Theatre: Those Girls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later,

Tekumel: Ditlana

 What happens when bad people make good things?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later, 

A Change in the Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later,

Theatre: Little Richard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later.

Candidates

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

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

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

Why yes, we take this seriously.

The candidates for this year's awards are: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 More later, 

Theatre: Beat Box Baby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later, 

The Political Desk: Quick Shot Results

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later,

Theatre: They Did The Mash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later, 

The Political Desk: Quick Shot Edition

 Wait, its not November! Why are you talking politics? I cry shenanigans! 

Nope, that's the way things go. New ballots have shown up at Grubb Street, and they may or may not be at your address as well in King County. If it has shown up, it is most likely a ballot with one thing on it.

For us, that single thing is the most localized of local elections - School Funding. Yep, boring, exhausting, eat-you-vegetables school funding. For our locality the measure is Kent School District No. 415 Proposition No. 1 Replacement of Expiring Educations Programs and Operations Levy. Yeah, try saying that in one breath. It puts a rate of a buck-eighty-eight per thousand dollars of assessment for 2023, and $1.86 for 2024. There is no raise in the rates here - it is just a replacement for funding that will help fund the schools.

And, to no one's surprise, I say YES on the matter. Check your local listings for your own neighborhood's funding. Deadline date for getting in the ballots is 8 February.

But wait, there' more. There is an entire OTHER election that you don't know about. The King County Conservation District is filling a position, and because of the way these elections are set up, does not share the regular ballot operation. But you can vote electronically, so go HERE to get a ballot. The candidate statements are here. The Stranger leaves its urban bubble to comment on it here. The candidates all seem like rational, reasonable human beings with concerns about our wild spaces, I recommend the incumbent, Kirstin Haugen, based on record and her attempts to actually get people to vote on this. But that's just me.

One last thing. Our state legislature is a part-time job, and is currently in session. There are matters great and small snaking their way through committees and approvals and, hopefully, votes. Here is a list, and their status. 

Even though the state legislature works of a short schedule, politics (and elections) is a full-time thing. 

More later,

Theatre: Sunday Sermon

Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer by Cheryl L. West, directed by Henry Godinez. Seattle REP through 13 February.

We are back in-person at the Seattle REP. Properly masked, cards checked, program book not handed out by the ushers but instead piled neatly by the door, snack bar serving water only. They've made some physical modifications in our absence - moved the audience doors at the Bagley-Wright, changed the angle of the aisles, and remodeled the men's room (European style doors, and where did the urinals go?). The house was about a third of normal, even on the main floor. And we start with a tough play - it is short but extremely heavy.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper who rose to champion voter's rights during the civil rights marches of the 60s. Her voice was loud and clear, and she spoke at the 1964 Democratic Convention against the (all-white) Mississippi Delegation (her televised speech was interrupted 18 minutes in by an announcement from LBJ). The play is a one-woman show, and on this Sunday afternoon we got the understudy - Shaunyce Omar, who commanded the stage with the verve and directness of an old-style country preacher. 

The play carries the DNA of black heroine plays like Nina Simone: Four Women (which also featured Shaunyce Omar) or Shout Sister Shout (about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and by Cheryl L. West as well). But Fannie Lou Hamer was an activist, not a musician, so the musical portion is take up with other people's hymns, gospel, and protest songs of the era. In that way it resembles the "feel-good-old-timey" fair that sometimes pops up in the rep, often with depression-era songs. This confluence is ... odd. Hamer's speeches were full of hymnal references and church-speak, but transforming her fully into a creature of song didn't quite work for me.

Shaunyce Omar was in fine voice, though, and backed up by a trio behind her. She interacted with them and with the audience with a practiced hand, pulling them into her story. And the story gets bleak in places. We are talking about Civil Rights in the American South in the 60s. The play pulls no punches with the brutal violence of small frightened men who define any attempt at equality as a threat. It is tough to watch, but important, and vital to Hamer's story.

Jim Crow has transformed but is by no means gone. He goes by James these days and works more within the system to keep the system from getting TOO equal. But people are still burning churches (and mosques. And temples), and have traded in the hoods for polo shirts and tiki torches. And attackers get caught only when someone videos them. And when these arsonists and racists and attackers do get caught, the secretary disavows all knowledge of their actions. And folk are still trying to suppress the vote. It has been 50 years since Hamer lost the mike, and  we've still got a long way to go.

The play is solid, and does Ms. Hamer well, restoring her at the end to the podium she was denied at the start of the play. But this is not the happy ending you want for her, not the redemption and apology she deserves. But its a good view into the era for those who were not there and hope we have become better, much like the Depression-era plays are for me. And maybe Ms. Hamer will get a coin out of this.  

More later,

The Oval Puzzlebox

Part of the contents of the package.

 My brother in Pittsburgh sent me some of my parents' mementos which he discovered in the basement. The package included. among other things, a duck decoy, my father's pocket knife, some of Mom's silver jewelry, some coins, a 10 oz silver bar they purchased in 1989 (with invoice), and a wooden oval box. The box contained some of Dad's military pins, including his honorable service pin (also known as the "ruptured duck"), some masonic pins, and a plastic Heinz pickle pin. But it is the box that this story is about.

When I first opened the oval, wooden box up, I heard something rattling around inside the lid. I thought it might contain a false top, and, looking at it, there was a small hole at one end, with scotch tape covering it. I pulled off the tape, and started to try to figure out what the hole was for. After some man-handling, a small metal peg came part-way out of the hole.

At this point I realized that the puzzlebox did not have a false top, but rather a secret lock, and the pin was the locking mechanism. But now I had put it in the locked position, and that way I could not put the lid back on the box correctly. After about ten minutes of fiddling about to no avail, I turned to the Internet, and much to my relief, there was a video for how to unlock (and lock) the box, called an oval spin box. Mastering that craft, I got the metal peg back into the lid, and could close the box properly.

And that also explained the scotch tape. My parents had taped up the little hole in the box lid to keep the pin from sliding out and accidentally locking the box, which they would have to figure out how to open again (withOUT the benefit of the Internet). Needless to say, I put the scotch tape BACK, and now the box in on the shelf over my desk, with other mementos, like a zeppelin stamp, a Maltese Falcon, and a framed copy of our wedding invitation.

And I am putting this down in case some future generation comes across the box, and finds that either it cannot be opened or, worse yet, cannot be closed. And to them I will give the warning that all investigators are faced with when dealing with some eldritch chest - don't remove the scotch tape. 

More later, 

Life In the Times of the Virus: Omicron Update

Drug Store - Edward Hopper 1927

So, are we back to normal? No, no we are not.

Am I tired of this? Yes, I am. You're tired too. We are all tired. And yet we row on.

When last we spoke on the matter, some six months ago, Delta was just blooming. Viruses mutate over time, and on occasion, one shows up that is more adapted to its environment and overtakes the previously popular model. And it was the case with Delta, and now Omicron (which sounds particularly threatening - wait until we get to Omega in the alphabet). Now, Omicron is a more successful virus because not only is it more virulent (spread faster and more easily) but it has the added feature of not killing its host immediately (Dead host = dead virus, so actually Delta is not an very effective virus from a continuing existence standpoint, but speaking as the potential host, it is nasty enough).

Anyway, the end result is after declining numbers, we are seeing more cases and hospitalizations, and the resources are strained right now. In Washington State, we have seen fewer deaths over time, particularly among the vaccinated, but still have hit 1 million cases and 10,000 overall deaths (WA's population is 7.6 million). And people are saying it is going to get worse in the next couple weeks.

And why? Well, part of it is because Omicron is better adapted to its environment. But part of it is because we've gotten tired of it. We want to go out. We want to go back to work. We want the kids back in school. We want to put this whole thing behind us. We want to miss it, but we can't miss it if it doesn't go away. 

And yeah, most of the current casualties are from people who decided that the vaccinations are not for them. There is an entire sub-Reddit dedicated to people who have publicly come out against vaccinations, then catch the coronavirus and die. And that makes me more sad than angry. Yeah, it is the perfect sort of inverse Boy Cries Wolf tale, but I am still saddened by people who are deciding to take the risk that somehow they won't be victims, and then lose. Despite this, I don't think they should be turned away at the hospital, or charged more, or otherwise punished for decisions that overclog the hospitals. I'm just sad.

But there are breakthrough infections, and those who have gotten vacced and boostered are catching the coronacrud as well. It is not nearly as fatal, but still is no walk in the park. The vaccinations can reduce the severity of the disease, but not limit exposure to it. Sort of like seat belts - they can increase survivability in a crash, but not take that drunk driver running the redl ight off the road.

Here on Grubbstreet we got boostered, and the results were a lot more severe than last time. Last time was no biggie, but this round of boosters left both the Lovely Bride and I wiped out of the day. Which makes a little sense, since our immune systems were prepared for something coming in, and then responded heavily. So it was an expected day off.

Mask discipline has changed. Over time, I've lost the hand-made masks I started with, and the logo-ed masks from my company (discarded/lost masks have replaced cigarette butts as the urban refuse of choice). I've switched almost entirely to the black KN95s that are this year's fashion statement. And we are fortunate, because our neighborhood is pretty solid as well - I go to the grocery store and the overwhelming majority are masked, and the overwhelming majority of those are wearing them correctly. Good going, team.

No one wants to shut everything down, but we may not get a choice. Schools are closing for lack of teachers. Alaska is losing 10% of its flights because it doesn't have the manpower. We've called out the National Guard to support the hospitals. I hate the idea of returning to quarantine and to vaccine mandates, but I am just so tired of it all. And yeah, you probably are too.

And the most frustrating thing about it is that we have shifted in an attitude of "Let's do everything to stop the spread!" to one of "Yeah, you're probably going to get it, but it (hopefully) won't be too lethal". So this contributes to the feeling of frustration and exhaustion.

And here's a thing. In the before times, I remember how we talked about the Spanish Flu of a century ago. Not Spanish in origin, but that's where it first identified (sort of like people getting made at South Africa for announcing Omicron). There were a bunch of hygiene attempts and resistors and overburdened hospitals, and yeah, it sounds AWFULLY similar to the present. But then there was the Great Forgetting, as the news of the Influenza got swallowed by the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition and labor disruptions and rising Fascism and ...

Hey, the future doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. And the rhymes are pretty tight these days.

More later.

Book: A Sudden Case of Death

The Case of the Canterfell Codicil: The First Anty Boisjoly Mystery, by P.J.Fitzsimmons, 2020.

Provenance: A Christmas present I purchased, then entrusted to the Lovely Bride to deliver to me on the day itself (I in turn order clothes that she has specifically noted in catalogs, wrap them and return them to her - it is a system that works). The book was endlessly flogged on Facebook to me, as the Mighty Algorithm had determined my interest in mysteries of the interwar years (of course, if you read this blog, you might determine that as well), and I was curious.

And the book,  apparently self-published, cuts free of the stuff and nonsense of modern publishing process, allowing the tiller of the literary fields to deal direct with the consumer with a severe reduction of middlemen and gatekeepers. A farmer's market for literature! Huzzah the revolution!

The Review: And how was it? Not too bad, but not as strong as it was hyped. The book was oversold, promising a collision of Wodehouse, Sayers, and Christie. A high bar to be sure. The frothiness of Bertie and Jeeves, the eloquence of Peter Wimsey, and the clockwork plotting of a Miss Marples cozy, all compressed within its covers. Demanding such comparisons, however, reminds the reader the the originals, written in the era itself, are well-remembered classics for a reason. My expectations were high, and while the end result was a romp, it does not measure up, and left me a bit disappointed.

Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly (Boo-Juhlay) is residing at his club when a telegram from his old college pal summons him to Canterfell Hall, where the much-disliked Uncle Sebastian has just taken a header out of an upper-story window.  Anty arrives at  Canterfell to find a cross between Blandings Castle and a Poirot-inspired railway trip. Mysteries abound, small and large, starting with a locked room mystery and spiraling out from there.

Anty as a character falls between two chairs. He is neither the cloth-headed Bertie Wooster nor the supreme intellect Lord Peter, but exemplifies traits of both, depending on the situation. So it is hard to get a handle on him as he sometimes lumbers through some scenes, then has flashes of brilliance and glory. If you're going to ape Wodehouse (*cough* The Wyvernspur *cough*), you have to catch his ear for banter, and some of the chat falls more into the Realm of Monty Python and Blackadder than into the era itself.

Also, in presenting Wodehousian descriptions, there is a much of muchness, which makes you appreciate Plum's tact and reserve (there's a line I never expected to write). Every briar patch and weir, every doorknob and newel post, gets an achingly florid string of similes and comparisons. Sort of like being trapped in an esoteric comedy routine from the 80s.  Also, there seems to be a decided lack of synonyms for the word "thatch".  In a similar fashion the mysteries sort of pile up on each other, as EVERYONE has a secret or ten. The locked-room death of Uncle Sebastian, the nature and location of the titular codicil, the disappearing painting, the horrible dinner and excellent breakfast, they just tend to pile up over time. But yes, they all get answered, to some degree, by the end. 

Does Fitzsimmons play fair with the reader? Mostly. Some of the brain blasts that Anty gets are based on previous information that he, the character, does not share with us, the reader, until the time for the reveal (such as how an off-handed complaint from an Police Inspector tells him that a member of Parliament is lurking about). And the cause of the first death is less of a well-executed plan and more of a random roll of the dice. Yet it barrels along merrily to its resolution.

As a self-published work, the book's production values are high. The cover has that slightly tacky plasticized cover which continues to disappoint me, but I am afraid that, publishing-wise, that ship has sailed. The cover is a stylized art deco with a metro-retro font (also in the chapter headings). It coulda stood a map, to be honest, to position various rooms in the manor correctly (which Nine Tailors did), but that is a minor point.

So will it leave the major publishers quaking in their boots? Not really, but that's OK. It is a pleasant enough volume, and I would recommend it above the recent Westlake. If you approach it as a lark and paean to the previous masters, it is fine. But I would be very wary about the ad copy in the future.

More later,

Book: You Say You Want A Revelation?

Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer, Tor Books, 2021

Provenance: Purchased from Amazon.Com. The first three volumes were available as trade paperbacks, but I could only find the American edition in hardback. Receiving it, I can see why - it is a massive tome, longer than its predecessors.

The Review: This is the final book in Palmer's Terra Ignota series. Books one and two are reviewed here. Book three is here. Go read those reviews, because it gives the best summary I can come up with about how we got to a future world of rational actors who are going to kill each other over valid reasons. As noted previous, it is impossible to give a detailed review without spoilers, so consider yourself warned. 

So, here's where we are. The world's population is divided into non-national Hives, which are now pitted against each other. The cassus belli is the arrival of a god. Not the god of this universe, but a god from somewhere else, who seeks to flush out the god of our reality by remaking the world. Some of the Hives support this - they are the Remakers. Some do not. They are the Hiveguard. Now, not all the Remakers are fighting for a complete remaking, and not all Hiveguard are united either. And there are factions within each Hive that disagree with what their parent Hive is doing. AND there are smaller groups which are neutral, but not really neutral, as it is revealed. AND it turns out there is another subtextural war going on between those who want to go see Mankind spread throughout the solar system and those who want to psychohistory our way to a better existence on earth.

So, yeah, it is confusing. And as the war progresses just gets moreso. The allies from the previous chapter are revealed to be enemies, the enemies of the next chapter turn out to be allies, apparent victories are really defeats, and defeats turn out to be victories as far as ultimate goals are concerned.This is not "You can't tell the players without a scorecard" in that you are provided with a scorecard at the start of the book and by the time you're halfway through, it is untrue. That chapter there? Never really happened. Or maybe it did. Plus, the fact that everyone calls everyone else by different names deepens the confusion.

Which is OK, in that book moves through these twists and turns with the expertise of Odysseus moving between whirlpool and monster. Our unreliable narrators become even more unreliable. We have two - Mycroft and the 9th Anonymous. Well, kinda. Like everything else in this future, it's complicated. Lemme leave it at that. It is one of those books that have to be paid attention to, to be conquered, to be scaled, to pull away its understanding. 

Everyone here is a hero. Everyone is a villain. Everyone does bad things for supposedly good purposes. Each of the Hives is not a monolith, but riven with its own subfactions and rebellions. There is war on multiple levels, by multiple prime actors, and individuals change sides swiftly. Things that are presented as very good things when they occur are later reveled to be very bad things. 

This book challenged me. I am no student of philosophy, so if you tell me that a particular philosophy is X or Y, I will believe you. I've got the wiki-version of most philosophers, boiled down to a few choice points. But I can tell you that while the earlier books belonged to Voltaire and Hobbes, this one belongs, blatantly, to Homer, as Mycroft identifies all manner of roles from the Iliad to the various players. 

Once upon a time we referred to Dune and Lord of the Rings as being "unfilmable" - their scope and depth was too much for the screen. Now, portioned out over several movies and backed up with supercomputer animations, they have been filmed. Ignota has that challenge now, in part because of its nongendered/gendered nature of all the characters. Characters have swapped gender identifications throughout the story, from a non-gendered they to either he or she, depending on who is talking and what they are talking about.

One thing that is interesting is that over the course of the publication, out language has moved to the point that singular They is no longer as weird as it  once was. Palmer points out that this is flaw in her future, by assuming that the eradication of noticed gender differences stymies gender equality (sort of like, since we now use the term Ms, equality has been achieved).

In one of the earlier reviews, I pointed out how a lot of the presented Utopia of the book is progressive, liberal, and ultimately wrong. Now I feel there is a stronger religious element to the book as well lurking not-too deeply under the surface. JEDD, the Alien God, is taken at face value as a god without too much demand of credentials. Bridger, the young mutant (?) with the power to create anything, seems very much the much the miracle worker, who ultimately transforms himself to fit a more savage world. And Mycroft's super-ability, reworked by Bridger, involved imbuing and transforming others. So I wonder if JEDD, Bridger, and Mycroft can be interpreted as the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 

This is a tough series to scan properly, and Palmer's style harkens back to Gene Wolfe's ability to be completely clear and opaque at the same time, along with Herbert's tendency to delve deep into political discourse. (Indeed, the Alien God JEDD in many ways is an echo of the Kwisatz Haderach). It is a rewarding book, in that it encourages me to think more about what has happened, and even now, two weeks after finishing it, I am still considering what lessons it holds.

More later, 

Snowed In

As you may have heard, we've had a a bit of snow up here in the Pacific Northwest. It is not unusual to have snow once or twice a year, and by snow I mean snow-level-at-sea-level, lasts-more-than-a-day type of snow. We're used to snow with visiting rights - if we want snow, we can just go up to the passes, or to watch it at a respectful distance from the foothills. Rarely does it come to visit, squatting down in your driveway, and showing no intention of moving on.

After the first wave

This is one of those times. The there was a light set of flurries just before Christmas, and the main onslaught began that night. About 6 inches up here on Grubb Street, judging from the pile-up on the deck railings. Then a few days of flurries as the high
dropped into the 20s, then another wave of about 3 inches more. Currently it is hovering just around freezing, with most of the blacktops clear from melting.

So, enough to shut everything down - this level of snow is so rare that the local authorities are limited in response. King County has all of 14 plows. Kent itself has 8 de-icer or sander trucks that have snow blades on them. Kent does have a priority list of streets to plow. Odds are that your street is not on that list. Businesses are either shut down, running with reduced staffs, or closing early before the roads freeze. I haven't had a newspaper delivered to the house for a week, though the Post Office, Amazon delivery guys, and milk deliveries have been uninterrupted (thought one of them has lost his gloves in our driveway - if you're missing brown fur-lined gloves, they are on the bench out front).

Snow Halfling

Still, this is an opportune time, and not just because so many folk are still working from home. Hitting the Christmas break puts a lot of kids at home from school. Our department had already decided to take off between Christmas and New Year's. We managed in the break between storms to get out to the grocery store, and while the deli counter was shutting down (not enough workers that day) and the bread aisle was severely depleted, there were neither major shortages or panic in the aisles.

Swedish Snow Lantern

And the housemates have been playing in the snow, making both a snowman and a set of Swedish snow lanterns. The Lovely Bride and I have been keeping to the warmth of the house, and I have enough new books to tide me over.

We still have power and the Internet, so that puts us ahead of game, as opposed to several years back, when the power went out and we relied on the fireplace and wind-up emergency radio. So we are fortunate. Rumors (meaning the weather report) say that it should warm up in the next few days, then we get hit with another round of snow. Nothing is overheated, nothing is on fire, so we are doing well. And we at Grubb Street hope you're doing well, too, and have a safe and sane New Years.

More later.

Ten Movies

 So, talking about other things, I considered what my favorite ten movies were. And I had to think about I would mean as "favorite". There are movies that a really like, and would recommend to others, but probably not watch again. They were a great experience - blockbusters, indie films, but they were one-and-done for me.

And there are "films" where you want to take apart how the plot is unspooled, how the shots were taken, how they got that take, or sought out that emotion. Films can be analyzed. Movies are just embraced.

And then there are the films that I will watch. Every time. Channel hopping or random streaming, coming in on the middle of them, and I will hang on until the end credits. I know the lines. I know how they end. I know the stories behind them. But these are movies that I will WATCH again and again. This is what I'm talking about.

Not all of these are great movies. Not all of them have "worn" well since their release. Some of them are a bit cringe. Many of them lack deeper meaning. A lot of them bunch up in my teen aged years. Some are even in Black and White. But I will watch them. Every. Damn. Time.

Here are ten movies:

The Thin Man (1934)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Longest Day (1962)

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

The Great Race (1965)

The War Wagon (1968)

Ice Station Zebra (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Star Wars (1977)

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

So what are YOUR Ten?

More later,

Season's Greetings

 Wishing you a safe, sane, and secure Holiday Season.

Art by Eyvind Earle

More later, 

Seattle Weather

When we moved to Seattle twenty-some years ago, I started encountering weather features and climate conditions that I hadn't encountered before, or had few references to. Here's a handy list for new arrivals:

Weather Forecast: Fiction. 

5-Day Forecast: Science Fiction. 

Mountain Day: We are surrounded by mountains - Cascades to the east, the Olympic range to the west. But when we say "The Mountain is Out" (and we do), we are talking about Mount Rainier (rah-NEER), which looms to the south like something out of Greek Myth.If we can see it from base to tip, we call it the "Full Mountain".  People are usually happy when we can see the Mountain, despite the fact that Rainier is an ACTIVE VOLCANO (not erupting, but not quite dead, either).

Sunbreaks: The opposite of Partly Cloudy, but rarer out here. It a term used from the Fall to Spring, and usually means "You might see some sun today." Most of the summer is pristine, blue, and cloudless. That's when your relatives from back East visit and tell you how nice it must be to live out here. You want people to stop moving to Seattle? Invite them out in the dead of winter.

June-uary: When we say "summer" in Seattle, we don't count the first two weeks in June. Sure, May is nice, with soft rain in the evenings and fogs in the morning, but a grey overcast dominates the landscape in early June, so much so that it gets its own month. Also called June Gloom.

Atmospheric River: A recent term, it reflects the fact that Washington State doesn't really have any large agricultural states to the west of it we can call up and ask for steady weather forecasts.What we often see on the doppler radar is the thick stream of heavy red bearing down on us. Makes the weathermen on the evening news excited.

Pineapple Express: When the atmospheric river commutes from Hawaii. Really makes the weathermen excited.

Convergence Zone: I mentioned the Olympics, they are a massive upthrust of mountain due west of us. They tend to stand in the way of the atmospheric rivers that buffet the coast. Of course, the weather tends to go AROUND this big chunk of mountains, so Seattle is often at the point where the weather coming around the northern side hits the weather coming around from the south. When they hit, we get interesting, local effects. So Kirkland can get heavy rain and hail while Kent gets nothing.

Rain Shadow: The flip side of the convergence zone. Because the mountains are in the way, some places get untouched by rain while it rains heavily to both the north and south. The Olympics become Seattle's umbrella, and like an umbrella, a treacherous wind can turn it inside out.

Microclimates: As a result of the differences in altitude, plus the rain shadow and convergence zone, microclimates mean that you can have radically different weather in relative close proximity. While in certain parts of the country, the saying is" If you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes" in Seattle it is "If you don't like the weather, drive fifteen miles."

Misting: What Seattlites call it when it really ISN'T raining. You don't need a slicker. You don't need an umbrella (a sign of being a tourist). It's just misting. Works up to the point when you start seeing hail.

Thunder:  A rarity. It happens maybe once a month, consists of one long, rolling peel. and people will talk about it at the office the next day. It is so cute to those who come out from the Midwest. 

Snowed In: More than a quarter inch on the roads. Everyone forgets how to drive. Archaic term now that everyone is working from home.

Snow Level: Snow is measured by altitude here, and as winter proceeds the snow level descends down from the mountains to the sea. So we really pay attention to where the snow level currently is. "Lowland Snow" sets off alarm bells and closes schools. Grubb Street is located at the 500 foot mark, just in case you were wondering. 

Seattle Freeze: Has nothing to do with the weather, but is as close as we get to feeling chilly. 

Black Ice: Not a uniquely Seattle phenomenon, its the scarier way of saying "It's a little slick out there".

Closing the Passes: The main east/west highways out of/into Seattle go over the Cascade Mountains, and as winter arrives, travel over them become perilous and often avalanche-y, until finally the passes are closed, sealing us off from the rest of the northern US. We're pretty happy with that.

Polar Vortex: Not so much a Seattle thing, this is a weather effect that has been picked up on the national reports. It is bitter cold with heavy snows and wind - what Wisconsin used to call "A pretty average winter".  The weakening of the Jet Stream around the Arctic Circle results is sudden bulges of cold air descending on the heart of of the country, giving Climate Skeptics the chance to complain "Where's your Global Warming, now?"

Pyroclastic Flow: We have an active volcano nearby (see Mountain Day, above). Someday, it will go off, and send a cascade of molten rock, hot mud, and melted snow down the surrounding valleys, including the Green River valley, where Renton, Kent, and Auburn lay. This is a reason that Grubb Street is up on a hill. Have a pleasant day. 

Subduction Zone: The Big One - that massive earthquake that will cause the West Coast to fall into the sea, belongs to us, Oregon and California, so it not unique to Seattle. However, we DO talk about the tectonic plates far out to sea that have the potential to slip and create a Tidal Wave, which, given the narrowing of the Straits leading to Puget Sound, will channel it like a shotgun blast at the city.

Tsunami Route: You can see signs occasionally. I'm not sure they're being kept in order. They are usually pointing towards higher ground (well, yeah), in case the subduction zone triggers a tidal wave that will swamp the low-level areas of the Sound.

Solstice: Solstice is an important holiday in Seattle. We are the furthest north major metropolitan center in the continental US. We are further north than most of the population of Canada. So this means that our day/night cycle takes wide swings back and forth during the year. In the summer months, we are used to the sun setting in the Northeast, and twilight showing up around 10 PM. In the winter months, we are looking commuting in the darkness both to and from work. Both are a bit wearing on the senses, and the Solstice is the moment when the pendulum reaches its furthest point, and starts slipping back.

Happy Solstice. More later.

Book: Jail Break

 
 

Help, I'm Being Held Prisoner By Donald E. Westlake, Titan Books, original publication 1974

Provenance: Half-Price Books. When I am in a used bookstore, I check the mysteries to see if there are any Rex Stouts I am missing. In the same area of the alphabet I found this Donald Westlake in trade paperback format.

Review: So, Donald Westlake is an incredibly accomplished author, and wrote the original Parker novels. He also wrote the novel The Hot Rock, which became the film of the same name with a screenplay by William Goldman, starring Robert Redford, George Segal, Paul Sands, and Zero Mostel. Funny movie. So if you want funny crime stories, Westlake has you covered. And the original publication of this book falls hard on the heels of The Hot Rock movie, so there was probably a demand of funny crime stories.

And it is a prison fantasy, in that it takes place in a prison, but is scripted in a way that breaks your sense of reality if you think about it too hard. 

The unfortunately-named Harold Künt (with an umlat - it just gets worse the longer you look at it) is inveterate and uncontrollable practical joker whose latest stunt on the Long Island Expressway gets him sent up the river for a short stint. He falls in with a band of tough guys who have tunneled out of the prison, but they are not planning an escape. Instead they leave the prison, commit a few crimes, go out to dinner, take in a movie, then come back for roll-call. Harold accidentally and easily crashes the party, and after some deliberation, the tough guys take him in because they have a big plan - they are going to knock over not one, but two banks in the town the prison is located in, then come back to prison because that's the last place anyone would think to look for criminals.

And we're ignoring stuff like, you know, fingerprints. Like I said, let's park reality at the door for this one.

Its a fun, light read. Harold is a nervous wreck, trying to keep himself from committing any more practical jokes, plus keeping the gang's secrets, plus dealing with someone else pulling practical jokes and him taking the blame, plus trying to keep the gang from finding out that he is NOT a tough guy, plus desperately trying to keep the gang from robbing the banks. So most of the book consists of him going to greater and greater lengths to keep all the balls in the air. Sort of French farce, with a lot of door slamming, but the doors have bars on them in this case. 

I have to call out the Paul Mann cover of this one, only because, in the tradition of hard-boiled mysteries, it conveys the theme while misrepresenting what is going on inside the covers. The protagonist is a broad-chested he-man dressed up in classic hamburglar stripes (he is not, and the book is set in a period of Folsom prison denims). The babe is all legs and bare;y-buttoned men's shirt (there is a love interest, but not as dolled up) with an obligatory gun - It is something something off the old Carter Brown covers by Robert McGinnis. 

So, it is a fun book, and a nice break from change ringing in the fens of East Anglia, but not one to hunt down. 

More later,

The Things On The Doorstep

Recent Acquisitions, with a Cameo from Kia

Here are some of the game products that have been piling up here at Grubb Street. The bulk of them are Kickstarters that have delivered. Kickstarter has a been a boon for small and medium publishers which might otherwise not have the reach to find their audience.

This Kickstarter boom, though, has been kicked in the teeth of late by the global situation, not just the perils of the pandemic but the shipping crisis as well. The backup has delayed delivered even further and small shipments are getting lost in the shuffle. And, given Brexit, I do think twice before ordering anything from England, as the shipping fees can rival the cost of the product itself.

However, I do have a long trail of material that I've ordered previously which continues to show up at my door. And this is a very mixed bag this time. As always, these are not reviews,. in that I feel you need to play the game in order to review it fully, but a rather is a first glance and reactions to them.

Southlands (Richard Green, with Wolfgang Baur, Basheer Ghouse, and Kelly Pawlik; Kobold Press; 316 page hardbound) as well as the Southlands Player's Guide (Green, Marks, McFarland, Merwin, Pawlik and Suskind; 80 page softbound) and City of Cats by Richard Pett; 202 page hardbound). The Southlands was originally detailed for the Pathfinder Game, but makes the transition to D&D 5E with this volume. It deals with the territory south of the core Midgard territories and is a melding of Arabian Nights, Dynastic Egypt, and Lost World African themes. Looking forward to reading it in more detail, given my background with Al-Qadim. The Player's Guide gives you a lot of the nuts and bolts for creating characters and new races in this region for 5th Edition. The City of Cats looks at first blush to be this world's Cairo analogue, with a lot of urban fantasy intrigue. Full color, high production values, excellent maps.

Bayt Al Azif (Jared Smith, editor; Bayt al Azif Inc.; Issues 1-3; 80-120 pages squarebound magazine) This is an irregular magazine on the Call of Cthulhu game. The release schedule is "When the Stars Are Right" which means I have three issues so far, the most recent from 2020. I got it off Amazon, but you can order it in real-world or pdf form off DriveThruRPG. Really high production values, echoing the old World of Cthulhu magazines from Pegasus Spiele. Contents are a mix of adventures and articles, the latter being about the history of the game, and reviews/overviews of recent Cthulhu products. Their website is here.

The Oracle #14 (Stephen Hart (writing/design/layout) and Jane Spenser (editing); The Grinning Frog; 50 page squarebound). Ordered this during the 'Zinefest on Kickstarter, but to call it a 'Zine is to round down. Landscape formating, glossy stock, excellent art,. This particular issue deals with a fantasy version of Venice, with canals, duels, masques, masks, and magic. Great on flavor and inspiration, light on mechanics. Website is here. 

The Dee Sanctions Adventures - (Paul Baldowski and Richard August; 44 pages squarebound) I got the ruleset for this a while back, and while the kickstarter included these rules in pdf, I picked them up in print and got a bonus adventure as well. Short version - John Dee's Suicide Squad. This one is softback and nice production values.  Website is here.

All Must Bow (Ryan Hatt and Joshua Flaccavento,; Bleak Horizons Press; 58 page saddlestitched) This one is weird, and more of art-project than a game setting.The idea is that there are uncaring, monstrous Dreadful Ancient Things in our universe, and you're working with/for  them to achieve - whatever it is you think they need to achieve. It mentions the use of X-cards at the start and actually feels like it may need it. System Agnostic (with hints and helps about particular systems in the back  it almost feels like it is an experience hung on an RPG's blasted skeleton than a full RPG itself. Includes a sealed envelope that I am quite frankly a little frightened to open. Company website with links to other sites is here.

Nahual (Miguel Angel Espinoza, 288 pages Squarebound)- This one is very interesting. An RPG by designer of Latino heritage, Nahual is based on a comic book that has only been published in Mexico, where the angels, representative of Western Colonizers, are hunted by descendants of native shamans, Upon slaying the angels, the shamans turn the bodies into drugs and food served from taco trucks  Powered by the Apocalypse Engine but complete in and of itself,with high production values and good B/W art, it is an urban fantasy not based on traditional western tropes. . Website? Here.

Orun (Misha Bsuhyager, Jerry D. Grayson, Eloy LaSanta; New Agenda Publishing; 288 hardbound) Also from diverse voices and avoiding traditional western tropes, this game is billed as Post-Apotheois Afro-Futuristic Space Opera. So that's a bit of a niche market, but it looks great. Pulling from  the "Lost Present" school of SF (like Tekumel and Dune, our present is far in the game's past and Western Civilization has wiped itself out long before mankind made it to the stars), the game uses Nigerian/Yoruba terminology like Oya (for Earthers) and Orisha (for ascended humanity) to craft a futuristic setting with multiple planetary heavens and a Sauron-level meme-devil as an ultimate big bad. The product itself is high production values - Hardback, full-color, glossy stock, with a book ribbon and a slip case. Worth a deeper dive.

The Black Hack (David Black, Black Label/Squarehex, 124 page hardback)- Hacks are something that have popped up in the past decade - Minimalist designs, using old-school games that push ease of play over detailed background. Take a system (usually a 3d6 one) and reducing it to its most basic components. This Black Hack is the revision and has a clean presentation and art that would fit in the liner notes for the Gorillaz Clint Eastwood album. Player's section has four classes, like the classic. DM's section has a lot of tables for random results. The Kickstarter came with a bunch of small tchotchkes, like mini-booklets for maps, lore, and spells. This one (and the Dee Adventures) actually shipped from England, and made it in a timely fashion. Stripped-down web page is here.

And that's about it. If I get a chance to actually play any of these, I will come back to them. But in general, Kickstarter has produced some really fine opportunities to get hold of games that might not otherwise make their way to your friendly neighborhood gaming store.

More later,