The Dig: Day 2
Artifact: A keyring with assorted old keys
Dated: Circa 2001-2002 (acquisition)
My birth father gave me this batch of keys he had collected from numerous old homes, correctly surmising I’d love them (even if I still haven’t done anything with them).
Any suggestions out there on cool things to do with old keys?
The Dig: Day 1
Artifact: An empty Dots box
Dated: Circa 1994-1999
As first glance, the preservation of this item raises an eyebrow even for a clutterhound such as myself. First, it’s an empty box of candy. Second, though I’ll eat most any type of sweet, I don’t particularly care for tooth-clingy Dots. Third, the box suggests a trip to the movie theater, and Dots candy doesn’t even register in the top 20 Items I Eat at the Movies. So, how I came to buy it in the first place is a bit of a mystery. It’s possible it comes from the eight-year span during which I was matched with a Little Buddy in the Big Brother/Big Sister program. (We went to a lot of movies because, as we all know, the surest way to mentor a child is through relentless exposure to Hollywood.)
Little Dot needs to pay more attention where he's going.
Pity the poor child who thinks we live in a world where all problems have solutions, for this maze has none.
Simple misprint, you say? Well, you say “tomato,” I say “subtle statement of existential angst.” Closer inspection of our little Dot’s “friends” reveals his situation is even worse than the impassable ink-drawn lines suggest: Not only does he live in a world where lines are arbitrarily (and incorrectly) drawn, it’s also one where his fellow travelers lack either the skills or desire to aid those separated from the herd.
Say hello to four excellent allegorical representations of impotent friendship. From left to right, there’s Excited Misdirection, Barely Concealed Apathy, Blubbering Distress and Ill-Aimed Competence.
The lesson here? It’s not always easy to connect the dots. In fact, it can prove impossible.
I’ve got the box to prove it.
[Note the following is the expanded transcript of an interview done for BookPage.com.]
In the decades since he was first introduced, R.A. Salvatore’s drow ranger, Drizzt Do’Urden, has become a fantasy archetype on par with any of Tolkien’s Middle Earth crew. But unlike Bilbo, Gandalf and company, Drizzt’s adventures are yet being newly minted. Neverwinter, the followup to 2010’s Gauntlgrym, is the second of six planned books in the Neverwinter Saga, a series that races ahead 100 years in the Forgotten Realms timeline. With the last of his original companions gone, Drizzt must forge new bonds while facing determined, powerful foes at every turn. While it’s anyone’s guess what awaits Salvatore’s iconic protagonist, it’s certain where the book itself will go—straight to the New York Times bestseller list, where 23 of Salvatore’s earlier books have already been.
MB: Let’s talk process. You’ve written more than 53 novels in the last 20 years. That’s basically the definition of “prolific.” What’s an average writing work day look like for you?
R. A. Salvatore: On an average day, I get about two hours at the computer. If I’m home alone, I might have a character set up over the Pool of Fire in Mt. Hyjil [in World of Warcraft]. I’ll write for 10-20 minutes, minimize that screen and go down and fish the pools out, then fly back out, minimize that screen and write for another 20 minutes. Typically, the amount of words I can do in a day is between 500 and 2,000. Once I get over 2,000, I’ve kinda drained the battery. Every now and then, I have a 5,000 word day—usually with a battle scene—but I haven’t had many of those lately. I must be getting old.
The thing about being a writer is it never leaves you. You go to a Red Sox game or you watch a football game with the kids and try to get away from it, but questions like, ‘What am I going to do about this scene?’ just keep popping back into my head. I go to bed with it at night and wake up with it in the morning, but typically it’s about two hours at the keyboard.
MB: Any particular regimen?
RS: [My approach to my writing] used to be structured. I’d do it in the morning. The kids would go to school, I’d have my cup of coffee, and I’d have a couple of hours to get done. It’s not that structured anymore. I’ll poke around the Internet, watch TV, go work out, come back, sit down, type 50 words and say, “Nah, not in the mood.” I don’t really sweat it anymore.
MB: It doesn’t seem to have affected your output.
RS: Well, if you’re doing a thousand words a day, you can still easily do a couple books a year. And I’m so comfortable in my style now, and in knowing what I want to do, that it’s not going to take me 45 rewrites to get the paragraph the way I want it.
The 350-400 word count restriction (because of use in BookPage‘s print edition) on my review of Neal Stephenson’s Reamde basically meant I had no room to discuss any of the really interesting things about the book. Oh, well.
My first visit to Discworld via my review for BookPage. Pratchett’s one of those legends I hadn’t read before. It was worth the trip, eventually, but I suspect some of his earlier entries in the series are better.
‘She looks like Popeye.’
That was my very first thought upon seeing Katherine, my newborn baby girl. Sure, in the anecdotes to friends and family that followed, I would slide “After I had been assured by the doctor that she was fine, my next thought was…” in there ahead of it, because who wants to reveal his first thought on the birth of his first child was a comparison to a 1930s cartoon character (and not even Swee’pea, at that)? But at best, it was a tie—an interior monologue photo finish of sorts. And as soon as I had been assured that the squinty eye and drooping lip on the left side of my daughter’s face were temporary, my very next thought was, ‘All she needs is a little pipe, a little sailor’s hat, maybe an anchor tattoo on her forearm…’
Our little Popeye impersonator had arrived two weeks’ later than scheduled. But once she decided to come, it seemed, at least initially, like she was determined to make the transition from fetus to “Awww…” a quick one. Within a few minutes of the first contraction, we had abandoned our plans for a leisurely pre-admission walk in the park. (The film we watched in our babies-for-beginners class made it look so appealing!) Within a few hours, Sarah was medicated, dilated and primed for delivery. Then I jinxed things by telling our gathered family that it could happen in the next 15-30 minutes. Though fully dilated and a fetal noggin’ mere inches from the light, progress just stopped. (Advice to fathers-to-be: Do not joke about “going to 11” when your wife reaches 10 centimeters. Your newborn will need a father.) Sarah did all she could for the next four hours, but Katherine had apparently decided she liked her snug efficiency more than the pink-walled room of her own we had waiting for her back home.
Eventually, with Sarah exhausted by Katherine’s staunch insistence on keeping the “in” in “in utero,” our midwife brought in the on-call physician who in turn sized things up and brought out… salad tongs.
Now, I’m no stranger to forceps—I’ve eaten at Olive Garden. And the same class that fed our delusion that we’d have hours to spend in quiet contemplation of the miracle underway also covered forceps as a means of recalcitrant baby delivery. But though my wife and I had discussed at length natural versus epidural, as well as vaginal versus C-section, we hadn’t spent any time on tongs. In my mind, forceps as a baby-grappling option occupied the same abandoned hall in the Museum of “Get this baby OUT!” as vacuum extraction (also still used, it turns out).
Though they worked, it turns out that forceps come with their own set of potential complications. In the case of Katherine, their use led to a compressed facial nerve, which in turn led to a passing bout of Bell’s Palsy and, from there, voila!—Katherine’s initial resemblance to a certain sailor man.
Fortunately, in the days that followed her eye soon lost its perma-squint, her lip its droop. But the forceps had left at least one lasting legacy that night in the delivery room. It gave my new daughter her first nickname—“Spinach.”
As I stood there watching Katherine squiggle under a heat lamp as she endured medical attention, and later, as I held her in my arms, a verse from Popeye’s theme song kept playing over and over in my head (no doubt lodged there along with his signature chuckle by the rogue first impression):
I’m strong to the finish, ’cause I eats me spinach.
Our baby daughter may have come into the world looking like Popeye, but in truth, she was the spinach. And “strong to the finish”? That was my job, now. There would be plenty of Blutos of time and circumstance, of impatience and distraction, but just as Popeye only needed to reach for that can of spinach whenever things got especially tough, I held in my hands the only thing I’d need to refresh my resolve, to harden my determination, to stay strong to the finish, whatever that finish might be.
“Spinach.” I’m pretty sure she won’t like the nickname much, especially when she gets older. But it’ll mean the world to me.
It’s high time someone addressed the longstanding bias against non-homicidal hillbillies in horror films.
My review of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil for pastemagazine.com.
The first page of my undrawn salute to this man’s “best friend” of 16 years.
—MEB
Film Review: Take Shelter