powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2003-07-31 - 8:56 a.m. Antler Woman Dammit, Thjora. One of our Glastonbury chairs needed reshaping, a matter of cutting threaded rods too short in the zeal to correct them being too long. We�d been ignoring the problem successfully for months. Ah, the SCAdian curse of Pennsic projects. All those lists made during the car drive home, the ones that were promptly forgotten in favor of couch and a movie, suddenly come due. So, we finally decided to repair the thing. Of course, I�ve always disliked the messy polyurethane finish, so while I�m wielding the belt sander, some crackhead impulse makes me strip the entire chair. Yes, that�s just what a SCAdian needs right before War. Let me be a perfectionist and redo work on already finished gear. I blame Thjora. Her example has led me astray. I�ll get you for this. *Yawn*. In a related newsflash, quite tired from various projects and still haven�t packed much. Ah work. The stories I wish I had time to write. I�m still behind on that bit about the horse, the brick and the goat, a funny story about pillows and ducks, and a soliquoy on how justice impedes progress. Add to that the assembly of treehuggers, how something shaped like a film reel controls a spacecraft, and a pitiful ploy to bend techies to your will. But, I can post the stories of the Pink Duck Tag Sale. It�s actually a trilogy, beginning with the Antler Woman, and adventure with my friend Mark. What to say about Mark? He�s home safe, thank you God and all the angels, from Iraq after sending me an email that said �Hey, there�s breweries in Baghdad� followed by months of silence. His welcome home bash was last weekend and I kicked him after I hugged him for that mean email trick. But I was getting the story about the Antler Woman. The cast, for those of your who don't know them all: Theodora and Roland, our beleagured heros. Mark, a former Black Diamonder known as Heinrich Gunther von Ravensburg whose behavior, well, how to describe this, a surrealist Picasso character on acid? I love this man, and we're probably cousins depending on when our grandparents slept together, but this is the kind of guy who ends up in situations like taking a taxi across Belgium at 3am. Yes, the entire country. No, he and the driver didn't speak the language. Francesca de Parochel (Stephanie) is another former Black Diamonder with a masters in Food Science who always tested her chocolate recipes out on the business meetings. She has an incredible sense of the absurb-her stuffed sheep is mentioned as a resident on her answering machine, she names every piece of tacky fruit I've ever given her, and she has a jingling stuffed octopus. However, unlike Mark, she is firmly ground in reality and actually checks bus schedules before bopping across Europe. So, at our opening scene, these four worthies are off to a wedding of yet another former Black Diamonder and old college friend, Laila, ........ Once upon a time Theodora had the deluded idea that riding with Mark to Laila's wedding was a good idea. Mark swore he usually curled up quietly with a book on long car trips. This is the man who led Black Diamonders on 13 failed Great and Glorious expeditions all the while humming his own theme music. But we decided to be (idiots) brave. Since we were all going together, Theodora, Roland and Mark left DC area, picked up Francesca in New Jersey (Theodora was whimpering in Francesca's arms at this point) then proceeded through New York City along the coast and to the far, far Northeastern corner of Connecticut. This was an educational trip. We learned that Theodora and Mark have the same taste in men, Francesca has to be the only being in New Jersey that doesn't live right off the turnpike, and that it does take four people to catch all the signs that direct you along I-95 through NYC. So, we arrive at the hotel around 11ish, pretty wrung out. Counsel is held in Mark and Francesca room to discuss morning activities including when to get up, how to find breakfast, and when to leave for the wedding. Mark had flipped on the TV to check the weather, then surfed over to Discovery. Though the sound was off, we slowly, one by one, turned toward the screen mesmerized like gawkers at a car wreck. A slender woman with dishwater blond hair, Swiss miss braids and coke bottle glasses was gesticulating earnestly in front of an overdone painting of a Moose standing on the edge of a Canadian lake (oil on velvet). The scene cuts to the same woman standing in a clearing, brownish grass, like the wildest edges of the Pennsic woods in the fall, but with tall conifers surrounding. Obviously we were in the higher elevations. She is dressed all in brown and is facing a moose. Yes, the ones Forgal likes. She keeps beating the knee-high grass with something that looks like a small megaphone. Then she whips a set of moose antlers out from behind her back. A full, large set. Grasping the bar connecting the left and right antler, she puts them on top of her head. Then she brings the megaphone to her lips. Now, remember, we still have the sound off. Mark is standing there in a towel, transfixed with his mouth open. The rest of us are sitting on the two beds, equally frozen. A moose appears from within the thicket! She begins to advance toward him, swaying from side to side like someone failing a drunk test. She circles this way and that toward the moose, waggling the antlers and nodding her head up in down. It looked more difficult than the pat your head, rub your belly game. Francesca begged me to reconsider, BUT, despite wise advice and my better judgment, I turned on the sound. We cut back to the antler woman standing in front of that oil painting, gesticulating madly. It turns out she is speaking French earnestly and passionately. She is, Giselle, a Canadian wildlife researcher. Now try to imagine a monotone moderator translating the following: And wee must be careful. If you do not know how to use ze antlers, you could, viola, incite ze moose to charge. You must know what to say to a moose. The moderator sounds like he is trying not to laugh. Cut back to the waggle walk through the woods footage. Here, I am seducing this young cow. She iz shy, but (antlers come up aggressively) I am succeeding with her. Oh, my god. Mark was still dripping in the towel, but now he was stuttering and pointing, while we all ponder the uncomfortable question, if you succeed what are you going to do with her? New scene. Edge of a lake. Giselle is knee deep in water, holding the antlers on top of her head with both hands and drinking like a moose. Next to her is a real moose who looks fairly amused. Often, I spend eight, nine hours with the antlers just talking to them. They have their own language. Eight, nine hours holding a pair of antlers on your head? Has this woman never heard of string? Attach the things to a hat? Another clearing. Giselle thrusts her head forward aggressively and uses her megaphone to utter these indescribable moose like noises. She stomps her feet and looks at the young moose on the edge of the clearing. Now, I challenge this young bull for his territory. He iz preparing to charge, but, viola, (she takes the antlers off her head and hides them behind her back) now I am no longer a moose. Now I am not a threat. The moose brakes and backpedals, like Wiley Coyote over the edge of a cliff. He saunters off looking triumphant and kind of offended. Francesca and Roland take their hands and put them next to their temples, fingers splayed and make moo-moo- moose noises. Mark and I begin singing (to the tune of Duke of Earl) Moose, moose, moose. Moose and squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. (I'm sorry. Squirrel just happened to fit there.) But wait! Next Giselle and her family (THIS WOMAN IS MARRIED TO A MAN WHO CAN FUNCTION?) meet disaster. Shot of brown blur, extreme closeup of an antler, the camera falls and static. I swear, the translator/ announcer sounded like he had to step off camera and laugh. We waited and waited, but there was only more Giselle speeches in front of the overdone oil painting concerning the in and outs of talking to meeses. I kept wanting to know if her kids had hooves, but, alas, the program faded out to a biography of Arnold Swartzneger. Never, never, never, teach Mark a song that involves turning your hands into fake antlers and dancing around the room. Especially if he's only wearing a towel. � � � 
|