Theatre: Anniversary Plays

Covenant by York Walker, Directed by Nicholas Japaul Bernard, Arts West Through 2 March.

Blues For an Alabama Sky by Peral Cleage, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Seattle Rep through 23 February

The Lovely Bride and I have crested 42 years of marriage this past week (thank you, thank you), and to celebrate, we decided to hold a "staycation" where both of us took off work. As a result, we played games (I lost several games of Wingspan), ate a lot of good food (Chestnut Cafe, which is the LB's favorite's lunch spot, Lobster Shop in Tacoma, Mashiko Sushi in West Seattle, and Toulouse Petite near the Seattle Center). And, as fate would have it, we had two plays scheduled over three days - Covenant at the Arts West, and Blues for an Alabama Sky at the Seattle Rep.

Let me get to the heart of the matter - Covenant was the best play and the best performance I have seen in Seattle for years, Arts West has been putting together bang-up seasons for the past couple years, and this one fired on all cylinders. The writing was top-notch, the performances were amazing, the direction was fantastic, and set design was grand. The small nature of the theatre brought an intimacy that allowed the actors to reach out across the void of the forestage and grab the audience by the collective shoulders and give them a good shake. The play is mythic and suspenseful and fully engaged.

Covenant is about secrets. It is also about faith and superstition, but it is most of all about secrets. The setting is a small town in Georgia, 1936. Johnny (Donavan Mahannah) comes back to his home town. He left town a stammering boy in the wake of his older brother's death. He returns now without the stammer, a master musician with his guitar, and possessing a smooth self-assurance. Naturally there's suspicion he made a deal with the devil. He came back for Avery (Simone Alene), who was just a friend but now something much more. Avery's Mama (Felicia V. Loud) is a god-fearing woman who does not approve of Johnny and his juke joint antics. Little sister Violet (Deja Culver) and family friend Ruthie (Kaila Towers) round out the ensemble. They're all brilliant.

And I don't want to say more because I don't want to do spoilers here - it's that good. Each character gets their turn to tell stories and reveal secrets, as well as sparking off each other in meaningful relationships. And the writing is SO GOOD, of the level that I was left thinking "Man, I wish I had written that" and "Man, I wish I could write like that". There is a not an ounce of fat in this play - even the most cast-off line has meaning and subtext, and is delivered in such a natural and engaged fashion, that over the course of the play as you realize (often to your horror) what is really going on here. All questions are resolved, even the ones you didn't know you had.

And part of that is the direction (Nicholas Japaul Bernard) and the dramaturg (Marquisa 'QuiQui" Dominguez. The players maneuver perfectly a two-tiered stage, the back stage being Mama's dining room, dominated by a cross, which the forestage was open for a variety of purposes, including a general "theatre space" as the actors share secrets with the audience. The sound design was excellent, accenting the action on the stage. Even the stagehands, the black-dressed theatre ninjas moving props onto and off the stage, were used perfectly. 

I rarely say that something is a near-perfect play, but this is it. Get yourself out to West Seattle for this one. 

Sunday we decamped for the Seattle Center and Blues for an Alabama Sky. And I will be honest - it was good. And if I saw it on its own I would probably give it greater praise. But it suffers in comparison with Covenant.

We're still in the 1930s, but this time in Harlem. Angel (Ayanna Bria Bakeri) is a hot mess of cabaret singer who just lost her job, her living space, and her boyfriend. Guy (Jamar Jones) is her gay best friend from Savannah, who is a costumer and is sure that Josephine Baker will sweep him up and invite him to come work for her in Paris. As he is trying to navigate a drunken Angel home, they're aided by Leland (Ajaz Dontavius), newly arrived from Alabama in the big sinful city. Delia (Ester Okech Lewis) is the prim neighbor from across the hall who is working to bring a family planning center (read: birth control) to Harlem, aided by a boisterous local doctor (Yusef Seevers). The five of them struggle with life and survival in the wake of the fading Harlme Renaissance.

And it works, mostly. The first act feels like it drags a bit, Checkov's gun makes a requisite appearance, and you can see some of the twists and turns coming a ways off. Some personal revelations and traumas show up rather late in the day. And there is a huge amount of name dropping going on - Marcus Garvey, Josephine Baker, Adam Clayton Powell (Jr and Sr), Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, none of whom show up on stage. 

The music, however, is haunting and delightful, with Nathan Breedlove on the trumpet acting as the ghostly spirit of the city itself to show time passing. Which is a good thing, since the stagecraft involves a turntable set that shifts back and forth to show what apartment we are in. I would wonder if the play would work better in a smaller confines, or, on the other hand, if Covenant would fade if thrust onto a larger stage.

Yet, it all comes together. The actors are fine. It is the best of three revivals at the Rep this season (it was originally produced 30 years ago). Given a choice between this and the Super Bowl, I'd definitely choose Alabama Sky. But seriously, go hunt down Covenant and prepare to be impressed. 

More later,

Game: Murder, She Roleplayed

 Brindlewood Bay by Jason Cordova, The Gauntlet, 2022

Here's the High Concept - Murder She Wrote Meets a Cthulhu Cult. The players take the roles of elderly women living in a small New England town. They're members of a book club known as the Murder Mavens, and they solve mysteries. And in the process they discover a deeper conspiracy underlying it all.

It's a really good game concept, and I was pushing our regular group of veteran gamers to try it out, and despite some challenges, it worked out pretty well.

Let me hit the biggest challenge first - the rule set is a complete mess. It is well-produced, a digest sized hardback, but the contents could stand a complete revision. RPG rules are challenged by two conflicting purposes. One is to teach the game, and the other is be a reference when playing the game. This book does neither well. 

Part of it is that the game is Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA), which is a new style of play. Its got some really cool ideas, but Brindlewood assumes that you're already familiar with them. The vibe I got on the first reading was akin to reading the original Chainmail or original D&D rules. There a basic assumptions to the game that are assumed to be common knowledge, so a newcomer will just bounce off them.

Further, you absolutely need to have the characters sheets available to understand the game. There is a description of characters sheets in the book, but vital information that only exists on the sheets (which are not in the book). I was part of the Kickstarter, so I could dig up the files, but for everyone else, you have to go online (no, they don't tell you where to go, or even that you really need the characters sheets to understand the game). The further downside of this is that, once the site holding the sheets go down (because the Internet is both eternal and ephemeral), you're high and dry.

The organization of the book does not help. Definitions, when provided, are in a couple different locations. The explanation of what happens in the first play session shows up 140 pages after we're told about what is a typical play session consists of. There is no index. We had three hard copies of the book and an e-book at the table, and we were still flipping through pages, muttering "I'm sure it's here elsewhere".

Powered by the Apocalypse runs differently than your traditional RPG game (like D&D or CoC). Players are much more empowered to determine what happens, defining both the results (and penalties) of their actions. The basic mechanic is two six-sided dice. You role for success. On a 6 or less you fail (and you or the Keeper can describe what happens) on a 7-9 You succeed but at a cost (the Keeper decides with your input). On a 10 or better you succeed, but we advance the meta-plot a bit (the Meta-Plot involves a creepy cult of a supernatural being - we just started digging into that after the second scenarios, but have not gotten too far)..

The players have a lot of input, and as a result always have to be on their toes and ready to engage (as opposed to the more traditional, initiative driven systems where you wait your turn to do something). The Keeper also has be on their toes, in that one has to continually figure out what goes wrong on those all-too-common rolls. Sometimes this results in dead spots where players (and/or the Keeper) are trying to figure out what happens next.

Further, while this is a mystery game, you the Keeper don't know whodunnit. The players gather clues which tend to be rather open ended, and let the players fill in the blanes  (real conversation from the game - ME: You find a steamy letter. PLAYER: Who is it from? ME: Who do you want it to be from? PLAYER: I HATE this game!). After they have gathered sufficient clues, they piece them together and roll to see if they are right. As one player put it "OK. Who are we pinning this on?"

I know. This all sounds like this is a heavy lift. How did it work out in play?

Well, we had a marvelous time over about five game sessions. The character creation system required a lot of engagement - they effectively had to write the introduction to the TV show, where each character got their moment and a description of their "cozy place" home. As a result we created characters with much more depth than the your standard 1st-level dwarf warrior. Again a favorite interchange: ME: Tell me about your late husband. PLAYER: No one ever suspected a thing

The format is very much 80's television, right down to the jump-scare (getting locked in a freezer, or sliding off the deck of a ship) and going to commercial. There are a multitude of ways to damage or kill the characters, and a multitude of ways for the characters to unwind that and take another path. The setting is a small coastal town in New England, but many of us had worked in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, so the small-tourist town flavor came naturally to us. We ran through two adventures - one involving a wealthy family patriarch getting pushed off his yacht, the other being a Halloween party where the victim was drowned in a tub used for bobbing for apples. It was goofy in places and a lot of fun.

The flavor is great, and the players rose to the occasion. This is definitely a case of a good game, but a challenging explanation of it, and we had to mentally unwind a lot of traditional role-playing assumptions and mannerisms in order to get to the heart. And yeah, I'd like to see a few other examples to see where this game did and did not adhere to the original PbtA rules. But a good time was had by all.

More later,

Game: Auf Weidersehen Berlin

 Berlin: The Wicked City, Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin By David Larkins with Mike Mason and Lynne Hardy, Chaosium 2019

I've mentioned this before, but the concept of doing full-fledged reviews carries with it the responsibility of actually playing the game. I talk about my recent arrivals with the light hand of first impressions and initial read-throughs, but full reviews demand a higher level of engagement.  The downside of this is that it may take weeks or months to get to a post-worthy review. This is hardly a good recipe for telling you about the new hotness.

But anyway, Berlin: The Wicked City.

Berlin was the capital of Germany in the twenties and thirties (the government was based out the town of Weimar briefly after WWI and that's where the name "Weimar Republic" came from). It was a vibrant, cultured, and often decadent city, with cabarets, art, a thriving literary scene, and a nascent movie industry. And sex. Lots of sex.

The book is recommended for mature readers, and leans hard into the city's cabarets and sex workers. A lot about sex workers. Even when talking about the various districts in Berlin, it drills down on what kind of sex workers are common there. Sort of like if you were writing about Las Vegas, but concentrating on strip clubs and escort services. It's a bit much, and while it adds depth to the setting, I never want to hear  people complaining about the Random Harlot Table in the DMG ever again.

The sourcebook section is incredibly detailed - we're a hundred years in the past in another country. And most people's knowledge of that era is primarily watching Cabaret on their iPad (which is not horrible, since the movie is based on the musical which is based on the book by an author who LIVED in Berlin during that era). So the first hurdle is getting people to understand what it is about Berlin they should consider when adventuring there.

And the authors have done their homework, and want you to know about it. Bios about everyone who hung out in Berlin in the 20s and 30s. Floorplans of famous buildings of the era. The adventures themselves are filled with name-checks and famous characters, such that I took the rare measure of asking the players not to look up everyone they encounter on the Wikipedia. 

The game rules? OK, we talked about the new system a while back. In general, they hold up well in play, and I like the fact that the staged nature of success makes it easier to narrate combat. In addition, the setting for the adventures makes for new players to slide into. Germany in the immediate post-war period had stricter gun control laws, so the idea of player characters packing heat is initially off the table (Gun laws were loosened later, but then only for "approved" people).

What about the adventure? Ah, there's the rub.

Well, I wasn't impressed. I ran the first of the three adventures, and after reading the second, thought about just going on to something else with my team. But after a vote, we pressed on, and had a good time of it. Of course, this requires a bit more detail and explanation, and with it a big SPOILER WARNING for those who are planning to get involved with this. So consider the SPOILER LIGHT lit and know that HERE BE SPOILERS.

My regular group on this was four players. A big-game hunter looking to book rich tourists to safaris in East Africa. A grizzled American reporter who came for the war and stayed for the beer. An albino heiress who lost her father and brothers in the war. An alienist who had an unpleasant encounter with Deep Ones when he was in the Kriegsmarine in the Baltic. You know, your typical grab-bag of Call of Cthulhu characters. They were all members of the Independent Order of the Owls, a club of paranormal researchers. This was one of the groups suggested by the book for creating a common theme among diverse heroes, and it gets good marks for giving the Keeper a place to start and unify the team.

The further good news is that the adventures swing away from the standard CoC plot ("You are summoned to a distant, unfamiliar place by someone who will be dead by the time you get there"). The bad news is that the players are often bystanders in their own adventure. They are roofied, magically teleported (a couple times) and in the case of the first adventure, have their fates determined by a single die roll at the beginning of the game. At the same time, there is a lot for the Keeper to do as well, in that you have to come up with encounters as the Brownshirts and their allies in authority close in on you (the Owls were raided at one point, and I had to make that up on the fly). Plus there are places where the text leaves you high and dry on basic reasoning about NPC behavior (Why DOES the Russian count choose to hire you?) and places where you have to make sure certain clues are delivered (make sure the amnesiac Grand Duchess mentions the Berlin Zoo to lead their players there later).

The adventures cover the rise and fall of postwar Berlin. The first adventure takes place among the physical and economic decimation following the end of the War and features the malevolent spirit of a mass murderer. The second occurs during the roaring 20's recovery and deals with a group seeking to incarnate an ancient goddess (and unfortunately succeeding). And the final adventure occurs during the authoritarian takeover of Germany, with the SA (Brownshirts) rising, and takes a tour through German cinema.  And through it all we have murdered prostitutes, dissolute, naked celebrities, and SS-supported brothels. 

How did our group fare? They lived, sorta. The American reporter sacrificed himself to defeat an elder god and was replaced with an exact duplicate. After the third adventure he joined the big game hunter and emigrated to Wisconsin. The alienist fled to Switzerland, and the heiress attempted to use the knowledge they gained to resurrect her dead husband. This last bit did not go well, and she went quietly mad and remained in Berlin until the Allied bombers arrived.

Berlin: The Wicked City, is an impressive sourcebook. The research is excellent, and by using period maps of the city, the maps are well-done. The handouts were well put together, and we discovered that even the newspaper typefaces of the time were politicized. Ultimately, though, this is a challenging product, not so much for the adult nature of it but because the adventure often denies players their agency, and requires the Keeper to thread some very narrow needles to keep the plot moving forward. 

More later,

Theatre: Jack and Tollers

 Lewis & Tolkien by Dean Batali, Directed by Karen Lund, Taproot Theatre, January 22- March 8 

CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. In the real world, they were compatriots, fellow professors, members of the Inklings writing group, occasional pranksters, and good friends. In the world of fantasy literature, their followers and fans rival the Tupac/Biggie rivalry. I will admit I'm on Team Tolkien, but let me back up a moment for some background before weighing in on the play itself.

The Lovely Bride and I had a busy Saturday, with Tai Chi class in the morning, a light lunch at the Greenwood restaurant Razzi's, then joining up with friends John and Janice for this play. Then we had additional errands (grocery shopping, getting more bird seed and cat litter), before returning home. At our age, that's a big day.

And we got to break in the Isaac Studio Theatre, which is a nice, smaller venue than the main Taproot Stage. I've described Taproot's main theater as a jewel box with a thrust stage and 225 seats. The Isaac is even smaller with 150-some seats laid out in a more traditional manner with a high-rise of comfortable seats looming over a small stage. Perfect venue for a play about two men in a bar. Lewis and Tolkien reunite after many years apart at the Eagle & Child, their favorite pub, to reminisce, reconnect and settle a few old scores. 

Now, my mental image of Tolkien, supported by interviews over the years, is that of a scholarly Hobbit. Brilliant in his chosen field (Middle and Old English), who in his spare time side wrote what would become defining books of British Literature. He sits there in a highbacked chair, smoking a pipe and discussing Beowulf. Not something for dynamic playgoing, I will admit. So I had make some strong mental adjustments for both the Tolkien and Lewis as presented on the stage. 

Jeff Allen Pierce's Tolkien is much more animated. Gruff, grumpy, and defensive. More conservative and Catholic than usually presented. Tolkien and Lewis were both religious, but from his writing, I always put Lewis down as being more hard-core to his faith. Narnia, Perelandra, and the Screwtape Letters all drip with Christianity. Tolkien's works were also extremely moral, but he lacked all the bells and whistles, or rather, the allegory, found in Lewis's works. The play's Tolkien is much more emotional, loud, pedantic, and often loud.

Lewis (Peter Cook), on the other hand, is more aloof, controlled, and professorial. He comes off as the more cerebral of the two, more in command of his emotions. He is more in line with what I think of as a Oxford Don. He comes off as man hurt by the end of their friendship, but has let the years scab over it, while Pierce's Tolkien still grapples with the situation. Of the two, he is the better man.

Both actors are good in their roles, as is Chloe Michele as Veronica, a waitress of the bar, whose character is often referee and audience for their set-too. She pops in regularly both to take the edge off both men, and break up the back-and-forth as they argue. 

The play succeeds when talking about the relationships between two men who have grown apart. The Lovely Bride got it and was moved the by tragedy of their breakup and the hope of restoration. For my part, I had to turn off the part of my brain where I kept comparing the two against my imaginary versions and instead broke them down into component parts - effectively, a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar. And in those terms, it worked.

Also, forgive this pedantic digression, but when you say someone is an apologist, it does not mean in these circumstances that they are sorry for what they may have done. Rather they are offering a reasoned argument for someone. That's unclear in many cases, but the Apology of St. Paul (Acts 22), for example, is not that he's sorry for being a Christian, but a thoughtful explanation of Christianity.  We toss the word around here a bit assuming that the audience would pick it up correctly, but I don't know if that's the case.

Anyway. Was it a worthwhile afternoon? Yep. Did it work as a play? Also yes. Should you go see it? Yes - the Saturday matinee had a full house and has already been extended two weeks. But as history, even as historical fiction, it fails to live up to expectations. And mind you, expectations were high.

More later, 

And To All A Good Night

 Grubb Street wishes you and yours a safe and happy Holiday Season.

Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Olivier Merson (1879), MFA, Boston.

Theatre: A Very Wooster Holiday

 Happy Christmas, Jeeves by Heidi McElrath and Nathan Kessler-Jeffrey, directed by Karen Lund, based on the stories of PG Wodehouse Taproot Theatre Company, Through December 31

Let's round out this festive season's holiday plays with a Wodehousian romp. The Lovely Bride and I, along with our friends Janice and John, set out for the northern reaches of Seattle for lunch at Saffron Grill in Northgate (Indian/Mediterranean fusion, which was quite good), then doubled back to Greenwood and the Taproot Theatre for Happy Christmas, Jeeves, And it was all quite enjoyable.

Happy Christmas is not based on any one particular Bertie and Jeeves story so much as it is based on all of them. Indeed, one of the criticisms of Wodehouse's stories is their similarity - High-class toff Bertie Wooster gets himself in trouble, and only his sage and unflappable valet Jeeves can extricate him. And while this is true, but it is a little unfair, sort of like saying that The Simpsons have one story, and they just keep telling it different ways for 35 years. So this particular creation, from the pens of McElrath and Kessler-Jeffrey, features all the characters, hallmarks, and tropes of the traditional Bertie/Jeeves stories, mixed together and served as a Christmas Pudding. 

Here's a deal - Bertie would like to do nothing more than spend the holidays alone, curled up with a new book by his favorite author. Such is not to be, of course, because his dreaded Aunt Agatha descends upon him with the demand that he put his hapless cousin Claude on a train to South Africa (spoiler- Claude doesn't go), and then the situation is made worse by Bertie's old chum Bingo Little having fallen in love with a waitress named Mabel, but doesn't know how to get HIS aunt's approval of the cross-social-class match. Add a few cases of mistaken illnesses and an escaped ferret and you culminate in an inspired collection of door-slamming and hallway-chasing. 

And it's a lot of fun. And I should add that for this particular matinee performance, the understudies took over. There was a flurry of addenda slips in the program book, and folk stepping up into the leads. Jon Lutyens emerges as a pitch-perfect Jeeves, all manner and decorum even when armed with a net and a broom. Joe Moore was a delight as Bertie, all loose-limbed, slack-jawed, and goggle-eyed. Moore had been listed as Cousin Claude in the program, but after being promoted, that role was nicely assayed by Giao Nguyen. Kim Morris is a juggernaut-class Aunt Agatha, all sound and fury. William Eames was the endearing and infuriating Bingo Little. Nikki Visel was the very precise and proper (and cougarish) Lady Bittlesham, Bingo's Aunt and author of books on proper etiquette. Mabel was Rachel Guyer-Mafune, and this would be the fourth production I've seen her in at a fourth different theater. She's a hard-working actor.

They're all good. Delightfully so. And the direction was top-notch, dealing with the challenges of a small theater with a thrust stage and flanked on three sides by the patrons. This performance had pacing, and would set up and delivered jokes and humorous situations, with enough breathing room to let the audience catch up. The acting was broad, the action was slapstick, and there resulting confusion completely enjoyable. The audience was enchanted and engaged.

I liked it a lot, so much so that afterwards, I sat down to pen this, since it runs for only one more week (they did extend it over the weekend). This was the best Christmas show (Though Snowed In was nice as well). So if you need something to do in your post-Christmas break, here's a breath of fresh air with a very familiar setting. Happy Christmas to all!

More later, 

Theatre: Metaphysical Humor

 Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward, directed by Allison Narver, Seattle Rep Through December 22

Despite the playwright's name, this is not a Christmas play, though it is the kind of play that fits well within the holiday season - light, frothy, traditional, safe. Something to take in as a break from cookie baking, or to take the out-of-town visitors to. And indeed, it felt like a full house was in attendance this past Sunday afternoon.

But as a play I found it frustrating, in the same way I found By the Skin of Our Teeth frustrating. It is classic theatre in the expected style, and parts of it are excellent, but it ultimately misfires for me.

Here's the skinny - Charles and Ruth Condomine (Arlando Smith and Gina Hammond), both on their second marriages after the deaths of their first spouses, throw a dinner party with the Bradmans (Sara Waisanen and Nate Tenenbaum). Charles is working on a new novel involving a fraudulent occultist, and to that end has invited a local medium, Madame Arcati (Anne Allgood), to hold seance. All the others are skeptical, even mocking, but Arcati proves to be the real deal, and summons the spirit of Charles' first wife, the ebullient Elvira (Kirsten Potter). Whackiness ensues.

But, like Skin of Our Teeth, it should work, but it doesn't. This is a venerable old warhorse of a play, long-running in London's West End, subject of numerous revivals and innumerable summer stock and school versions. It should burble with wit and verve, but instead most of the banter shouts along at a uniform volume level and speed, such that I'm worn out trying to keep up. The pacing feels off. The three main characters in this love triangle are not expected to be particularly likeable, but by the same token, none of them seem to deserve their ultimate fates. They're all shallow. A little callous, but not delightfully so. They all seem to be talking, but there is little actual conversation going on here.

Where the play succeeds in where the talking stops and the physical comedy takes over. Allgood as Madame Arcati is a wondrously comic medium, a loose-limbed crane as she works her spells and flings herself bodily into trances. And Sophie Kelly-Hedrick as the maid, Edith steals every scene she is in as a Monty-Python-Gumby-turned-servant. The stagecraft is top-notch in the Rep tradition, and fits particularly well for the physical comedy. And the Lovely Bride has informed me that the gowns were excellent. 

But ultimately, it misfires. Maybe the old plays I enjoyed have grown long in the tooth. Maybe it's just the modern approach to them. But the end result is just OK - not great, not horrible, just fine but not worth a strong recommendation for the holiday season. But just sort of indifferent. Truly blithe.

More later. 

The Big Pile of Books: Plane Books

A Right To Die by Rex Stout. Bantam Books, originally published in 1964. 
Too Many Clients by Rex Stout, Bantam Books, originally published in 1960
And Four To Go By Rex Stout, Bantam Books, originally published in 1958
Fade to Black by Robert Goldsborough, Bantam Books, originally published in 1990
The High Window by Raymond Chandler, Vintage Crime originally published in 1942
Pickup on Noon Street by Raymond Chandler, Ballantine Books, originally published in 1952
Playback by Raymond Chandler, Ballantine Books, originally published in 1958
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, Arcturus Books, originally published in 1920 

So I've been doing a lot of air travel this year, and when I travel, I bring along paperback mysteries. They are small, portable, you don't have to turn them off when landing or worry if the batteries are low. I usually get them at used bookstores, so if you lose them, you're out a few bucks.

And there's something I've noticed that I haven't seen anyone else comment about - the demise of the mass market paperback. I've been in a couple big chains, and the stubby pocket-sized mass-market paperback has been almost completely replaced with the larger-size trade paperback. The only mass-markets I'm finding (even in grocery stores, is the aisle next to the greeting cards) are by established authors and part of larger series that have been running in that format for years. Even a couple of the entries here are trade-sized reprints, purchased while on the road. Is this change-over really a thing? Are we losing the traditional mass market paperback of our youths?

Anyway.

These mass-market mysteries are also relatively short, unlike the doorstop fantasy books of the last several decades. That works out as well, since I can finish a book in one hop from Seattle to Milwaukee, or a round-trip to LA. 

I still tend to favor Nero Wolfe mysteries, if you haven't noticed, but I am getting towards the end of the Rex Stout canon, and have actually bought the same book twice under different covers because I was unsure if I have read it or not. I've even engaged with Stout's estate-approved successor. So I'm doing a bit more experimentation, this time with some Raymond Chandler I had never encountered before, and dabbling with Agatha Christie. 

Anyway, here are some recent additions

A Right To Die - Usually, Wolfe's world exists in a 7-year bubble. When we first meet Archie and Nero in the 30's, they've been together about 7 years. In the fifties, they've been together about 7 years. But now we are in the 60's and suddenly we get a direct call-back to an episode in the 30's. Back in 1938, Wolfe cracks the case in Too Many Cooks by appealing to the better nature of a group of African-American waiters. Now, one of those former waiters shows up at his door, quoting the speech that Wolfe had made that night. His problem is that his son is engaged to a white girl, and he wants to find out what's wrong with her. And then, of course, the white girl turns up dead. I mentioned that Wolfe's world is predominately white, but this is one of the times that Stout touches on racism.

Too Many Clients - This is Stout's sex mystery (amusing since the back cover of the paperback edition has a promotion for Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (But were afraid to ask). Much as A Right To Die delved into race relations, Too Many Clients deals with a high-level exec maintaining a sex-den in Spanish Harlem, where he um, entertains young women. When the exec turns up dead, Wolfe starts gaining client after client who wants to know who did it (and confirm that it wasn't them). The sex is polite, gentile, and mainly confined to the erotic art on the sex-den's walls. And since Archie Goodwin, our narrator, is a gentlemen, it doesn't get much further than a passing glance. Very much of its age.

And Four To Go - This is collection of Stout's shorter works, which originally saw print in glossy magazines like Look and The Saturday Evening Post (both long-gone as regular periodicals). This collection deals with a murders set around the holidays - A Christmas Party poisoning, an Easter parade shooting, a Fourth of July picnic stabbing. Each with a host of suspects and motives and a solid reason for the relatively inert Nero to get involved. Also was a fourth story that was an alternate version of a story that appeared elsewhere, with only the age of a female character changed. Interesting and a pity that such few avenues for this type of fiction now exist.

Fade to Black - Robert Goldsborough is the appointed heir (by Stout's estate) to carry on the stories of Nero and Archie. And it's all right - I can't really fault it. All the pieces are there - the brownstone, the orchids, the gourmet meals, the dicey relationship with the cops. But is does feel a little off, oddly because Stout's stories were always in the moment when they were written. Wolfe is always reading some recently-published volume, and the New York of the era is drivable. Fade to Black hews to that rule as well, but it feels weird once we get into later decades. The first line is "The whole business started at Lilly Rowan's Superbowl party", which just feels odd to me. The mystery involves dueling add agencies and stolen ideas, and there is a body, of course. It's not bad, but we are looking at a different place and time.

(As an addition, this volume was publishing in 1990, and the evolution of the mass-market paperback is clear from the earlier books of the 60's. It is a mass-market, but the margins are wider, and the leading (the white space between the lines) is larger. The book itself has more pages and is thicker, though I doubt there are more words. Paper in this later era was apparently cheaper, allowing the book to swell and take up more space on the bookshelf).

The High Window - This was purchased in Missoula Montana at Shakespeare's, a bookstore across the river from the hotel where MisCon was being help. I had finished Murder at the ABA and wanted to get a book for the return trip. I had read most of the "big" Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister, The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye), and wanted to dig into the ones I had not heard of before (or had not been turned into movies). In The High Window, Phillip Marlowe is hired by an upper-class client to recover a rare coin. . Almost immediately hoods start leaning on him and dead bodies start piling up. Two things stay with me as I read through these - one is how Chandler managed to turn LA into a character, an impressive thing for a town that legendarily has "no there there". Chandler here is dealing with the upper crust and the roots they've set down in the more sordid parts of LA

(And by the way, this the trade version of the book, reprinted in the 1992, and can be compared against the earlier mass markets. Thinner, taller, but also wider margins and leading. And a higher price tag, even taking into account inflation). 

Playback -  One other theme that haunts Chandler's pages is broken women - those who have been traumatized as a foundation for their actions. You notice it after reading a few of them. In The High Window it was timid secretary Merle Davis. In The Long Goodbye it was Linda Loring. In this case it is Betty Manning (with a host of other names) who is on the run to California. Detective Phil Marlowe is hired to shadow her, then switches sides and becomes her defender in a cluster of lies and betrayals. The part of LA that Chandler defines here is Enclave Culture - those wealthy colonies along the coast where the old money retires, the young money wants to be included, and the help staff can't afford to live within the town boundaries. That part is the most interesting feature, along with Marlowe's internal monologues.

Pickup on Noon Street - This is a collection of shorts originally written for pulps like Black Mask. There's no Marlowe here, but rather characters named Dalmas and Carmady, both of which have their own internal code that Chandler relies on. LA is here as well, but seedier, seamier sides, which means a lot of hoods and guns, troubled women, and bodies on the floor. I picked up the book at Half-Price, and it came with its own little mystery - a polaroid used as a bookmark of what could be a shoreline or a distant mountain range in the distance, with a non-descript skyscraper along one side. 

The Mysterious Affair at Styles - The first Agatha Christie novel, and the first Poirot, this feels like a bloodless affair in the wake of Chandlers continual callousness and Stout's colorful domesticity. It is the classic Manor Mystery where the suspects are all in the house the night of the murder and everyone has a motive somewhere along the line. Christie wanted to write a mystery where she plays fair, and gives all the clues needed to solve the puzzle, but the passage of a hundred years made this reader sail past the pertinent clue in identifying the murderer. Yet it has a clockwork logic to it and a very British reserve that contrasts with the other books described in this post. The character with the most personality is narrator Hastings - Poirot's expository sidekick in the style of Doctor Watson and Archie Goodwin - who falls for one of the suspects. This particular edition was another trade paperback, nicely presented and large-formatted. 

And that's it for the Plane Books of 2024. The thing that strikes me in this mystery reading is the frame holding the mystery is sometimes more engaging that the mystery itself. Dorothy Sayers has a very political in her writing. Stout (and his successor) takes New York City and turns it into a cozy place for the occasional killing. Chandler reveals the LA outside his window, and Christie gives a tour of the upstairs/downstairs life in the interwar years. The books are centered on the mystery, but what makes them successful is what they're really about.

And I'm looking at stocking up for next year's trips. There will be fewer of them, but they will still be there.

More later.

Theatre: Holiday Mood

 Snowed In (Again) by Corinne Park Buffelen, Music composed by David Taylor Gomes, Directed by Kelly Kitchens. Arts West through December 22.

Ah, with the first windstorm shaking the last leaves off the broadleaf maples and causing widespread power outages, the first holiday play of the season is now upon us, and just before Thanksgiving as well. Last year Arts West put together a revue centered around four actors (and a pianist) going to a cabin in the mountains to work on a Christmas Show and getting ... snowed in.

It was fun. And so we do it again this year. New cast, similar cabin, tasked with putting together a SEQUEL to the previous show. So we get a mixture of songs from the previous year ("Bonita the Sexiest Christmas Elf") with a few newcomers (Grampus" - a wonderful paen to family holiday gatherings with that Grinchic patriarch), along with interstitial material dealing with family traditions and paralyzing deadline pressure. And Olive (the Other Reindeer) makes a return as well.

And the cast is in fine voice and high spirits -  Lauren Drake, Ays Garcia, Alexander Kilian, and Brandon Reil as the "new kids" ensemble, Aaron Jin on the keyboard. And they are excellent, though competing with Sarah Russell's rendition of "I'm Happy Being Hosted" is a tough lift. That's one of the challenges of doing a sequel - comparison with the original flavor.  And the choreography was sharp and in places hilarious.  .This year's version had less nods to Seattle and more to the season, which is cool as well.

A nit? Sure, but just one. The blocking and set design had a seat for the actors directly in front us in the front row, so I had a case of looking at the back of the actor's heads. And butts. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And it was amusing to see Alexander Killan curled up in a fetal position from the sudden stress of creating an all-new show with the old material. So there's that.

The humor is broad, the actors are spirited, the feelings are grounded. No heavy stakes, no character arcs, no (major) lessons learned. It is very much a Holiday Revue, put together with heart and soul. Yeah, it was fun and a great way to enter the holiday season.

More later,

Bomb Cyclone

 So, I'm writing this from a friend's house, about 15 minutes south of Grubb Street. Because Grubb Street is currently without Internet. 

You may have heard that the Puget Sound was hit recently by a "Bomb Cyclone", which is a scary term and in real life is no picnic either. A Bomb Cyclone is a tropical depression that develops quickly (The Bomb part) over the ocean, creating high winds (The Cyclone) along its periphery. It is not a hurricane, though it can have hurricane-force winds. 

And what it does is pull in air from the surrounding area to power those winds. And in the Seattle area, this means that said winds get pulled through the mountain passes to the east of us. The passes are currently closing due to snowfall already, but the winds get HOV access. These winds get concentrated by the passes before blasting into the more settled foothills. 

And that's why its a bad thing for those living in the foothills. Whenever we get a bad windstorm, it's because the winds are coming out of the east, being pulled through the mountains. That's the case here.

Power went out at the height of the storm and stayed out for about 9 hours. The Lovely Bride had years ago (after the last outage) purchased a large cinder-block-sized battery and so got to hook up her CPAP machine there. I did not, and didn't want to take the chance of draining her battery too much. But we had some level of preparation. And we still had land-lines phones, functional cell phones, a gas stove in the bedroom and a gas stovetop in the kitchen. So we were not knocked down to "Little House on the Prairie" status. But a lot of folk (like, hundreds of thousands) lost power and a lot of them still don't have it restored, particularly in the valleys leading down from those windswept passes. 

Anyway, nine hours. Good work on the recovery from Puget Sound Energy. Our neighbors are on another line, and they are still out, but have an extension cord long enough to plug into our socket near the back yard, so their freezer is still running. 

But also, as the storm passed through, a large branch from one of the firs out front came down and neatly severed our Internet cable. So even when power got restored, we still were without Internet. So we called Comcast, and they sent out a guy. Guy shows up and explains that the area still does not have Internet service at large (something about a nearby Node being out), and until they repair the Node, they can't re-hook up the house. Something tells me that the "Node" may be on the same line as our unfortunate neighbors, so we'll have to wait until power comes back up for them, and then they can fix the node. And THEN they can come back an hook up the house again. 

No, Comcast has no idea when all this is going to happen. The guy's suggestion was to keep calling in to complain. Yay.

Anyway, we are Internet-less for the immediate future. A road crew from Kent came by the morning after the storm and cut up the fallen branch and hauled it away (just as I was coming out of the garage with a handsaw in hand and my face set with grim determination). So, good work Kent Road Crew.  And Wednesday morning consisted of cleaning up the mid-sized branches. Thursday is when we got the bad news that Comcast was neither as cool as Puget Sound Energy or the Kent Road Crew. And by Thursday afternoon I was already looking for a way to get back online.

Yahsee, my current gig (Senior Writer for Elder Scrolls Online - I don't know if I mentioned that), requires I get online to communicate with coworkers and put things into the engine. So no connectivity, no work. It was a forced vacation, and while I still had some PTO left for the year, I was planning on spending it elsewhere. And after two days of quietly reading in a warming waterbed, I was pretty much chomping at the bit to get back to it. 

So, I made some phone calls. Some friends were still without power at that point, but one had both power and connectivity, and I hauled my desktop down to his place and set up on his usually-unused dining room table. And then had to get a "wifi usb dongle" to hook everything up to the friend's Internet (at home I use a long Ethernet cable plugged directly into the router). But now I am back in business, such as it goes, for the foreseeable future. Just in time to lay down my tools for Thanksgiving.

I will update this when/if we get to the stage where I return to my former haunts. In the meantime, I am in a bit of exile here. But at least I can contact the outside world again.

More later, 

[The Updates: On Saturday our neighbors got their power and Internet back. Comcast's website said they could get to us by Wednesday. The Lovely Bride called them and got an appointment for the next day. Sunday morning a young man came out on his lonesome and hooked us back up. Good work, young man!]

Recent Arrivals: GameholeCon Swag

 So a few weeks back I wrapped up my final gaming convention of the year, Gamehole Con, in Madison, Wisconsin. I usually do only one or two conventions a year, but with the 50th anniversary of D&D, I ended up at five of them. For me, that's a lot of travel.

Oh, the name? Well, Gamehole Con is run by an attorney named Alex Kammer. He also owns a restaurant in Middleton called the Free House, built into a historic building. The stairs to the second floor were too steep to use for a restaurant, so it became his gaming group's hang-out - the Game Hole. In it Alex has collected a huge amount of old gaming material, including the original TSR Forgotten Realms map. And he oversees Gamehole Con, which has been in the Alliant Energy Center to the south of the city. It's a really good convention, incredibly well-run. High marks all around.

And one of the things I like about going to conventions is seeing what is out there as far as new games are concerned. While our local game stores are good, they don't always carry the depth and variety I see at conventions, in particular from small publishers. So I tend to go indulge in a bit of shopping therapy. Plus, you're often buying from the publisher and sometimes from the creator, so that's nice. 

Not everything here is from the convention. one is a local purchase and one from a kickstarter. But the bulk are from the convention, so let us start with those:

Gamehole Con swag: Program Book and a Rust Monster Plushie  The program book is a spartan and effective twenty pager, with ads from the supporting sponsors, maps of the site, policies, and a list of exhibitors and guests (no bios, which is fine).. The events themselves are online with QR Code, which creates a nice versatility (the site itself is very searchable as well). The plushie is a standard for GHC as well, and a freebie to guests (I still have the Mimic from several years ago). The traditional Monster Manual rust monster is this year's plushie. The Lovely Bride has already named him Palladium. 

[Note from the distant past - when the Rust Monster first appeared in D&D, there was no illo to go with it, so, since it showed up with various oozes, I assumed it was a pile of rust with Cookie Monster googley eyes. We didn't hear about the plastic toy until later.]

Wardens of the Eastern Marches, Alex Kammer with Josh Hoyt and Jason Knutson, Gamehole Publishing, 28 page saddle-stitched digest, 2024. Gamehole Publishing (Yes, connected with the Gamehole con) is launching its own organized play at the convention, and this was a free giveaway. The Eastern Marches are the setting for a bunch of adventures they've published over the years (see next entry). This tidy little booklet gives an overview of the world, as well as the basic ground rules for their organized play. All the information in the book can be found here, but it's nice to have a hard copy.

The Brain Gorger's Appetite by Alex Kammer,  Gamehole Publishing, 40-page softbound, 2016, GHC Purchase. Into the Deep Dark by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 46-page softbound, 2017, GHC Purchase, Trillium, City of Enchantment by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 62-page softbound, GHC Purchase,  2018 All three of these were published over the years by Gamehole Publishing, and sold at the convention. I meant to pick them up last time I was there, and finally did so this time. The three adventures are part of a larger arc, set in what is now the Eastern Marches (see above), and involve a mind flayer brain gorger named Marlipp. The trilogy starts in the small town of Okney's Hold, journeys into the Underdark Deep Dark, and ends up in the faction-ridden city of Trillium. It's old-school adventures wired up for 5E action. 

Lands of Runequest: Dragon Pass by Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford, and Jason Durall, 190-page hardback, GHC Purchase, Runequest doesn't get as much coverage out here in the local hobby stores, so I'm always glad to see it at conventions. Dragon Pass has its roots Waaaay back in the White Bear, Red Moon board game, and it is a highly diverse chunk of land at the crossroads of Glorantha. Lottsa sentient creatures, factions, and politics rolling around. Dragon Pass probably has the greatest weirdness-per-acre of any location in Glorantha. Nice to see the update.

No Time to Scream by B.W. Holland, Bridgett Jeffries with C.L.Werner  Chaosium, 104-page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase, Call of Cthulhu shows up in the local stores more often, but hey, I was there at the convention booth and they had a sale. No Time to Scream consists of three straight-forward one night-and-change adventures. Though aimed at novice Keepers/GMs with instructions and advice on how to play, the scenarios work well for pick-up games and (insanely) quiet evenings with more experienced players. Works best with pregens, which are provided and also available as an online download (which makes the assumption that the buyer has access both to a computer and a color printer (having a color printer readily at hand is one of the plus sides of the return-to-office push. That and free pens)).

The Order of the Stone by Jared Twing, Lynne Hardy, and Paul Fricker, Chaosium, 152 page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase. This one feels like an old-school CoC scenario - three chapters, ancient cult, entrapped eldritch god, world-ending threat, hiking distance from Arkham. At first glance, it looks pretty good, with a collection of Lovecraftian set-pieces - ghost ship, small port town, rural wilderness. It's really good to see Chaosium do new old-style adventures in addition to updating the classics for the new system. Player handouts available online, which still has the challenge of No Time to Scream.

Seeds of Decay by Darryl T. Jones, Splattered Ink Games, 436-page hardbound, 2004, Gift of the Author. A big adventure about tiny heroes. The Dobbers are a diminutive people living in the Alwaysgreen Forest, threatened by an eldritch evil that is spreading like rot. Set up specifically for Dobbers and other tiny-size creatures, its two parts cozy game and two parts heroic horror. This is the deluxe edition (gold-foil on the cover). The author is also the artist, so it is a very good-looking product. The hat on top of it is for an upcoming product A Time-Traveler's Guide to Dinosaur Hunting. Nice hat. 

Mazes by Chris O'Neill, 9th Level Games, 240-page hardbound digest, 2022, GHC Purchase. I mentioned Sentai and Sensibility in an earlier write-up, and I found the core mechanic (a single type of die tied to each character class) intriguing, but buried beneath a pile of setting-specific verbage. So when I discovered the system this was based on at GameHoleCon, I had to buy it. This is a revised edition, and is based on the original fantasy version of the game. It is much deeper than Sentai, and uses a number of interesting new systems. I'm currently digging through it. Its presentation is excellent, and it feels like a solid game. 

Scurvy Buggers by Irene Zelinski, 9th level games, 76-page softbound digest, 2024 GHC purchase from designer. I got this from the designer at the Con, and we chatted. This was a pirate (I'm sorry - PYRATE) version of the game system, and it may be that I was already reading the Mazes game, but the rules went down a lot smoother for me than for Sentai and Sensibility. This is very much Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death with genderfluid pyrates. Zelinski expands the one-type-of-dice per class mechanic to include ship types as well. Neat idea. 

Dead Man's Cove, by Tyler and Luke Stratton, Limithron, 1-page folder scenario, GHC Purchase, Buried in the Bahamas, by Luke Stratton, 22-page saddle-stitched digest, The Sinking of the Cthgan, Limithron, 8panel fold-out scenario, all GHC Purchases. It may occur to many readers that I am a sucker for pirates. Pirate Borg was a definitely superior evolution of the Mork Borg system, reshaped to fit the curves of the golden age of piracy. I have these in pdf from the kickstarter, but I really wanted to get hard copy as well. They are radically different in approach, and reflect very much a "maker" culture of craft where the presentation formats are elastic. I think I can keep them with my core book, which is a challenge when you have so many different physical approaches to the supplements. 

The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett, Del Rey, 592-page trade paperback, gift from the author. I met Peter doing a livestream dungeon adventure on Saturday night, and he gave me a copy of the book. Imagine a world where demons show up every night in a twisted version of the initial day of a Minecraft game. The only thing that keeps them at bay are magical wards, and humanity sort of lies low behind its magical walls in the darkness. The Warded Man is the guy who manages to incorporate and utilized the wards, challenging the demons on their own ground. Yeah, this goes on my TBR pile. 

Shadow of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment, 288-page hardbound and Secrets of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment LLC, 296-page hardbound, 2024 Kickstarter. About ten years ago, Rob Schwalb wrote the very excellent Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is an update to the system and a new world for that system. Demon Lord was very grimdark, while Weird Wizard is much more in the heroic mode - still a deadly world, but not a doomed one. Call it Greydark? Without too much digging (and yes, it rewards digging), it advances the design of Demon Lord just as Demon Lord advanced the design of D&D Third and Fourth Edition (and in a case of ironies, Demon Lord showed up around the same time as 5th edition, and Weird Wizard showed up with D24 (Yes, I'm still trying to make that a thing). Secrets is both the campaign setting and monster book, and takes the entire system out for a spin. The thing I can dun them for is that the tables use a light grey typeface that is hard on these old eyes. But a lot is going on here, and I'm going to be spending some time with it.

Godzilla The Encyclopedia by Shinji Nishiakawa, Titan Books, 216-page softbound, purchased at Midgard Comics. I bought of copy of this a while back, gave it to a friend who is a BIG Godzilla fan (we plowed through most of his DVDs from the Showa to Millennium era), then went back and bought a copy for myself. Titan is known primarily for their comic book collections, but this one started as a series of articles and just expanded from there. It's write-up of almost every monster in the Godzilla films, and every version of Godzilla, Missing are those that had an original version elsewhere (Rodan is there, but only appears here for when he first fought Godzilla), and the American versions. The writeups are two-page spreads, beautifully illustrated, that cover both in-world facts as well as design discussions of how the various Godzillas changed over the years. This is an incredibly excellent book if you're a Godzilla/Kaiju fan.

That wraps it for now. And more things have shown up while I was putting this together, but for the moment, more later. 

The Political Desk: Final Edition

 I usually wait for a few days for the dust to settle, but the vote margins most of these races are pretty decisive. Let's take a look

Yes to Initiative Measure No. 2066 - Protect the natural gas industry This is tight, and usually late ballots skew to the left. However, it has been pretty stable for the past few days. 

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2109 - Repeal the capital gains tax.

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2117 - Destroying carbon tax credits.

NO to Initiative Measure No 2124 - Bankrupt the state-run long-term care insurance.

President - Donny Trump and JD Vance. Hey, color me surprised.  For what its worth, Washington State generally pummeled the heck outta the GOP - it looks like none of his minions got close to the levers of power on this side of the state.

US Senator - Maria Cantwell

US Representative Congressional District No. 9 - Adam Smith

Governor - Bob Ferguson

Lieutenant Governor - Denny Heck

Secretary of State - Steve Hobbs

State Treasurer - Mike Pellicciotti

Attorney General - Nick Brown

Commissioner of Public Lands - Dave Upthegrove

Superintendent of Public Instruction - Chris Reykdal

Insurance Commissioner - Patty Kuderer

Legislative District No 11 State Senator -  Bob Hasegawa

Legislative District No 11State Representative Position 1  - David Hackney

Legislative District No 11 State Representative Position 2 - Steve Berquist

State Supreme Court Justice Position 2 - Sal Mungia  The other tight one, but the late ballots had it for Sal.

Superior Court Judge Position No 41 - Paul Crisalli

Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Capital Projects and Technology Levy - Yes, much to my surprise. This one is razor-thin, and could flip back as we move to fruition. 

Final thoughts before we cover the Political Desk with a tarp for the winter? Well, Washington State did a fine job protecting itself from Washington DC. And if the new/old administration does half the things that they promised to do, there's going to be a lot of buyer's regret for the rest of the country. But that's the nature of democracy (see Brexit). In the land of Ivar's, we'll keep clam and carry on.

More, as always, later. 

Theatre: In Rep We Trust

 Primary Trust by Eboni Booth Directed by Kaytlin McIntyre, Seattle REP, through November 24th

OK, after By the Skin Of Our Teeth, I was looking at redemption here. Not to bash on the Thornton Wilder play TOO much, but even the best reviews touted the actors and the stage settings, and not a one called out Thornton's words to praise (the general consensus was "Allegory!"). So I stand by my previous review, and looked at the Rep to pull out of a middling first showing.

And they did so. Primary Trust is a perfect little play, well acted and directed, and is the first play in a long time that made me say "Wow, I wish I had written that". Its a Pulitzer winner, which usually leaves me cautious, but it is really, really good.

Here's the summary - Kenneth (Stephen Tyrone Williams) is a lonely man. He works in a used book store. He drinks and eats dinner at a local Tiki bar. He doesn't have any close friends, except maybe Bert (Andrew Lee Creech). And Bert has his own challenges (no, I'm not going to do spoilers on this one. I go into these plays mostly blind, and I have no idea if I would have reacted differently if I knew what was going on before). Anyway, Kenneth is trapped in the routines of his life, and the story is how he gets untrapped.

And that's about all there is to it. It is a real simple, sweet story. And it is so well-written and well-presented.

Let me rave on the actors for the moment - Stephen Tyrone Williams is a kind, endearing Kenneth. He's well-intentioned and introverted and uncomfortable and a little broken and scared of the world around him. Williams has previously been in Rep productions - August Wilson's Fences and the Piano Lesson,  He captures the chaotic internal voice of Kenneth, turning on a dime from budding confidence to overwhelming panic attacks and back again, pulling the audience along. He's just really good in this role. 

Allyson Lee Brown matches him step for step as a cascade of waitstaff at Wally's Tiki Bar, a flood of customers that the bank that hires Kenneth (The Primary Trust of the title) and one waiter that helps Kenneth break out. She has the improv skill of morphing characters one after another, literally filling the town of Cranberry, New York. Andrew Lee Creech is Bert, Kenneth's only mental support network, and captures that nature of the bud who is always there for him. Rob Burgess is excellent both as the owner of the bookstore, and later as the bank manager, each with their own quirks. And Justin ("Lizard Boy") Huertas rounds out the cast ambient music throughout. 

This is a good cast, and hits that point I like to make about Repertory companies, that you get to know the actors, not just the characters they portray.  And they have good material to work with.

Eboni Booth is an incredible naturalist writer, and her characters emerge through their dialogue. The interrupt, they fill in each other sentences, they apologize, and they talk about nothing in an amazing realistic sense. She uses repetition to her advantage to show passage of time ("Welcome to Wally's!") and the nature of the community the play is set in (just about everyone says "Pardon My French" at least once). And the actors are up for it, their portrayals feel like real conversations. 

The Lovely Bride pointed out that all the characters were nice. And she's right, All of them. There is no bad guy in this play, except for Kenneth's own crippling insecurities and blocks. And we find out why Kenneth is broken, and not only the WHAT of Bert but the WHY of Bert as well.

The stagecraft was great and not intrusive onto the action itself, scenery floating in and out. The main set is a sort of "Our Town" street, but it becomes Wally's, the bank, a snooty restaurant, a street, and it does so without poking too hard at the reality of the play itself. No big puppets needed. 

This one falls into the "Go see" category, a pleasant way to spend the darkening, rainy afternoons and evenings. And sweet. Really sweet.

More later,. 

The Political Desk: The Jeff Recommends

We're a week out. I've been covering politics and elections for twenty years now in this space, and realize that I've gotten more serious and less snarky over that time. It's something I'll have to work on (regaining my snark).

The press has been particularly frustrating this election season. Yes, I know about a couple major newspapers were cowed into submission by the GOP into "No Endorsements", but it goes deeper than that. The Seattle Times published it endorsements in the open, but its individual endorsement articles are behind a paywall (which is amusing since its endorsement of Bob Ferguson is a master class at timidity and praising with faint damns). The Stranger has just been purchased, and just fired its news editor, Rich Smith. And you would not know from the Kent Reporter that there even was an election (plus they soft paywall as well). Small sites tend to be more localized and partisan, and they still provide some good general data, but lot of old standbys have gone by the wayside. They will be missed. 

Here's an interesting comparison of Stranger vs. Seattle Times endorsements, for your edification and amusement.

I do stand by my opinion of the GOP's "Flood the Zone" approach of doing so much so badly that no one can keep up with their crimes and errors. We've seen a new accusation of sexual assault, the revelation that the impeached former president withheld funds for blue-state disasters, military threats against anyone that looks at the convicted felon funny, a couple mental meltdowns on sympathetic podcasts, and a Nazi-ish Madison Square Garden seeping with hatred and rage. And that's just been in the past week. Yeah, it's been taxing. I just do this thing once every four years and I'm exhausted.

And there has already shenanigans and low-level violence on the ground. Most of them have been GOP-related, and their argument that there is election fraud, and to prove it they will commit election fraud. There have been fights and threats. In Washington State, we've had some ballot boxes vandalized already, so now you have the added task of checking to make sure you ballot was received and counted. Because there are jagoffs out there.

AND you can find one of your nearby ballot drops and voting centers here, or you can mail it in. No postage necessary. The deadline is 8 PM November 5 for the drop boxes, postmarked Tuesday, 5 November for the mail ins. You can even register to vote and vote the same day at the voting centers. 

Anyway, summing up the past week of posts, I've put in a simple format for you. These are my endorsements and belong to me. Go fetch your mail-in ballot and take us across the finish line. As I've stated before, I don't care who you vote for. But I would want you to vote. 

The Heywood Initiatives: NO on all of these budget-busters:

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2066 - Supporting natural gas by preventing regulation that encourages other energy sources

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2109 - Repeal the Capital Gains tax on people much richer than you while killing funding for education.

NO to Initiative Measure No. 2117 - Destroying carbon tax credits and in doing so kill funding for transportation, energy conversations, and emissions-reduction.

NO to Initiative Measure No 2124 - Bankrupting our state-run long-term care insurance, because they can.

So NO on the bundle of them.

President: Kamala D. Harris and Tim Walz. I never realized I had more guts that Jeff Bezos. Learn something new every day).

US Senator - Maria Cantwell

US Representative Congressional District No. 9 - Adam Smith

Governor - Bob Ferguson

Lieutenant Governor - Denny Heck

Secretary of State - Steve Hobbs

State Treasurer - Mike Pellicciotti

Attorney General - Nick Brown

Commissioner of Public Lands - Dave Upthegrove

Superintendent of Public Instruction - Chris Reykdal

Insurance Commissioner - Patty Kuderer

Legislative District No 11 State Senator -  Bob Hasegawa

Legislative District No 11State Representative Position 1  - David Hackney

Legislative District No 11 State Representative Position 2 - Steve Berquist

State Supreme Court Justice Position 2 - Sal Mungia

Superior Court Judge Position No 41 - Paul Crisalli

Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Capital Projects and Technology Levy - Yes. Put this long electoral nightmare out of our lives.

That's it for the pre-election write-ups. I'll do a follow-up with results a few days after the election (We're mail-in, remember, so it takes a while to get the results, and in some cases lead changes). Then we're back to talking about games. And theatre. And if you're very good, collectible quarters. See you next time.

More, of course, later.

The Political Desk: Getting Schooled

 OK, here we go again folks. 

Kent School District No, 315 Proposition No. 1 Capital Projects and Technology Levy is the fourth attempt to get money for the school buildings. Each one has gone down in flames, and each one has come back retooled, asking for less funds, being clear about what they're spending it on, and reducing the number of projects. The amount they're asking for is not excessive. I will note that this time they included an athletic field revision for Mill Creek school, which was one of the complaints of the No people the last few times. It's purely transactional, but it's politics. 

I'm not a big fan of replacing athletic fields, but I am a fan of roofing, building sidings, boilers, and emergency generators, along with upgrading their tech to modern levels. And this is a reduction on the property tax it replaces. So, I'm with YES

The No side is hauling out their standard scare tactics. Property taxes! Can't trust the school district to use the money like they said! What happened to the AC improvements? They dun the current measure for removing stuff that they complained and campaigned against last time. Pretty much they don't like the current Kent School District admin, and are willing the starve the schools until they get what they want (Accountability! is a great buzz-word. So is transparency, which they didn't use this time. 

There have been some yard signs around (YES for education!), but the local paper of record, the Kent Reporter, has been notably absent from the reporting on this. And it is the last thing on the ballot, separated as far as possible from the budget-busting initiatives at the front end. But hang out for the after-credits scene, here - and vote YES (Yep, I put it in bold twice).

More later, 

The Political Desk: Mild Court Press

Now I'm working more in the dark. There used to be a site called Voting for Judges which served as an excellent aggregator of  endorsements from the various groups interested in judges (like the various bar associations). That site is no longer in operation, and general political coverage tends to be a bit scattershot.

A lot of court positions are elected in Washington State this time, but the vast bulk of them are unopposed. So congrats to all the Justices who are lonely in their ballot box. I'm not going to do the research on you, not even for entertainment purposes. We have only two races that have any competition.

State Supreme Court, position 2 - The Seattle Times bemoans the fact that court positions are officially non-partisan, but the final choices are from a Democratic-supported candidate and a GOP-supported one. Because the position is non-partisan, but the candidates are not. Still, they (and 8 out of 9 other Supreme Court justices) support Sal Mungia, a lawyer out of Tacoma with a strong resume, solid endorsements from the legal community and a good track record on civil rights. OK, I can go for this. 

Superior Court Position 41 - Even less information than the State Supreme Court. The Times doesn't cover the race. The Stranger uses the space to mostly campaign against the established court system. Still, Paul M. Crisalli has gotten a hatfull of endorsements, including all the current State Supreme Court justices and 53 of his judicial colleagues on the King County Superior Court. So yeah, I can go for this.

More later, 

The Political Desk: State Legislature

 This one is fairly short, in that there are no Republicans running here, and two out of the three positions don't even have competition. 

Legislative District 11 straddles I-5 and I-405 and stretches down to Panther Lake and Grubb Street - we're in the far SE corner. Bob Hasegawa is our incumbent State Senator and is running unopposed. David Hackney is the State Rep Position 1, and recently showed up in a Seattle Times article about crime (he's against it. He also supports Bob Ferguson's pitch to spend $100 million more on cops and public safety). He's also running unopposed. Steve Berquist is State Rep Position 2, has a secret identity as a school teacher, and is running against a Libertarian candidate. I'm recommending Berquist for the usual reasons (he's done a good job, particularly on education issues), but I'm pleased to see other parties running for office that are NOT the big tickets. Hey, they even have yard signs!

And that's it for local news. More later.

The Political Desk: Statements on the State

 Now we're down to the state level. Washington State elects its entire executive branch every four years, so the potential for massive turnover is always there. However, the state's been doing pretty good, has recovered well from COVID, and regularly gets high marks in various ratings as to the health and well-being of its citizens. So yeah, I am up for the Democrats in general.

Governor - This is an open position with Jim Inslee choosing not to run for a fourth term (and that's a good thing, in my opinion). The Democratic candidate is current Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who has been an activist is protecting consumers in the state. He's gone after corporate shenanigans, took on pharmaceutic companies over fentanyl, cleared out the rape kit backlog, and been a bridle on Trumpian nonsense for the past four years. He has been an activist, aggressive, AG, and don't see that changing when he becomes governor. It is kinda amusing that a lot of positive political candidates come out of the AG offices these days, but that's probably a beard-stroking analysis for later. So, Bob Ferguson.

A positive word, though, about Dave Reichert, who is likely the best candidate the GOP has put up for the past twenty years. The former King County Sherriff, former US Rep, he was not endorsed by his own party because he wasn't crazy enough. He may or may not support Trump depending on who he's talking to but I will take him at his (current) word. But I am happy to not recommend him purely on his political views (Tried to defund Planned Parenthood, doesn't support marriage equality, anti-climate science). Of late, he's been making a case for divided government (even though that has been a mess at the national level). So, no thanks.

Lieutenant Governor - The Lieutenant Governor presides over the State Senate, and does more than a little nudging on its priorities (like the current housing crunch). This is the department of "Don't Mess Things Up".  And Danny Heck has succeeded admirably with not messing things up and actually moving the ball forward on things in a bipartisan fashion. So yeah, let's keep him.

Secretary of State - OK, I will be honest, I'm a strong supporter of Steve Hobbs. He has maintained the integrity of our election systems that Sam Reed and Kim Wyman had built up, and kept our elections free and fair. But he's also a gamer, and an extremely vocal one, and has pushed to protect small game stores and game producers, as well as expand RPGs in school libraries and prisons.. We've got a lot of small companies out here, and I appreciate the support. I did attend a fund-raiser for him at the Mox Boarding House, where he not only committed to his support for the industry, but also went into extreme gamerly detail on the cases that his staff have handled over the years (A student voting in two places, people who died between when they mailed their ballot and when it was counted). He did so with the pride of DM telling about you about his latest adventure. So yeah, Steve Hobbs. 

State Treasurer - Now we get into the more boring but just-as-important positions. Meat and potato stuff.  The ones that handle the money. The State Treasurer is the state's CFO, collects the cash and distributes is Mike Pellicciotti has done a bang-up job, such that people who rate us on our financial stability and such give us high marks. Moody's gives us a AAA rating, Standard and Poors gives us a AA+, and we have strong state pensions. Not bad. So, Mike Pellicciotti.

State Auditor - The treasurer spend the money, the auditor makes sure it is spent correctly. Auditor is a watchdog operation. These are the accountants looking over the books. Pat (Patrice) McCarthy has been an auditor for twenty years, starting with Pierce County, and has picked up the torch in 2017, and has done a good job, not only checking up on pandemic funding, but also uncovering fraud and waste in the government (like $7 million in misappropriated funds for a local housing agency). McCarthy has a earned the position.

Attorney General - With Ferguson running for governor, the AG is an open position, and there is a game of musical chairs. Nick Brown has risen to the top of that scuffle, and is an excellent candidate for the position. He was Inslee's General Counsel. He was the first Black US Attorney for the state. He's pushed hard on the fentanyl crisis, consumer protection, and sex trafficking. Pro choice, pro gun safety, pro-consumer. Brown has large shoes to fill, but I think he can pull it off. 

Commissioner of Public Lands - This race is another win/win for voters, in that both candidates are good. Jaime Herrera Beutler was both a State and US Rep. She also voted to impeach Trump on the second go-around, and the state party will never forgive her for that. Dave Upthegrove has botanical name and has been on the King County Council and a State Rep for a neighboring district. . Either could run our extensive state forest lands. The big diff is dealing with our mature legacy forests (Not the old growth, but stuff has hasn't been lumbered since WWII). Upthegrove supports keeping them intact, Beutler wants to let in the logging companies that have been funding her campaign. On the other hand, few year's back Upthegrove got shirty with some traditional enviros that supported someone else in the primary. So, jump ball on this one, but I'm still going to give the edge on policy to Dave Upthegrove.

Superintendent of Public Instruction - Chris Reykdal is the incumbent and has navigated the department through some really choppy water of later - the COVID pandemic being part of this. However, he's got the numbers back up to pre-COVID times, and we have more graduations than ever. Also, school meals, CTE training, retaining teachers, and improvements for rural schools. And he takes a hit every time people have to pay their property taxes. (Did I mentioned that paying for the kid's education is literally in our state constitution. Yeah, it is). Reykdal has also been a bulwark against conservative culture warriors and voucher advocates. So, yeah, I'm going with him.

Insurance Commissioner - The previous guy who held this job for many years turned out to be a jagoff and as such is not running for re-election. The Democratic party actually does that - it's an accountability thing. Republicans? He'd be on the conservative talk shows complaining about persecution, demanding a trial, then pushing it back as far as possible. But that's just a personal rant. Patty Kuderer is an excellent candidate to hold the position of wrangling our insurance industry. Her background is from the state legislature, where she's been active in employment discrimination, which makes her a good choice to help the office recover from its previous commissioner. She's pro-consumer protection , pro reproductive healthcare, and pro-transparency with the insurance companies. Yeah, let' give her a shot.

OK, this was a long one, but it is all downhill from here. More later. 

More later, 

The Political Desk: Congressfolk

 Let's look at Congress. We have two races on the ballot, one at the state level for Senator, and one for the 9th Congressional District. The 9th is a rough trapezoid with the corners at the International District in Seattle, Sammamish in the north, Auburn, and Federal Way in the south, and includes Mercer Island and Bellevue.  So yeah, a lot of people in a relatively small space.

Let's do Senator first. Maria Cantwell has done a real good job in her tenure, and I would normally recommend her to keep her job but as a matter of course. But I want to enthusiastically recommend her based on her performance this senatorial season. This has been first and foremost due to her pushing through the CHIPS and Science Act, which has encouraged semiconductor  research, development, in the states in the States. This act has seen amazing benefits already, and will continue help our home-grown computer chip industry. That's a good effort on her part, and a recommendation to keep her and encourage more of the same in the future.

The 9th Congressional District is in one of those really good positions with two good candidates. Adam Smith has been the House Rep within our ever-shifting borders for nearly thirty years now, and in his seniority has a good position as the Senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. He's done good work in that time. Melissa Chaudhry, on the other hand, is from the more progressive wing, and has extensive experience in charities and NGOs. I recommended Chaudhry in the primary as new blood, but I have to admit that Adam Smith is competent, capable, and has done a good job, which is one of my base-line requirements. So I'm telling you both candidates have merit, and you need to do a bit more digging to find out if you think they are worth voting for. Myself? Walking around both of them for a day or so, I have to go ultimately with Adam Smith. But I'm going to say this is going to be real close.

More later,

The Political Desk: Prez and Veep

 Kamala Harris/Tim Walz. Well, Duh.

I mean, seriously, I was going to vote for Biden anyway, even with the age issues. The current administration has spent the past four years digging out of the holes that the previous admin put us in, and has done an excellent job. Let's face it - the economy is better than most of Europe post-Covid. Stock market is up. Crime is (generally) down. Illegal immigration is down (but still there and still illegal). Inflation is really down (but still inflation). As legacies go, it's been pretty good.

And Kamala Harris has been there for the good stuff. Presiding over the Senate, she cast the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, and has helped with the recovery over the wishes of a brattish, do-nothing GOP. (The Republican-controlled House is the LEAST productive of any governing bodies since the 1960s, with the possible exception of ginning up investigations that do nothing but generate copy for FOX news). So yeah, she gets the credit for a good administration. 

But she isn't just a continuation, she's a Biden-Plus - the good stuff you've gotten as a result of the Great Recovery and her own plans for first-time homebuyers. Decriminalization of pot. Protection of women's rights. Cap insulin prices across the board. Expand the Earned Income Tax credit. If she gets a fragment of her plans enacted, she's doing pretty good.

She has a LOT of experience in all three branches of the government - Judicial (Attorney General of California), Legislative (Senator), and Executive (the current gig as Veep). The resume is pretty damned solid. And let's add to the fact that she's pretty much put together her organization in 100 days, and has exceeded the expectations of even Biden's team.

And then there are the endorsements. OK, you expect other leaders in your party to endorse you, but she has EVERYONE on her side and out there pulling for her, including a handful of former presidents. And the mass of entertainers, which is nice but not confirmative, in my opinion. The Insane Clown Posse like her. That's nice. Oh, and there is a group of Gamers for Harris, which is also nice but not confirmative for most people. I'm proud to have added my name to this list, by the way. So just so you know, I'm in the bag on this one. 

But what's interesting about endorsements is the number of name-level Republicans, government, and military folk that are supporting her. A lot of them have "former" and "retired" in their title (as in "can't punish me for speaking my mind"). A lot of them have had first-hand previous experience with the convicted felon that's her opponent, and they want nothing to do with him. But the big thing with these types of endorsements is this: You can still vote for Harris and be considered a good Republican. 

The other guy is, well, the other guy. He was the previous administration, and pretty much a complete collapse - screwing up COVID (while sending medical supplies to Putin), kowtowing to foreign authoritarians, threatening our own allies, running up the debt more than any other president, helping overturn Roe v. Wade. The wall that never got built, the infrastructure week that never happened, the replacement of the ACA that never occurred. Pretty much a dead loss as an administration. Mind you, he gives an entertaining speech, as he dances between subjects like a drunken badger on meth. Most of the people who worked for him are not supporting him, and many are publicly going for Harris. He does have his ardent supporters, who hope he hangs around long enough to pass some dreadful conservative legislation. They just want someone with a pulse. Though we don't know for sure because he won't share his medical records (Harris did, of course).

And he seems tired. Worn out. Non-linear. He says he's doing "the weave", and we just can't get the depths of his sagacity. He'll be claiming to do zen koans next. I feel real sorry for him, and I wonder why the mainstream media isn't talking more about Woodrow Wilson (who was incapacitated late in the administration, and access to him (and his decisions) was controlled by a small group of people). 

Eight years ago I put forward the idea that his approach was to "Flood the Zone" - say and do so much that is wrong that no one can keep up with you. Just keep piling crime upon crime, insult upon insult, weirdness on weirdness. Stage an embarrassing photo op at a closed MacDonald's? By the time people call you on it, you're out there talking about Arnold Palmer's junk. And while that is sinking in you mention how Hitler had the best generals. Because if you ever stop delaying and denying, the entire mass of insults and lies will collapse and crush you.

There are others running. Jill Stein and the Greens are running to deny Harris a majority, so then people will pay attention the THEIR issues (because that always worked in previous elections). RFK Jr is still on the ballot in Washington State because he didn't drop out fast enough, and will probably drain off some Republicans that can't bear to vote for the guy that promised RFK Jr a place in his administration. The rest are minor players in this particular passion play. Thanks for showing up.

But like I said, I was pleased to put my name on the list of Gamers for Harris, and declare my support. And I think she's going to be a great president.

More later,