This little tale gave me a strong sense of déjà vu.
The Doctor and Liz are amongst the observers aboard a Royal Navy cruiser which is testing out some fancy new depth charges. They pass the test which involves destroying a bit of rock. While everyone celebrates, the Doctor and Liz note some radio interference which they think originates from the nearby S.S. Monitor whose job is to assist other ships navigate the rocky waters of wherever it is the story takes place.
But it turns out the Monitor is offering bad course data, much to the chagrin of various captains whose ships end up in Davy Jones' Locker. Upon investigating, it is discovered that the crew of the Monitor have been knocked out cold and a tape recorder with the bum data is being broadcasted to unsuspecting ships. The Doctor and Liz investigate under waves in a bathyscaphe which is "eaten" by a larger submersible with nasty, big, pointy teeth.
They are taken to the home of the Carpanthans, a race of fishmen who put the Doctor and Liz on trial for the destruction of their city - that rock the depth charge destroyed was no mere rock. Their trial takes place in a courtroom which fortuitously happens to have a stash of emergency gas cutting cylinders. Luckily Liz has a lighter with her - does she smoke Virginia Slims? You've come a long way, baby!
Despite a makeshift flame thrower, our heroic pair are unable to effect an escape. However, the Doctor manages to convince the Carpanthan leader that he will not reveal their presence to the apes on the surface. For this act of kindness, the Doctor and Liz are allowed to leave. Those Carpanthans weren't so bad after all and didn't seem to worship Dagon.
I don't know when this comic was written but it bore more than a passing resemblance to Doctor Who and the Silurians. Fish people under the ocean, reptile people under the ground. The Doctor trying to broker peace between a cold blooded race below and the warm blooded apes on the surface.
Liz is back, although she blurts out "Doctor, I'm scared!" at one point. A little science at the beginning but she's mainly the pretty thing needing the Doctor's help.
What do you get when you cross lutefisk with a hit of LSD?
A trip to Stoughton.
Hopefully a local reads that.
I've had Norway/Norwegians on the brain for a little while now. Next week I am off to Gamehole Con to spend a few days drowning in Lovecraftian chaos as I play Karsten Ekelöf, a Norwegian bacteriologist and physician who goes Beyond the Mountains of Madness. BtMoM is a Call of Cthulhu adventure that takes place in the Antarctic. Here's a bit of his backstory:
Karsten would join the Bratvaag Expedition led by Dr. Gunnar Horn.
Ostensibly an expedition to hunt seals and study glaciers and the Arctic seas, its secret mission was to claim Victoria Island for Norway.
The expedition first stopped at White Island where they improbably discovered the remains of Swedish explorer S.A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition. The official story is that only skeletal remains were found but Karsten and company stumbled upon corpses that still had flesh attached to the bones. Karsten examined the corpses and was horrified to discover that it appeared as if much of the adventurers' flesh had been eaten away as if by necrotizing bacteria.
The remains were stowed aboard their ship and Karsten examined tissue samples from them in transit to Victoria Island. Although he was not surprised to find that they were awash with foreign bacteria, he was shocked to discover that the invaders were unlike anything he'd seen previously.
They had strange tentacle-like protrusions and organelles unknown to science...
So there I was contemplating this Norwegian brew and what to do for a picture for this review and my mind started wandering. I thought about Nordic Noir TV shows but discovered that the ones I've watched are mainly Swedish and Danish with the odd one from Finland and Iceland thrown in. Where are the Norwegian TV producers?! Surely Oslo is as crime ridden as Stockholm. You can't tell me that there aren't maniacs living in the fjords or that the Norwegian forests are bereft of fae.
Then it occurred to me that I've been listening to a lot of Wobbler, a progressive rock band from Norway, lately and I have dragged them into this. Heck, they're probably the kind of guys who would drink this variety of beer anyway.
The brew at hand is Of Wood and Smoke by Haandbryggeriet located in Drammen which appears to be an exurb of Oslo. Thankfully some of it made its way to Madison at some point. The date on the bottom of the can was "12-7-202~~~" - the last digit was all smooshed so I guess its date of origin shall forever be a mystery. But, given that December was noted, I take it that this is a winter release.
This jibes with the beer, a hearty brew that was aged in akvavit barrels giving it a potency of 8% A.B.V. Of Wood and Smoke is an amped up version of Haandbryggeriet's Norwegian Wood, a smoked lager with juniper. This stouter iteration is apparently smokier and juniperer, in addition to having a higher alcohol content due to the spiritual comingling.
With the temperatures around here finally providing some much-needed relief from summer, I figured it was time to put this beer to the test.
My pour produced a big tan head which had shrunk a bit before I could take a decent photograph. Holding my glass at just the right angle, I could see that the beer had a deep ruby hue. I didn't notice any bubbles because I just couldn't see that far into the liquid. There was just blackness. Taking a whiff, I first caught booziness, that sharp alcohol smell. Apparently they weren't playing around with the akvavit. Luscious smoke then wafted into my nose and I attempted to discern what variety it was. Ultimately I failed but suspect it was from a fruit tree like apple or cherry. However, that impression may have been influenced by the inviting plum scent from some of the non-smoked malts.
My initial sip revealed a smooth booziness, as if the surely rather large malt bill was able to add enough sweetness to take the edge off of the akvavit. (I'd say the brew had a medium-heavy body.) Just as with the aroma, smoke came next followed by a moderate malty, caramel sweetness. I also tasted some milk chocolate. There was a mild fizz which struggled to penetrate the Maginot Line of malt.
On the finish I tasted a boozy heat which was joined by some lingering smokiness as well as bit of that caramel sweetness and a dash of the juniper. Everything resolved into a mild, slowly fading akvavit burn.
This is a really nice beer. I suspect it was past its prime but I liked it anyway. The smoke was just delicious and the sweetness wasn't anywhere near cloying. The hops and juniper were very much in the background keeping things from becoming a treacly mess and adding only piney/spicy accents. The akvavit I've had was flavored with caraway but I didn't detect any here.
Of Wood and Smoke is surely amongst the most boreal brews I've encountered. The smokiness was wonderful and it kept me warm on a chill autumn evening.
Junk food pairing: Until I can find some locally-produced lefse chips, I will recommend you pair your Of Wood and Smoke with a bag of Sørlandschips Original Spansk Paprika potato chips. The earthy paprika will go well with all of the malt flavors here and the oil will be swiftly cut by all that akvavit.
With my adventures up north done for the year, I settled in to enjoy the autumn close to home. The two maple trees down the street regaled me with their gorgeous colors on my walks to and from the bus stop.
Speaking of bus stops, reconstruction of an arterial street near us was finally finished and, in addition to a fancy, new bike path and pleasantly smooth pavement, I got a new bus shelter.
I feel like an aristocrat when I’m inside it on dark, rainy mornings, which are becoming increasingly common, as it has a light. An amenity! A minor one, I grant you, but it’s just weird to me after having spent years and years of chilly, wet autumn dawns waiting for the bus in dark, spartan shelters.
This new public transit Xanadu was situated slightly farther away from the corner than the old one and, as Fate (or a devious streets planner with a wicked sense of humor) would have it, right next to a walnut tree. There was a recent dry morning when I was standing there and one of the fruits fell, coming within an inch of my head. Lesson learned, though I suppose it would have been a good excuse to call in sick had I taken a walnut on the noggin.
"Sorry, Boss, but I cannot work today as a walnut fell on my head and I think I have a concussion."
No doubt my boss would have suffered damage to her eyes from rolling them so much.
Walking out from our driveway one day, I noticed this suggestive mushroom sprouting from the mulch on the north side of our house.
Of course my inner 12 year-old giggled maniacally. I believe this is commonly known as a stinkhorn mushroom and some mycologist endowed it with the highly appropriate botanical name of phallus impudicus which translates as "shameless phallus".
On a recent bike ride I ran across these skeleton flamingos.
Despite being well out of flamingo habitat range, Madison has a thing for them. Well, the yard decorations, anyway. Back in September 1979, some UW students decided to pull a prank and put 1,000+ plastic pink flamingos on Bascom Hill.
The incident became a part of local lore and the plastic pink flamingo became an icon, of sorts, of Madison. And so you occasionally see a yard full of them, there’s a flamingo mural on the side of laundromat in the Tenney-Lapham neighborhood, and the bird features in the annual holiday lights display at Olin Park, amongst other appearances.
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In my spare time, I prepped for Gamehole Con, Madison’s premiere gaming convention as I was to run a few sessions of the Call of Cthulhu role playing game.
One scenario takes place in the 1950’s and begins with the players driving down a county road in a torrential downpour. They seek shelter at an isolated rural diner/gas station and take comfort in its endless supply of cheap coffee but, unbeknownst to them, there’s a nasty alien entity lurking in the woods. Although just a ball of light, it is a mindless, unfeeling devourer of the vital energies that animate living beings. There are some locals at the diner, some of whom are harboring dark secrets.
I tried to make a spooky atmosphere with people sometimes catching a light zipping through the trees from the corners of their eyes. The players eventually run into this refulgent killing machine and hilarity ensues.
The other scenario took place in the small town of Blackwater Creek, MA in 1926. A recent archeological dig had uncovered the resting place of a small fragment of the evil god Shub-Niggurath. This hideous remnant of malevolence infects one of the townsfolk who retreats to a nearby cave. She transmogrifies into a horrific creature from whose body flows enough Shub-Niggurath amniotic fluid to fill a creek. Hilarity ensues.
A couple years ago I started my own tradition of serving kringle to my players. The kringle is a Danish pastry shaped in a ring of sweet-filled dough. Early one morning I walked over to Lane’s Bakery to pick up my order. This involved traversing the lesser used parts of the convention center grounds until you get to an ill-lit gravel street. From there things get brighter but it’s a bit of a spooky walk in the antelucan hours.
It was clear and chilly out but at least this afforded me a good glimpse of Orion. You know it's autumn when you see the hunter in the southern sky.
I bought a highly seasonal pumpkin kringle, no frosting. While I love sweets, I find that, as I've gotten older, I want to taste the dough more, I want my tongue to revel in the delicious results of those Maillard reactions instead of being subjected to a mindless blast of sugar. Frosting only serves to obscure the grainy goodness.
The kringle was wonderful but the trip to Lane’s was bittersweet as the bakery was to close in December after 69 years. It was genuinely sad to hear the news of the impending loss of a Madison institution and this now leaves me without a source of fresh kringle within walking distance of the convention center. The only place I can think of in the area that makes the ringed goodness is a bakery in Stoughton, about 10-12 miles south of Madison.
It's easy enough to find kringle in grocery stores as the Racine Danish Kringles brand is ubiquitous. However, I taste margarine or imitation butter flavoring in their dough. Perhaps I ought to check out some grocery stores I don't usually shop at to see what's on offer. There are surely other brands on supermarket shelves around town.
In addition to running games, I played them as well. A highlight was the Blade Runner role playing game. The movie is an all-time favorite of mine and I was really looking forward to trying it out. I was not disappointed.
I played the role of the chain smoking, grizzled veteran cop. My fellow players and I investigated the “retirement”, a.k.a. – murder, of a replicant, i.e. – a synthetic person. Our sleuthing led us around to various locations in the Los Angeles of the future where we met a slew of suspicious replicants and various human members of the criminal underground.
The game was really well done with nice, high quality supplements.
The dice were funky too with one side having an eye, a recurring motif in the movie, and an origami unicorn, something made by Gaff, one of the cops in the film.
The game had an intriguing storyline, well fleshed out characters, and some genuinely thought-provoking thematic material. Really fun.
In the dealers room someone was selling appropriately themed coffee and I bought a bag of Kraken. Who doesn’t like tentacled sea monsters?
When I wasn't gaming, I was to be found spending time hanging out with friends and BSing. One night someone in my cohort told us that there was a group of well-heeled gamers from (present day) Los Angeles at the con. Apparently they like to game in style as they had brought a butler with them who had catered a particular gaming session with a portable build your own taco bar. A butler at a gaming convention filled with unwashed masses of gamer dorks is as incongruous a pairing as anchovies and ice cream. Plus there was just something intuitively wrong about a group of rich white guys bringing a black butler to the con. The whole idea just had bad 19th century vibes.
When I heard this tale, I realized that I had run into the guy in an elevator. Anyone not clad in a black t-shirt or in costume at a gaming convention sticks out like a priest at a brothel. He must have had a good haberdasher back in L.A. because he was dressed to the nines making me look like a serf in contrast. I had greeted him as I stepped into the elevator and he seemed in good spirits as he flashed a smile. Recalling the encounter, that old TV show Soap popped into my head about that rich white family who employed a wise-cracking black butler.
I hope his employer treats him well and that he was generously compensated as being a non-gamer at a gaming convention is surely like being trapped in one of the circles of Hell.
During another late night BS session, a friend revealed that he was contemplating running the epic Call of Cthulhu scenario Beyond the Mountains of Madness.
It's a sequel to the H.P. Lovecraft novella At the Mountains of Madness which chronicles a 1920s Antarctic expedition that, like everything in Lovecraft's tales, goes horribly wrong. In Beyond, players are sent on another expedition to the icy wastes to try and discover what happened to the first one. No doubt it is a tale of great woe and I fully expect my character to go insane and/or die.
Beyond is a massive scenario that takes days and days to go through but my friend would like to try to condense it into 3-4 long sessions at next year's Gamehole Con. He asked if I and another friend of ours would be anchor players who would commit to all of the lengthy sessions and help out other players as needed to keep the game moving forward.
We did.
And so, if this plan comes to fruition, it will be an epic, chilling adventure next year. Plus it has the added bonus of delaying having to find a bakery near the convention center for a couple years.
I had a blast at Gamehole. Many characters died heinous deaths in the games I ran and the games I played were great fun. Plus I got to hang out with friends deep into a few alcohol-soaked nights where we BSed and those of us who knew my late brother indulged in some warm reminiscing.
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A week or so after the convention I was off to West Chicago to meetup with a couple friends who were to accompany me to the lovely Arcada Theater in nearby St. Charles to see a concert by Martin Barre.
Barre was the guitarist in the progressive rock band Jethro Tull for 40+ years before being unceremoniously booted by band leader Ian Anderson back in 2011 or thereabouts. Since then he has assembled his own group, recorded 5 albums, and performed many a concert. He is currently on the "A Brief History of Tull" tour.
It was a great show! Despite being in his 70’s, Barre had a lively stage presence. Although I couldn't play a guitar if my life depended on it, I regard him as one of the best guitarists ever to come out of the rock world. He always seems to play the right notes, to play what a song needs instead of demanding to be heard strictly as a virtuoso. As a jack of all trades kind of player, he can do big, heavy riffs like "Aqualung" or judiciously add color to an otherwise acoustic song like "Velvet Green".
We got a good overview of Jethro Tull’s catalog with “My God” being a highlight. It opens quietly with some gentle acoustic guitar adorned by piano. But when those big slashing electric guitar chords came thundering in, well, they sent a chill up my spine. The flute solo in the middle was replaced by some of Palladio, a contemporary classical piece by composer Karl Jenkins and it fit seamlessly.
The band's playing was tight, energetic, and everyone seemed to be having fun and this is what live music is all about.
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Before heading back to Madison the next day, I bid my friends farewell and went to see Anatomy of a Fall which was playing at the cinema in St. Charles. I hadn’t seen anything to indicate it was going to open back home so I jumped at the chance to see this French film by Justine Triet that had won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year.
Sandra is a novelist who lives with her husband Samuel in a chalet up in the French Alps along with their son Daniel and his dog, Snoop. As the movie opens, a woman has come to their home to interview Sandra. But while they are chatting, Samuel cranks up some music upstairs where he is remodeling the top floor. Sandra and her interlocutor agree to reschedule the interview for a quieter time.
Daniel and Snoop go for a walk and, upon their return, find Samuel's body lying on the snow in front of the house. Daniel screams prompting Sandra to come out of the house where she sees her husband’s body.
Samuel is pronounced dead at the scene and Sandra is accused of having pushed him out of a window. She hires a lawyer who is also a friend and goes about defending herself as she consoles her traumatized son.
One of the great things about this movie is that it sends you down dead ends and leaves you wondering. It’s a murder mystery, but only just. We don’t see things from the point of view of a detective but rather watch as life continues for Sandra and Daniel. As a courtroom drama unfolds, we learn about Samuel and Sandra’s marriage troubles. The movie left me alternately convinced of Sandra’s innocence and thinking that she may have done it through scenes of her in the throes of grief and ones where she is cold, almost emotionless.
And those courtroom scenes were interesting. I don’t know how true they were to the real French judicial system but they mirrored the scenes in Saint Omer, another French film about a woman put on trial for murder, that I saw back in January.
Prosecutors are apparently given free rein to hector the accused and their witnesses are allowed to be openly hostile to them. And here no one stops Sandra when she answers a question only to go off on tangent filled monologues for minutes at a time. French trials seem to be able to change into free form routines.
I was fed revelations about Sandra and Samuel’s marriage in small bites almost throughout, which was addictive, and pushed me towards thinking she was guilty only to have the movie offer me something else to get me going in the other direction.
The truth about everything here was elusive whether it be how Samuel died or how strong or weak his marriage to Sandra was. I found myself questioning everything. I loved how the movie, largely through Sandra’s lengthy discourses on the stand, talked about the intricate complexities of marriage as well as those of self-assessment. Samuel’s death gives Sandra cause to reassess her relationship to him as well to reflect on her own feelings, thought, and behaviors.
I adored Anatomy of a Fall. I loved the way it weaved an intense look at a failing marriage into a murder mystery that did its best not to give much in the way of definitive answers.
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In preparation for Halloween, my Frau got her costume together. It was of the creepy dead girl in the Japanese horror movie Ring.
Speaking of Halloween, a friend sent me this photo which he swears was taken in Chicago.
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Bonus photo. This is a statue of Dred and Harriet Scott that I saw on a visit to St. Louis several years back. Their bid for freedom began at the Old Courthouse there in 1846, though I suppose it was quite new back then.
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?
Chorus: "Oh mighty God, we were singing and then, the next thing we knew, there were a couple microphones standing in front of us. Shurely you can forgive us our trespasses, etc."
God: "Quit the bad puns or suffer my wrath."
Not only was there electric amplification, but the Kapellmeister seemed to be dressed in more contemporary clothing.
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.
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.
Having constructed a prima facie case in my mind that the Masons' influence permeates Indianapolis, I made my way back to the convention as I had a game to play. On my way there, I passed the lovely old Deschler Building that dates from 1907. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
My next game was a Call of Cthulhu adventure entitled “The Stone Gateway Mystery, Starring The Hardy Boys” and I played Iola Morton, Joe Hardy’s sweetheart.
We are in Bayport and the Hardy Boys’ dad, Fenton Hardy, must head out of town on business so he entrusts his sons with the responsibility to investigate a developer named Terrence Wall, er, Nolan Andrews who is to present his plans that very night for a big, new development which would gobble up precious shoreline and imperil the charming historical character of the town. This character is aided by a mysterious stone gateway adorned with eldritch carvings - or pictograms, perhaps…
I have never read any Hardy Boys stories but the guy running the game and the other player had. (Two people didn’t show up.) It was a blast investigating the evil developer's stratagems, fretting over Joe’s dangerous ("Oh, Joe! Be careful!") yet very manly (sighhhhhhh) actions to thwart the developer, and screaming occasionally because that’s what girls do, right?
It was a fun game and we managed to stop the mad developer from not only erecting ugly, out of character buildings that would tarnish Bayport's charm, perhaps irreparably, but also from summoning forth hideous, evil creatures that would destroy the world! We really dodged a bullet there.
When the game was done, I met up with one of my friends who, like me, was tired of bar food. I hadn’t had a bad meal, really, but I'd certainly had enough salads and Buffalo wings to last a week. And so we went to a Thai restaurant not too far from our hotel. Completely expectedly, many other gamers had the same idea we did and there were a dozen people waiting in line for the place to open at 4.
My companion had a fine curry while I went for tom yum soup, one of my favorite foods.
The soup was excellent though a bit different from what I’m used to. This stuff had no noodles but there were onion and tomato in it, which was a new twist for me. Also, I am accustomed to getting a plate on the side with Thai basil, bean sprouts, a few jalapeno slices, and a wedge or two of lime. Not here.
Still, not only was it a welcome change from the bar food that had largely been my diet so far, it was genuinely tasty stuff.
We went back to the hotel with full bellies to freshen up before heading out to a movie. We had tickets to see Oppenheimer on the IMAX and on film too at the Indiana State Museum, just a few blocks west of the hotel. We wandered over there and discovered that the museum was next door to another one, the Eiteljorg Museum.
It features art from Native Americans and from Western America. Indianapolis seems an odd spot for such a museum but it apparently got its start from the collection of a philanthropist for whom the place is named: Harrison Eiteljorg. We had some time before the show and were waiting on another friend of ours who was grabbing a quick bite after a game so we decided to do a little wandering.
There was a path leading behind the Eiteljorg and so we followed it.
This led through a small green area and out to the Central Canal.
It was a really nice spot with a park on the opposite shore and a trail to walk along the canal. We saw only a few people as we slowly strolled our way along the canal path. Did the threat of potentially having to navigate large crowds of gamers keep locals away? The area just seemed oddly quiet. I am not sure where the canal goes, exactly, but walking it to find out may just be in the cards for a future visit.
The museum was closed except for the IMAX cinema but it looked to be an interesting place. Many other people had the same idea we did as the theater was full when we settled in for 3 hours of celluloid goodness. I’ll be honest, though, it should have had an intermission. I guess the industry has to squeeze as many screenings in as they can, audience bladders be damned.
I really liked how director Christopher Nolan used the IMAX format for scenes depicting massive flames, ripples on the surface of water, and just any phenomenon that captures the scientist's vast imagination. The sheer size of the screen engulfs us and, just perhaps, instills a tidbit of awe in our minds as the man on the screen ponders the universe and its workings. I wish there were a few more of these scenes as I really enjoy this montage style where the film cuts to something that illustrates a character's thinking or feeling or perhaps just shifts the mood for us. Personally, I especially like it when a film cuts to something outside of the story world for a brief second before throwing us back into it so we can ponder how what we just saw relates to the story. I enjoy that act of trying to link seemingly disparate things.
The Trinity scene was just great. While we see various people taking shelter, donning goggles, and looking on in anticipation, we hear only breathing despite an atomic bomb just having detonated. And then the sonic boom hits them. But it also hits us with that IMAX sound system cranked up to 11. I felt the boom. Just fantastic cinema. Great credit must be given to Nolan for not making this the climax quickly leading to the end of the movie. It’s another element of Oppenheimer’s story, albeit a very important one, but it’s by no means the end of his tale.
I would really like to see Oppenheimer again but, alas, probably won’t be able to on an IMAX.
As was our custom, we retired to the Omni lobby for the night after the film where drinks and conversation flowed easily.
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Saturday morning I had a date down the street from our hotel at this place, the City Market.
A friend and I walked down there and we discovered a small memorial for James E. O’Donnell, a native of Indianapolis who survived the sinking of the cruiser named after his hometown on 30 July 1945 just after it had delivered the uranium and other parts for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, courtesy of one J. Robert Oppenheimer. You may recall the scene in Jaws where the grizzled old man of sea, Quint, tells of the ship being torpedoed and of how he and his fellow sailors found themselves at the mercy of the sharks who called the Philippine Sea home.
My friend went on his way whereas I entered the City Market and found that it is now a public market. It was still early so no vendors were yet open.
I was here for a tour of The Catacombs, the subterranean ruins of Tomlinson Hall which stood next to the Market building until 1958 when it was consumed by fire. Both buildings were/are on Market Street and, true to its name, markets were held on this street as well as in the two edifices which were designed by a German architect whose name I cannot recall. While the first floor of Tomlinson Hall hosted markets and vendors hawking their wares, the rest of the building was more of a public event space.
Concerts and cotillions were held for Indy’s good and great and Benjamin Harrison celebrated his nomination for the presidency in the Hall’s ballroom. The Catacombs were the basement of Tomlinson Hall, with plenty of room for things such as produce for the markets that would stay cool underground.
The Catacombs were quite spooky and I dared not stray from the rest of the tour group lest I never return…Our tour guide was a member of Indy’s historical society and explained the history of Tomlinson Hall and its surroundings. While not as dramatic as Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow starting the Great Chicago Fire, local legend says a bird dropped a discarded, yet still lit, cigarette on the building's roof to start the blaze. Did a pyromaniacal pigeon really do the deed? Or was it a story concocted by an anti-smoking crusader? We shall never know.
In years past, The Catacombs were used as a haunted house on Halloween and Gencon held at least one session of Dungeons & Dragons here which sounds like it would have been a hoot.
With the tour over, I headed east. This area of downtown felt gentrified with lots of newer apartments. Since such buildings are about as interesting as watching paint dry, I headed north and again found myself surrounded by older homes and other buildings like this Catholic church.
I came to another beautiful and decidedly older building where I spied a Green Man on the side.
Don’t see these often. I discovered that it was affixed to a wall of The Athenæum, a gorgeous 19th century building that was originally a kind of community center for the city’s German immigrants and German-Americans. Back then it was named Das Deutsche Haus or "The German House” but World War I forced a change to The Athenæum lest community members be accused of being loyal to the enemy. Besides, a Latin name sounds all highfalutin, especially when it has that fancy a-e diphthong with the letters melded together.
My understanding is that German immigrants and their descendants were slow to learn English and adopt it as their primary language. I believe Milwaukee still had multiple German-language newspapers as World War I began. But, as the conflict progressed, these people scrambled to learn English, anglicize their names, eat hot dogs instead of frankfurters, etc. OK, so I am not sure about that last one.
Das Deutsche Haus featured a Turners Hall, a theater, and surely a bier hall too, amongst other things. Today there’s a German restaurant, concerts are held there, and I think some of it is office space.
Turning the corner to see the great architectural detail of The Athenæum, I found myself on Massachusetts Avenue which begins in the northeast part of downtown and continues in that direction.
I first discovered Mass Ave, as the locals call it, back in 2006 or so. It’s a bit like State Street here in Madison but with less emphasis on college students and more on young professionals. New apartments sit next to older ones with hip restaurants and bars to be found along much of the streetscape. Well, they looked all trendy to me, anyway.
The stretch closer to downtown seems to have more newer apartment buildings and more places that would appeal to a younger set who found it important to be seen at such joints.
Kitty corner from The Athenæum is another fantastic building but this one has a Middle Eastern look to it.
Are those minarets? It says “Murat Shrine Club” on one wall and it turns out that this was the local HQ of Indy’s Shriners, formerly known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, hence the architectural style. I got this vision in my head of the front door opening and a bunch of old duffers donning fezzes zipping out on go-karts heading for some parade or other. Shriners are an offshoot of the Freemasons – Masons again! They're everywhere in this town.
I wondered if there was an Illuminati lodge somewhere. If I happened upon an Eye of Providence or any other esoteric symbol while traipsing around, I was going to get very paranoid.
I presume mystical, arcane rites used to be performed there but now the place is a theater called the Old National Centre where the only chants raised are drunk concert goers singing along to their favorite bands.
Just look at the marvelous detail!
I could have looked at all of the stained glass windows and the carvings and whatnot all day. But time was tight so I pushed onwards.
Another highlight I stumbled upon was an old fire station that had been converted into the local firefighters museum and memorial.
Across the street I found one of, if not the, neatest ghost sign I’ve ever seen. The wall of the building was covered in layers of ads - a veritable early 20th century advertising palimpsest. But it was the Quaker Oats sign that was the biggest and stood out from the rest.
A gentleman who was sitting on a bench flagged me down and introduced himself as a photographer and videographer. After introducing myself, he said that he had seen me walking along the street taking photos and was glad that I had traipsed by him. He inquired as to where my pictures could be seen online and if I considered myself a street photographer.
“No, I’m no street photographer,” I replied. “Just a tourist who likes old buildings and ghost signs. And no, I’m not on Instagram or Twitter or any social media like that. Just an old school blog where these photographs will be posted in a few months.”
It was a friendly little chat and I was appreciative that someone would think that I was even a remotely practiced photographer whose snaps would be worth viewing.
I found the storefront theater where I was scheduled to see a play that night and then checked the time. A game awaited so I turned around and headed back to the convention.
On the way, I passed a couple of murals. The first was of hometown literary hero Kurt Vonnegut.
Evans, another Indy native, was an artist, writer, and poet who was associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. I am not familiar with this "Black Arts Movement" and so will have to investigate.
I was tempted to stop in at that ice cream parlor where they make it to order in a bowl resting atop a bath of liquid nitrogen but didn't want to be late.
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Bonus photo. Here’s another one of Piper at the vet unsuccessfully hiding behind the doc’s laptop. Poor Pipey.
