strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
« January 2003 | Main | March 2003 »
Feb 27 03: outbound
First of two noteworthy articles today: Pioneer 10 has left the building. Off it goes, past the farthest fringes of humanspace, bound for Aldebaran. 2 million years from now, it will get there. Unless something interesting happens to it first. Personally, I’m hoping for the unknown interesting event.
tremble
I also can’t resist posting this interview for your review, done for the Washington Post with the author of what has been lately called the “worst novel in the history of the English language.” Reading it puts a strange queasy nervous laugh in the dark corners of my head but I am compelled to put it on display here anyway. Probably in the hopes that by laughing at it I won’t find myself the subject of such an article at some point in the future.Attendant muses, hear thy humble supplicant. I’m almost ready, I promise. Please don’t let me fail this spectacularly.
plans
We’re going to England in April! To see our charming Oxonian friends! We don’t have the details worked out. But we can’t wait. (Hi, guys. We should talk soon.)ave atque vale
Mr. Rogers is dead.
For those of you who weren’t exposed to American children’s television between 1968 and 2001: Fred Rogers was a sweet, gentle man with a sweet, gentle show. Those of us who watched it when we were of the proper age�—well, we generally don’t remember much about specific episodes, but his name evokes all sorts of quiet happy affection, and we can all sing little snatches of “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
Thanks, Fred.
Feb 26 03: HOB update
Incidentally, the Horror of Blimps made somebody physically ill from laughing today. Someday I want to be able to do that.
I think.
adventures in pseudoglamour
Okay, it’s really really late but I can’t let another evening go by without commenting on a phone call I got from my father on Saturday. Amazon had delivered his copy of this.
Wow. How cool is that? My first honest-to-god trade book, with a hard cover and a Library of Congress entry and everything. Amazon is selling the ultrarugged school & library binding edition; I don’t know if any other sort is available, but I suspect that it is. Perhaps I should throw a book-signing party…
Of course, the next big hurdle is to get something published that wasn’t done as a work-for-hire freelance thing. But for now, bedtime is a higher priority.
Feb 21 03: theatre corner!
Sari and John and Paul and I did a shockingly NYC thing this evening. We went to see a show. And not just any show: we saw a musical currently in previews in a tiny little theatre just off Union Square. The show is called Avenue Q—after a real street, way out in Brooklyn—and if there is any justice at all it will be the next Little Show Turned Runaway Hit. It’s about twenty- and thirty-somethings trying to find their place in a world full of sex and bad jobs and star-crossed relationships and frustrated dreams. Oh, and two-thirds of the ensemble are puppets.
The seven-person cast is great. Three of them play ‘real’ people (including none other than Gary Coleman); the rest handle the puppets. They sing. They dance. They turn on a dime from hilarious to heart-rending. The puppeteers display fabulous technical skill, and easily hold their own against their ‘real’ castmates. The non-puppeteer actors have much easier jobs, because they all play one character each. Did I mention that one of the characters is Gary Coleman? And another character is a Japanese immigrant social worker who is apparently also Judy Garland back from the dead? Among them, they get married, break one another’s hearts, come out of the closet, fall in love, sleep with the wrong people, seek their true purposes in life, surf Internet porn, become washed-up child-actor has-beens by the age of fifteen, and succumb to (or resist) the charms of those snuggly Bad Idea Bears. Actually, there were several points in the show where Sari and I looked at each other and realized that the characters’ stories were uncomfortably like our own. We threatened to make a break for the door so we could have a good cry on the street, but we didn’t mean it. We were having too much fun to leave.
Clearly, this is a show that needs to be seen to be fully appreciated. It can go from Sesame Street homage to parody in a heartbeat. (They’ve even got a pair of TV monitors to provide little ‘educational’ video clips.) The songs are stylistically varied but uniformly catchy, and Paul will happily rave about the fabulous arrangements for the three-man orchestra if you ask him to. The production design is low-rent but exuberant and inventive: the three-building-facades backdrop unfolds in clever ways to provide necessary interiors, but it’s never so clever that it upstages the show. The puppets have the simple, expressive elegance of the house of Henson, which makes it all the more unsettling when you see them having sex. (Which is not to say that Avenue Q is tawdry or seeks to be shocking for shock’s sake, but this show is not for kids.) There were a few sound glitches, and the follow spot didn’t always follow closely enough, but hey, it’s in previews.
So you’d best get your tickets now, before the reviews come out. Ere long every hipster in town is going to be lining up for a puppet show.
Feb 20 03: study break
I should be working on my current project right now, but I’m not. I took a study break, reading a few threads on the Straight Dope Message Board. A thread that came up a couple of weeks ago had been revived, and I reread it, and it was still the funniest thing I had read in a long time. So now I share it with you. It had me in helpless semi-asthmatic giggles for five minutes the first time. This time it was closer to eight because the thread had gotten longer.
For your reading pleasure: The Horror of Blimps. [link redirected 3/1/03—AW]
If you are inclined to explore the boards further, you might start by quickly perusing The Straight Dope, �a syndicated weekly column that has been fighting ignorance since 1973. (It’s taking longer than we thought.) The message board exists, at least officially, for commentary on published columns and for further crusades against bad science, urban legends, historical misconceptions, etc. It’s also a fascinating online community, rife with hilarious and intelligent folks from all walks of life. There are also a few total dipsticks. But that’s the internet for you.
Feb 19 03: entropy sets in
It was beautiful for a while, and quiet. About one car every 4 blocks on 9th Ave, and random scatterings of locals on foot, tossing snowballs at one another and generally taking in the magic.
But now it ain’t. The streets are being plowed, and shopkeepers are digging two-foot-wide channels in the sidewalks in front of their stores for foot traffic. And all that displaced snow piles up in between. It’s well over three feet deep in places—at least, it was, until the melting started. The trodden snow breaks down into cold dirty grey-brown sludge, which pools up at the streetcorners. The puddles often look just like wet pavement, until you try to walk across them, at which point you discover that they are deep enough to swamp your boot-tops. Until the snow melts enough to uncover the openings to the storm-drains, the lakes can only expand, spreading three, four, five feet out into the street on either side.
In short, it’s gross. I’m staying home until March.
Feb 17 03: hush
Snowing and snowing and snowing. Outside the bathroom window, every strut on the fire escape has its own three-inch drift. And still it falls, and we’re told that it won’t stop coming down until tomorrow night. The city has gone quiet, even for a Sunday night, as we all bunker in and wait for the Nor’Easter to do its stuff. A weird orange glow comes from everywhere and nowhere, as sodium streetlamp light reflects from the muffled sidewalks and parked cars and the flakes that thicken into a heavy fog above our heads. By suppertime tomorrow there may be two feet of snow in Hell’s Kitchen. Imagine.
The excitement of it all has kept me up even as my mind starts to slip its gears. I had dinner with John H, then came home and played a zillion games of computer pinball and solitaire between dashes to the window and the weather channel. But I think the novelty has worn off at last. There are two extra blankets on the bed, and I’m off to keep them company.
Feb 16 03: social update
Just got back from Todd P’s housewarming party. Todd is one of my oldest friends. I’ve known him since I was…what, eight? And now, after seemingly endless threats, he has finally moved to NYC. Harlem, specifically. After three weeks, most of us would still be trying to locate all of our flatware. But Todd and Steven have got their place utterly under control. It’s excellent, and when Paul sees it he will seethe with real-estate-glamour jealousy.
Also at the party: Kelly T and Erin M, also now New Yorkers. Erin got here about the time I did; Kelly has been here since 1999. I hadn’t seen either of them since high school, or shortly thereafter. Call it fifteen years. And the startling (and joyous) discovery is that it felt like the lacuna was something closer to twenty minutes. Sure, we had a lot of catching up to do, but the bond of friendship picked right back up where we left it off. Only now we had the added benefit of all those years’ worth of unpacking our emotional baggage. I am proud to say that all the Danvillians at that party had managed to transcend the specific miseries of our youth. We’re doing just fine. Todd is an actor. Kelly designs sets for theatrical productions around the US. Erin teaches Shakespeare to inner-city kids all over NYC. (She’s also beautiful. Something about her looks reminds me of Mary McDonnell.) Just realizing that—that we’d all survived the dark years of teenagerhood and turned into actual adults, not merely functional but fabulous—was grounds for a number of group toasts over the course of the evening. And don’t we all crave evenings like that?
Feb 15 03: what I did today
I was here, with Sari and Kathleen and John and César. It was indeed really really really cold. When we began to lose the feeling in our feet we started doing small outbursts of discreet dance steps. We had a Kick Line for Peace. We did the Pogo for Peace. We Salsa’d for Peace. After about 4 hours, we Went Home for Peace. And also for Warmth.
another late night
Paul is in Ithaca by now. I’ll be meeting him there on Sunday. As usual, I’m celebrating my night to myself by roaming the Internet and reading until my eyes fall out. One of the threads I’ve been following is for da Vinci codex images, preparatory for the new renaissanceguy.com. And I found this. Pretty cool: a bridge built in Norway based on 400-year-old plans. And it’s a lovely piece of public engineering, if not quite so beautiful as the one in the painting.
Feb 13 03: hack
Round about 4pm every day the smoke starts. The downstairs neighbor apparently lights up in the afternoon and keeps going until sometime in the wee small hours. It seeps up through the floor.
This hasn’t always been a problem, but now that the guy downstairs is facing legal action (for illegally turning his apartment into two apartments, and then subletting the one with the bathroom), he seems to be home much more often. (That’s right. Apparently he has subleased his bathroom to somebody else. What he does when nature calls I do not know, nor do I ask.) He only lives in the half that’s beneath my office and the bedroom. So those are the only rooms affected. Fabulous.
So anyway: if you see me and my clothes smell like smoke, that’s probably why.
for the record
Lots of gallows humor here in town these days, all masking the anxiety hanging over New York and its inhabitants. Should the unthinkable occur and the lot of us get vaporized, I’d like to state a few things for posterity:
- Earth has been a fun place to be. Thanks to all of you who contributed. If I end up dead, I’ll do what I can to bring you love and good fortune from wherever I end up. If somehow we come through this mess okay, I’ll buy you a beer.
- Dubya felt that the best way to defuse the resentment and rage directed at our nation by a significant percentage of the Mid-East was to poke Iraq repeatedly with a pointy stick. If I end up poxy or radioactive as a result, I point the finger from beyond the grave: you, sir, are a dope.
- I think it’s safe to say that two years ago we had the respect of most of our allies in the West. Now, because of our leader’s unilateralism on matters military, economic, environmental, and otherwise, much of that goodwill is gone. Where once we led because we were respected, now we lead because we are the biggest bully around. Whether or not I am dead when you are reading this, I point the finger again at George: you, sir, are a dope.
It’s not that I or anybody I know thinks that Mr. Hussein is any sort of a nice guy. But there are a lot of people who disagree with how this is being handled, and those who claim to act on our behalf don’t care. And I’m a little frightened that my neighbors and I are going to be asked to be accountable for his actions anyway.
Feb 12 03: the rest
Um. Hi, my name’s Andrew? And I’m, um…I’m addicted to my iPod.
I didn’t really realize how much I had come to rely on it until tonight. I went to the evening swim practice, because I skipped the morning one. (Okay, go ahead. Everybody say it together: “…Because you were up too late the night before.” Whatever.) But as I dashed out of the apartment to get to practice, I…I…I left the iPod on my desk! I had to walk eight whole blocks without it! And then another eight blocks coming home! I felt bereft. My hands kept reaching for it in its usual spot on my belt, but it wasn’t there. And this cig-junkie’s craving gave me pause.
How concerned should we be by our habit of screening out the sounds of the world around us with music? It’s a perfect example of the put-yourself-anywhere-but-where-you-are tendency that makes the Zen masters so crazy. On the other hand, Zen wasn’t born in Manhattan. I wouldn’t be wearing it if I were walking through a forest, or someplace where the ambient noises were less abrasive than taxi horns and the schluss of the M11 bus driving through the dregs of last night’s snow. I figure as long as I am sufficiently present not to get hit by a cab, I can shake my groove thing all the way down the sidewalk if I so choose. I share this island with 1.5 million other Manhattanites, and many of them are loud. Any opportunity to create a sense of solitude—or at least a sense of personal space—is tempting.
Still, I know I used to be able to walk home from the pool without music. I know I used to enjoy just taking in the city around me, and that included the sounds: conversation in dozens of languages, laughter, machinery, scraps of music from every continent. I guess the real question is: do I lose more than I gain?
Feb 11 03: in from the cold
Damn. It is freezing outside: at last report, 24°F/-4°C. I am presently a very slow typist as a result. I just came home from seeing Elena Faro, tax lady extraordinaire, who’s got me lined up for a refund. Shout oh yes!
notes from the doctors
Paul’s father has full function in his hand, which is a good thing. My own father is now back from the hospital as well, having had the other knee replaced last week. I look forward to going for a walk with him once he’s back up to speed, which admittedly could take a while but it beats where he’s been. Hi, Dad.subcultural moment
Just so we’re clear, Paul’s threats to write Tommy Walsh/Andy Kane slash were a joke. Don’t want y’all thinking he’s some kind of perv. But it is a funny idea.And for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about: slash fiction, a subgenre of fan fiction (aka fanfic), is one of those things that was stayed on the outer fringes of fandom until the advent of the Internet, at which point it stayed fringy but at least had a more universally accessible platform. By ‘fandom’ I mean that particular strain of mediaphiles devoted to science fiction and/or ‘fantasy,’ whether their specific passions were for television, paperback novels, comic books, films, or whatever. You know: geeks. Fan fiction is any fiction written (a) about characters from an established pop-culture continuity and (b) by somebody other than the continuity’s copyright-holders or his/her/its official ghostwriters/scriptwriters. It is generally written to be circulated among other fans, and nobody sees any profit off it.
To my knowledge slash was born amongst the Trekkers. Fanfic isn’t going to be televised and doesn’t have to worry about sponsors, time constraints, budgetary concerns, &c., so it gets to explore the source material’s themes and plot elements with more breadth, depth, and daring than the source does. Star Trek’s fanfic writers, and its female fanfic writers in particular, often used this opportunity to write about romance in the Utopian future. And because (a) this was the 1960s and (b) the show’s most prominent characters were male, you started to see a lot of male-male relationships. Suddenly there were Kirk/Spock stories and Sulu/Scotty stories. Some were tender romances; some were tawdry pornography. Presumably, the best of them were both.
And now? Your show isn’t a hit if somebody isn’t writing slash about it. Buffy/Willow? Check. Crichton/Dargo? Mais bien sûr.
Given that Changing Rooms and Ground Force are home-improvement shows, and as such don’t have much of a plot, they don’t really lend themselves to short fiction. But the net is as big, and as weird, as humanity’s assembled passions. If the first stories haven’t surfaced yet, there’s doubtless some hot-blooded obsessive working on a draft. I feel better just knowing that.
Feb 10 03: stones, gardens
Paul and I had our little fix of horticultural fantasy this evening after we got back from a choral gig. Specifically, thirty minutes of Ground Force, which is one of our guilty pleasures. We get to dream of having a lovely garden. Truth be told, we also have kind of a crush on its resident builder-guy Tommy Walsh. Paul has threatened to write Tommy Walsh-Andy Kane slash fiction, even, which is an idea that makes me laugh very very much. But poor Tommy: he doesn’t get nearly the sex-symbol treatment that his coworker Charlie Dimmock does. She’s the water-feature lady, is Charlie. She is also the Queen of the Amazons and can sling paving stones and chainsaws and whatnot with the best of them.
Whilst coming up with the perfect link to demonstrate the lovely Ms. Dimmock’s celebrity status (it’s probably either this one or this one) I learned that she’s 5’6” and weighs ten-and-a-half-stone. And I got to thinking about how strange it is that the Brits have managed to go metric—something the Americans will never do, because, you know, the metric system is a godless Communist conspiracy—but they still do this “I weigh twelve stone” thing. Sure, culture is culture and we do weird things because of it. But stones? What kind of a crazy unit of measure is that? 14 pounds, that’s what, and the mental math required to actually use it is unwieldy to the point of being absurd. How many of us keep our fourteens times table in RAM?
Now that I think of it, maybe that’s the point: it’s a way to state our weight without actually revealing how much we weigh. Hmm.