An Update from the Flat Lands
Crawling out from under the rock sometimes known as
Sprint, beneath which he's been hiding, Allan Grohe looks up into the strange, bright blueness
of the summer sky, blinks several times, and sends a tight squirt-burst from his laptop to the
CommCore satellite before heading back down below, muttering something about the Three Musketeers....
Sorry that I've been rather incommunicado of late. It really has been
about seven months . . . . I really have no excuse whatsoever, since Heather's in Beijing, and I'm not spending the summer at gaming conventions. Mostly I've been relaxing, catching up on movies and reading, planning my
D&D 3rd edition game, writing to Heather, playing racquetball, swimming, and otherwise lazing around.
I should be updating my web page, cleaning my apartment from footboard to ceiling fan, writing the poems and screenplays I've been mulling on, and finding a better job. Other than one new poem, and some possible work for
Wizards of the Coast, though, I've pretty much been slacking all summer (Chris, you should be proud :-)
I saw and liked The Patriot and
X-Men, in case you haven't all checked them out yet; rented the
Ninth Gate (merely OK, the novel
The Club Dumas was much, much better), Double Jeopardy (fun though predictable),
the Claire-Daines-gets-arrested-in-Singapore-for-smuggling-drugs movie (a waste of film),
The Messenger
(had to see it again, loved it in the theatre; the soundtrack is phenomenal, too),
Stigmata (which sparked a fair bit of my summer reading), and
Fight Club (easily the best movie I've seen this
year! Fight Club reminds me a lot of the comic book Milk
& Cheese). Been watching a little B5, too.
On the reading fronts, I just finished The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte, a wonderful occult/bibliophile mystery (which formed the basis for the dubious Ninth Gate film), and am reading a cool book on the African Rift Valley. I've wanted to go there for sometime, and began looking into it a little (very expensive: $7000/person, ugh!).
I'm also reading some books on early Christian/Jewish/Gnostic/etc. writings, a la
The Gospel of St. Thomas, the Khabbalah, Greek Mystery cults, etc., inspired by
Stigmata. Fun stuff. J. Michael Straczynsky
is writing a superhero comic book for Image called "Rising
Stars" which reminds me a little of Watchmen crossed with second/third season X-Files. Definitely worth checking out.
I'm also building a new D&D game, which has been a lot of fun. If you're even remotely interested in D&D anymore, check out the new
3rd edition when it's released
on August 10th (PHB; DMG and MM to follow in
September and October). It is phenomenal--a thorough rewrite and updating to the rules system, while maintaining the flavor and feel of D&D 1st edition.
I haven't been this excited about a game since I began
working on Blue Planet (which also has a 2nd edition coming out at Gen Con [shameless plug]).
I missed seeing Yes perform out here, since Heather was hospitalized for food poisoning at the time, but will catch
Sting tomorrow night with the
Mulkeys. I keep hoping that Porcupine Tree and Godspeed You Black Empereor will tour out this way, but no such luck.
On the positive news front, Rush is finally heading back into the studio soon; I'll be very curious to hear what the next album sounds like after all the tragedies in Neil's
life (which is true, as well as somewhat morbid).
Life for Heather and I is great. She's in China, studying 2nd year Chinese in an intensive language program (they speak only Chinese, except when calling home, 24x7).
She has been there a little more than a month, and will return on August 19th, so there a little less than a month left.
Missing her has been torturous, but I suppose there's some good in there somewhere, or would be if I actually worked more on some of my summer projects (my Catholic heritage showing through a little ;->
We'll be back in NJ again over Thanksgiving, from November 17-26, and hope to catch up with some of you then, since things didn't work out this last visit.
And, lastly, here are the results for GlamNames for Heather and I (since she's out of town and can't do this on her
own). From http://qix.lm.com/cgi-bin/fun/glamname.pl:
Allan Grohe = Poxy Feathersex
Allan Thomas Grohe = Poxy Bangsex
Allan Thomas Thomas Grohe Junior = Poxy Bangplanet
grodog = Typhoon Tinselpants
the grodog = Multiplex Featherspike
iscladoc = Maribou Shimmerpowder
iscladoc the dark = Dart Bangtwist
iscladoc the indigo = Dart Bangmullet
Heather Schunk = Effervescence Sugartwist
Heather Anne Schunk = Effervescence Mirrortwist
I have to say that I'm rather fond of Multiplex Featherspike as well as Dart Bangtwist. Poxy Bangplanet's interesting, too--kind of fits my fascination with The Ebola Virus (now known affectionately as Multiplex Glitterpowder).
All these names sound like characters out of MM
[Icy Silvertwist]'s Blood stories, too, in case the similarity hadn't hit anyone else: not the main storyline, but the pulp adventures of Pearl Peru
(a.k.a., Continental Dandypoison), etc.
And, just in case you thought I wouldn't look it up, Herman Melville's nickname is Effervescence Silversex.
To read further into my past (now known as The Time Before Heather Left
for China), read my November 1999 bio, August-Septemer
bio, the next-most-updated bio, the current-ish bio, less-current
bio, and older bio, then the yet-older life notes, followed by earlier,
still-earlier, and very-much-still
earlier versions of the same, in addition to my original
biography (also rather lame/silly) created when The Dreaming City
was launched way back in the Spring of '96.
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