Areas of Unrest

10 October 1999 - Things That Are Hot

QOTD: "A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom." - Albert Camus, The Fall

Reading: the November 1999 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Listening to: Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu

My seething temper. It seems like everything went wrong on my trip to Boulder this week, between a very disappointing meal at a newish restaurant (Bacaro), a screwed-up hotel reservation, a particularly unproductive meeting, and a massive traffic jam getting back to the airport leading me to barely make my flight home. Once back, my temper barely stopped simmering as I fought my way through road construction to Orange County.

Dragons. It was important to get that flight so I could be home in time to drive out to Anaheim to have dinner with Martha and Doris. Doris is a storyteller who lives out that way; Martha is a storyteller from Phoenix and was taking her family to Disneyland. I hadn't met Martha in person before and my connection to her was from the days of Dragons, Legends and Lore (better known as DLL), a mud where we used to hang out and kill dragons together. We had fun trying to explain this to Doris as we waited for a table at Felix, a Cuban restaurant in Orange. Over an excellent dinner (mahi mahi in Caribbean sauce, with rice, spinach and plantains), we shared lots of gossip about storytelling and tellers, what workshops we'd gone to, what resources we love, what stories we can tell where, etc.. Spicy food, spicy conversation.

The sun. I stayed overnight in Orange County (at the hostel in Fullerton) because there was a Volksmarch in Old Town Orange on Saturday. I had hoped to get there early and avoid the heat of the day, which might have worked had I realized that Chapman Avenue in Fullerton was not the same as Chapman Avenue in Orange. The temperature had reached about 95 Fahrenheit before I finished the walk. Despite which, it was a nice walk, through an interesting area, with lots of antique shops and restored buildings. One thing I like about doing these events is that I get to places close to home that I'd never find otherwise. There was a mystery bookstore I'd never been in before, a Victorian bridal museum (which I didn't stop in, but might be worth exploring on another visit) and an old fashioned soda fountain, for example. All of this maybe 50 miles from home, but it might as well be on Mars for all anybody who lives in my neighborhood is likely to go there.

John Valentin's bat. I did get home in time to watch game 3 of the Division series. Wow! Even without Nomar Garciaparra, the Sox hit well and won. And then there was game 4 today. I sat in my living room slackjawed as they scored 23 runs, forcing a game 5 tomorrow. Of course, being a Red Sox fan of long standing, I expect them to find some way to break my heart, but maybe they can at least wait until the World Series. Please?

The thing that wasn't so hot was the coverage of the game on Fox. You are supposed to talk about what is happening on the field, not what happened two games ago, not what a fan who drifted off in the front row might be thinking about, not what a nice guy someone who is already out of the game is. I was most annoyed that they kept exclaiming over the fans staying through such a long game. That is the way it is supposed to be, damn it, and it isn't anything unusual at Fenway Park or at any other stadium where the fans actually care about the team. These guys have obviously been covering far too many Dodger games, where the so-called fans drift out in the seventh inning hoping to beat the traffic home. Real fans stay until the bitter end. And Red Sox fans more than most have every reason to know that it ain't over till it's over.