Very sorry to hear of the passing of Bruce Allen, guitarist for the Suburbs. He was only 54.

Here's a link to one of my favorite songs of theirs:

www.youtube.com/watch

My son, Zachary (7) has quickly figured out how to make status updates on my iPhone to my Facebook page when it's not in my possession. He likes writing things like "Dinosaurs A-Z" or I-Spy" or "Dinosaur Train" -- basically whatever book or TV show is on his mind (or sometimes he'll type in the author's name, as well). I actually think this is quite hilarious, but I also think I need to be a bit more vigilant with the thing. But so if you happen to receive a note like the above, I'm not trying to send you secret messages. Zach might be, but I'm not.

Started reading The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston (of the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child books) and Mario Spezi, a true crime account of a serial killer in Florence. Interesting read so far.

Okay, I'm late to the game on this one. I wanted to buy Under the Dome, King's latest behemoth, but my ever-prescient wife reminded me of the other King books I HAD to buy, but never got around to reading, so I finally picked up my copy of Lisey's Story, which had been gathering dust on my bookshelf since I bought it in '06, and started reading.

Lisey's Story has now become my favorite King novel. It's a novel he couldn't have written in his 20's or 30's -- perhaps not even in his 40's. Yes, there is certainly horror in this novel, but it's also about intimacy. And he writes so well about intimacy and the intimate language that only a couple who's been together for a long time share, as well as the intimacy of family members, and the special words that develop among these close relationships. I remember when this novel first came out, that some people were turned off by some of this language he uses (like 'smucking' instead of 'fucking') but I felt that within the confines of this world King's created, it makes perfect sense, and feels oh-so-right. The characterization he employs in Lisey's Story is wonderful, and I'm still thinking about the characters today, even though I finished the book yesterday. I want them to stick around in my mind for awhile, because they were painted so vividly, and I don't want to let them go.

Anyway, HIGHLY recommended.

I was very fortunate growing up. I was never a victim of abuse. An occasional spanking, but they weren't serious spankings. More like symbolic swats that I'm sure didn't even redden my backside.

Lately, I've gotten especially sensitive to stories about child abuse.  Like this one in the StarTribune about a 10-yr old who tried to escape his abusive father by hiding in an oven (which his father promptly turned on to smoke him out). The father even told the police how he was going to give the kid a 'whoopin' when they left. Is this the 1950's?  And this one, also in the StarTribune in which a 70-yr old day care worker pinned kids (2-3 yrs old) in their pajamas to mattresses to keep them in place. And she'd been doing this for the last 8 years!

Both these articles appeared on the same day.

Who the fuck are these people?

I just don't get it. I really don't.

For some reason on my commute home last night, I became nostalgic and started thinking of some of the best concerts I've seen. So here, in the best chronological order I can remember, are some of my favorite concerts from the past. I may be a bit fuzzy with some of the years (hey, I'm 41!) but I'll do my best.

1983/84 The Suburbs, Love is the Law tour, at the Mayo Civic auditorium in Rochester, MN. One of my first concerts, and they were great live. Had a horn section, too!

1984 The Tubes, Outside/Inside tour, at the Orpheum in Mpls. A very fun, theatrical (and naughty!) band to see live. Great for my hormonally overwhelmed 16-yr-old self.

1984 The Eurythmics, Touch tour, at the Orpheum in Mpls. Great music. I snuck in my disc camera (remember those?) in my pants, and as I was going through security, it slid down my leg, but luckily got caught between my cuff and my shoe. I still have the pics somewhere around.

1986 Oingo Boingo Dead Mans Party tour (I think) at some big auditorium in Salt Lake CIty, Utah. This was a great concert. I was in Salt Lake City with my school's AFS club for a week-long student exchange, and one of us (Ed Smith) stayed at the house of a relative of one of the members of O.B., and they happened to be doing their concert that week. So we went to see them -- and they put on a great show, playing pretty much their entire discography -- and Ed had a backstage pass, so I gave him my camera, and he took pics of Danny Elfman and other band members. Wall of Voodoo ('Mexican Radio') opened.

1987 or '88 Throwing Muses House Tornado tour, 7th Street Entry, Mpls. Small, intimate venue, they blew me away. The bass and drums vibrated through my entire body. This is when I fell in love with Kristen Hersh! One of the most amazing live performances I've seen.

1989 Pixies Doolittle tour, at the Orpheum in Mpls. Another great concert. Love & Rockets opened.

1990 Sonic Youth Goo tour, First Avenue, Mpls. Very cool to see this band live. Guitar playing with screwdrivers and hammers and other unique implements. They actually knocked over a stack of speakers while playing. I fell in love with Kim Gordon at this concert.

1990 B-52's Love Shack tour, some big auditorium in the Twin Cities -- I can't remember which one. This was one big, fun, geeky, rockin' show. I still think 'Rock Lobster' is one of the most rockin' songs ever written! Ziggy Marley opened.

1991 Firehose Flyin' the Flannel tour, First Avenue, Mpls. I've seen Firehose and/or Mike Watt play many times, and am always blown away.

1994/95 Cratewasher, a college band in Bozeman, MT. I was living in Bozeman at this time. This band played a lot of Minutemen songs, as well as originals, and I loved 'em! They played a little rented place in Livingston one winter night - located up a set of stairs, over a coffee shop and restaurant. Not a lot of people there - a couple dozen at most. Apparently, Rich Hall (former SNL alum) was in the audience (he lived in the area at that time.) For some reason, I just remember having a complete blast. The band had a bottle of whiskey that it kept passing among itself and the audience members, and by the time the concert ended, we were all quite inebriated.

Thanks for indulging me on my trip down memory lane...

Finished Eric Larson's Devil in the White City - a pretty fascinating, well-researched book. Meanwhile, I listened to the audiobook version The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson. Highly recommended. It's quite a hilarious memoir of Bryson's growing up in 1950's Iowa.

I also just finished Resort to Murder colleague Judith Yates Borger's Where's Billie? which is an excellent mystery that takes place in and around the Twin Cities (with some memorable scenes at the Mall of America!).

I haven't read this much in years. It's been kind of fun, but it's also been a convenient excuse to avoid doing some much needed writing. I really really really really really need to/want to get off my ass in that regard.

Ah, well...

My whole family was hit with the flu, all of us taking our overlapping turns to be miserable for a few days. Only the dog, fish and rat seemed to have avoided it. But on the upside - I got a lot of reading done!

Since the start of October, I've read a new book by some Dan Brown fellow. Something about freemasonry and symbols? Anyway, I enjoyed it. I know many people think his writing is awful, and sure, some of it's klunky, but I enjoyed the plot with its mixture of little-known historical tidbits.

Then I read some books I picked up at the Twin Cities Book Festival; Death of a Cozy Writer, by G.M. Malliet , and Stalking Susan, by Julie Kramer, which were both fun reads and worth the price of admission.

Next up was The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penney, which I really enjoyed. It was one of those books which drew me so well into its world and characters that I really didn't want it to end.

Now I'm reading The Devil in the White City, by Eric Larson. A fascinating book about the serial killer H.H. Holmes juxtaposed with the creation of the World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893. I'm about half-way through and am enjoying it.

Melissa and I watched the movie W over the weekend, which we both liked (especially Josh Brolin's portrayal of Bush) but were both appalled by Thandie Newton's portrayal of Condoleeza Rice. It seemed like it was lifted from a really bad SNL sketch.

Looking forward to Saturday. There's the Twin Cities Book Expo from 10-5, which is total bibliophile porn to me. At 11, I'll be participating, along with a few other writers, in a workshop for teens who are interested in sci-fi, fantasy & horror at the Washburn Public Library in Mpls. This will all be a great relief after a rather crappy week (I've basically just been in a lousy mood).

Also, I found out I received an honorable mention in the upcoming Year's Best Horror, 2008 edition, edited by Ellen Datlow, for my story "Rotten Fruit" which appeared in the zombie antho Bits of the Dead. It's always nice to receive a nod like that.

I had a vivid dream last night that I was in Wabasha, trying to get my family to my car. The problem was, I couldn't exactly remember where my car was, and we had all this luggage in unstable containers (a grocery bag in the process of tearing, an old worn cardboard box, etc.) and there was always one of us missing. Zach would be missing, then I'd find him, but then Paige would be missing, and when she was found, our dog had trotted off somewhere. Plus, I was running late for work.

It sucks when I'm more restful in my waking hours than in my hours alseep. 

One of the events I credit for my love of horror was watching the movie The Blob was I was a kid. I'm guessing I was five or six years old. It was during a summer when my family was staying at my grandmother's house in Mankato while my mom was working on her Master's Degree at Mankato State. Anyway, during a long, lonely summer day, I happened upon the beginning of this movie and was fascinated as this old man came upon a fallen meteor, poked it with a stick, and this glob of goo attached itself to his stick and slid down it onto his arm. It scared the crap out of me, but I could not stop watching.  I remember sitting on a big easy chair with faux-leather upholstery, the footrest up, the big console TV in front of me with its dish of hard candy on top. I was scared, freaked out, but part of me loved it!

So then I've always wanted to watch this again, but have never been able to find it, until I got a gift sub to NetFlix. It was the first thing I ordered. Watched it last night, 35 years or so after that initial viewing. It was a lot of fun to see, but man, the blob itself sure didn't seem so scary anymore.  Looked like a slow moving misshapen cherry gummi-somthing-or-other. The acting was actually above par, compared to other movies of the same ilk -- Steve McQueen was especially good.

Anyway, it was fun to revisit this old friend, this little spark that ignited my love of all things spooky.

I like to think I have good taste in music. Yet, lately, I've caught myself quietly singing along to the latest Miley Cyrus song.
Oh dear sweet Jesus...

I recently watched How Green Was My Valley on AMC. Never seen it before. What a beautifully shot film -- it's one that would be nice to see on the big screen, or at least have a wide screen addition available. On AMC, it was in standard format, and it felt like there was a lot of scenery missing off to the side. It was fun to see a young Roddy McDowall playing the lead.

And my story The Siege is available as an electronic download. Take a peek!

I had a bit of a disturbing, yet strangely satisfying dream last night. I was at someone's apartment, and realized something wasn't quite right with the retainer (!) I wore, so I went into their bathroom and took out the retainer, and my teeth started falling out. Not just individual teeth, but groups of teeth attached to big bloody hunks of gum and jaw bone. Apparently my mouth held more teeth than previously known, since I kept yanking my teeth/gums out, filling up the sink, and there were still more to pull. The satisfying part was that it seemed to feel good to pull them, like I was scratching some annoying itch.

So, anyone have any interpretations? Or has my dentist implanted subliminal messages in my noggin?

I gotta stop reading the comments sections in places like the StarTribune, or any place healthcare is brought up. The same folks say the same things over and over and over, no matter what evidence is brought to light.  It makes my brain hurt. You can hold up an apple to these people, and say "This is an apple," and then they'll say, "You're brainwashed by Obama. It's an orange.  An orange, I tell you!" and you double check, and sure enough it's an apple, so you say, "Look, really -- it's an apple. It's right here in my hand. I even took a bite out of it. It's really an apple," and they'll say "Socialist! Stop waving that orange in my face. Only Hitler would talk about oranges." And so you say, "You've got to be kidding me, how can you say it's an orange when it's obviously an apple.  Look, here it is!  It's a fucking apple!" And they say, "How dare you try to suppress my freedom of speech. Next you're going to try to take away my guns!" And you say, "What? What does a gun have to do with my apple?" And they say, "Your orange is only the start of the slippery slope to government's takeover of the private sector." And so then you just gotta sigh and wonder if banging your head against a wall would get you any further...and the answer is probably, sadly, most likely - yes....

Sorry, I just had to rant. And I honestly am not trying to insult anybody of differing opinions -- I'm just, well...my brain hurts...

Zachary has been obsessed with the game MouseTrap! lately. Not playing it, but playing with it -- with the trapparatus. (The word -- trapparatus -- patent pending by the J.A. Arnold Corporation.) Anyway, we could not peel him away from it last night, and let him fall asleep next to it on the living room floor. He likes to fill the tub that the green man is flung into with actual water.

My family and I went up north for the weekend. We were in the Detroit Lakes area, staying at a family friend's house on an isthmus between Lake Maud and Lake Eunice. Paige fell in love with a toad she found over the weekend, and had some long heart-to-heart conversations with it before having to let it go before the weekend was over. Zachary loved the small beach nearby, and was fascinated by the insects that crawled around the area. We also got to see a couple rescued snapping turtles that the above mentioned family friend -- Patrick -- had (he's an animal conservation officer) and se we got to see them before they were released back into the wild. One of them had been impaled on a metal pole by some assholes a year ago and Patrick has been rehabbing ever since, until its release yesterday.

Melissa and I went to a flea market (after dodging WE fest traffic - yikes!) then to an out-of-the-way antique store in which I found an old Oliver typewriter. I'd been wanting one of these for a long time -- I love how they look (see the attached avatar -- looks just like that sans wings.) Got it for $45. It needs some cleaning, but otherwise is in beautiful shape.

As you may or may not know, I'm very interested in genealogy - I really enjoy the puzzles it presents, and the challenge of putting the often-times confusing and contradictory pieces together. It can be fun going into it with what you think you know, and find out it ain't exactly the truth.

One of the most fulfilling things I figured out was who my dad's birth-mother was. I discovered this approximately two years ago, and shortly thereafter discovered she was still alive (which was quite amazing, considering that my dad was 70 years old at the time.)

My dad grew up always knowing he was adopted, and his adoptive parents were great people, and he loved them very much. He knew that he was adopted at 19 months of age from the Owatonna  (Minnesota) Orphanage, that he was full-blooded Norwegian, and that was about it. So about maybe six/seven years ago, he finds out that the orphanage he spent time at (which he remembers nothing of) had recently been turned into a museum, and was run by one of its former residents, Harvey Ronglein (who wrote an excellent book on his experiences there called Boy From C-11, Case #9164) Anyway, my parents went to see the museum, and my dad -- while unable to get his actual case file, was able to leave his name & address to see if there was any info of his birth parents. It wasn't a burning need for him -- it was more just out of a slight curiosity. Later that year, he received a letter from a social worker from a county in northern Minnesota that supplied some info about his birth parents. I won't go into detail about which city or county, and I'll change some of the specifics just for privacy sake of the birth parent's relatives who still live around there, but the letter said that his birth mom was only fourteen when she had him, that she was the xth child out of x number of children, and that the birth father was a relative and went to jail for this. (The letter didn't give any names or anything like that, of course.) As you can imagine, this was a bit of a shock for my dad.

So anyway, a few years later, with my dad's permission, I took the info to the Minnesota History Center's library/archives, and using what little I knew, sifted through thousands of census records (and luckily it was for a fairly small county -- if it would've been Hennepin or Ramsey counties, forget it!) and was able to fit everything together -- only one family met all the criteria. And to top it off, I found the indictment record for that particular relative in these beautiful maroon leather-bound records.

So -- it understandably took a while for my dad to figure out what he wanted to do with the info, especially when I found out by doing a few simple internet searches, that his birth mom was still alive and living out west. I had her phone number and address in hand. He eventually decided to write her a letter, just being very kind, not too nosey, etc, and a few months later, she wrote back a lovely letter with some pictures enclosed of her and her family. He wrote back one more time, including pictures of his family, but never heard back from her after that, which he's fine with, since he never really expected to hear from her in the first place.

Of course, I want to know more, I want to talk to this lady and get her story, but it's really none of my business, and I don't want to give her any more of a shock than she's already had. So I'm leaving it at that. But it's strange to suddenly find out you have hundreds more relatives that you never knew about, even if they're only biological (she comes from a huge family).

Just wanted to share that.

I've become quite fond of Paige's pet rat, Ginny. She's extremely friendly, and always comes right up to me when I get near her cage. When I open the cage door and put my face near the entrance, she'll grip the edge with her hind feet, stand and place her front feet/hands on my upper lip and sniff my nose. When I let her crawl on my chest and shoulders, she likes to stick her nose in my ear and sniff.

Basically, she likes to sniff.

But she's never bitten anyone. In fact, if you put your finger in front of her mouth, she'll just lightly nibble it, tasting it, and then -- you got it -- sniff it.

In September, new publisher Damnation Books is releasing a bunch of short stories, novellas and novels as part of their launch. My longish short story, "The Siege" is among them, and I just got to see the cover today. I like how it turned out! From what I understand, the short stories will be released in an e-book format.



Be sure to look closely at the honeycomb.