The Discomfited Doctor

At the end of the previous story, Dominion, the Doctor announces that there's an anomaly in San Francisco, the site of his last regeneration, that must be investigated.

Unnatural History was a surprising tale for me and it has a rather complicated plot that I am not qualified to synopsize easily. It begins with the Doctor in London trying to convince Sam to come with him. But this is not our Sam, it's Dark Sam, the alternate version of the much-maligned companion that was first mentioned 16 books ago in Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies. I don't know why no one investigated this avenue until Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman did here. Were the other authors not interested? Perhaps they figured Miles would take his own baton and run with it.

Then we find out that the events of the TV movie left a scar in the fabric of Time-Space that never fully healed. Various creatures are drawn to the portal such as Mandelbrot turtles and unicorns and a Kraken thingy which sleeps in the bay. Now let me see if I have this right. When our crew initially encounters the scar, the OG Sam falls into it and Dark Sam is created. The TARDIS seals the scar to keep it from getting ever more dangerous and preserve any possibility of getting blonde Sam back.

There's this unnatural historian, Griffin, who is trying to collect the odd creatures that have started to appear in San Francisco. He's a being from higher dimensions and quite mysterious. And he has these ominous henchmen. Griffin reminded me of Light in "Ghost Light" in that he wanted to collect and preserve. Light couldn't comprehend that beings changed and, similarly, Griffin is really big on taxonomy and seeks to simplify creatures so that they fit into but a single category.

Also, in perhaps a nod to "Remembrance of the Daleks", there's a boy running around who is not all that he seems. He is, in fact, with the Faction Paradox and he messes with the Doctor's head.

Griffin proves a very capable foe who is able to thwart the Doctor's plans pretty much up until the end. I liked that he was so enigmatic. We get some background but it's really a bunch of hints at this and possibilities of that. He collects his specimens and puts them into this transdimensional box. At the end, Sam opens the drawers of the box freeing the specimens who push Griffin into the scar. Will he survive? Boba Fett, after all, is supposed to have been able to escape the sarlacc.

With the TARDIS doing its bit as transdimensional duct tape to seal the scar, the Doctor is lost, not himself in certain ways. Detached from his anchor, he is not whole. At one point, he creates a pan-dimensional force field to contain Griffin, but it proves no match for the wiley collector who simply steps out from the field and kills a pagan hippie lady whom Fitz had enlisted to help the cause. In another scene, he sends one of those messenger cubes to the Time Lords only to discover later that the Faction Paradox kid has it. Blum and Orman really knock the Doctor off his pedastal here. Better than torturing him like the latter did in Seeing I, at least.

And then there's the mysterious professor at UC-Berkeley who says, "I’m Professor Daniel Joyce these days..." I thought he was a Time Lord at first, but he denies it at some point. He's obviously not human but I dunno what species he is a member of. And I was really thrown when he and Griffin have a little confab where Joyce seems to have some authority in a group that Griffin is ostensibly working for and so he can order the unnatural historian around. Or so he thinks, anyway.

Finally, there is biodata everywhere. Biodata are like DNA molecules but crossed with a computer program so you can modify it and thusly change the person - even their past. The events of the TV movie have spilled the Doctor's biodata all over San Francisco. The scar is full of it and there are whispy strands of the stuff dotting the cityscape. Joyce is tinkering with it, Griffin has some, the Faction Paradox...Well, if you're just going to leave your biodata lying around, you can't expect it to remain unmolested.

Unnatural History has a lot of threads running through it. There's the whole Sam vs. Dark Sam quandary, people tinkering with the Doctor's biodata, having to defeat Griffin, the Faction Paradox lurking in the background and occasionally making nebulous threats, etc. Lawrence Miles sowed the seeds in Alien Bodies and here Blum and Orman reap the harvest of twisty, paradoxical goodness.

While I appreciated all the timey-wimey uncertainties and wonder if it will be another 16 books before someone picks up on the threads here, the tone of Unnatural History put me off. It feels very 90s and has a slick casualness to it that doesn't do much for me. The tone is like what I think Joss Whedon's TV shows are like. The new Sam does drugs so she's "dark"; Griffin is more than a match for our hero but is he really all that interesting a villain? I really liked that he was such an enigma but he came across as rather a one note character.

I am having a hard time explaining it.

I won't say that I am against a flailing, helpless Doctor per se, but you have to do it right. Falls the Shadow felt like pure sadism to me. When you take away the Doctor's ability to help people and to overcome evil for too long, then the quirks and charm of the character tend to erode quickly. He just runs to point A where his plan fails so he drives his VW Beetle to point B where is next plain is foiled.

Perhaps the biggest contribution to Doctor Who lore and continuity is the way Blum and Orman tinker with the Doctor's identity. There's various chatter about our hero being half human and his biodata is littered around San Francisco with various groups tinkering with it. Are they changing his past? Are they modifying him? He was loomed yet had a human mother; he is The Other yet also just some Time Lord whose dissatisfaction with his society convinced him to bail on it just like a Gallifreyan Prince Harry. The book seems to take the whole concept of the origin story by the scruff of its neck and throws it out the window.

I should probably re-read Unnatural History at some point. Blum and Orman are fine writers with more neat ideas than you can shake a stick at. But there's just this ineffable problem I have with the tone. It feels American, it feels like the TV movie.

The fact that I have written much more about this story than I intended speaks to the fact that it is, at the very least, noteworthy - that it is worth considering and discussing.

I will end with this: Fitz gets into Dark Sam's pants in this story and I have to wonder how that's handled in the tales that follow.

R.I.P. Anchor Brewing

Sad news. Just a month after my encomium to Anchor Steam, I read that Anchor Brewing is no more. After 127 years, the venerable brewery has closed.

At the company’s Mariposa Street headquarters, the doors were supposed to open at noon to welcome the steady flow of summer tourists and locals eager to take a walking tour of the historic brewery, which was founded in 1896 and has roots in the California Gold Rush. But the doors were closed to the public for an emergency meeting between Anchor’s parent company and its employees, who initially learned of the closure from the news release. Employees streamed out, some clutching desk plants, one — who wished to remain anonymous — exited the doors and simply offered: “Bulls—t. F—king bulls—t. That’s my quote.” Drivers rolled down the windows chanting, “Keep brewing, keep brewing!” By 12:30 p.m., the Anchor Brewing flag had been replaced by an American flag, and a flurry of former employees had departed for drinks at Thee Parkside.

Wow. Very disappointing but not at all surprising that the employees hear the news about the loss of their jobs via a press release as opposed to their employer.

Perhaps someone or someones will take up the torch and keep Anchor alive. We shall see.

(Photo by Grant Marek.)

Feed your head. With chocolate.

Confession time.

When I first got it in my mind to do this little San Francisco triptych, I sat down to consider what I'd write about. There had to be music and, since my former flame was a Deadhead, I knew I had to write about the Grateful Dead. She and I both loved good beer and Anchor Steam was the obvious choice. I then recalled her love for chocolate and that it was she who got me hooked on the good stuff.

Warm memories of being introduced to the joy of her favorite chocolate, Scharffen Berger, filled my brain. Those luscious squares of chocolate darker and richer than any Hershey product could hope to be just melting away in my mouth...great stuff.

So I went and found a bar of Scharffen Berger, tasted its delights, and sat down to write. I then discovered that the Scharffen Berger company was founded in 1996, after my San Francisco-loving girlfriend and I had parted ways.

Maybe I need to do crossword puzzles or some sudoku to whip my memory back into shape. I have this distinct feeling that someone I dated was a big fan of Scharffen Berger but I cannot recall who it was.

If it wasn't Scharffen Berger that opened a new world of chocolate for me, then who was it?

Ghirardelli!

Ghirardelli was founded in 1852 and so I'm in the clear with the whole timeline thing.

Perusing shelves of chocolate bars recently, I've noticed that San Francisco companies seem to dominate the artisanal baking chocolate market. In addition to Scharffen Berger and Ghirardelli you've got Guittard. How does San Francisco do this?

So, back to Ghirardelli. Founded in 1852, it is reputedly the oldest continuously run chocolate maker in the United States. These days it's owned by Lindt, the Swiss mega-chocolatier, and I have read that their chocolate isn't as good as it used to be.

Regardless, I took a stroll down memory lane.

I have a preference for dark chocolate - the darker, the betterer, generally speaking. This 72% cocoa bar was a bit on the low end as I normally buy chocolate in the 85-90% range. (The 88% Extreme Dark bar from Endangered Species Chocolate is my go-to chocolate indulgence.) Unsurprisingly, I do not recall what strength chocolate bars my girlfriend and I shared so I went with a darker bar but one a bit lighter than I normally indulge in simply for a change of pace.

With Ghirardelli, you get a bar that's 2 big squares across rather than 4 smaller ones. The aroma was great as it had a wonderful chocolate bitterness with something sweet behind it. I heard a distinct snap when breaking off a couple of squares. This stuff was rather firm. Indeed, I got a crunch when I bit into one. It had a smooth texture but not one that I'd call silky.

If you are asked to describe the flavor of chocolate to someone who's never tasted it, what would you say? This stuff had a modicum of bitterness, to my taste, but would probably be considered very bitter by a milk chocolate devotee. It had that lovely roasted, earthy, nutty flavor of chocolate. I also noted that the chocolate flavor seemed mellower than that of the 70% bar of Scharffen Berger that I had bought and sampled while laboring under my misremembered past. I just don't know enough about chocolate to describe why one bar that's theoretically more or less equivalent to another tastes rather differently.

I admit that eating this chocolate was really nice. Not only because the chocolate was so tasty, but I recalled sharing some Ghirardelli with my old flame. She was a bit like Mr. Miyagi to my Daniel LaRusso but, instead of "Wax on, wax off", it was "Don't chew it. Let it melt in your mouth."

********

This brings to a close my brief San Franciscan detour.

I cannot claim any expertise when it comes to San Francisco's problems. It seems like persistent remote work policies, opioid addiction, overly permissive laws, and lax law enforcement are some of the main culprits responsible for the problems the city faces today. Whatever the causes, I hope things turn around there soon.

On the Verge of Going Into Operation Crystallization

As I noted in my introductory post to this little San Francisco blogging tangent, I had a girlfriend who loved the city. She also loved jam bands, the Grateful Dead perhaps chief among them. This isn't to say she enjoyed this kind of music alone - she didn't - but I think songs like "China Cat Sunflower" held a special place in her heart.

I've been meaning to listen to a performance of the Dead at one of the Acid Tests for a while as part of a regimen of listening to famous, infamous, and/or historically important rock concerts. Shows such as when Dylan went electric, that night a wasted Grace Slick called her German audience Nazis, or Jimi Hendrix's last concert. These Grateful Dead performances at Ken Kesey's big LSD parties fit the bill as they not only document the early days of one of the most popular and successful rock bands, but also are a part of a larger cultural movement that had a profound impact on America.

And now that I am writing about various things San Francisco, it seemed like an opportune time to blast some early Dead into my earholes.

From what I gather, The Warlocks changed their name to the Grateful Dead just a few weeks before their performance at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on 8 January 1966. Wikipedia says this was the 5th Acid Test. I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test because my hippie girlfriend loved it but I cannot recall much of the book. That's drugs for ya, I guess. So I'm not sure if the book described anything that went down on this particular night but I would bet that it involved a lot of black lights, DayGlo paint, and a very trippy liquid light show.

I've wondered what the Dead's music was like at the Acid Tests and assumed they were playing these lengthy psychedelic jams - epic versions of a proto-"Dark Star", perhaps, where audience members danced to endlessly improvised guitar solos that penetrated their very essences or simply watched the tracers of their cigarette cherries create nicotine-laced mandalas in the air before them.

But that's not what they played. At this gig, anyway.

The recording we have seems to be a soundboard and contains 4 songs. Those are bookended by stage banter, most of which I assume is Ken Kesey, speaking to the audience about Neal Cassady, the captain taking everyone on Operation Cystalization, and other profundities of that moment. That's drugs for ya, I guess. I found it as part of a 6 CD set that collects (some of?) the Dead's Acid Test performances and related recordings.

After a couple minutes of chaos relating to microphones not working, the Dead launch into a cover of Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee". At just under 7 minutes, they have doubled the running time of the original but they've also slowed it down a bit and made it into more of a slow blues tune than Harpo's original with its insistent beat.

This is followed by a fun cover of The Coasters' "I'm A Hog For You, Baby". Mickey Hart hadn't joined the party yet so Bill Kreutzmann's playing stands out. Here he really propels the song forward and throws in some nice fills too. A Dead original comes next: "Caution (Do Not Step On Tracks)". This would appear on their second album, Anthem of the Sun, in the summer of '68. It's a speedy blues rock jam with Pigpen doing the vocals, I believe, and adding harmonica. Kreutzmann is manic here.

The set closes out with a slow blues rendition of Rev. Gary Davis' "Death Don't Have No Mercy". At 9 minutes, we get a lot of guitar soloing but also some organ that I don't think we heard much of in the preceding tunes.

This was definitely not the kind of stuff I figured the Dead would be playing at the Acid Tests. Very bluesy, lots of covers. The band sound like any number of late 60s blues rock groups here but I suppose that was their M.O. at that time. Still finding their feet. Kreutzmann is fantastic on this night with his drumming leading the charge. It seems that in later years the drumming took a back seat, it became cautious lest it trample on Jerry Garcia's delicate, fluttery guitar sound.

While there is a generic white boy blues rock thing going on here, the show has a wonderful energy to it and the songs are great.

Buy the lysergic ticket, take the ride.

If you're going to San Francisco, put an Anchor Steam in your glass

To the best of my recollection, my San Francisco-loving girlfriend did not introduce me to Anchor Steam. Instead, that was at the hands of a former roommate. But I do seem recall her imbibing the brew as part of her indulgence of all things San Francisco. It was part of the package, so to speak.

I've gotta say, this new label just doesn't compare with the old one. To the best of my knowledge, the label redesign was courtesy of the brewery's new corporate masters, Sapporo, who bought it in 2017. I guess I just have fond memories of drinking the stuff with the old label back in the mid-90s. At least they kept the shorter, stubbier bottle.

Steam beer, which I assume is also known as California common, is brewed with lager yeast. But, instead of letting the little fungi do the sugar eating/alcohol pooping routine at chillier temperatures as is their wont, they do it at the warmer temps that their ale brethren prefer. Legend has it that the term "steam beer" came from the days when Anchor would stow its wort in tubs on the roof of the brewery to let cool ocean breezes chill it down to a suitable temperature. The steam rising from these open containers gave us the name.

Anchor Steam is a beautiful clear amber. I got a nice, white head on top but it largely went away before I could get a snap. It smelled like caramel with something floral throw in the mix as well.

While there's a bit of a caramel taste, it is not particularly sweet. Perhaps a good, solid fizziness helps in this regard. This is joined by a light breadiness and a nice, firm dose of hops which have a spicy/herbal - almost minty - flavor to them.

This is a fine brew. It's got a clean, lagery malt flavor balanced by a generous dose of hops which provide a brisk counterpoint.

A few days before I began preparing this post, I learned that Anchor is pulling back and will only be available in California from here on out. Sad news. I don't drink Anchor beers that often but the occasional Anchor Steam has been a welcome treat for some time now. It seems that Anchor just hasn't been able to tack the stormy seas of the craft beer world. This American tradition sadly cannot hold its own against the IPA madness.

Well, it just means something extra special if/when I get to San Francisco.

(Continue with "On the Verge of Going Into Operation Crystallization".)

Frisco

Hardly a night goes by when I don't dream. Unfortunately, I rarely remember any of these nocturnal adventures. However, I had a dream recently of which I can recall one bit. It involved an old flame from many years go. Modesty forbids me to give an exact account of what transpired in the dream but I can say that it mirrored a scene in Infinity Pool.

Even though it was the mid-1990s, this former girlfriend was something of a hippie chick. She was a big fan of jam bands, loved nature, preferred to eat organic food, and wore patchouli oil. I suspect that, if she hadn't lived in Madison, she would have lived in San Francisco, or at least the Bay area.

At some point while we were dating, she took a trip out there and I think I still have the postcard she sent me. Haight-Ashbury was like her Santiago de Compostela, a pilgrimage site where she could indulge her fascination with and delight in late 60s hippie culture. It was where the Grateful Dead had lived just down the block from Jefferson Airplane and people made merry while tripping on LSD. There was a communal vibe so there was always a couch or floorspace to crash on. If things got bad, you could always find help at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic.

There may not have been much left of the hippie dream in the San Francisco of the mid-90s when my girlfriend made her trip, but it seems to be perhaps all but gone now.

Her appearance in my Cronenbergian dream happened around the same time I'd been reading and hearing about the San Francisco of today. At first it was a trickle of brief mentions that the city's downtown is now home to vast acres of empty office space as thousands of workers continue to work remotely never having returned after Covid lockdown. And then I encountered people like Michael Shellenberg bemoaning the large homeless encampments, public drug use, and all of the consequences of those things.

Even as I type, the news tells of a rolling gun battle there, that federal aid is forthcoming to help San Franciscans combat the fentanyl epidemic there, and of a downtown movie theater closing. I cannot personally vouch for the state of San Francisco but it looks pretty bleak from where I sit.

Raffish dreaming and woeful tidings from out west means I've got the Golden Gate City on my brain. Thusly I've decided to take a few detours to fondly remember my old girlfriend and the city before its current problems descended upon it.

(Begin with "If you're going to San Francisco, put an Anchor Steam in your glass".)

Hey Grandma