El Burro Volador

A while back I mentioned that I was working on a big project that was occupying most of my creative faculties.  Well, I’ve recovered a little bit from the launch of this behemoth on Tuesday, and I’d like to talk a little bit about it.

I’ve mentioned before in this space that I play tabletop roleplaying games with my group of friends every Tuesday.  Well, I know that the readership here is mixed company, some of whom have had no exposure to roleplaying games, so I’d like to explain a couple of fundamental concepts.

First, the way that I like to think of it is that my friends and I get together each week to cooperate in the telling of a story.  So far, this particular group has told classic fantasy stories – a quest to steal a magical apple from some wicked goblins, the exploration of a fallen dwarven hold, etc.  We have also told a gothic tale about a journey through haunted woods to the castle of a strange conjurer.  We have told a superhero story, and we have even told a story set in the dark future where an act of chemical terrorism traps a small band of assorted lowlifes in a bar while tensions between them mount.

Now, perhaps the most basic structure that needs explaining in order to understand how these games work is the basic division between the “actors” and the “director”.  Y’see, all but one of the people in the group are what is called “players” and each take on the role of one of the main characters in the story, creating this persona more or less from scratch, determining the character’s actions, and even speaking for/as the character.  The remaining member of the group is responsible for creating the underlying situations, playing all of the supporting characters, and adjudicating the rules.  Each different roleplaying game gives this person a different title – in Dungeons & Dragons this person is called the “Dungeon Master”, in Mutants & Masterminds this person is called the “Mastermind”, in Cyberpunk 2020 it’s “Referee”, while in White Wolf’s line of games it’s “Storyteller”.

Anyhow, that’s me this time around, and I have decided to try and make this story the best one we’ve ever told, so I’m putting in tons of work – including writing nearly 20 pages of fiction last week as a “preface” to set the tone.  In theory this story will run for most of 2009, with occasional breaks to keep things fresh.  I’ll keep you posted.

Yeah, I decided to actually write something instead of just pasting some quotes in.

As my sister mentioned in her comment to yesterday’s post, Mom also sang to us when we were kids.  She didn’t sing to us at bedtime, like Pop, but just at random times, whenever the mood struck her, I guess.  Like Dad, her taste seemed to run toward songs with a strong narrative, but whereas his tastes ran to historical sagas and cowboy ballads, Mom went in for tearjerkers like B.J. Thomas’ “Billy and Sue”, and, of course, “Mama”.

Judging from Sarah’s comment, though, the song that has stuck with us the best is the utterly creepy “Laurie (Strange Things Happen in This World)”, a hit for Dickey Lee back in the 196o’s that was still more than capable of chilling me and Sarah every time Mom sang it to us.  I still shiver thinking about that song.

A slight change from my intended topic, but my old man seems to be making an effort to be extra nice to me lately, and I’m trying to do my part to think about him in a more friendly way, so I thought I’d talk about a really good memory I have of him.

I’m sure I listened to those insipid tapes of “children’s music” when I was a kid, but my parents didn’t make a big deal out of them (I was from a “pre-Raffi-lite” generation) and they more or less slid right off without making an impression, thank heaven.

No, the first songs I really remember are the songs my father sang when he sang my sister and I to sleep.  The best part about these songs is that they were all basically stories.  There were no love songs, or catchy dance hits.  No, my pop sang old Johnny Horton numbers like “The Battle of New Orleans” and “Sink the Bismark”, or Marty Robbins tunes like “Big Iron”, “El Paso”, or “Streets of Laredo” (one notable omission from his selection of cowboy ballads was this song, which is a favorite of my other dad).   He even sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.

I’m not sure how fondly Sarah remembers these selections, but I loved them, the cowboy ballads in particular – it was like getting a whole western movie right before you went to sleep, so you could dream that a big handsome cowboy rode into town to save you from the villainous Black Bart.  Or something like that.  I’m not sure, I wasn’t very good at being a little boy.

The last couple days at work have amounted to a mental and emotional beating, as well as an unusually high degree of physical punishment.  One of the worst things about working with family is that a bad day at work can turn into a fight with a family member, which stays with you a bit longer than most job hassles.

I have also not been getting along with Rebekah, who accuses me of over-indulging in self-pity.  I accuse her of being an unsupportive shrew, and my home life pretty much goes to hell as well.  If it wasn’t the weekend I think I would just get in my car and drive ’til I ran out of gas, then abandon it and walk ’til I ran out of strength, then lie down to die in some strange place where no one knows my name.  That actually sounds pretty good.

Instead, I’ll do a lot of writing, drink myself to sleep tonight, clean the house tomorrow, and go back to work on Monday.  Hopefully somewhere in there ‘Bekah and I will make up.