The Corona Diaries Vol 40: Autumnal Fun and Games

(November 2021)

With the change of seasons there's colorful leaves, cooler temperatures, and Piper hanging out underneath the bathroom sink.

It's all warm and cozy down there as a heat duct runs underneath it.

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Let's start with food because who doesn't like food? Wisconsin leads the nation in cranberry production. I believe we grow more than half of the national cranberry crop and wouldn't be surprised if there was a national strategic cranberry reserve somewhere up north. I bought a bag of the fresh stuff and made pork chops.

Beer, stock, onions, cranberries – it was tasty! Oh, and some rosemary too.

Regarding those changing leaves, there are two maples a block over that turn a brilliant red every year. They're really nice to see on my walk home from the bus stop in the evening.

I spent Halloween down in Chicago visiting my mother. We went out to eat at Psistaria Greek Taverna before trekking across the street to New York Bagel & Bialy. There was a line out the door of the bagel joint when we got to the restaurant and when we left it. They do a brisk business. After that we made a quick stop at a liquor store so I could get some Chicago beer that's not available in Madison.

The scariest thing of the whole trip was the traffic on Touhy Avenue where it seemed like half the city was trying to get to the Edens in record time and wanted to let everyone know they were in a hurry by frequently honking their horn.

Speaking of scary things, I got in a scary read this Halloween season – Spiral by Japanese horror author Koji Suzuki.

It's the second book in the Ring series. The first book, Ring/Ringu, was made into a Japanese film of the same name and remade here in the States as The Ring by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s I watched a lot of Japanese horror films, which were in vogue at that time. They were all total creepfests punctuated by moments of sheer terror and Ringu was the first of them that I watched so it has a special place in my horror-filled heart.

Spiral was good. It picks up the day after the events of the first novel. Knowing the events of Ring, this one lacked the novelty of its predecessor but it was still spooky and there were a couple spots in the story where I was genuinely frightened but couldn't stop reading because I just had to know that the protagonist survived.

All in all, a good fright.

If you dare dip your toes into contemporary Japanese horror, Ringu is a good place to start. I recall watching Dark Water and Juon and being scared s*itless by both. One of them has an elevator scene that scared my Frau and I so much that we simultaneously reached for each other to cling for our dear lives.

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Last month a couple friends and I took a trip to Milwaukee to see The Hu, a hard rock band from Mongolia that we'd been wanting to see for some time now. They're not just a hard rock band who happens to hail from Mongolia; they are a Mongolian hard rock band that incorporates some traditional instrumentation from their homeland.

You get your bass, electric guitar, and drums but also the morin khuur, a 2-string bowed instrument, a tovshuur which is a 3-string Mongolian lute thingy, and some kind of woodwind that looked and sounded like an oversized recorder. Plus they sometimes throw in some Tuvan throat singing which, to best of the knowledge of this non-singer type, involves singing more than one note at a time.

While they played a lot of hard rock, there were also a few songs that were gentler and more folky where the electric guitar added color instead of big chords. They sang in their native tongue but it didn't make a difference. Their performance was full of energy, great melodies, and big, thumping beats so we didn't really need to know what was being sung.

Our next goal is to see the German-Nordic experimental folk band Heilung in concert. They like their primitive beats, to dress in (faux?) animal skins, and to don antlers. They draw inspiration from runes and the paganism of their ancestors that royally kicked some Roman butt in 9 C.E. at Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Hopefully they'll make their way to the Midwest sometime soon.

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Last month I attended Gamehole Con, a tabletop gaming convention held annually here in Madison. It's always a great time. Friends from Chicagoland come up for the occasion to join my Cheesehead comrades and me in 4 days of gaming gluttony.

Most of the time we played boardgames. A group from Milwaukee brings their games library over – we're talking hundreds and hundreds of games – and you can check them out for free and play them to your heart's content. We generally play a mix of games new and familiar.

I played Raiders of the North Seas for the first time.

As you can imagine, it involves taking the role of Vikings and attacking various harbors, monasteries, etc. But instead of slaughtering monks like at poor Lindisfarne, you roll a couple dice and take pieces off of the board.

We also played a game called Red Cathedral which involves – quelle surprise! – building onion domed churches.

I found that the pictures in that circle looked very familiar. While it took me a while, I eventually figured out why. They were done in a style that was just like that of the illustrations in a book of Russian fairy tales that were drawn by Ivan somebody or other.

Take a look at the game board:

Now here's a picture of Vasilisa whom I presume had a run-in with Baba Yaga seeing as her hut is in the background. I am unsure, though, as I woefully ignorant of Russian folklore.

Another highlight of the weekend was the last game of the convention that we played on Sunday before the remaining Chicago folks headed home – 1775: Rebellion.

It's pretty neat as it involves cooperative play as well as competitive.

A friend and I were the Continental Army and Patriot Militia, respectively. We were teamed up against  a couple of our pals who took on the roles of the British Regulars and the Loyalist Militia. The French and the Hessians made guest appearances as did the Native Americans.

The situation was looking very dire for us rebels as the game entered the last round of play. Miraculously, though, we fought the British scum to a draw.

When I wasn't involved with a boardgame, I was playing or running a role-playing game. Friends from Chicago run Call of Cthulhu games – horror role-playing based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft as the Cthulhu Masters Tournament. The game they ran this year took place at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. As rock music played in the distance, we were tracing ley lines, being kidnapped by cultists, and had our sanity strained to the breaking point by unearthly beings hell bent on unleashing havoc upon our world.

In other words, your usual Call of Cthulhu stuff.

I ran a Trail of Cthulhu game. Trail is very similar to Call but with some different game mechanics. My scenario took place in northern Wisconsin in the fictional town of Four Pines in April 1934. The players/investigators head north from Chicago and enter a town that sends one of its own out into the woods when the Northern Lights appear to appease a mysterious creature. They discover that the creature is the Wendigo of Native American lore which haunts the forests of the north and eats people. Only it's not really the Wendigo, but the Great Old One Ithaqua!

I made sure that the town tavern had some folks playing Hardanger fiddle (a Norwegian violin with 8 strings) tunes as well as some lumberjack songs on accordion for that authentic feel. I took the songs from Folksongs of Another America:Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946 compiled by UW-Madison folklorist Jim Leary. As the players hung out at the tavern, I had the locals telling lumberjack as well as Ole and Lena (i.e. – Norwegian) jokes. E.g. –

Ole went to the doctor for a physical. After Ole was dressed the doctor came in and said "I am sorry Ole, but you are very sick and have only a few weeks to live".

Ole went home with a heavy heart to tell Lena the news. After Ole told Lena he sat in his easy chair and Lena went to the kitchen. Soon a heavenly aroma came from the kitchen. Lena was making his favorite cookies! "Lena must really love me" he thought. Ole went into the kitchen and started to take a cookie. Lena slapped his hand away and said "Get avay! Dese cookies aren't for you, der for da funeral!"

Unfortunately, I didn't keep things on track and we weren't able to finish the game in our 4 hour time slot. Still the players enjoyed themselves as did I which is the whole point.

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Bonus photo time. Here's my father-in-law in warmer times showing off a sail he painted for a regatta.