On Introversion and Sci-fi Audiobook Excerpts, Now With Bad British Accent!

I decided to consider it a character-building exercise (pun unintended, but applicable) to act out and record a couple more snippets of my second book. It's an interesting sort of dichotomy I feel about these things. There's that introverted part of me-- the writer who discovers hours have melted away while imaginary worlds sprout up-- that understands the satisfaction is in the ideas and process itself. The something from nothing. The personal challenge.

Then there's the part of me that knows the real tangibility of a creation is not always in one's own head, but when it resides with others, too. As if it becomes More Real with each person it meets.

Now when I write, I read aloud all the time. It's a great tool for flow, for making dialogue sound natural and for figuring out what should be cut. It is also uniquely personal because it means committing characters to a sort of tone. Like illustration, it means offering some sort of guide to the reader of, "This is what I was thinking so-and-so was like."

So as I contemplated doing any readings, I initially hesitated. Did I really want my version of the reading-- my amateur acting, my interpretation and most of all, my bad British accent (for whatever reason, my alien character Rollie has always sounded English)-- out there guiding readers?

But here's the thing I decided. It's genuine. It was the best I can do for this moment. And as a writer, you can only keep those walls up so long before you can't see over them yourself. If I were taking them down, I might as well give it my all and go the whole way.

So at the top of the page, you'll find part one of chapter two. And here you will find the second part of that.

It's not perfect, but it was fun. And the view from over the wall is not bad at all.

The Legend of Fangy Pitchtail

The Jersey Devil has its pine barrens. The Loch Ness Monster has its Scottish aquatic tourism. And Fangy Pitchtail claims the weedy, second-tier, far-back of my residential yard.

Like ol' Nessie and Bigfoot, there is some reason to question our friend Fangy's existence. But where they have grainy non-credible portraiture, I have but one fleeting eyewitness moment to back it up.

I had always suspected there was something back there. When I first bought the property, the Way-Back of my tiny personal kingdom was a lush jungle of prickles, vines and National Geographic photographers.

So with the blind, zealous ambition of a new homeowner, I gathered machete and gloves and well-informed native guides and went about reforestation. The Nat Geo folks moved three backyards over to examine the fascinating suburban ecosystem of lawn bowling balls, bottle trees and other creative recycling. Things were looking up.

Soon, I had seven bags of creepers and stabbers and stick-to-your-socksers. But new information caused the glittering joy of a job-well-done to quickly lose its luster.

I could not stop focusing on a strange spherical hole, the size of a golfball, dug deep, deep, deep into the dirt.

It looked like something was living there. Something roughly the diameter of a very thick jungle vine.

Suddenly, I wondered if I was truly alone. And I wished I could go back to the days of solitude and a 75% less chance of slithering subterrainean guests.

Well, from then on I kept the place clear in only a half-hearted way. Just often enough so I wouldn't be labeled the local kook, the crazy lady with the Addams Family film set for her backyard.

When I did weed, I weeded while peering over my shoulder, questioning every rustle in the brush, every vine I grabbed...

A surprise grand entrance of a local cat lost me about three lives of my own, as my ragged nerves exploded in a personal landmine of limbs and heart palpitations.

Then there was the day a friend and I were chatting in the kitchen, and happened to peer out the back window into the yard.

It was only a moment, as these things tend to be. One second in time with no independent verification, no solid proof. But we both stopped dead in conversation as something large, long, sleek and black was spotted, just slipping over the top of the five-foot back fence.

"Er, maybe it was a cat," my friend told me, lying on cue as good friends tend to do in situations of discomforting backyard anaconda. "A black cat's tail. That's all. Just a cat."

"Sure," I agreed, knowing full-well a cat's tail does not taper like that. If that was a cat, it was a scaly mutant cat. That lived in a golf-ball-hole.

And that made the image of Fangy Pitchtail all the more, um, colorful.

So Spring is here, and the Way-Back yard needs to be weeded again. I know the probability is that my cold-blooded squatter is probably just a simple black snake, completely harmless and likely more afraid of the shrieking, edgy creature above than she is of it.

And perhaps Fangy isn't even there anymore. Perhaps he's relocated to the yard with the National Geographic photographers, helping document the local fauna and why anyone needs a wall artistically-constructed out of 100 empty Chlorox bottles.

But like those who doggedly pursue the fabled, the impossible, the mythic, I can't help but feel Fangy is still out there and waiting. Biding his time for that one big meeting. His ultimate chance to pose for a blurry shot on film.

The stuff of which kitschy souvenir t-shirts are made. I mean, a scaly mutant cat that lives in a golf-ball-hole could really make a killing.
Er, maybe I should rephrase.

Technical Meh

I know now that I'm not the only one. In fact, I have proof.

My friend Kathy of The Junk Drawer wrote recently she plans to say "Sayonara" to her uber-surround-sound-indoor-personal-home-multiplex the moment her husband, Dave, snuffs it. Such is her increasing animosity to the beast.

(The multiplex, I mean. Not Dave. She likes Dave.)

My own relationship with my home entertainment system is thus:

Getting the bare minimum hooked up and working properly in the first place has been a Light-Beaming-From-the-Heavens-Chorus-of-Fat-Kids-With-Wings-and-Harps-Flapping-Around Miracle. One not to be screwed with.

Adding or enhancing this system is absolutely out of the question.

Yes, I admit it. I am perfectly content having reached a state of Technical Meh.

I have worked it out so I know where the cables go for the current items I own. No more, no less. This alone had been finalized through lengthy consultation with a friend, a dad, a Radio Shack employee and pinpointed through a series of pencil drawings and weeping phone calls.

When I have moved domiciles, or exchanged dead home entertainment technologies for happy live ones, the cables are all marked with careful, specifically-coded systems so detailed and mysterious, Tom Hanks and Dan Brown are doing a book-to-feature movie about them.

This system gets threatened about once every three years, as my dad comes to visit for Christmas.

He sees that I have three remotes. One for the TV. One for the cable. And one for the video player. And he feels that in his deep and abiding Dad Knowledge, he can streamline this for me into a single Omniscient Remote.

But while that idea is a lovely fairy tale we might enjoy pondering in dappled garden glens, I do not, in fact, want One Remote to Rule Them All.

I like my Triumvirate of small black buttoned boxes. What the Pop learns after a few hours of research on the matter is that my technolgy currently teeters on the precipice of Ultimate Doom.

One subtle change could render the entire system into electronic paper weights.

These days, when the spirit moves him to reach for remotes with renewed vigor at the challenge, I slap his hand and tuck a mug of egg nog in it.

But that's family for ya, isn't it? Always trying to push your buttons.

Thou Shalt Not Curseth in Thy Backyard

Nervous as chihuahuas... That's how I'd describe my best friend, Josette, and I in grade school.

Both of us were only children who suffered from the microscopic examination and evaluation of our daily existence.

Me, I was nervous about grades and piano lessons and being three years younger than everyone else in my Reading class and braces and glasses and scoliosis and gym class and saying the wrong thing and getting beat up on the playground and having to buy all my clothes from thrift stores.

So, nothing much, really.

Poor Josette spent a lot of quality time in Sunday school classes so she had been convinced that even though she was a good student, a kind daughter and an overall nice person, she was still somehow teetering on the precipice of Hell.

I bring this up because Josette and I are great friends to this day, and she'll be coming to hang out with me over the Fourth of July weekend. Undoubtedly, we will get to laughing about our very biggest, most stupid fear during this time of our lives-- one that prompted many a cold sweat and sleepless night...

That our parents would find out we had been swearing in Josette's backyard.

It's absurd now, of course. I mean, just during the average evening commute I have been known to say things that salty longshoremen would deem colorful and piquant. But at the time, the issue was terrifying, all-encompassing and destined to lose me phone and TV privileges until possibly high school graduation.

Plus, you know, Josette had that whole Eternal Damnation thing to deal with.

The fact is, that no swearing ever even took place in Josette's backyard. In retrospect, I kind of wish it had. Because frankly, my adult mind has a hard time coming up with a scenario where we'd actively have gone out and practiced our blaspheming techniques, in the backyard, front yard or anywhere else.

If anywhere, possibly, a good f-bomb could have been dropped over the mushy olive-green three-bean salad in the lunchroom, the inevitable and mandatory side-dish to the glorious pizza, a side which we all threw away the moment we got to our tables.

But even so, neither of us really had that much inner rage.

But one of our classmates-- we'll call him Arnold Kosninsky-- HE started this rumor about our honing our powers of obscenity in the outdoor location.

Arnold Kosninsky was a small boy comprised mostly of nose. Metaphorically, I'd say that was an accurate description of his personality, too. Where he would have become corned beef hash in any physical confrontation, he instead used words to harass his fellow students, rooting out their emotional weaknesses and preying upon them like a mini Hannibal Lecter with a perpetual sinus condition and a bowl-shaped haircut.

For Josette and I, our weakness was the desire to keep neatly under the radar in the dynamics of Kiddom. Arnold made that impossible.

For a good two years, Josette and I trembled at the thought of the Omnipotent Parent Grapevine and how eventually, word would spread of these slanderous misdemeanors to the wrong people. Josie feared the flames of perpetual hellfire. I just really wanted to continue to see the A-team on Tuesdays.

Our highly-intellectual confrontations with The Enemy would go like this:

Arnold: I saw you guys out swearing in Josette's backyard. I'm telling your parents.

Me: You did not. When?

Arnold: I did, too. And you know when.

Josette getting cagey: Where do I live then? If you saw us, you'd know where I live.

Arnold: I know where you live. I don't have to tell you. And I'm telling your parents.

Two years of this. And Josette and I really believed that Arnold not only knew where Josie lived, but that he had enough solid evidence to blackmail us.

I often wonder what Arnold is doing now. Last I'd heard, Josette had seen him at the local mall, trying to get people to take surveys. (I kid you not.) I imagine this job would appeal to his intrusive nature. He could learn all about innocent strangers. Probe their buying habits and deep, personal concerns. And then call them up for follow-ups...

"I saw you buying Rogaine in the grocery store. How would your girlfriend feel if she knew you were balding?"

He could probably make some big bucks that way.

Halleluja.

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Magic Fingers Ma and the Quest for the Mega Blender

"Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June in a Kenworth pulling logs... Cab-over Pete with a reefer on, and a Jimmy hauling hogs..."

Ah, the well-metered poetry of "Convoy"! How I remember C.W. McCall singing those words out through my parents' crackling AM radio. Dad was never able to tune in his usual classical music on our vacations, so "Convoy" was a sure sign of summer. A sign of the long, wonderful drive from Northern New Jersey down to Cape May in the white-and-blue Dodge Family Wagon.

The Family Wagon... I did love that vehicle.

Thinking back now, that camper was likely the precursor for the Transformers. Everything in it became something else. The two bench rows of seats flipped and spun to become a dining booth... Add a few pieces stowed inside the seats-- and voila!-- a kitchen table. Curtains snapped into place for privacy. And me-- a five-year-old, more flexible me--well, I stowed myself away in the rafters each night in a loft bed that pulled out to overlook the grandeur that was portable vacation-a-rama.

The camper had gas burners-- nothing like Mom's normal, coffee-toned electric stove back home. A propane smell filled the air, which signaled bacon, fried in an actual pan instead of by that new microwave technology. Real bacon, too, not the assembled bacon wannabe of Sizzlean that Mom often tried to slip by us. It crunched and then melted in the mouth, salty and sweet.

I was also allowed a particular and usually-forbidden delicacy during this time: tiny boxes of sugary cereals. Froot Loops, Coco Krispies and Apple Jacks were my biggest temptations-- ones that every other week of the year-- like Pixie Stix-- meant inevitable death. (And from the way my mother normally spoke about them, that cereal-induced death could be as early as age 10.)

The grocery shopping alone was a week of Camping Nirvana in Kidville.

But Cape May promised so much more than gas-stove bacon and verboten sugar-death cereal. Cape May was the location of forty finely-aligned lanes of home-grown Jersey ski-ball... The very lanes which one particular summer empowered my mom's quest to win the mother of all blenders.

After checking into the campground, finding a suitable spot, and hanging up the handmade sign that staked our claim from future invaders-- one small step for the Thorson clan, one giant step for cheap lodging-- we headed ocean-side, to the Promenade.

The boardwalk there and I, we had a love-hate relationship at this time. I reveled in the chinging bells and music of the arcade... Thrilled to the prospect of getting fresh Archie comics at the newsstand... And savored the rich, heavy aroma that poured from Morrows Nut House...

But I was eternally suspicious of the cracks between the boards that made up the walk itself.

It seemed to me, being able to peer down between my small, flip-flopped feet and through the planks to the waves bursting below, that anyone my size was an absolute goner. Having watched enough Warner Brothers cartoons, I felt I had a sound grasp of physics, and knew deep in my heart I would pour through the boards of the boardwalk into the ocean below. Lost forever.

For the longest time my parents had no idea what the problem was. But to me, every trip to the boardwalk involved elaborate weeping over my impending separation from my family (and my watery grave in Davy Jones' locker), followed by a terror-stricken dash into the safer concrete floor of the arcade.

But oh, the arcade! It was like Dorothy stepping from grim, black-and-white Kansas into glorious technicolor Oz. Shining quarters sat in stacks under great plastic bubbles, just waiting for a single coin to topple them into winnings. Stuffed Snoopys and tiny glass animals hoped to be snatched by skill, luck and silver claws. Pinball games rattled. Lights flashed. Allowances were won and lost.

And there, along the prize counter, up on one of the shelves, that is when my mother laid eyes on it. The high-powered six-speed blender with multiple-chopping blades in Colonial Harvest Orange... A must-have for frothy summer beverages and a wide variety of guest-pleasing dips.

"It's perfect! And it's the same shade of orange as the kitchen!"

I didn't mention it, but it also matched the livingroom, diningroom, den, entryway and upstairs bathroom. Mom was a devout supporter of the Colonial harvest.

"It's 2,000 tickets," my father said reading the sign below it.

I imagine the man could just SEE the quarters from his paycheck rolling away. Dad has never been very fond of spending money on unnecessary things like... say... lunch, even. I mean, this is a man whose motto is, "Seven Ritz crackers and that's all you need." He's very specific about it, too. Not six, not eight. Seven. Unless, of course, someone else is buying.

So, the idea of trying to earn 2,000 tickets for anything he wouldn't directly be using himself had to have almost given him chest pains.

"Don't they have these in the store?"

"Well, not like this," said my mother, eyes aglow. "This one is in Colonial Harvest Orange."

"So you mentioned."

And thus it was determined. Over the course of the week, we would earn enough tickets for Mom to take home that Colonial Harvest Orange beauty. Oh, the dips she envisioned. Oh, the patés, and other French words I couldn't spell because I was hooked on phonics.

So, during the day, we would spend our time in the shining sun of the beach...

Or picking through the Cape May diamonds (these polished quartz stones that washed on the shore because of a quarry all the way in Delaware)...

Or visiting the lighthouse...

Or strolling through antique shops...

Or convincing me that the Day of The Triffids film I saw on television did NOT mean that the trees of the campground were going to uproot themselves and eat us alive...

(Now that I think about it, there seemed to be just peril around every corner to my five-year -old self...)

This is how we spent our days. But our evenings -- oh, our evenings! They were spent on the quest for the Holy Grail of Countertop Appliances. Playing ski-ball.

Mom was a dynamo with a ski-ball. Petite and with a good arm, Mom's underhand throw rivaled the greatest Ski-ball champions of the day. She had a real technique, Mom did. A one-kneed dip timed perfectly with her swing, and a smooth release that let that ball roll straight to that sweet 50-point ring.

Me, well, it wasn't more than a round or so into our endeavor that it became clear I was a serious liability for my team. It was another case of misunderstood physics for me, and no amount of instruction was going to turn me into a big ticket-winner.

Quarters went through me like Yoo-hoo.

So this newbie ski-baller was reassigned to the spectator spot, gnawing on red licorice whips from the Nut House and cheering them on from the peanut gallery.

Night after night, my parents worked to rack up the tickets. They tried some other games there-- catapulting coins to shower other coins off ledges-- but after some experimentation, Dad proclaimed the games were rigged.

So back to the Ski-Ball they went, deft... devoted... determined.

After a few days, my mother was developing ski-ballers wrist and knee, probably some little-discussed version of carpal tunnel. I admit, I was starting to lose both my appreciation for the sport myself, and I'd already re-read Veronica's shameless ploys for Archie's attention a hundred times as I waited.

But as with all vacation, the days dissolved like Pop Rocks... Sweet, surprising, and gone too soon. My mind was already focused on the drive home and the possibility of a once-a-year hot-dog from Stewart's Root Beer Stand. I could taste that roasted, garlicy hot dog, and the smooth creamy root beer-- a delicious combination destined to make me good and queasy about five miles on down the road.

And Mom began the final count of the tickets. She had a system, counting in twos for speed. "488, 490, 492..." Five-hundred. She'd made about 500 tickets, not enough to take home that shining orange facilitator of avant-garde cuisine.

How could you work so hard for something, and not get even close, we wondered? Perhaps Dad was right. Perhaps it was rigged.

So my parents let me choose some little glass poodles from the display case... A mother poodle with two poodle puppies on a chain. Then they gave the rest of their tickets to some other family.

The wife had a certain look in her eye that was familiar. On the top shelf, there was this Crock-Pot in California Avocado that she just couldn't live without.

I walked the planks a final time, and we made our way back to the Family Wagon. I wondered vaguely whether those French poodles knew anything about paté.


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Humor-bloggers get all 100s in ski-ball. Where were they when we needed them?

Stealth Mom and the Mayonnaise Infiltration of 82

Home cooking. The words conjure up images of Mom and apple pie. But for some, beneath the warm memories of home and hearth there also lurks a darker underbelly. One of coercion, deceit, betrayal... and condiments.

Yes, today, my friends, I will share with you how my childhood dining was regularly infiltrated by the Stealth Mom-- who I've come to suspect was actually a secret agent for the United Mayonnaise and Sour Cream Council.

My mother, I should begin by explaining, was a very good cook and also a pretty darned honest person all around. And it's important I begin the story like this, because you need to fully understand the confusing dichotomy that Dad and I experienced under her clever double-agent manipulations.

On one hand, you had the loving mom and wife who planned nutritious meals, made fantastic beef barley soup, amazing chili, and drool-worthy baked goods... The mom who did this uncomplainingly, and to whom Dad and I both sincerely owe our gratitude....

And then on the other hand, you had the evil mastermind who plotted to invade our tastebuds and gastrointestinal systems with the handful of deeply detested non-nutrive elements like mayonnaise and sour cream (me), and onions and mushrooms (Dad), in an effort to expand our personal horizons.

See, Mom herself disliked very few foods-- except for lima beans which gave her a dangerous allergic reaction that made her puff up a like an inflatable lawn ornament at Christmas. (The aversion being, then, kinda understandable.)

So as a result of Mom's great love of all that was culinary, she found it simply impossible to believe that my dad or I truly didn't like a particular flavor or texture. She felt it wasn't so much the taste we were reacting to, as in... oh, I don't know... the bad publicity or something.... Food we viewed unjustly as having a shady reputation... Martyred by prejudice...

And so quietly, subtly, she made it her personal quest to prove us wrong.

This was done by slipping disliked ingredients into a meal with the sly ingenuity of a 15th century usurper to the English throne on a poisoning campaign. I mean, when it came to what was in his din-din, honestly, Edward V had to watch his back less than my father and I did.

The irony was that Dad and I could also totally taste-- and often see-- what was lurking in the food.

"Does this tuna have mayonnaise on it?" I'd ask, after a bite of the unpleasant tang, the slick texture, and a survey of the suspicious white coating that no fish in its right mind would find sea-worthy.

"Er, no," said my otherwise honest maternal archetype. "No, just don't worry about it." Big smile. "Have your sandwich. The bread's getting soggy."

But I was not so easily dissuaded. "I really think there's mayonnaise on here," I'd insist, the Mayometer in my brain issuing great whoops of "WARNING WARNING WARNING-- ABORT-- ABORT-- STEP AWAY FROM THE SANDWICH!"-- that there was a contaminated substance lurking.

"Oh, that..." She'd give a casual wave of the hand. "That's just the oil from the way it was packed. Don't give it a second thought. Eat up."

I'd eye the sandwich suspiciously, drilling down with my optical Anti-Condiment Detector and picking up distinct mayonnaise residue through its microscopic lens. "I don't know, Mom... It doesn't look anything like oil. It really looks like--"

"Oh, just eat it already!" she'd finally say, exasperated. And adding, with a narrow expression, "You can't taste the mayonnaise, anyway."

That was the giveaway: "you can't taste the mayonnaise, anyway." Which is probably why she didn't get into, say, being a double agent for American national security during the Cold War or anything because, she didn't have her Believable Denial down quite solidly enough.

They would have worn her down too soon.

Well, recently, in discussing old recipes, I've learned that others, too, grew up having to form proper defenses against their own personal Stealth Moms. In fact, such was the popularity of this concept during my formative years and before, that there apparently were cookbooks encouraging mothers to work their mega-mom meal mojo on tricking husbands and young'uns into eating the inedible. So it wasn't just an isolated incident. My mom was part of a movement!

And now I understand that Jessica Seinfeld-- Jerry "No Soup For You" Seinfeld's wife-- has a cookbook out called Deceptively Delicious, and she's marketing the Stealth Mom to a whole new generation.

As an adult, I can certainly appreciate the need to ensure your loved ones get their proper nutrition...

But as a child who lived under the Covert Mayonnaise Infiltration of the 80s, I can only find myself shrieking, "Beware, my little friends! The Stealth Mom is on the prowl... And she has ways of making you eat!"

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Do you have memories of mealtime trauma? Were you the child of a Stealth Mom? Of Cabbages and Kings would love to hear from you!

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I hear they respect a person's right not to like mayonnaise over at Humor-blogs.