L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Drabble Babble

A Drabble is a story of exactly 100 words. Laurence Simon (aka Crap Mariner) writes and podcasts one every single day here, but on Saturdays he turns it over to his listeners for a weekly showdown. There’s a different theme each week, selected by the previous week’s winner. Here are my last six entries:

The Voice - listen

Alan felt the 15-foot tall papier mache wizard head begin to tip dangerously. Everything had gone so well at dress rehearsal. He’d spent hours learning to manipulate the rods and strings that controlled the wizard’s eyes and mouth while speaking his lines into a mic. The mic was the best part: a special filter gave him The Voice - deep, resonant and superbly wizardy. But now it was opening night of The Wizard of Oz. The Redmond High School theatre was filled to capacity and disaster loomed. The head teetered precariously. Munchkins scrambled for cover.

“OH CRAP!” the voice boomed.

Olive Loaf - listen

Bill leaned forward in his chair, trying to focus on the PowerPoint presentation, but the charts, graphs and bulleted lists blurred as if obscured by billowing clouds of flour.

The monolithic high-tech empire he’d built meant nothing to him. Secretly, he’d always wanted to be a baker - knead dough in his hands; make crust instead of code.

Nobody knew.

Graphs morphed into racks of hot baguettes. Pie charts turned into, well, pies. Even bullets on lists made him dream of olives dotting a fragrant loaf.

He stood up and walked out as they watched him go, openmouthed.

Nobody knew.

Breaking & Entering - listen

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen

I’ve spent nearly my whole life keeping up the façade: Perfect woman, perfect family, perfect life. Terrified to reveal the truth. I’d be shunned, despised, ridiculed.

Of course you can’t keep it up forever. The first cracks are tiny, almost invisible. But they spread and before you know it, your life is a network of shards held together by fear.

Now that it’s all broken in pieces at my feet, I don’t know why I resisted so long. The darkness has gone, replaced by brilliant light.

Fuzzy Dice - listen

The phone rang.

“Now what?” thought Alma.

An incident at school. Could she come meet her son in the principal’s office right away?

Alma sighed. She had this fantasy of serving perfect gourmet meals to her smiling family around the dining room table. But whenever she started, there was some interruption. She reluctantly dumped the neatly diced cubes of carrots and onions into a Tupperware container and grabbed her car keys.

That was Monday. Tuesday night was dentist appointments. Wednesday, band practice. Thursday she worked late. Finally, on Friday she pulled out the Tupperware container and peered inside: fuzzy dice.

Light - listen

She noticed it as soon as she got up: she was lighter. Not thinner, but somehow less affected by gravity. Her feet hardly touched the carpet as she drifted downstairs. TV Newscasters were grim: global warming, pollution, the end of the world.

She grew lighter as the day went on. By evening she had to hook her toes under the edge of the cabinet to stay low enough to cook dinner.

Later, the moon shone bright in the window. She opened it and floated up into the icy night. Around her countless other shapes were rising. Spores seeking fertile soil.

Asylum - listen

“Joe, I swear it was the strangest thing. I was in the middle of a lecture and suddenly a wild-eyed woman in a straightjacket materialized out of thin air.”

“Quite a few ghosts haunt this university.”

“Ghosts?”

“It’s true . This place used to be a state mental hospital. Didn’t you know? The Eagles wrote ‘Hotel California’ about it.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that.”

“So many of the inmates who died here hang around that the university even has an admissions policy for them.”

“Admissions policies for ghosts?”

“Yeah: you can audit any class you like but you can never leave.”

See more like that one:

• My Life at First Try
• Lies, Damn Lies and Publishing
• Deranged Atheist Sock Monkey
• Supershort
• Flasher

If they come, feed them for chrissakes

We’ve driven, oh, about two and a half hours to play at your wedding. The instructions included phrases such as “get to the ferry at least a forty-five minutes early”, “turn off the paved road” and “watch for a fence post on the left with a boot on it.” Negotiations with the neighbors to let us to bring a microphone onto the property surpassed the Kyoto treaty, but we’ll be allowed to plug in as long as the sound is not audible from 50 paces away and we stop by 7 pm. The remote farm you’ve chosen to celebrate your special day is charming and the slanted patch of gravel and mud by the creek is the perfect place to set up our gear. Let the festivities begin!

It is standard procedure to feed the band at some point. We’re stuck there for a good four hours, not counting transportation time and we can’t exactly nip around to the 7-11 during a break. We don’t expect special treatment. We don’t need to eat your $150 a plate catered dinners. It’s nice, but a plate of sandwiches in the kitchen will do. And beer. Thank you kindly.

Usually people are generous and there’s plenty of whatever to go around. But two events in the past year were remarkable for opposite reasons.

The first was a wedding so remote Google Maps just said “Here be Dragons.” The grounds included campsites and trenching tools for the guests. It was festive however, with flocks of little moppets dressed as fairies flitting about on the grass. But there was no food for the band. None. We asked. Eventually, a sympathetic caterer snuck out one plate of sesame noodles. For five people. If Sue hadn’t had a can of peanuts in the car we might have been reduced to chewing cable insulation.

Maybe it’s my Jewish upbringing. Maybe it’s that most of the private events we play are for eastern European families. But the thought of anyone being hungry at a wedding is just… inconceivable. We’re still shaking our heads.

The second event was last weekend on a local island. Early in the evening, while we were setting up and waiting to play, waiters circulated with trays of appetizers and they made sure to put the band on their rounds. Drinks were plentiful. At the end of the first set we were told to go to the kitchen for dinner. Even better! The chef served us plates of crisp salmon cakes and quinoa salad with sugar snap peas, which we took to a small table near the stage to eat. The royal treatment!

We started the second set, expecting fewer dancers on the floor as the waiters brought dinner to the guests. But no dinner appeared and guests soon began to exit. Perhaps seeking insulation to chew on. By the end of the set the room was nearly empty and we realized that for some reason, they’d chosen to dinner the band but not the guests!

Maybe times are tough. Maybe the attendees were all islanders happy to have actual mainland people come out to add a little spice to the quiet life. Sure the guests had their canapes. But to the salmon cakes were suddenly heavy in my stomach. The second situation was as uncomfortable as the first.

We didn’t have a caterer at our own wedding. My family and I spent days cooking to save money. But by god, everybody went home stuffed. Everybody. Anything else is just… inconceivable.

Amended to clarify: The second event was a fundraiser, so of course their budget was restricted. I just wish they hadn’t chosen to feed us more than they fed the guests. We would have been fine with appetisers.

See more like that one:

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• Mixed Reality Music
• Shake it
• Mr. ESP
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Light the Fucking Candles

Here’s a little something to get you all cranky and riled up that someone’s putting up Christmas and Chanukah decorations and it’s not even Halloween yet! What is with these people?

It’s never too early for a little holiday angst, right?

Light the Fucking Candles - MP3 audio file
© 2004 Eva Moon

One holiday would be enough
To make the season really tough
We’re a fucked up family
Chanukah by the Christmas tree

Holiday insanityIs gonna be the death of me
You don’t know how glad I’d be
If Rudolph was a Maccabee

Come on and
Light the fucking candles
Light the fucking candles
Light the fucking candles
One More Time

Fry the latkes, bake the ham
Ask me if I give a damn
Santa loosen up your belt
You ate too much chocolate gelt

Come on and
Light the fucking candles
Light the fucking candles
Light the fucking candles
One More Time

Let the nightmare end at last
Chanukah and Christmas past
Shove it all ‘til later
The Easter Bunny comes for seder

Come on and
Light the fucking candles
Light the fucking candles
Light the fucking candles
One More Time

Mike Gordon: Bass & backing vocals; Ferko Saxmanov: tambourine & backing
vocals; Zushka: drums. Special thanks to Mark Skipper of the Damien
Project for providing the great lead guitar for this song and to Adam Kittle at Inversion
Studio for additional guitar, engineering and mixing. Video illustrations and production by Eva Moon.

Elektrifying

Here’s the twitter version:

Elektra in 140 chars: Agamemnon axed by faithless wife. Daughter Elektra gets brother Orestes to kill mom. Dances herself to death. Curtain.

The opera went on somewhat longer.

Elektra opens Saturday at the Seattle Opera. I experienced a dress rehearsal last night, thanks to the odd circumstance of being hired as a “Greek theatrical troupe” for an opera benefit party next Thursday. I hope they are not disappointed, because if the opera itself is any indication the Greeks are an unforgiving lot.

Elektra raves, rants, seethes, screeches, dances and ultimately dies in one long, relentless hour and forty minute act and she really has no one to blame but herself. I kept wishing someone would toss the girl a Prozac.

The staging is moody, the music lush and brooding. It’s a dark stone courtyard, perpetually night washed in dim blue light. Oddly, all the real action happens off stage. The whole thing is nothing but monologuing. My mind began to wander.

I imagined Sarah Palin as Elektra:

The office of the Governor in Alaska is the scene of the drama. Since discovering her brother-in-law has axed his marriage to her sister, Saraktra lives only with the thought of vengeance. She exists like a wild beast, banished from society, a butt of ridicule to the aides, a horror to all, only desirous of the blood of her brother-in-law in atonement for that of her sister. The man has no rest. Fear haunts him.

Saraktra’s sister is entirely unlike her. So frightfully do her dreams torment her that she comes to Saraktra to beg her to give up her obsession so they can both move on and put it behind them. Saraktra does not comfort her. Her sister then mocks her with the news that Orestes Monagan, the public safety commissioner she oppointed is gone. This is a terrible blow for Saraktra, who had hoped that Orestes would return and wreak vengeance on the evil brother in law. Saraktra determines to complete it alone. She digs up her cell phone and unleashes an impassioned campaign.

But the messages were false, she claims when confronted with her actions. The press, who now enters the scene, at first cannot believe that the half-demented woman is the governor of Alaska. But the brother in law is ultimately axed. Saraktra, her thirst for vengeance satisfied, under the spell of a blood-madness, dances, beginning weirdly, increasing to frenzy, and ending in her selection for the McCain ticket.

Curtain.

Soup Weather II

I promise this will not turn into a food blog. But one good soup deserves another and this is a recipe that’s been simmering in the family since the original appeared in the Los Angeles Times at least a quarter century ago. As with all my recipes, it is substantially transmogrified from the source. I can’t help it. When I decided to make paella, I read a dozen recipes, closed the books and made my own impressionistic gestalt paella. Tonight’s soup is a gestalt of cioppino, but happily can be made almost entirely from ingredients on hand in the space of about 20 minutes.

Eva’s Mediterranean Seafood Soup

Chop an onion and a bunch of garlic and saute in a big pot in a splash of good olive oil. When it’s going good, add a bay leaf, a couple of whole dried red chilies, thyme, basil, salt and saffron.

A word about saffron. For god’s sake, just use the stuff. There’s no substitute. People talk about in hushed tones it as if it were fairies’ toes or moon rocks. Sure it’s expensive, but how much do you need? Shop around. I buy a little vial like this from a spice market across the street from Pike Street Market for $5. If I used a quarter of it (which I don’t) it would be a dollar and change. A pot of soup serves 5-6 people. Are you going to tell me your friends aren’t worth 25 cents worth of saffron? Go hog wild. Put in a half teaspoon full.

Stir that up for a bit and then pour in about a quart of stock. I used a box of seafood stock I picked up at the market, but part chicken stock / part clam juice works just fine. Chop in a couple of tomatoes (or add a can of diced if you don’t have fresh). Simmer 5 minutes. Then add some seafood - a chunk of some kind of firm, white fish and a couple handfuls of shrimp are things you can keep in the freezer. Tonight, I also added clams and mussels. Simmer a few more minutes and then toss in sliced zucchini. Another five and it’s ready to serve.

For those of you who complain that I don’t specify quantities, try these: 1 cup, .75 lbs, 16, half a teaspoon, 3 medium or 2 large.

Now go and trust your instincts.

Photos by Eva Moon.

See more like that one:

• Chopping List
• The Magi had it easy...
• Day 15: Which Way to the Egress?
• Day 13: Juice of Affliction, Chili of Salvation
• Day 11: The Wall

Lies, Damn Lies and Publishing

Some time ago I came across a website of one sentence true stories.  I can’t remember exactly how long ago this was, but let’s call it a year. So, a year ago I submitted a story and promptly forgot about it. Yesterday I received notice that my story had been accepted for publication.

This is not promising news for someone writing a novel. Let’s do the math. My story is 27 words long and took a year to wend its way through the publishing process. That is nearly two weeks per word. At that rate, it will take approximately 370 years to get my novel published.

Guides and blogs for aspiring writers are rife with depressing statistics mostly having to do with the tiny nose hair your manuscript represents in the agent’s or publisher’s elephantine slush pile. By far, my favorite blog on the subject is Miss Snark, Literary Agent. An amusing read even if you’re not in the biz.

It’s possible to read too much advice. We find ourselves writing to an imaginary agent sometimes rather than to a reading audience. If you’re to have any chance at all, they shriek, the first five pages are critical. You must suck the agent into the story, knock her socks off, have her panting to know what’s on page six. We cut a good ten pages of exposition so that we could squeeze the entire opening premise of the book into the first few pages. Did we sell our artistic souls?

I hate to admit it, but it’s better now.

Still, I’m reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck right now and I don’t think he’d fare too well in the mammoth slush pile wars. What advice might a modern editor give to improve his chances of catching a publisher’s eye?

Dear Mr. Steinbeck,

Thank you for sending us your manuscript. The writing is excellent, but I’m afraid it’s not for us. The first entire chapter is devoted to the history of the Salinas Valley. Modern readers expect to be engaged from the first line. Perhaps if you opened with some exciting action, such as Cathy’s beating at the hands of Mr. Edwards it would draw the reader into the story more immediately. You can always fill in backstory later on. I hope you will take these suggestions in the spirit in which they were given. Best of luck in your future writing endeavors.

Ms. Agent

Is it too soon to practice being bitter?

See more like that one:

• My Life at First Try
• Drabble Babble
• Deranged Atheist Sock Monkey
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Play Freebird!

I’m trying to think how to write this without sounding like a total fossil.

Up until just the other day, I had never played Guitar Hero or Rock Band. My children are addicts. My son won a Wii playing Guitar Hero at PAX last year. Surely a proud moment for any parent. But I remained aloof. Snooty even. Being a real musician and all.

In an odd confluence of events, these two games have led to an entire generation of teenagers who know all the songs I heard in college. Who buy Dire Straights CDs. Who can discuss the nuances of Joe Perry’s guitar solos. Who not only know who Bon Jovi is, but can tolerate his music. They want to talk about these things, but I lived through the 80s once. Why would I subject myself to it again? Whatever happened to the generation gap? Can we get it back?

I’m good at sticking to my guns. In 15 years of playing accordion I have never once played a polka. You can put that on my grave. Is there an Accordion Hero game? (Apparently there is, but alas, the whole rep is polkas.) Alas, sometimes enough influences converge to batter down even the most stubborn resistance:

First off, it looks fun, in a Tetris-y sort of way. You have to see the patterns and match them up. There’s something appealing about games like these that I think taps into one’s inner housewife - wanting to tame chaos and make things tidy.

Second, I am a musician. It shouldn’t be all that hard, right? I even get to pick out my hot rocker babe avatar. On the other hand, I am a musician, so what excuse would I have if I totally sucked at the game?

Third, an irresistible opportunity dropped into my lap (or rather pried the top off my head). Last weekend I worked at our first annual Redmond Digital Arts Festival and my bailiwick was the Digital Lounge. Which happened to contain a set up of the brand spankin’ new Rock Band 2 with a 14×11 foot screen and teeth-rattling pro sound system. I was stuck with it for over twelve hours.

Lastly, I know my kids would be insanely jealous. (And they were!)

So let me give you the old fossil report on Rock Band 2.

I tried every station at least once. None of them is even close to playing actual music. The most musical aspect of it is that if you focus on the rhythm and let that carry you, you’ll do better. The drums were probably the closest to feeling like you’re actually playing, since you do hit the pads with actual sticks. There’s even a foot pedal. I didn’t suck on easy. We played “White Wedding” by Billy Idol (the choice of a 15 year old). Next I played bass. That was probably the easiest. I only felt like a cringing, stumbling half-wit. If you’ve never played it, the controller looks like a guitar, but it’s just a fancy box for buttons. You could play the game on your PC keyboard. (though it wouldn’t be as fun.) Next was guitar - same controller as bass, harder parts. I suck.

I was most interested in the vocal role. Since singing is mostly what I do, I figured I’d REALLY suck. And I wasn’t entirely wrong about that. The problem for real singers is, the game only scores you for accuracy. You don’t get any points at all for originality or interpretation. In fact, you’re dinged for it. Big Brother wants you to toe the party line. I knew it wouldn’t be like singing but I was surprised at HOW MUCH not like singing it was. Your voice is just another controller: push the right button at the right time or lose the point.

(On a side note I’ll come back to another time, a friend has created a way to make a Guitar Hero controller out of a real guitar. I’m not sure if that is a move towards greater good or evil in the world.)

Overall, I’d say it’s fun and potentially addicting. My avatar, Heather Moonbeam, was hot hot hot. It IS Tetris-y. It ISN’T music-y, but that’s ok. I have music. I’d make different choices in regard to repertoire, but my musical tastes are proven non-money-makers.

Best of all, I totally pwned my kids.

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Soup Weather

I rarely blog about recipes, but this is a request. I’ve been making pozole for ahem-ty years and before I start off another recipe firestorm, I’ll say right out that I know it’s not the way your old abuelita made it. It’s just the way it’s evolved for us over the years so get over it because I’m not going to change it.

Start with a pork wad.

I used to make it with a shoulder, which tastes the best but it extends the cooking process by about a day because you have to chill it and then scrape off a foot of fat. Now I use a pork tri-tip. Not as richly flavorful as the shoulder, but we’re watching our girlish figures over here at Eva Moon HQ. They come three wads to a pack at Costco and have so little fat you could cook it for a week and you’d still need an arc lamp to find the fat dot.

Chunk the pork and toss it in a pot of water with: garlic (go ahead and use a whole head), a handful of those little dried red chilies, some whole black peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, oregano, cumin and salt. Boil until the meat is tender. When you can find the fat dot without the aid of a scanning electron microscope, it’s ready for the next step.

Dice and dunk: a large onion and about four anaheim chilies (the long green not-too-spicy ones). Dump in two cans of diced tomatoes and two large or four small cans of white hominy, rinsed. I also like to add a can or two of red and or black beans (so sue me).

Note: If you haven’t worked with chilies before (even the not-too-spicy ones) have a care which of your personal mucous membranes you finger afterwards. I’m just saying.

When the onion and chilies are pretty much cooked, adjust the seasonings and toss in a few sliced zucchini. Simmer another 10 minutes and serve with chopped fresh cilantro and lime slices. You may want to discard the dried red chilies. They never really get tender enough and they’ve given their all to the soup, so don’t think you’re proving your manhood or anything by eating them.

Bring on the fall. And bring on the soup recipes.

Photo by Eva Moon. Really.

See more like that one:

• Chopping List
• The Magi had it easy...
• Day 15: Which Way to the Egress?
• Day 13: Juice of Affliction, Chili of Salvation
• Day 11: The Wall

Bailout Video Hits YouTube

I just made this youtube video of the Bailout Man song:

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• The Bonehead of the Opera
• Sibling Revelry
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Is that a glowstick in your pocket?

Last week I was alerted to the existence of a fabulous thing: strings of tiny purple lights on sale at the Fred Meyer Halloween display. They’re about 5 feet long and run for hours on two AA batteries. I popped right over and bought one. I had no idea at all what on earth I would use it for but how could I resist? They even have a blink setting. You really never know when you might need something like that. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

This weekend is the Redmond Digital Arts Festival. You can find out all about it on the festival website so I won’t go into the details here other than to say we’re off to a great start and you all should come to Redmond when we do it again next year. Seriously.

I was slated to work all day in the digital lounge - a large dark room with a number fascinating interactive installations and, sadly, Rock Band 2 on a 14-ft wide screen. Fortunately the 80s rock covers that were drummed into my head all afternoon were hammered out by the pounding techno DJ later in the evening.

Anyhoo, knowing I was going to be working in a dark room, I decided to make a sort of blinking purple tiara out of the light string. It worked great, but that wasn’t the half of it…

One of the most popular activities was an interactive light show created by Seattle artist Amir Stone. An infrared camera picked up lightsources - mostly glowsticks, though any source would do - and projected persistent images of the movements onto two 14′x10′ screens. The screen cleared for a new artistic endeavor every 60 seconds. It turns out that a purple light tiara makes fabulous noodly streaks of color on the screen - a terrific contrast to the broader glowstick paths.

It was all squiggles and swooshes until we discovered that a camera flash would capture a still image of the people in line of the projector. That’s me below (and my tiara squiggles all over the middle).

Nine hours of it was about enough though.

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