(early-August 2023)
(Watch the prelude.)
On my way over to Lucas Oil Stadium where a game of Mystery of the Abbey awaited me, I encountered a group of singers on a street corner.
The chorus was dressed in old timey clothes as if they were Amish but there was modern amplification so I wasn’t so sure. Can the Amish remain doctrinally pure if they sing into a microphone as long as they didn't place it there, touch it, or have anything to do with it? I mean, proximity to modern technology isn't verboten, is it?
Whoever they were, I crossed the street to hear them better and found them singing the old hymn "The Old Rugged Cross". I cannot recall the last time I'd heard it. Maybe on an old Doc Watson album or one of those compilations of Alan Lomax field recordings. This street corner version was quite beautiful and my sentiment was shared by a woman sitting in the passenger seat of a car at the intersection who leaned out of the window and applauded. I did the same when they had finished and continued on my merry way.
I arrived at the football stadium and, walking up the stairs, noticed a statue of a quarterback in the classic quarterback pose with arm back, hand clutching a ball, and ready to throw. At first I thought it might be of Earl Morrall and then felt stupid because, if they're going to put a statue up of a Colts quarterback, it would be of Johnny Unitas. Duh! Then it occurred to me that those fellows played for the Baltimore Colts, not the Indianapolis Colts.
Oops.
The statue ended up being of Peyton Manning.
Entering the stadium I was amazed, as always, at how small it seems. I mean, it holds tens of thousands of fans but it doesn't feel like a megadome. People on the other side of the stadium aren't teeny tiny dots like I am used to. Looking around, I found that there was much to be desired in terms of signage. After wandering aimlessly for a few minutes, I finally came upon someone who looked like he was in authority and I asked just where the hell my game was to be held. He smiled and admitted that the game's listing in the event catalog didn't quite match the names of the rooms at the stadium in anything approaching an intuitive way before pointing me to my table. My fellow players eventually showed up after being similarly confused. With everyone present we donned pretend habits and delved into Mystery of the Abbey.
It merges the old board game Clue with Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, one of my favorite tales. There’s been a murder in a medieval abbey and you play a sleuthing monk trying to expose the identity of the killer.
While the game has the same basic premise and similar mechanics to Clue, Mystery of the Abbey expands them, makes sleuthing more complicated. Your investigating monk cannot wander the abbey at-will and must return to the chapel for mass every round. Certain rooms give you a card which can turn the situation upside down and undo a lot of your work - e.g. - the abbot catches you being a naughty monk poking around where you shouldn't be. Plus, there are many more suspects than in Clue.
Was the evil deed perpetrated by a wayward Benedictine scribe in the throes of madness? Or perhaps a Franciscan acolyte led onto the wrong path by Satan himself?
Here I am, the green monk, heading to the white monk’s cell to poke around for clues.
Mystery of the Abbey has more going on than Clue yet it is not a very complicated game. It was easy to get the hang of. I had a lot of fun gathering clues and attempting to throw my fellow monks off the scent so that I could be the one to approach the abbot with the identity of the killer. I had my speech all ready with tales of an illuminator taking a bath with lime leaves, blackened fingers and blackened tongues, a lost text by Aristotle, etc. Unfortunately, someone beat me to it and won the game.
With my session being done, it was back to the Omni to meet up with my cohorts and a spot of lunch. Just across the parking lot from it is the old Union Station, a gorgeous old train station.
I think it dates back to the 1880s and, while it no longer serves rail passengers today, riders of Amtrak’s Cardinal route board and alight from their trains in a building just adjacent to it. I think that the building is now a hotel. Next time I’ll have to go in and see that big window from the other side.
I once again met up with a friend at the Omni and we retired to the bar for lunch. It would be a wedge salad for me. But a fancy one.
Instead of a wedge of iceberg lettuce, I was given a few trimmed heads of Romaine. Also different was the dressing. I am used to the French kind on a wedge salad but there was bleu cheese here, although I have been to at least one restaurant here in Madison which serves it with French and bleu cheese dressings. Decadent! I had shrimp added to my lunch (decadent!) which weren't too bad considering we weren't anywhere near shrimp waters. After all, I was on vacation. It was quite tasty but a different animal from the Wisconsin supper club salad to which I was accustomed.
Soon enough evening rolled around and I was off to Massachusetts Avenue again to see a play at The District Theatre, a small storefront place. They were putting on a performance of Spring Awakening, described as being “based on an old weird German expressionist drama”.
Old?
Weird?
German?
This sounded right up my Strasse.
I had never heard of it nor its author Frank Wedekind but I was intrigued. Wikipedia describes it as a play that “criticises perceived problems in the sexually oppressive culture of nineteenth century Germany and offers a vivid dramatisation of the erotic fantasies that can breed in such an environment.”
Well, there were all kinds of mature content warnings to go with it.
The stage was sparsely decorated. Sitting before a brick wall that had several areas exposed where the black paint had been scrubbed off/faded away was a lone chair with what looked to be a chemise hanging on the back. A garland with notecards dangling form it was strung from the rafters.
The play had been transformed into a musical with the score written by pop musician Duncan Sheik whom I’d heard of but I don’t think I’d ever heard a note of his music. But the late 19th century German setting was kept.
It opens with a teen girl pondering where babies come from and asking her mother about this sensitive subject only to be rebuffed by one thoroughly embarrassed parent. We then meet other kids in her town who, like her, are navigating their ascent into adulthood and their burgeoning sexuality.
There were some affecting moments that brought back scenes from my adolescence but also crazy ones such as when one of the boys is at home in the bathroom trying to masturbate. His father, at stage right, keeps pounding on the door asking him to hurry up in there. To stage left, one of the boys in his class at school is receiving a piano lesson from his mother. The catch is that the kid's classmate has a crush on his mother and the classmate’s fantasy is brought to life when she rips open her dress, grabs the boy’s head, and shoves it between her breasts which she jiggles for extra fun.
Tender moments of teen confusion alternated with comic routines - I had never seen a circle jerk in play before. And there were also some deadly serious scenes involving rape and abortion. I really enjoyed how modern pop music was integrated into the Germany of 130 years ago. A fun and interesting play, I want to learn more about it. I can only imagine the brouhaha that it caused back in the 1900s when it debuted.
I felt it made a nice complement to Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Dream Story. Although written 30 some odd years after Spring Awakening, it is a look at sexuality from an adult perspective in roughly the same culture. The story became the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut.
After the play it was back to - you guessed it - the Omni for beer and good company.
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The next day was Sunday, the last day of the convention. For the first time ever, I actually had a scheduled game on a Sunday. I got up early and packed my stuff into our SUV before wandering over to the hotel where the game was to be held.
I passed over the Central Canal and got a different view of it.
I also discovered that Indy has a 9/11 memorial.
My last game of the con was called “Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire” and was an Achtung! Cthulhu scenario. Achtung! Cthulhu is a role-playing game like Trail or Call, which I’d played in the previous days, but, unsurprisingly, everything takes place during World War II.
It builds on the Nazi preoccupation with the Spear of Destiny and their expeditions to Tibet in search of, amongst other things, proof of racial this and evidence of occult that to create a game world where the Nazis and their allies utilize occult techniques and ceremonies to harness the powers of the supernatural and summon old gods to do their evil bidding.
In our game, we were sent to a monastery outside of Cairo to acquire a magical, precious stone that could be used for nefarious purposes before the Nazis got a hold of it.
The premise was good. And who doesn’t like outwitting and killing Nazis? Unfortunately, the guy running the game missed out on something very important: there was no threat here. I never felt menaced like I should have. It was obvious to us that monks of the monastery were under the influence of a strange power by their thousand yards stares and robotic movements but they did little to nothing to prevent us from escaping with the titular gem. While they may have occasionally given us a collective gimlet eye, they seemed otherwise content to let a bunch of foreigners infiltrate their midst and roam their home at will.
The whole point of Cthulhu games is to expose characters to earthly dangers and cosmic horrors alike, to confront the investigators with crazed cultists and weird, threatening creatures from another dimension that cause our heroes to lose their grip on reality and, if they're lucky, to be put out of their misery by some heinous daemonic creature who chows down on the hapless human for a snack.
Oh well.
We were on the road around 2. Another successful Gencon.
I’ve come to like Indianapolis more over the years since I’ve been attending Gencon there. I heard that there were 70,000-75,000 attendees this year and appreciate time spent away from the throngs of gamer dorks. Downtown Indy is eminently walkable and laid out in a grid so it’s easily navigable when you want to find a meal or something to do that’s not gaming.
I liked the old buildings and really enjoyed traipsing down the American Legion Mall and that stretch of memorials and obelisks. Indy loves its memorials. The Red Line makes taking an extended trip away from downtown a breeze and think I may go south next year in search of the perfect pork tenderloin sandwich.
A couple gripes. First is that the restaurant situation downtown could use some work. That Thai place was an exception to restaurant after restaurant of common, American fare. Indy loves its steakhouses almost as much as war memorials! And there was Italian and fast food but something “ethnic”, something not your typical kind of food was hard to come by. I walked by an Indian restaurant on one of my walks and that makes 2 places. There were probably more non-American type restaurants than I recall, but there just didn’t seem to be many.
At some point in the past, Indianapolis got the nickname “Naptown” which I think began as a playful thing but morphed into something derogatory, saying that the city was slow and sleepy. It may have overcome that but there’s still a definite small town feel, at times. Especially at night when an inordinate number of people – young men, no doubt – feel the need to rev their engines. This is the home of the Indianapolis 500, I guess, but still. Are the ladies of Indy really impressed by this kind of thing? It’s just like high school.
A great thing about Indy is that folks are very friendly. From the concierge of our hotel who wanted to see the photos I took on one of my walks to the panhandlers who were never once aggressive. Heck, even the geese shat away from pedestrians. The animals here are truly nice, human and otherwise.
I grant you, I only know Indy when the biggest convention in is town so my view is skewed. But, when I get out of downtown, I find that locals are still friendly to this tourist.
Oddly enough, I don’t think I saw a police officer until the third day we were there. A friend had and said that he’d chatted with her. She remarked that they were trying to hustle the homeless and the panhandlers away so that we congoers saw only the nice face of Indy. And so we did.
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Bonus photo. Close to my place of work is an old bus stop. I contacted Madison Metro and they said it dated back to the 1960s but it is still used today.
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