Changing the world

Lucky Town, by our pen named Morgan Brice, is a fairly short Holiday themed novella in the BadLands portion of the shared universe. We join Simon Kincaide and Vic D'Amato prior to their voyage from Myrtle Beach to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving with Vic's extended Italian American family. We get a peek at Simon's WASP-y upbringing as his mother tries to convince him to come home for Thanksgiving for societal reasons, but Vic's family winds out. Which is fine, other than making me hungry, since Vic's family cooks for most of the first few chapters.

Simon has a vision in Pittsburgh alluding to someone who made a deal and was soul shredded when the deal ended. Said dealer has now made his way to Myrtle Beach, leading to tying together both parts of the novel. This is, of course, after Vic's ex shows up at a party and causes drama.

Anyway, said dealer has, as it turns out, made a deal with a Krampus, which leads to a Hoodoo woman, a Bruja, and Simon facing off with a hooven figure while Victor protects the person trapped in the bad deal.

As I said, it's a novella, so it's brief, but it is fun to read, and since the protagonists are a bit older then the boys in Witchbane, the relationship is a teensy bit less...adolescent, I guess.... although they do seems to enjoy each other's company a few times in 100 pages. I'll be interested to get into the next full volume to see how this falls out.

(xposted from James's Genre Books)

Finished Armistead Maupin's More Tales of the City this morning prior to my ultrasound, and again felt the pleasure of enjoying a good read. (Goal is to make it through all 9 volumes before July, but going on Library copies from this point forwad, since I've managed to lose my collection.)

Anyway, while some of the darkness we got a small peak at in the first volume pops up here, it's not nearly as much of a character as it winds up being in later volumes. I mean, really, the worst we get to deal with is the Cannibal Episcopal Cult at Grace Cathedral, and even that is not quite as bad as later events.

We start on Valentine's Day as Michael and Mary Ann make resolutions for their love lives. As it turns out, Mary Ann's boss (who was having an affair with their landlady in the last volume) left her a substantial gift in his will, allowing her and Michael to take an 11 day cruise on the Pacific Princess to Acapulco. Much to the chagrin of new boss Beauchamp, who's busy dealing with the revelation that his wife DeDe is giving birth to twins from a Chinese father. DeDe's mother, Frannie, on the other hand, is dealing with turning 60 when she gets a surprise for her birthday. Mona is having issues with being alone, so she hops a bus to Reno and instead gets suckered in to working phones at a whorehouse in Winnemucca. Brian, now living in Norman Neil Williams's little house on the roof, is busy watching a woman with binoculars in another building. And Mrs. Madrigal remains as she has been, with hers being one of the largest revelations in the book.

On the cruise, Mary Ann meets and falls in love with Blonde himbo Burke, who has amnesia about his 3 years in San Francisco. Michael resigns himself to being alone until he hits the only gay bar in Acapulco and runs into his former lover Jon. Sparks fly, and by the time they reach San Francisco, all of 'em are happily coupled again.

DeDe manages to befriend D'orothea unexpectedly after she leaves Beauchamp. Beauchamp, upset over the scandal of her children hires someone to beat her up to terminate the pregnancy. (The fact he's cruising the bathhouses looking for men is evidently less of a concern to him than his wife's mixed heritage babies.)

Burke, as it turns out, has issues related to his amnesia like a feal of fenced walkways and puking at the sight of roses. He also remembers a strange rhyme in his sleep and recognizes a man with a hair transplant.

Mona, out in Winnemucca, discovers her name in of the books, calls San Francisco, and the big secret comes out. Mother Mucca, nee Mona Ramsay, is her grandmother. Mrs. Madrigal is actually Mona's father (sort of).

Mrs. Madrigal does try to get Mona and Brian together, but the lady across the city causes issues.

Michael comes down with Guillain-Barre and winds up hospitalized while his mother writes him letters about she and her husband joining Anita Bryant's Save Our Children. Which does lead to a very powerful moment when Michael writes home to mom and dad, discussing his own homosexuality.

By the end, we find out Burke's amnesia was due to trying to break open a story about a cult eating human flesh during Communion, we find out Brian's nightly appointment was actually Mona's mother, we find out what the anagram in Mrs. Madrigal's name is, and we get to see Michael and Jon happy for the moment. (Spoiler: this doesn't last. They're divorced and reconcile in the next book, then Jon dies off page in book 4.)

While this volume ramps up the soap opera nature of the narrative, it's still so much fun to read.

For those of you who didn't hear, I somehow got tickets for a Sneak Preview of Love, Simon last night at the Lennox here in town. Oddly, I've been unable to stop pondering it today. So, let's talk about it.

We start by meeting Simon (Nick Robinson), a 17 year old senior at Whisper Creek High School in what appears to be suburban Atlanta. Simon tells us about how he's a normal kid with normal friends and a normal family but he has one big secret.

His secret, of course, being that he's gay, something he confesses online to another anonymous student after a post on "Creek Secrets", which here is portrayed as some kind of school gossip page on the web. The boy, who's pseudonym is Blue, confesses he's gay and talks a bit about how he feels. Simon creates a Gmail account and e-mails Blue, and thus starts their very strange online friendship.

Simon starts school days by picking up his friends Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and Leah (Katherine Langford) (whom he's known since they were kids) and Abby (Alexandra Shipp) (who moved to town towards the beginning of the school year). They get iced coffee before school and go endure High School and musical practice. (In a bit of unreality, the school is putting on Cabaret, something I doubt may high schools would tackle.)

Anyway, Blue does eventually respond to Simon's first e-mail (which Simon signed as Jacques), and in probably one of the most honest things in the movie, leads to Simon near constantly checking his phone to see if Blue has responded any time they write. Of course, after getting caught texting by Vice Principal Worth (Tony Hale), he gets his phone confiscated until after rehearsal, leading to checking his e-mail in the library. He forgets to close his browser, leading to Martin (Logan Miller) seeing and taking pictures of the e-mailed conversations between Blue and Simon.

Martin uses this as blackmail material to get Simon to set him up with Abby. Which he does do, first at Bram's (one of the soccer players who sits at his lunch table) Halloween party, and later running lines at Waffle House. We'll come back to that dinner here in a second. At the party, Simon gets drunk and begins to think Bram might be Blue. This lasts until he walks in on Bram making out with a girl.

Leah walks Simon home and spends the night, hinting around about her deeper feeling for someone in their group, which Simon assumes is Nick.

At Waffle House, Martin gets Abby to talk about her parents' divorce. This convinces him to ask her out at Homecoming, which doesn't go well, and indeed, makes him a meme on Creeksecrets. At Waffle House, Simon meets Lyle, who becomes another candidate for Blue, until he asks about Abby's availability at the game.

Christmas/Hannukah comes, and Blue is going to the middle of nowhere with his dad, whom he finally came out to. At this point, Simon thinks Blue is Aaron (Tyler Chase), who said something in rehearsal about going to the middle of nowhere. However, while on break, Martin, tired of suffering from the memes about his over the top proposal, releases the emails. And thus Simon is outed over Christmas break.

And because he needs to suffer even more, his friends compare notes and figure out Abby and Nick have been quietly admiring each other for some time and are mad that Simon was trying to keep them apart. Abby's mad, because Simon didn't realize she was talking about him during her late night confession. She's also perturbed that Simon told Abby before the outing.

Oh yeah, and Blue blocks Simon, since he values his privacy.

Then comes the harrassment at school, despite the adults being strangely supportive.

Anyway, since this is a rom-com, everything works out, and we finally meet Blue at the end, as he and Simon end up in a grand gesture meeting. (Think Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed. Same idea, different execution.)

So, I compared this last night to a John Hughes movie out of the 80's, which is mainly due to a few fantasy sequences and the fact that just about ever adult acts like a idiot for the most part. Upon further reflection, given Simon is narrating this, it's likely that he, like a 17 year old, is reflecting the adults as he sees them. Well, that, and the last scene is essentially Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

There are more than a few points where the fantasy rubs thin and we see the reality quite well, like the scene where Simon's mother (Jennifer Garner) and Simon discuss his coming out, and she echoes a conversation I had (admittedly later in life) with my own mother, about how she knew he was hiding something, but had no idea how to broach the subject. Or when the only openly gay kid at the school (who's name I can't remember and can't find on IMDb), who talks about his home life, where his mother hides his sexuality from his grandparents.

What I anticipate hearing in terms of negativity about the movie after release is likely diversity issues. While the cast is a real ethnic mix, Simon is white and from an affluent family. (Hell, her gets his sister a Cuisinart for Christmas.) The black theater teacher might as well be called Sassy Black Woman, even though she's likely the best adult in the movie. And honestly, in a different setting (read: rural area, with poor parents), this movie would have played out a lot differently. However, Simon's tale is honest and contains enough seeds of many folk's coming out stories, even these little detractions shouldn't interfere with people identifying with Simon or his story.

I've talked about it on here before, years and years ago (and I ain't digging through tags to find it) but tonight, we return to the topic of a project I participated in back in the Summer of 1992.

To preface this, a musical I had never heard of was major topic of conversation at camp, one City of Angels.

Anyway, the camp I was at was a Governor's Institute on Creativity in Northeastern Ohio at Ashland University. Three sections, that I believe were divided into smaller sections (musical theatre, writing, and visual art). I of course was in the Musical theatre section. Our group wrote a musical that was sort of Walter Mitty, wherein Owen sat in a restaurant fantasizing about a woman in the restaurant. Due to some confusion, mainly due to conversation on the above musical, we ended up having Owen in contemporary time, with his fantasies being him a a 30's Private Dick. The girl became a moll, her boyfriend the boss....

Anyway, because of that, I can add a few things to my resume under the heading "Things I enjoyed doing, but haven't done since." Namely, I actually composed a song and the accompaniment, helped write the script, helped choreograph parts of it, and handled most of the props and set design. The latter two were things I really enjoyed above all else, and once the desire to be an actor fizzled, they became one of my dreams. Problem being, much like other dreams, they never really came to fruition, as my life took some very different turns along the way.

And now, I find Ohio State is putting on City of Angels this weekend, and the tickets are in my price range, even if mom is going to end up buying them as my birthday present.

That dream never died, it seems. Finding out that a musical I've wanted to see for a while is being presented someplace where I can see it reawakened that long ago goal that still remains pretty untenable. I mean, yeah, I could probably volunteer with some of the local groups, but I'm really lacking at the construction aspect. Also, I have no artistic talent when it comes to drawing.

On a totally unrelated note, I got to see the stage version of The Lion King last month. The show was fabulous, although it took a while to adjust to the amount of puppetry it involved to portray the animals of the savannah. Also, there's nothing like having a giant rhino walk down the aisle right next to you, or having a hyena hiss at mom as they processed down for "Be Prepared". One of the best jokes came at the start of the second act, when Zazu, who in the movie follows up "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" with "It's a Small World", instead followed it with the chorus of Frozen's "Let It Go". It brought down the house.

I wound up cleaning my friend list on here.

Admittedly, most of these were deleted accounts. And a few were suspicious, given a friends only post I made wound up in the hands of two people I have no desire to talk with ever again. As such, the leak was either here or G+, so both lists have been trimmed a bit.

If I unjustly defriended you, and you want back on, please comment here. Not like LJ is exactly alive any more, but I'm still here lurking sometimes.

So, I haven't updated in a while, mainly due to lack of much of anything to say.

I find my tongue is getting sharper as the weather cools and the business begins the march towards the Holidays.

I find my anger is getting misdirected and leaking out at bad times.

So, yeah, hello Winter.

The other day, I ran across this site, which ended up royally pissing me off.

Let me start by stating I had my Eagle Court of Honor on October 16th, 1992. I also had my first voluntary sexual experiences with a member of my troop, and my troop's Senior Patrol Leader was the one who taught many of us how to masturbate. I was not the only one who had a cock in one of my orifices at an event, nor was I the only one to shove my dick in someone else's orifice at an event. This was not limited to my troop, nor my council.

Most of the adult leaders at one point or another let slip some of the much more flagrent violations of policy in their youth. (Admittedly, most of those were drug/alcohol related, but still...) I still recall the cannabis plants growing in the Staff area at my Council's big summer camp.

They found one pedophile while I was still in Scouts. He was married with children. And he masturbated a kid in a wheelchair.

So why am I ranting about this shit now? National's policy and most of the commentary against changing the policy completely ignore the reality on the ground. And a good majority of the current regulations, for that matter. Because if we pretend that no sex ever happens, then BSA should cut the entire requirements added since I left the program about avoiding sexual predators. Because involuntary sex still involves the dirty dangly parts. BSA would also need to appoint morality monitors to follow around all Scouts and make sure nothing at all related to sex issues forth from a Scout or Adult Leader during any Scouting event. (And give we're discussing 12-18 year old boys, I wish them really good luck with that.)

You can't stop reality from intruding on ideological bullshit that only seems to exist in the warped dreamscape of National Council, which in turn is allegedly being held hostage by certain Evangelical, Mormon, and Catholic interests. What you can do is start figuring out how best to address the reality, and maybe, just maybe work on a better narrative that becomes much more inclusive and can better apply the values I was taught in Boy Scouts. Because half of what I was taught revolved around leadership, and the other half revolved around learning to make decisions for myself based on the best information presented. Plus a bunch of outdoor skills that still get practiced. Maybe not so much Metal Craft, but the point remains.

I hate seeing an organization I loved one upon a time start falling apart because it can't adapt to circumstances that no longer want to remain hidden in a closet with other skeletons just to appease an increasingly brittle ideology that has never been based in reality.

This will hopefully fulfill two goals in two different things with a few tweaks. Anyway, need feedback and suggestions, comments and concerns...

( opening the box )

( Olympian slash fic )

Where the hell did that come from?