Joe Hill: A Worthy Legacy

Well, I’ve talked about television for 2 of the past 3 weeks.  Let’s talk about literature for a bit.

For a while now, all the books I’ve consumed have been audiobooks.  I have a long drive to work, and it helps me keep up with all the reading I want to do.  So pretty much any newer author that I’ve been interested in checking out have been via audiobook.  One such author is Joe Hill.

Hill is actually Joseph Hillstrom King, middle child of the pinnacle of my pentagram of literary idols, Stephen King.  Although he is not the only one of the three to write novels, he is the only one to really carry forward his father’s style and traditions, and he writes large, sprawling, character-driven pieces with supernatural cores that seem to all take place in a shared universe.  While I’ll admit that I initially checked out Hill’s novels simply on the basis of his parentage, I was soon hooked on his talent.  He’s similar enough to his father that, if you’re a fan (as I am), you’ll almost certainly enjoy his writing, but not so similar that you feel like the work is a retread.  I just finished Strange Weather, which means I’ve read most of his work thus far, and I thought I’d share a bit of my perspective on them, both as novels and as audiobooks.

I’ve mostly listened to them in order of publication, which means I started with Heart-Shaped Box, which is where I first realized that here was a talent to rival my 5 literary idols.¹  HSB is about the washed-up ex-singer of a heavy metal band, and it was where I started to appreciate the depth of Hill’s worlds, as so many things that at first seemed casually tossed out just for background all came together at the end, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place at the last minute.  The audiobook is read by Stephen Lang, the gravelly-voiced actor who you may think of as the “bad guy” from Avatar, but I will probably always see him as the wheelchair-bound Waldo from Into the Badlands, or maybe as the terrifying blind man who is the “victim” in Don’t Breathe.  It’s a perfect voice for this whiskey-soaked tale.

Next up was Horns, which was read by Fred Berman (a voice actor mainly known for a bunch of videogames I’ve never played).  It was also later turned into a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, which I also highly recommend.  It lacks some of the depth of the novel, of course, but it’s not a bad adaption, and Radcliffe does a pretty damn good job playing Iggy Perrish, a character who spoke to me even more than those in Heart-Shaped Box.  Even better, Horns has one of those insane plots that sounds like it’s going to be completely ridiculous when you first hear it, but then becomes amazing as you start to delve into it.  I could easily see how Hill got his start in comics, because this is a comic book story if there ever was one, although still with the layers and layers of character development that you expect from a novel of this nature.  Plus it has some interesting things to say about human nature and the nature of secrets.

And then we come to NOS4A2.  See, Heart-Shaped Box was very good, and Horns was super-fun, but this book, beautifully rendered by Kate Mulgrew,² is finally the classic you knew had to be coming.  It’s sprawling, and bounces around in time and folds back in on itself, and deals with childhood and memory and the nature of evil.  The characters are amazing and so real you swear you’ve met them before.  The action is gripping and sucks you in completely—describing it as “edge of your seat” or a “thrillride” would be cliché ... but not entirely inaccurate.  It’s too rich and detailed to make a good movie out of, but perhaps the upcoming AMC series—starring a nearly-unrecognizable Zachary Quinto—will do it justice.

As I mentioned above, I just finished Strange Weather, which I suppose is Hill’s version of Different Seasons.³  As with his father’s work, this one is a set of 4 novellas loosely tied together thematically via weather, especially clouds.⁴  In the audibook version, each is read by a separate narrator, and they really have very little to do with each other, so let’s treat them as 4 separate books.

Snapshot is very good, and quite interesting; it’s read by Wil Wheaton, who I’ve gushed over before in the context of audiobook reader.  This was an excellent choice, and the novella is well worth it.

Loaded, on the other hand, is one of those dreary affairs where you know perfectly well what the author was going for, and why things had to happen as they did, but that doesn’t make you enjoy it any more.  The reader is once again Stephen Lang, and once again it’s an inspired choice, but it doesn’t really save the story in my opinion.  This is also the only one of Hill’s works, at least of the ones I’m familiar with, that has zero supernatural elements at all in it,⁵ so perhaps I’m biased.

Aloft is a bit of a weird one for me: while the characters felt very real to me, and the backstory was detailed and extensive, the plot itself felt a little light ... not much “there” there, if you catch my drift.  This alone of the novellas felt like it really should have been part of a larger work.  The reader is Dennis Boutsikaris, who you probably know from many things: ER, or *batteries not included, or, more recently, a recurring role on Better Call Saul.  He was fine, although I didn’t find him as perfect a choice as nearly all the other readers.

Finally, Rain is the clear winner.  Audiobook-wise, there’s another amazing performance from Kate Mulgrew, the characters are all insane and yet familiar, such as you might expect to find on a show like Twin Peaks or Northern Exposure, and the story is interesting, somehow inevitable and yet surprising at the same time, and the relevance to our current political situation is spot-on.  Highly recommended.

In fact, they’re all recommended, to one degree or another.  I also have The Fireman, the only other novel, already in my audiobook collection and ready to go.⁶  Which only leaves us with Locke & Key, his series of graphic novels,⁷ and 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of short stories, and I think that’s almost his entire output thus far.  But I have to say, I’m mightily impressed with Joe Hill at this point in his career, and I’m sure that’s only going to improve over time.  I’m not quite sure I’m ready to expand my pentagram of literary idols to a hexagram, but, who knows?  Maybe someday I will.  Maybe even someday soon.

__________

1 If you don’t recall, they are: Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, and Neil Gaiman (in order of my discovery of them).
2 Whom you may think of as either Captain Janeway from Voyager or Red from Orange Is the New Black: your choice.
3 Or perhaps Four Past Midnight, although I think stylistically/thematically Different Seasons is a closer analogue.
4 Although it’s closer to clouds of smoke in Loaded.
5 If we take “supernatural” to mean “beyond what we currently accept as reality.”  If you think science fiction is entirely separate from “supernatural,” then there’s a few that fall into that bucket.
6 Another Kate Mulgrew reading.  Apparently Hill really digs her.  Which I totally understand.
7 Also soon to be a series, this one on Netflix.

Final surrender to the CBS machine

When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy.  The networks have conspired to dumb us down.  But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true.  The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.  That’s a far more depressing thought.  Conspiracy is optimistic!  You can shoot the bastards!  We can have a revolution!  But the networks are really in business to give people what they want.  It’s the truth.

        — Steve Jobs, Wired, Feb 1996

We have finally given in and are paying for CBS All Access.  This was a difficult decision for us, and one that we resisted for a long time.  The situation is that the big broadcast networks are still struggling to figure out how they compete in today’s streaming world, and CBS, alone of the original three, has decided to start its own streaming service.  The problem, though, is that, at least currently, with CBS All Access you can either get a reasonable fee or you can get no commercials.  On the one hand, I have a severe problem with paying people to show me commercials.  If I’m paying a monthly fee, I expect it to be commercial-free.  But, on the other hand, I kind of have a problem paying CBS the same monthly fee as I would a premium movie channel: CBS All Access at current monthly prices is just a dollar more than I was paying for Showtime, and more than I’m currently paying for Starz.  That’s crazy talk.

But, it is true that there’s a new Star Trek out, and there’s only one place you can watch it.  It’s just that that in itself is not enough.  Oh, sure: there’s The Good Fight, which I suppose I’ll watch now that I’ve bitten the bullet, but it definitely wasn’t tempting enough on its own.  Being able to watch regular CBS shows without commercials is no draw: I can do that with my DirecTv, a DVR, and a fast-forward button.  Now, I could theoretically replace my DirecTv with a streaming solution, part of which would be CBS All Access, but last time I investigated that, it wouldn’t save me any money at all, and it’s not like I hate DirecTv or anything, so eventually I figured, why bother?

But now the second season of Star Trek: Discovery is starting, getting good reviews, and continuing to star Sonequa Martin-Green, who we loved in The Walking Dead.  So we are masticating the metal projectile, for better or worse.  And, since CBS All Access plus DirecTv is more expensive, it’s likely that soon we’ll be cutting the cable/satellite cord altogether.  Still not sure I agree that we’re better off this way, but at least the first couple of episodes of the new Trek were pretty damned good.

While perusing the vast quantity of shows available, I was again a bit disappointed.  In some cases, all the seasons are available.  For instance, if I wanted to watch the reboot of MacGuyver, I could do so: all 3 seasons are right there.  On the other hand, let’s say I finally wanted to give in and watch The Big Bang Theory.  Nope, out of luck: only the last season is available, and why would I want to jump in at the end?  (Well, assuming it ever will end, which perhaps it won’t.  But you see my point.)  Most of the older shows have a complete back catalog: feel like reliving the bizarre 80s phenomenon that was Beauty and the Beast?  All 3 seasons are right here.  And, as near as I can tell, every episode of every season of every Star Trek series is here—even Star Trek: The Animated Series.  So there’s 7 shows you could binge your Trekkie heart out on.

But, percentage-wise, there just ain’t a lot here worth watching, if you want my honest opinion.  I blasted through the first (and only, so far) season of Instinct, and I might try Salvation.  And/or Scorpion.  But, overall, not a lot going on, especially given the price.

I will endorse Instinct though.  Essentially, it’s a retooling of Castle:  There’s the tough, sexy female cop, played by an actor whose name you don’t recognize of Serbian descent raised in a former British colony still nominally ruled by Queen Elizabeth (yes, the two principal females leads really do have that much in common).  There’s the charming-though-somewhat-egotistical male civilian who gets paired with the cop even though the cop really should have an actual cop partner and not this “consultant” who is constantly getting put in harm’s way and exposing the city (New York, in both cases) to levels of legal liability that would get any actual politician who approved it fired on the spot.  But they go around solving crimes, having met because of a serial killer who patterned their murder spree on one of the male protagonist’s books but somehow even after that’s over they’re still “partners” for some reason, and it’s serious, because it’s a cop show, but it’s also fun, because one of the “partners” doesn’t have to follow the rules and can afford to be somewhat silly.  The female cop, of course, is a compulsive rule-follower.

And, if I stopped right there, you would assume that Instinct is just a rip-off of Castle, and perhaps you would decide it wasn’t worth watching.  But there are two issues with that.  First off, Castle is a good enough show that even a rip-off can be fun.  It’s only light entertainment, sure, but there’s certainly worse things on television.  And the other thing is, instead of Nathan Fillion having a big crush on his female cop partner, Alan Cumming is a happily married man.  A happily married gay man, even, which firmly puts the kibosh on the romantic angle right off the bat.  Which is nice, in a change-of-pace way.  It’s also nice to see Alan Cumming, who is himself a married gay man, get to play a married gay man, which is a role I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him in before.  Also nice to see his character having a very normal, loving relationship with his husband on a show where the fact that he’s a gay man has nothing to do with the actual plot.  Plus, Cumming’s character isn’t a useless mystery writer: he’s a former CIA agent and current professor of abnormal psychology, which makes him way more useful for actually solving the cases.  It’s a bit like Castle was injected with a spot of Criminal Minds.  Now, I’m not saying the show is perfect by any means—when the writers finally do decide that they just can’t stand having a female protagonist who’s not madly in love with someone any more, the romance comes so far out of left field that it will have you yelling “what the actual fuck???” at your television screen—but it’s a fun little time-waster, and, if you like those sorts of not-too-serious cop shows (like Monk, or Psych, or Death in Paradise, or, yes, Castle), you’ll probably enjoy it.

Dreamscape Perturbation I

"Dark Twisted Fantasy"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Sometimes a mix grows out of finding a song or two that just won’t fit anywhere else.  Today’s mix starter is “Heart Paper Lover” by Marissa Nadler.  I can’t remember how I stumbled onto Ms Nadler, but this track—like many of those off her excellent album Little Hells—has an eerie, dreamlike quality that’s hard to pin down.¹  It’s more dreamy than surreal, so doesn’t fit well onto Bleeding Salvador, but it’s also not quite creepy enough for Phantasma Chorale ... but then again, it’s too creepy for Sirenexiv Cola (although many of her tracks could work there).  Not pretty enough for Darkling Embrace; not contemplative enough for Shadowfall Equinox; not goth enough for Penumbral Phosphorescence.²  It comes closest to Smokelit Flashback, and I almost put it there several times ... but still, somehow, it just didn’t fit.  This tune sounds like a dream that you had, which wasn’t really a nightmare per se, but wasn’t particularly pleasant either.  Something that you awoke from with a vague sense of unease, a sense that there were disturbing ripples in the landscape of your dreams ...

Of course, as is often the case, once you find one track that inspires a mix, you soon start stumbling across others.  In the second episode of the comic-based Runaways, one character asks her sister to sing a lullaby that used to help her fall asleep.  The sister, Gert, sings this:

Let’s go to sleep:
There is a dream we can share ...
Just you and me,
In a floating sea in the air ...
What’s left below?
We’ll never know.

You are the moon,
In a quiet night, terrified ...

Now, I don’t know about you, but to me “Gert’s Lullaby” is not in the least comforting.  It’s dark, and vaguely creepy.  It’s beautiful—Siddhartha Khosla’s synthy dreampop is the perfect background for Ariela Barer’s vocals, normally quite punky, but here restrained and almost breathy—but it’s also just a touch ... off.  I was instantly captivated by it, and, once this mix existed, I knew it was a perfect fit here.

Another early choice for this mix was our opener, a remake of Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon,” which is already a song with a bit of a creepy vibe.  In the hands of France’s Nouvelle Vague, with their penchant for redoing new wave music with the æsthetic of New Wave cinema in the style of bossa nova (that’s Portuguese for “new wave,” if you didn’t catch the trend), it becomes something exotic and strange and weirdly disconcerting.  From the initial strains of jungle-like sounds to the smokey vocals that turn the underrated synthpop classic into a loungy, slinky, shadowy tune, it’s the perfect opener for the mix.

Several of the dreamier dreampop bands are excellent for this sort of mix.  Trentemøller, who we’ve seen on Paradoxically Sized World IV and Darkling Embrace I, and Widowspeak, who we first encountered on Smokelit Flashback V, and Iron & Wine, who’s been on both Slithy Toves I and II, as well as Porchwell Firetime.  (Of the three, I think “Sycamore Feeling” is the clear standout.)  For bridges, there are some returning favorites as well: Trespassers William (previously seen on Darkling Embrace) provides the “Intro” to our back stretch, and Morphine (from Slithy Toves II) gives us “Miles Davis’ Funeral,” which, along with the inimitable Devics³—who gives us our “Ending”—brackets “On Your Wings,” Iron & Wine’s contribution.  There are also some newcomers here, such as Zambri, Au Revoir Simone, and Warpaint.  These 3 bands have a lot in common: they all produce stylish dreampop, they all tend to explore the darker corners of that space, and they’re all composed, principally or entirely, of women.  The two Zambri sisters are mainly singers and all 3 members of ARS are vocalists and keyboardists, while Warpaint is a more traditional four-piece.  All three groups have a lot to offer, especially on a mix such as this one, but despite the driving urgency of Zambri’s “All You Maybes” and the lost-and-lonely-ness of Warpaint’s “Teese,” I think Au Revoir Simone’s “We Are Here” is the best of the bunch: it’s a lazy, diaphonous tune with just a touch of inscrutability.  At the other end of that spectrum, dark electronica artist I Am Jen gives us the instrumental “Find Me,” which is just barely not too dense and dark for this mix.

One of the most interesting sets of tracks, though, is the pair that kicks off our middle stretch: “Nothing’s Going to Hurt You Baby,” by Cigarettes After Sex, and “Is It All OK?” by Princess Chelsea.  Both were bands introduced to me by workmates from my current job, and both are goth-inflected electropop.  The CAS track is more of a slow, muddy and echoey ballad, while New Zealander Chelsea and her singing partner Jonathan Bree give us an almost child-like duet which is both dark and shimmering, composed of equal parts hope and cynicism.⁴  Coming off the Mazzy-Star-style, somewhere-between-dreampop-and-shoegaze of Widowspeak, they provide the perfect lead-in to the dark and almost oppressive “Find Me,” and thence on to “New Lands.” This latter track can be found on the moderately obscure New Goth Gypsies, which is an interesting little EP in its own right.  RUMTUM is a one-man electronica artist from Denver; Catamaran is a 3-piece modern surf rock outfit from Dallas.  Both fully fit my criteria for the appelation of “obscure bands.”⁵  The EP contains one track from each band, then those same two tracks, but remixed by the other band.  The track we’re hearing on this mix is RUMTUM’s, as remixed by Catamaran in a “vocal edit.” “New Lands” itself is pretty standard electronica fare, which means I find it a bit boring.  But the spin that Catamaran gives it here—that is, providing vocals, technically, but vocals which are so muted and distorted that there’s no hope of making out any actual words—makes it interesting once again.  And just dark enough to fit perfectly in the wheelhouse of this mix.

Dreamscape Perturbation I
[ Dark Twisted Fantasy ]

“The Killing Moon” by Nouvelle Vague, off Bande à part
“Gert's Lullaby” by Siddhartha Khosla & Ariela Barer [Single]
“Heart Paper Lover” by Marissa Nadler, off Little Hells
“Xavier” by Dead Can Dance, off Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
“Eclipse Them All” by Smoke Fairies, off Smoke Fairies
“Bones” by MS MR, off Secondhand Rapture
“All You Maybes” by Zambri, off House of Baasa
“Sycamore Feeling” by Trentemøller, off Into the Great Wide Yonder
“Sore Eyes” by Widowspeak, off Almanac
“Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby” by Cigarettes After Sex, off Ⅰ. [EP]
“Is It All OK?” by Princess Chelsea, off The Great Cybernetic Depression
“Find Me” by I Am Jen, off Electronic Collection No. 1
“New Lands [Catamaran's vocal edit]” by Rumtum, off New Goth Gypsies [EP]
“Intro” by Trespassers William, off Different Stars
“Toxic” by Yael Naïm, off Yael Naïm
“Teese” by Warpaint, off Warpaint
“We Are Here” by Au Revoir Simone, off Still Night, Still Light
“Miles Davis' Funeral” by Morphine, off Cure for Pain
“On Your Wings” by Iron & Wine, off Our Endless Numbered Days
“Ending” by Devics, off The Stars at Saint Andrea

Total:  20 tracks,  76:29

That just leaves us with a few tracks.  We first heard Smoke Fairies on Porchwell Firetime, and they could also easily be described as “dream folk,” so they work well here too.  As does MS MR, who are sometimes called dreampop (they’re not), sometimes darkwave (even less so), and occasionally even witchhouse (not really, but perhaps the closest).  We heard their ultra-classic “Salty Sweet” on Slithy Toves II; “Bones” is not quite as good as that, but it’s damned close, with a touch of dark, a dash of poppy, and a soupçon of murky, dreamy vocals, plus it provides the perfect volume title for us.  And, if there’s any band that was inevitable for this mix,⁶ surely it’s Dead Can Dance.  Quite a lot of DCD falls into the category of “dreamlike and vaguely menacing,” but I specifically chose “Xavier.” Within the Realm of a Dying Sun is one of DCD’s darkest albums in my opinion, and it’s no surprise that the other tracks off it that we’ve seen have shown up in places such as Phantasma Chorale⁷ and Penumbral Phosphorescence.⁸  “Xavier” is a weird juxtaposition of strings and synths, driven by Brendan Perry’s rich baritone, strangely reminiscent of Sinatra.  But perhaps Sinatra as heard while on ecstasy.

And perhaps the strangest track here is Brittany Spears’ “Toxic.” Of course, Spears doesn’t sing this version—in fact, I disdain that style of music so much I never even knew it was a Brittany track for the first several years I owned it.  This version is by Yael Naïm: born in France to Tunisian parents, raised in Israel, Naïm has a warm, soulful voice and can sing in English, French, and Hebrew; her style is often described as jazzy, her voice as husky.  This tune is utterly unlike anything else I’ve heard from her: it opens with a xylophone or glockenspiel, closes with dueling flutes or some other higher register woodwinds, and somewhere in the middle picks up a buzzing undertone that provides a looming but almost imperceptible sense of threat.  It’s light and dark at the same time; simultaneously child-like and ominous.  It’s a fascinating reinterpretation, and there really was nowhere else it could land besides here.

Next time, we’ll get a little pre-modern and dig up some proper classics.

__________

1 Wikipedia suggest the label “dream folk.”

2 And too slow anyway.

3 Who we’ve heard from many many times: Smokelit Flashback IV and V, Darkling Embrace—twice—Shadowfall Equinox III, and Porchwell Firetime.

4 Okay, probably a bit more cynicism.  The album is called The Great Cybernetic Depression after all.

5 Wikipedia has no idea whatsoever who either of them are; AllMusic has abbreviated discographies for both, but no bios.

6 Well, other than Devics, I suppose.

7 “Windfall.”

8 “In the Wake of Adversity.”

The Haunting of Hill House: A Win for Horror Fans

Nothing much to report this week, so perhaps I’ll give you a television recommendation.  If you haven’t yet watched The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, you really should.  Assuming you like horror, this is one of the best television shows of the last decade, if not more—we’re talking a Game of Thrones level, Breaking Bad level, Walking Dead level show.  In fact, it’s quite possibly the best horror TV show of the 21st century thus far, period.  One has to discount certain contenders, of course: Ash vs Evil Dead and Santa Clarita Diet are magnificent shows, but they’re in the horror-comedy camp (pun inteneded, naturally), and that’s a different ball of wax.  Walking Dead is a triumph, of course, but zombie shows are not so much horror shows as they are post-apocalyptic stories of man vs natural disaster—it just so happens that the disaster in this case wants to eat your brains.  True Blood deserves a mention as well, but realistically it’s more urban fantasy (with just a touch of supernatural Harlequin romance).  So I think the only real competition that Hill House has is American Horror Story, which has some fantastic seasons but also a few clunkers, and Castle Rock, which is a tempting choice: it’s a beautiful story, with more Easter eggs for hardcore Stephen King fans than we probably deserve.  But here’s the reason Hill House wins: it’s terrifying.

American Horror Story has some gruesome moments, and one or two genuine scares (especially in the first season).  Castle Rock is more of a masterwork puzzle with the way it all fits together perfectly while also turning in on itself.  But Hill House has all those things: it started scaring me right in the first episode, and when I got to the end and finally saw how it all fit together, I literally gasped.  I’m now watching it for a second time so I can fully appreciate all the foreshadowing and callbacks.  But it also fully delivers on the scares: one of the middle episodes gave me such a vicious jump scare that I dropped my laptop on the floor.  And, you know: jump scares can be cheap ... you can generate one with a loud noise and a cat popping out from behind a chair.  But this one was well-earned and amazingly effective.  And that was only halfway through: there was still plenty more to come.

The show runner is Mike Flanagan, who has produced a slew of well-regarded if not so well-known movies.  THe first one I was aware of was Oculus, which is a clever (and quite scarey) film, even if it doesn’t rise much above genre fare.  Then there’s Hush, which is nothing short of brilliant.  Ouija: Origin of Evil is that rarest of beasts: a Hollywood sequel that’s actually much better than its cheesy original.  And then there’s Gerald’s Game, which is a Stephen King novel that I had pretty much considered unfilmable, as it contains almost no action whatsoever and has only a single character in a single location for about 90% of its length.  But Flanagan found a way to make it work nonetheless, although Game is one of the few King books that really doesn’t qualify as horror at all.  But, still: when I heard Flanagan was going to helm a remake of The Haunting of Hill House, I was pretty excited.

This version departs pretty firmly from Shirley Jackson’s novel, as well as from both theatrical versions: 1963 and 1999.  Both of those tried to stay a bit more faithful to the source material, but both were ultimately failures, in my opinion.  Flanagan, on the other hand, departs rather sharply and ultimately succeeds, and no less than Stephen King agrees with me:

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, revised and remodeled by Mike Flanagan. I don’t usually care for this kind of revisionism, but this is great. Close to a work of genius, really.

Obviously I’m a bit biased when it comes to King—he’s the top point in my pentagram of literary idols—but I hope I don’t have to convince you that the man knows what he’s talking about when it comes to horror.

I could go on, but hopefully I’ve given you enough info to tell whether or not this is a show you’d be interested in checking out.  If you like horror as much as I do, I think you’ll find it pretty compelling.  I know I did.

Saladosity, Part 14: Sweet Tuscany

[This is the fourteenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


(If you need a refresher about my salad-making lingo, go back and review our first salad.)

Typically, when I want a salad, I want a salad ... you know what I mean?  I’m not dabbling here.  A really good salad is fully worthy of being your entire meal, not just a wimpy side dish.  Still, sometimes you really do need a salad as an accoutrement, or possibly a light snack.  But first, we have to talk about:

Trail Mix

Trail mix is an absolute blessing for people who are trying to snack healthy.  Of course, the vast majority of trail mix that you see in the store has crap like M&Ms in it, which I think defeats the whole purpose.^*  If you get the right blend of dried fruit in with your nuts (and seeds, if you’re into that sort of thing), it’s plenty sweet enough without resorting to crappy chocolate (or even good chocolate).  Now perhaps one day I’ll give you my recipe for what I consider the best trail mix of all time, but for now let me just introduce you to my

Stupid Simple Trail Mix

• 1 part pistachios
• 1 part cashews
• 1 part raisins

Seriously, you can’t get simpler than that.  How big is “1 part”?  Well, however big you want it to be.  I often just make this a quarter cup at a time (so I end up with 3/4 of a cup), but a half cup would work, or a whole cup, even, if you plan to eat it all day long.  Just don’t make so much of it that the nuts have time to go bad.  Also, remember that sunlight is the enemy of nuts, so keep your trail mix in a cool, dark place.  As long as you take that precaution, it’ll last almost forever (unless you ignore my advice and make metric shit-ton of it or something).

Oh, and hey, look: one day is today.  Since this is a fairly short entry in our series, I’m going to throw in my personal favorite trail mix recipe.  It has absolutely nothing to do with salads, but it makes a decently yummy snack that you might eat in between salads.

World’s Awesomest Trail Mix

• 1 cup pistachios
• 1 cup almonds
• 1 cup pecans
• ½ cup cashews
• ½ cup walnuts
• ½ cup nuts of your choice
• 1 cup berry medley
• ½ cup golden berry blend
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp cinnamon

Now, I know that’s a lot of kinds of nuts.  Trust me, though: it’ll all work out.  That last half cup is dealer’s choice:  Add more almonds if you’re really into almonds.  Throw in something wacky, like hazelnuts or brazil nuts.  I personally like to add a mixture of more almonds and pistachios, and sometimes more pecans as well.  I mix it up.  But the point is, you need a few more nuts to balance out the amount of dried fruit.  Believe it or not, it really is 3 parts nuts to 1 part fruits to achieve the perfect balance.  I suppose your taste may vary—I’ll allow it.  But try it my way first.

For dried fruits, I like the two medleys I listed (both from Trader Joe’s, of course).  The dried berry medley is cherries, blueberries, and strawberries, while the golden berry blend is golden raisins, cherries, cranberries, and blueberries.  However, they both have added sugars, so beware of that if you’re trying to stick to Whole30 rules.  As long as you’re willing to look past that, though, they’re quite excellent, especially with the 2:1 proportion I’m recommending here.  The only real downside is that dried strawberries are HUGE.  It would be nicer if someone were to cut them in half or something.  But I’m too lazy, personally.

The cinnamon is the thing that ties it all together.  It may sound weird at first, but it really does make the whole thing super yummy.  Just dump the nuts and fruits in a big, gallon-size ziploc bag.  Then sprinkle the cinnamon on top and close the bag (don’t squeeze the air out like you normally would—that will come later).  Now just shake the bag like crazy: upside-down, round and round, maybe throw it up in the air a couple of times.  Have fun with it.  Now open the bag again and try your sweet, sweet concoction.  Lick your lips a little.  Now close the bag and store it in a cool, dry place (this time you can squeeze all the extra air out).

Enjoy.

Sweet Tuscan Salad

Now for the main event.  This is our second simplest salad because it uses the second (and final) of our pre-made dressings: Tuscan dressing from Trader Joe’s.  It is literally the only dressing you can get at Trader Joe’s that is really really Whole30 safe.^**  Now, if you don’t know what Tuscan dressing is, it’s kind of like a dressing version of Worcestershire sauce.  Or A1 steak sauce.  Like halfway between Worcestershire sauce and A1 steak sauce, but a bit thinner so it makes a good salad dressing.  So it has a weirdly savory quality to it, which at first you’re going to think will not work with salad.  But bear with me.

• base veggies
• feta cheese crumbles
• simple trail mix
• Tuscan dressing (light)

The key to this salad is the raisins, which provide the perfect couterpoint for the tanginess and umami of the Tuscan dressing, and also using less of the dressing than you thought you needed.  Keep it light people: you want your veggies just barely stained brown here.  Tuscan dressing is one of those things that’s easy to overdo.  But, if you get it just right, it’s totally worth it, because the thing that’s awesome about savory (as opposed to salty and sour and all the rest) is that it makes your mouth water.  So we’re talking about a mouth-watering salad here.  Plus the Tuscan is also a bit salty, the feta is a bit sour, the raisins give you the sweet, and the nuts give you a great crunch.  If you really miss having any bitter to go along with all the other tastes, I guess you could grind some black pepper on it, but I don’t really think it needs it.  A small bowl of this really quenches any mid-afternoon hunger pangs I may be experiencing, so I have a tendency to have this for tea (as the Brits would say).


Next time, let’s get a little more complex and actually make a dressing for a change.

__________

* Although, if you do insist on sugary things in your tail mix, I recommend Trader Joe’s power berries and possibly some yogurt-covered raisins.
** Recall that our other dressing, the creamy feta cheese dressing, has dairy, which is a no-no for Whole30.  Also recall that my take on Whole30 means I don’t care.

Happy(?) New Year

Well, it hasn’t been a great year.  There have been a few bright spots of course: my Smaller Animal has continued to recover excellently from his surgery, and we had a fantastic National Heroscape Day this year, and my work changed its name and we got lots of cool new swag out of the rebranding.  But there have been shootings and fires, and lots of sickness, plus the foot disaster, and Pathfinder 2nd edition wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped it’d be, and I had to buy a new laptop 3 months ago and I’ve been configuring it ever since, and my accountant/financial advisor is quitting the game (partially due to the aforementioned fires) and I have to find someone new after it took me like 2 years to find her, and John Perry Barlow died and William Goldman died and Stephen Hawking died and Penny Marshall died and Harlan Ellison died and Ursula K. Le Guin died and Aretha Franklin died and Dolores O’Riordan died and even the immortal Stan Lee died, and I’m pretty sure that’s not even supposed to be possible.  And don’t even get me started on our rapidly deteriorating political situation.  So I’m not thrilled with you, 2018.  You could have done me better.

But I did remark on the occasion of Thanksgiving this year that life was still good, and I suppose that, like the inimitable Joe Walsh (who, somewhat amazingly, has not died) that I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do.  As a subscriber to the philosophies of Cynical Romanticism and balance and paradox, I continue to remain hopeful in the face of being shat upon, and I will continue to grumble in the face of unbelievable karmic blessings.  It’s who I am, and what I do.

For you, dear reader, I wish nothing but the most glorious and joyous experience of a 2019.  If your 2018 was horrible, this one will be better, I’m sure of it.  And, if your 2018 was pretty damned good despite all the contrary evidence, then I have no doubt that you will continue to make hay while the sun shines, and make lemonade from the inevitable rain of sour yellow citrus.  2019 will be an interesting year: it may be filled with political turmoil, and no doubt a bunch more of our role models will die, and I’m sure there will be adversity to test us.  But it will not be boring.

Cheers.

A Nauseous Super Naus

Well, this should technically be a full post, but there are two factors which mean that it will be at least slightly abbreviated.  One is that Christmas is falling just two days after this post.  Christmas is our big holiday this time of year, and often I wish you a happy-merry this and that, but you’ll just have to revist an older post for that sentiment this year.  (Check out my series listing of the informals and look for the “Happy Holidays” section.)

Because the second factor is what I alluded to last week: our family has been laid low by what we suspect is a norovirus: that is, a stomach flu that basically makes you barf your guts out for 24 – 48 hours or so, then magically just goes away.  In terms of evolutionary function, I’m still trying to work out what possible use this is to the actual virus.  I mean, obviously viruses can’t think and don’t have ulterior motives, but living things evolve a certain way for a reason, even if it’s a dumb reason.  In this case, though, I got nothing.

Our eldest child kicked us off, and the long lead time before anyone else started vomiting is a dead giveaway that they were patient zero.  They’re doing an intern program for an education class, you see, which involves sitting in for primary school classes for a certain number of hours a day.  And primary schools are just breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses: when single-celled pathogens get together, at pathogen conferences, or informal pathogen meetings, or even just hanging around in pathogen bars, they swap stories of their favorite primary school classrooms.  So patient zero here contracts a norovirus from some snotty-nosed kid, brings it home, and starts barfing.  It was only one really good day of digestive system evacuation, then it was over ... or so we thought.  It was almost a week later before the littlest one started barfing; the middle child kicked in about 2 or 3 days after that.  Then another week, and it was my turn.

My experience was, basically, you spend all day thinking you’re gonna barf, but you don’t.  After a while, you start to wonder if you’d feel better if you just went ahead and did it and got it over with—after all, that’s how it usually goes when you’re sick, right?  You feel nauseous, until eventually you vomit, then you feel better ... right?  Oh, no: not this time.  Because eventually you do barf, but you still feel nauseous.  Then you spend a few more hours thinking you’re going to barf again, but you don’t, until you do, then it starts over.  This continues until eventually, the hours of feeling like you’re about to hurl just continue indefinitely without any actual hurling, and you wake up two days later and you’re mostly okay.

And also I have to say: this was some of the most violent, stomach-churning barfing I think I’ve ever experienced.  I literally felt like my stomach was being wrung out like a dishrag in order to eject all its contents.  I luckily only experienced this twice; our baby girl had at least 15 episodes like this, until she was just bringing up water.  We tried denying her the water so she wouldn’t have anything at all to vomit, but that just led to dry heaves, which, if you’ve ever experienced that, is even worse.  So we went back to letting her drink water.

Water is pretty much the only thing I could consume, by the way.  I got a good lunch in before it started, then didn’t eat again for over 24 hours, and even then, it was a single packet of applesauce.  Later that evening I graduated to KFC mashed potatoes (light on the gravy), but, even then, I felt like I was pushing it.

But today I’m mostly better, and all my other humans are mostly better.  But it’s been a harrowing couple of weeks: even one of the dogs and one of the cats got into the act with us—entirely coincidental, I’m sure, since I don’t believe noroviruses are cross-species compatible, but it just felt like the miscrosopic world was out to get us.  Now that that episode is behind us (hopefully: The Mother never actually succumbed to the virus, although she got close a couple of times, so it’s still technically possible we could have one more go down), we can move on to Christmas.

Christmas and barfing don’t seem to have much in common, but allow me to tell you one more little story before I let you go.

Last night the family and I went out to L.A. Zoo Lights.  I was still breathing very carefully and moving pretty slowly, but I figured most of the serious barfing was over, and, besides: we’d already paid for it.  And plus the smallies were looking forward to it.  So I sucked it up and we went.  And it was okay: super-crowded, of course, and, in the end, probably not an experience we’ll repeat any time soon, but nice to say we’ve done it once.  On the way back home, needing some distraction from my stomach in order to deal with the LA freeways, The Mother put on the audiobook version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas—specifically, the 1966 animated special version, so the “audiobook” is essentially just the entirety of the audio from the show.  This is excellent, of course, because you don’t actually need the visuals to appreciate Boris Karloff’s amazing rendition of the book, and you also get the songs (which were specifically added for the special).  “Welcome Christmas” (you know, “fah who foraze, dah who doraze”) is nice, and “Trim Up the Tree” is mostly forgettable, but what we’re really here for, of course, is “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” as sung by the amazing (and amazingly named) Thurl Ravenscroft.  As I was concentrating very hard on this audiobook while driving us home, I can tell you quite definitely that there were a surprising number of allusions to my condition in this song, starting of course with the “seasick crocodile” reference, which I thought was a pretty apt description of how I was feeling.  But the final verse really brings it home:

You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch,
With a nauseous super naus!
You’re a crooked dirty jockey and you drive a crooked hoss, Mr. Grinch—
You’re a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauce!

A nauseous super naus pretty much perfectly describes my last two days.  Now here’s to hoping that my heart will grow three sizes and I can get back into the proper spirit of Christmas.  Because, you know, Christmas is in our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp.

So this is what "vomitorium" means ...

Our word for the week this week is norovirus.  I’m exhausted.

Next week, something more substantial.