Know-vember: Peg Aloi

My movie buddy! Peg and I have seen a lot of movies together, good and bad -- and have often argued about which was which (hee)! Peg is also a writer and academic as well as an amazing cook and baker (mmmm, deliciousness). I haven't gone to the movies yet in Galway, surprisingly. The good theatre is a bus ride away (I may eventually rent a bike), but I think part of it is not having someone to go to movies with in the middle of the afternoon (AKA the best time). Miss you, Peg! Hope you can make it over here :-)

1. What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?

Nudge the dog to get off the bed.

2. What's a song you might be persuaded to dance to?

Was enjoying "Get Down Tonight" by KC and Sunshine Band at the dentist's office today...but I like to dance and to all kinds of music, generally.

3. Where in the world do you live?

Albany, New York.

4. What's a great night out for you?

Great food and drinks with friends, a film premiere, a super hot play ticket in London or New York, a walk along a sparkling city street, sitting in chairs beneath a starry sky in the country, a bonfire, I am easy.

5. What's a great night in?

Steak and a TV marathon of The Tudors...or having friends over for food and drinks.

6. If you were offered an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Good question...probably Paris.

7. What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt, or Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon.

8. What movie makes you cry?

The ones where sad things happen. [Ed: hahahahahaha]

9. What makes you laugh?

The Colbert Report, at the moment.

10. Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

I should hope so.

Know-vember: Debi

The lovely Debi, gardener supreme, patient woman, Albacon wrangler -- romance fan! Here she is brunching with me at Café Madison. I miss meals together! Come to Ireland, all right?

What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?

When I wake up first thing, I might pick up the book at my bedside to read. or if something more interesting is in my bed I might enjoy that too, or I might stroll into the shower and pretend I'm in a outdoor shower in the tropics.

Where in the world do you live?

I live in a very nice house, big enough to be a castle.

What's a great night out for you?

A great night out would be dinner, company of good friends mixed company.

What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

Stephanie Laurens, Devil's Bride.

What makes you cry?

Sadness, hunger, poverty, injustice, it also makes me angry.

What makes you laugh?

A good funny story.

Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

I do believe there are faieries in the garden, also elves and pixies and if you aren't careful you might catch a 4 legged creature, or it might catch you. and don't forget the so called 2 legged. Next time you're in the garden, look very carefully, behind the tree the shadows that linger, under the burning bushes there are extra little mushrooms growing. by the rosebush there are extra little foot marks.

Thanks, Debi! Miss you.

I Have the Most Amazing Friends

Well, you knew that, right? But they continually amaze me anew; I was flabbergasted today with this incredible treat. Thank you, Niamh! I am still speechless. Can you believe it? This cake shows the fae folk of Ireland welcoming me to a little cottage in Galway by the bay. And the pièce de résistance? Chocolate stout cake.

The pictures don't do it justice. The incredible artistry of the waves of the sea, the trees, and the little chocolate woodpile! All the little fairy folk and the roaring fire: absolutely gorgeous. Everyone said it was almost too beautiful to eat -- but we managed to find a way to do it. As Maryann said (or was it Allan?) it's kind of like a Buddhist sand mandala -- painstakingly created but not meant to last. Except chocolate, mmmm.

The perfect capper to a wonderful day; Mary's home is such a sanctuary, although even out in the hills it was in the 90s. I headed out to the cave as usual and there was a good blast of cold air coming out from its depths. It was a relaxing day with people drifting in and out, conversations and quiet. Wonderful to spend a glorious day with some of my favourite people :-) I felt much better than yesterday, when watching the horror unfold in Norway made me want to runaway with Yeats' Stolen Child.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

The Oxford Odyssey, Part 1

Arrived in Memphis Friday, spoiled by getting free wifi on both legs of my journey. Despite a nervous few minutes at Albany, I did get on the overbooked flight and got to Memphis ahead of a rather nasty storm, which we could see from the plane. Miss Wendy picked me up and we headed to Oxford.

[Here's where I notice that if you upload pictures via HTML they default to a different size than if you do them through the other editor. Whatever -- I'm on holiday and have the unfortunate luck to be sick today, so I will get around to adjusting them later (or not).]

Here's the welcome center: it's still disconcerting for me to see stars and bars on state flags. But people are attached to their histories.

And their hometown heroes: here's the statue of Faulkner in the Square, home of Square Books, Off the Square Books, and Square Books Jr (a great bunch of indy bookstores).

Miss Wendy shares the local gossip with Bill.

I love this plaque: the power of imagination. People of Oxford happy to call themselves dwellers in Yoknapatawpha, Faulkner's fictional region.

They also like to give a nod to their equally famous sister city with this traditional British phone box.

Wendy's bank is the same one where Faulkner worked as a clerk.

The old courthouse forms the center of the square. It was a blisteringly bright but cold day Sunday.

We decided to see what "Faulkner Alley" was: turns out, it's just, um, an alley. But there was this one bit of graffiti that amused me.

After idling some time in the bookstore, we decided to head over to see Faulkner's grave and pay our respects.

It's a respectably swank site, with relatives along side the writer.

There were -- in addition to the more usual offerings -- two red aprons. If anyone knows there to be a significance to this, I'd be grateful. Otherwise I assume some clerks, fresh from work, decided to share a drink with the native son and then quit their jobs in a fit of inspiration, declaring they would dedicate their lives to the arts instead.

Faulkner's thirst was legendary, so fans continue to slake it to this day. May he never thirst, wherever he may be.

Quite a lovely old cemetery, still very much in use. We found it necessary to double back at one point to avoid interrupting grieving folks. Since Faulkner casts a long shadow over American literature, this shot seemed appropriate. It gives a little context, too. There was a wind chime in a tree nearby which gave a little live music to the location.

The U Miss campus is quite pretty: I love the nineteenth century observatories. This statue of James Meredith provides a beautiful reminder of how recent civil rights changes have been and offers a place for people to sit and talk and find inspiration.

Speaking of inspiration, I highly recommend the fabulous repast at Big Bad Breakfast -- another Oxford landmark. You just can't get biscuits this good in the north. And oh, the sausage! Mmmm.

Visiting the Vanderbilts

We headed over to the Vanderbilt place to check out how the other half lives (of course, at this point, it's not so much the "other half" as the super-rich 1%), but first we stopped to fortify ourselves at the diner.

I had a terrific burger cooked just the way I liked and everything was really fresh. My only disappointments: they have those coated fries with extra starch (bleh!) and they do not have real mayonnaise. But we did some more antiquing and saw a wonderful sight: an older woman in a leopard skin coat walking a cat in the rain. Wonderful!

Next we headed over to the Vanderbilt House. It's not quite as magnificent as the Biltmore, of course -- they only came here for a month each in the spring and fall -- but it is quite nice. The way they give you the tour is to take you through the experience of arriving there to spend the weekend as their fellow millionaire friends so you can see how the day was spent, but then you get to leave through the servants' area, so it brings you back down to earth. It was a bit rainy off and on, but a lovely day nonetheless.

Driving home last night there was a whole lotta fog: the effects of rather too warm weather for this time of year and a lot of rain. A bit nerve-wracking for driving, but it always looks so cool. Spooky in time for Halloween, eh?

With my Brothers

Buck, the most good-natured dog in the world, supervises the process, while Robert makes the dough, Steve explains why rutabagas are always a bad idea and then the final product appears: mmmm, fresh pasties straight from the oven -- yum!

It Must Be True

Good Reads and Bad Food

I finally joined up with Goodreads. In addition to Library Thing, it's one more place to help spread the word about my books and connect to readers and other writers. Do let me know if you have an account on either site.

Last Monday I had lunch with Robert at the West Taghkanic Diner. He had passed it many times while it was closed, so he had never been there, but was curious to try.



It was not the most propitious day, perhaps, to visit: they were really scrambling to keep up with the holiday crowd. There seemed to be only the one server and she was running back and forth constantly. So it was a long while before one of the busboys -- clearly unaccustomed to serving -- finally brought our drinks (ice tea and coffee).



"The home of home cooking": I had a spicy mesquite chicken club which lacked anything resembling spicyness (or moisture for that matter). Robert had fish and chips that at first glance looked like eels, but were some kind of fish and seemed all right. The beer battered onion rings were good, though a dipping sauce would have been nice.



They had the usual sort of advertisements for fascinating local businesses. And we saw Colin Farrell. Well, I think it was Colin Farrell. He appeared to have gained a lot of weight for a Scorsese movie, I think. Or perhaps it was not he...

BitchBuzz: Movies without Women

My latest column for BitchBuzz is on a pet peeve I have: Movies without Women (or the dreaded Movie with One Woman). It's an irritating popular trend in the last few decades that seems to have arisen from the focus-group approach to movie making (AKA micromanaging per the unconsidered comments of a bunch of random people).

My pal Mildred shared a HitFix review of the latest Travolta/Williams fiasco Old Dogs because it made her burst out laughing.

Admittedly, it is hilarious when Drew McWeeny writes:

If you truly hate your family and you're all trapped together this weekend, and you reeeeeally want to punish them and show them just how little you value their joy, then by all means, pile into the car and rush out to find a theater playing "Old Dogs."

But I have oodles of sympathy for his wail of pain; it's a howl I have made often, though frequently only at the inadvertent viewing of a movie trailer, because I would never go to a film like Old Dogs anyway because it epitomizes one of the primary problems of current Hollywood fare: movies without women...

As usual, read the rest at BB HQ, feel free to pass it along and share with your friends.

I've been enjoying myself to much this week, including the usual Thanksgiving food coma (thanks, Robert) so now I am back with too much work facing me (also as usual, I guess).

BitchBuzz: National Cupcake Week

My editor, whose Twitter handle is CupCate, of course made much of the fact that it's National Cup Cake Week (at least in the UK) and asked us all to do what we could in that theme. Of course, I got a bit silly as I'm not much of a chef (okay, it's true I can actually bake, but I am incredibly lazy, too). So I wrote my "recipe" for Brandy Alexander cup cakes:

For a complicated recipe like this, it is always best to start with the essentials. Of course for these cupcakes, brandy is absolutely required – and not just any brandy, either.

I would recommend the Paulet Lallique or Pierre Ferrand Memoire Vintage Edition, (although the Pierre Ferrand Grande Champagne 1972 Vintage will do in a pinch). While tastes vary greatly, of course, it is advisable to secure the very best brandy in order to achieve the fine results this recipe ought to have.

Taste tests are the best way to determine this. Line up several snifters of various brands, so that the light catches the light of the globes. Candlelight is best, so light a candle and position it so that the light both warms the glass and illuminates the colour of the liqueur.

Here is where Alexander comes in handy. Your Alexander, like your brandy, will probably vary according to individual tastes, but for this recipe it is best if he is reasonably strong and particularly good at tasks like lighting small candles and pouring brandy...

Read the rest @BitchBuzz. Be sure to share the link!

Good Stuff

Thanks to Lisa and Lori, I had my first visit to Capital Q Smokehouse, home of great BBQ in the capital region after the usual Tuesday at Mahar's (the best bar in the world). Wow -- some very tasty brisket, cornbread, coleslaw and home fries. Good sauce, too. Huge portions, of course, so there's a lot left over for tonight, too. Lori is returning to North Carolina the end of the week, so she will be missed -- although we will probably have months of continuing to chuckle over Lisa's "rack" remark...

And ages ago I meant to put up this picture of the lovely finger puppet The joey Zone sent me of the fabulous Oliver Reed from the Hammer film The Curse of the Werewolf. Gorgeous, ain't it?

Second day of teaching: the bookstore did not get my texts in for the sophmore medieval course and now I find there's a new edition of the Broadview anthology due to come out the middle of this month. Argh! Meanwhile deadlines continue to nag at me -- just grateful Monday is a holiday. I know the semester's just started, but I need it!

At the Fair

My pal Jenise talked me into going to the fair last night; that's one of her pictures of the fine fowl on display there. At least by the evening the heat had abated somewhat and once the sun went down, things were actually comfortable. We ran into people we knew very quickly (yes, even me!). Jenise and Mary tried very hard to resist the Bengal kitties, which did look like miniature leopards. We ate unhealthy food (no fried dough for me), looked at a wide variety of livestock -- one of the horses had a sign, "Friend me on Facebook" so the fair ain't what it used to be. Nonetheless, I felt like an extra in Oklahoma! walking around the barns and the midway.

This morning it was so humid, mist rose right off the surface of the lake and wrapped the trees in diaphanous white gauze. I kept an eye peeled for Avalon, but nothing appeared through mist but ducks. Another hot day today: thinking of gazpacho, thanks to José mentioning it on Facebook.

At the Diner

Birdie looks startled...

Susan looks annoyed...

...and Mildred enjoys her salad.

Here we are at George's Diner; today we're off to the zoo in Asheboro. Wheee!

UK Week 2: Mad Men and English Dogs (part three)

Back from Pennsylvania, where Miss Wendy and I sat in the dark and watched the fireflies when the power went out at Lafayette College, where she's teaching a summer class on comics. Saturday we headed down to Philadelphia and met up with my pal Todd for sushi, drinks and a not so good movie (that most critics seem inexplicably to love). It gave us plenty to grumble over, which always makes for pleasant conversation, so we had a great time.

All right -- back to London (if only!): Thanks to my pal Hamilton, I got to tag along to the Mojo show at the Forum featuring John Cooper Clarke, The Fall and The Buzzcocks with him, his band and his brother.

The only problem was the transit strike; everyone was being warned against taking the tube, so we took buses with the result that by the time we got to Kentish Town, my ears were already ringing from having two mad Hamiltons bellowing in my ears and we just missed John Cooper Clarke (a fact I have only mentioned about a thousand times since). Waah! So I include a video above for your delectation, although it may prove highly offensive to some, the language is unsafe for work, but it's an appropriate tune for the situation.

The Fall, however, were brilliant! I had only known a handful of their songs, but after seeing them I've decided I need to know them all. I even bought Mark E. Smith's book Renegade when I ran across it in a book store a day or two later and devoured it while on various trains and buses in the succeeding days. They have a unique sound which verges on spoken word with Smith's inimitable delivery. Watching Smith perform is highly entertaining as he wanders around the stage, adjusting the amps and bashing the cymbals. The crowd was wildly enthusiastic and appreciative. Wonderful!

The Buzzcocks came on with the amps turned up even louder, sounding just like they do -- although as Hamilton pointed out, Pete Shelley seems to have turned into Mickey Rooney. But they sounded good -- and LOUD. Lots of greying heads bouncing up and down to the music with big happy grins. It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I got to attend (even if I missed John Cooper Clarke...).

Next up, more Shakespeare, more idling, and a film!

Girls' Night Out

Friday night I went out with pals Jenise and Angela. Our first stop was the oh so sophisticated Wine Bar on Lark, but then Angela thought we should go play pool at the Hollywood down the street. Much larking on Lark -- for a long time we had the room upstairs to ourselves. The youthful patrons were afraid to face us at the pool table and waited until we went out to the patio.

Angela poses...

Frank glows...

...Jenise drinks!