday was a rainy, quiet day at home, but I decided to do a cooking project Erica had been planning, she wanted tomato soup with pesto grilled cheese. So we baked milk bread and made pesto and made the soup with fresh tomatoes and herbs. I made the soup more or less according to this recipe, but I didn't broil the veggies after baking, added more garlic and herbs, used a can of coconut milk instead of cream, and also added a can of tomato paste. For the fresh herbs, I used all the fresh tarragon and sage in the packets I got from the supermarket. Which was an ounce each, so a questionably large amount, and I would have felt like a fool if I'd ruined the soup on that account. I thought it turned out great, though, and fortunately everyone else liked it, too. I really love sage, though. Season your food more, it's fine.
New people are starting on my team at work this week. Busy, busy.
...and it was something alright. This Anime, like the Manga it was based upon manages to make you feel so uncomfortable in a variety of ways from the overly graphic violent tones paired with unapologetic streams of blood splashing everywhere coupled with over saturated scenes of fanservice ranking from Sailor Moon-type of revealing to the unconditional tropes of a distasteful Hentai you would watch to point out how cringy and ridiculous it is. The moral undertones in this series makes to wonder why it was even planned to begin with, and while some characters have potential to grow into a sympathetic trope themselves, it gets thrown out the window in the very next scene with aforementioned themes.
However there's one character in particular that makes this Anime even worse than you could ever tolerate watching, that character being Mugen Kurumi AKA The "War Nurse," who is potentially the very worst Anime character I ever had the displeasure in watching. Her very, VERY questionable portrayal as a healer AND torturer comes highly polirizing at best.
It makes me uncomfortable that Square-Enix was involved in the publishing of this series as well. You *could* watch it for the sympathetic feelings towards characters like Asuka and some actually good battle scenes, but I doubt you could get past a couple episodes much less the entire thing.
On the other hand, went on downloading Streets of Rage 2 on my phone and had a great time in nostalgiaville, so it did ease the uncomfortable feelings I experienced watching that Anime at least.
However there's one character in particular that makes this Anime even worse than you could ever tolerate watching, that character being Mugen Kurumi AKA The "War Nurse," who is potentially the very worst Anime character I ever had the displeasure in watching. Her very, VERY questionable portrayal as a healer AND torturer comes highly polirizing at best.
It makes me uncomfortable that Square-Enix was involved in the publishing of this series as well. You *could* watch it for the sympathetic feelings towards characters like Asuka and some actually good battle scenes, but I doubt you could get past a couple episodes much less the entire thing.
On the other hand, went on downloading Streets of Rage 2 on my phone and had a great time in nostalgiaville, so it did ease the uncomfortable feelings I experienced watching that Anime at least.
The tabletop science fiction roleplaying game of transhuman survival from Posthuman Studios.
Bundle of Holding: Eclipse Phase 2E (from 2022)
The American orbital transfer station offers employment to Byron McDougall, a chance for Charlie Bond to search for an alternative to MAD, and for Diana Osborne, escape from her violently abusive father.
The Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury
On Friday, the Galeón Andalucía came to Fishguard. She's a replica of a 17th century Spanish Galleon, launched in 2010, which has spent the last 15 years sailing all over the world. Not a lot happens in Pembrokeshire in October so everyone became very excited, and we all rushed over to see her (apparently there were more visitors in tiny Fishguard than there were in Liverpool, and there were so many of them that on the last day, they had to stop some people getting on board because of the crowd. It felt rather appropriate, after reading that each of the 150+ people on board a 17th century galleon would have about 1.5 meters of space each. Varied, of course, according to status. The officer's cabins were snug, but not excessively so even by modern standards. The hammocks, on the other hand, made my back ache just to look at them.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
We are fostering two cats for a few weeks for a local cat rescue. They are very thin, but very friendly. They haven't met our cats or Theo, they are living in the bottom floor in the big Shop store-room-cum-guest-bedroom at the moment, since they are both very thin and a bit sneezy. We are supposed to be feeding them up. They are eating a lot, which has to be good.
You can really see how thin Tabby is in the pic below - she's 8 months old. Her Mum is called Rosa, and she's slightly less skeletal, but still you can really feel her ribs.
( Read more... )
You can really see how thin Tabby is in the pic below - she's 8 months old. Her Mum is called Rosa, and she's slightly less skeletal, but still you can really feel her ribs.
( Read more... )
I'm meh on the lyrics and music, but the video...! So here it is, with a couple of other videos that inexplicably got skipped last time I posted a lot of videos.
****
( Fate of Ophelia )
******
( Two covers of the same song )
*******
( Guinea pigs exit and enter the tube )
******
( Ghost waltz )
( Fate of Ophelia )
( Two covers of the same song )
( Guinea pigs exit and enter the tube )
( Ghost waltz )
Also, another one of our furnace pipes has developed a leak. Every time we fix one, the next one goes. I've patched this one, so with any luck (and with our keeping the heat pretty low) it should last until we can call in a plumber.
(Does anybody know a plumber who will accept payment in semi-feral kittens? There's a batch around the corner, very adorable, very healthy, and willing to warm up to anybody who feeds them! They do need to be just a little bit neutered, defleaed, and probably dewormed as well, not to mention vaxxed, but that's surely no big deal for the right family! Actually, I think it's two litters, so that should be ample payment for a little bit of plumbing work.)
**********************************
( Read more... )
(Does anybody know a plumber who will accept payment in semi-feral kittens? There's a batch around the corner, very adorable, very healthy, and willing to warm up to anybody who feeds them! They do need to be just a little bit neutered, defleaed, and probably dewormed as well, not to mention vaxxed, but that's surely no big deal for the right family! Actually, I think it's two litters, so that should be ample payment for a little bit of plumbing work.)
( Read more... )
Growing up is hard enough without the entire world falling apart around you.
Five Novels About Coming of Age During the Apocalypse
Why do Cheolma Rehabilitation Hospital patients keep plummeting from the 6th floor, and why do none of them bleed when they hit the tarmac? The explanation is outside Detective Suyeon's field of expertise.
The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran
The final (still so hard to believe!!) season of Boku No Hero Academia started airing last week. If you would enjoy watching it along with other fans, come join us over at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bnha_fans! Like with previous seasons, we're sharing thoughts and reactions every week (without manga spoilers on those posts, to keep it friendly for anime-only folks :)).
bnha_fans! Like with previous seasons, we're sharing thoughts and reactions every week (without manga spoilers on those posts, to keep it friendly for anime-only folks :)).We will be playing the Best Classic Filk Song and Best Filk Song nominees. You can find all of the info at this link, oh, and you can vote, especially now that you've heard them all!
https://www.ovff.org/pegasus/2025finalballot.html
Available on iTunes, Google Play and most other places you can get podcasts. We can be heard Wednesday at 6am and 9pm Central on scifi.radio.
filkcast.blogspot.com
https://www.ovff.org/pegasus/2025finalballot.html
Available on iTunes, Google Play and most other places you can get podcasts. We can be heard Wednesday at 6am and 9pm Central on scifi.radio.
filkcast.blogspot.com
While I was at Gaylaxicon, an email went out form Cole Sarar (she/they) who runs Sci-Fi Reading Hour desperately looking for any author who might be up for a performance in early November. I checked my calendar right away because I really enjoyed ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
naomikritzer 's performance last year. I wrote about this here, but this is the gig where Cole pairs a musician and an author together. In Naomi's case, it was like getting to watch a radio play because the musician had the ability to do sound effects and she had reworked the piece so that Cole and she could share the narrative.
At any rate, ever since then, I've been thinking about what of mine might work for something like this. I don't write a lot of short stories, though I have written some. The short stories I have written don't tend to get very broad distribution (by which I mean, I have yet to truly break into any kind of traditional short story market. The one I did get in in the 1990s? SF AGE? Now defunct.) A few years ago, I wrote something for one ofrachelmanija 's projects that I really loved. It was about a supervillain trying to adopt a cat. It's very silly and tonally and conceptually, the complete opposite of naomikritzer 's "A Year Without Sunshine," so I had no idea if that would appeal to Cole. But, I was recently reminded at Diversicon that one of my strengths is humor. I decided to take a chance and I sent that along with a note that said, "You're probably already booked, but in case not, I'm up for it, and here's the piece I'm considering performing."
I don't know if I was, in fact, the only one to reply or if my being ready with a specific piece made me more appealing than any others who jumped in, but I got the gig.
I will, of course, be reminding you as this gets closer, but for your records here's the pertenent information: the performance will be Sunday, November 2 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl & Theater (https://www.bryantlakebowl.com/). Doors open at 6 pm and the show starts at 7 pm. There will be a post-show interview with both the writer and the musician at 8:00 pm. Cost is $10 in advance and $15 at the door*. (Braynt-Lake Bowl has its November calendar up, but this show isn't, for obvious reasons, up yet.)
Also, my co-performer will be the lovely and talented Scott Keever who says this about himself: Scott Keever is an award-winning guitarist and composer from Minneapolis. He has specialized in solo guitar, primarily fingerstyle, utilizing resophonic, classical, jazz and folk guitar sounds in his explorations while also focusing on Celtic and Eastern European styles. His stylistic range can be heard on his solo albums "Solo Guitar: Vol. 1" (2018) and “Solo Guitar: Vol. 2” (2022) (both available on Spotify and Apple Music) As well as being a solo performer, Scott plays guitar, Bulgarian tambura and oud for Orkestar Bez Ime (OBI), an award-winning Twin Cities band that specializes in Balkan dance music. He is also currently a member of chamber pop group Follow The Firefly and has recently worked with Ukrainian Village Band. He has been a long-time musician and performer in the local Minnesota theater scene and has appeared in productions with Brave New Workshop, Flying Foot Forum, Walking Shadow Theater, Ethnic Dance Theater, O’Shea Irish Dance and Table Salt Productions. He has also composed music for short films, documentaries, theater, radio and podcasts.
If that sweetens the deal for you. Please come if you're interested, yada yada, but what I really wanted to tell you about was the rehearsal yesterday morning.
Our schedules are such that all of us were available in the morning. We met at Cole's South Minneapolis house at 10:00 am.
It is always a challenge for me to navigate Minneapolis. When I first moved to the Cities, I lived in Minneapolis, but now, after decades of living in St. Paul, I find that whatever fey creatures rule the leylines of Minneapolis have rejected me. GPS mostly helps? It still managed to lie to me about which side of the street Cole's house was on so I spent several confused minutes trying to decide whether or not we were actually supposed to meet at the taco shop at the corner, or what. But, thanks to my chronic fear of being late, I had plenty of time to figure it out and managed to arrive nearly precisely on time.
Cole's house is a typical Minneapolis two-story affair. (How do I describe this to out-of-towners? A lot of our houses in the Twin Cities are older, at least by Midwestern standards, so I'd guess this was a Craftsman era house--early 1900s.) Cole did not offer the full house tour, but I was immediately at home to see a dining room table full of art supplies and other child-friendly detrius. It was a lovely, lived-in house. We chatted about this and that while waiting for Scott to arrive. Cole's ethnic heritage is Turkish and so she offered Turkish tea. I've had (and loved) Turkish coffee, but I was very intregued by Turkish tea, so I said yes immediately. During that conversation I learned that their father immigrated from Istanbul, but never became a US Citizen. We spent some time trying to decide if that made her a first generation immigrant or second. We settled on one and a half, which I found amusing.
Scott arrived in an extroverted, (likely) undiagnosed ADHD clamor. I, of course, liked him immediately. But, between Scott and I, thoughtful Cole had a tendency to get left behind as conversation lept from subject to subject without even a pause for a breath. I spend at least part of the time pausing Scott to make sure Cole--OUR ACTUAL HOST--was included.
I'm pretty sure that Cole hoped for this rehersal to be no more than an hour and a half, but we ended up going three hours.
Whew.
The way this show works Cole will also read something, so we started by listening to their story. They had sent us something ahead of time, but as Scott and I sat on the floor listening it was very clear that what she sent was NOT this story. After it was over we had a laugh because Cole had been saying that the piece they wrote "matched" mine in tone, but what we'd gotten in the email was so much DARKER that I spent some time thinking, "Wow, well maybe humor wasn't as self-evident as I thought?" But, no, it was just a clerical error. Cole had accidentally sent us the piece that had gone with the previous month's show!
I read my piece and then we spent a little time trying to figure out the order if the show, who would read first, etc. That's all still up in the air, and I don't think it really much matters. I think Cole's piece is longer than mine, but we need to fill an hour one way or the other.
Then, somehow, the conversation got on Neil Gaiman and that whole horror show and I discovered I have a ton of friends in common with Scott thanks to his association with Cat's Laughing and the general Venn Diagram of nerds, music, and Renaissance Festival.
It was a good time, but ran late and so then I made a tactical financial error by suggesting to Mason that we hit his favorite Korean fried chicken place for lunch. We had a great time and great food, but this--it turned out--was not the time of the month to splurge. Money is a huge argument in my household and so the rest of the evening was not nearly as fun as how the day started.
Captialism, man. I could really do without it.
=====
*If you're local and want to go but can't afford it, let me know. I have two comp tickets as part of the package. My wife never attends my readings and my son will be out of town, and I hate to waste these.
naomikritzer 's performance last year. I wrote about this here, but this is the gig where Cole pairs a musician and an author together. In Naomi's case, it was like getting to watch a radio play because the musician had the ability to do sound effects and she had reworked the piece so that Cole and she could share the narrative.At any rate, ever since then, I've been thinking about what of mine might work for something like this. I don't write a lot of short stories, though I have written some. The short stories I have written don't tend to get very broad distribution (by which I mean, I have yet to truly break into any kind of traditional short story market. The one I did get in in the 1990s? SF AGE? Now defunct.) A few years ago, I wrote something for one of
rachelmanija 's projects that I really loved. It was about a supervillain trying to adopt a cat. It's very silly and tonally and conceptually, the complete opposite of naomikritzer 's "A Year Without Sunshine," so I had no idea if that would appeal to Cole. But, I was recently reminded at Diversicon that one of my strengths is humor. I decided to take a chance and I sent that along with a note that said, "You're probably already booked, but in case not, I'm up for it, and here's the piece I'm considering performing." I don't know if I was, in fact, the only one to reply or if my being ready with a specific piece made me more appealing than any others who jumped in, but I got the gig.
I will, of course, be reminding you as this gets closer, but for your records here's the pertenent information: the performance will be Sunday, November 2 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl & Theater (https://www.bryantlakebowl.com/). Doors open at 6 pm and the show starts at 7 pm. There will be a post-show interview with both the writer and the musician at 8:00 pm. Cost is $10 in advance and $15 at the door*. (Braynt-Lake Bowl has its November calendar up, but this show isn't, for obvious reasons, up yet.)
Also, my co-performer will be the lovely and talented Scott Keever who says this about himself: Scott Keever is an award-winning guitarist and composer from Minneapolis. He has specialized in solo guitar, primarily fingerstyle, utilizing resophonic, classical, jazz and folk guitar sounds in his explorations while also focusing on Celtic and Eastern European styles. His stylistic range can be heard on his solo albums "Solo Guitar: Vol. 1" (2018) and “Solo Guitar: Vol. 2” (2022) (both available on Spotify and Apple Music) As well as being a solo performer, Scott plays guitar, Bulgarian tambura and oud for Orkestar Bez Ime (OBI), an award-winning Twin Cities band that specializes in Balkan dance music. He is also currently a member of chamber pop group Follow The Firefly and has recently worked with Ukrainian Village Band. He has been a long-time musician and performer in the local Minnesota theater scene and has appeared in productions with Brave New Workshop, Flying Foot Forum, Walking Shadow Theater, Ethnic Dance Theater, O’Shea Irish Dance and Table Salt Productions. He has also composed music for short films, documentaries, theater, radio and podcasts.
If that sweetens the deal for you. Please come if you're interested, yada yada, but what I really wanted to tell you about was the rehearsal yesterday morning.
Our schedules are such that all of us were available in the morning. We met at Cole's South Minneapolis house at 10:00 am.
It is always a challenge for me to navigate Minneapolis. When I first moved to the Cities, I lived in Minneapolis, but now, after decades of living in St. Paul, I find that whatever fey creatures rule the leylines of Minneapolis have rejected me. GPS mostly helps? It still managed to lie to me about which side of the street Cole's house was on so I spent several confused minutes trying to decide whether or not we were actually supposed to meet at the taco shop at the corner, or what. But, thanks to my chronic fear of being late, I had plenty of time to figure it out and managed to arrive nearly precisely on time.
Cole's house is a typical Minneapolis two-story affair. (How do I describe this to out-of-towners? A lot of our houses in the Twin Cities are older, at least by Midwestern standards, so I'd guess this was a Craftsman era house--early 1900s.) Cole did not offer the full house tour, but I was immediately at home to see a dining room table full of art supplies and other child-friendly detrius. It was a lovely, lived-in house. We chatted about this and that while waiting for Scott to arrive. Cole's ethnic heritage is Turkish and so she offered Turkish tea. I've had (and loved) Turkish coffee, but I was very intregued by Turkish tea, so I said yes immediately. During that conversation I learned that their father immigrated from Istanbul, but never became a US Citizen. We spent some time trying to decide if that made her a first generation immigrant or second. We settled on one and a half, which I found amusing.
Scott arrived in an extroverted, (likely) undiagnosed ADHD clamor. I, of course, liked him immediately. But, between Scott and I, thoughtful Cole had a tendency to get left behind as conversation lept from subject to subject without even a pause for a breath. I spend at least part of the time pausing Scott to make sure Cole--OUR ACTUAL HOST--was included.
I'm pretty sure that Cole hoped for this rehersal to be no more than an hour and a half, but we ended up going three hours.
Whew.
The way this show works Cole will also read something, so we started by listening to their story. They had sent us something ahead of time, but as Scott and I sat on the floor listening it was very clear that what she sent was NOT this story. After it was over we had a laugh because Cole had been saying that the piece they wrote "matched" mine in tone, but what we'd gotten in the email was so much DARKER that I spent some time thinking, "Wow, well maybe humor wasn't as self-evident as I thought?" But, no, it was just a clerical error. Cole had accidentally sent us the piece that had gone with the previous month's show!
I read my piece and then we spent a little time trying to figure out the order if the show, who would read first, etc. That's all still up in the air, and I don't think it really much matters. I think Cole's piece is longer than mine, but we need to fill an hour one way or the other.
Then, somehow, the conversation got on Neil Gaiman and that whole horror show and I discovered I have a ton of friends in common with Scott thanks to his association with Cat's Laughing and the general Venn Diagram of nerds, music, and Renaissance Festival.
It was a good time, but ran late and so then I made a tactical financial error by suggesting to Mason that we hit his favorite Korean fried chicken place for lunch. We had a great time and great food, but this--it turned out--was not the time of the month to splurge. Money is a huge argument in my household and so the rest of the evening was not nearly as fun as how the day started.
Captialism, man. I could really do without it.
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*If you're local and want to go but can't afford it, let me know. I have two comp tickets as part of the package. My wife never attends my readings and my son will be out of town, and I hate to waste these.
Fallen Woman turned private investigator Sarah Tolerance is hired to recover a fan. Carnage ensues.
Point of Honour (Sarah Tolerance, volume 1) by Madeleine E. Robins