I should read more books.

Meg:

Gig (complete with eye goop):

Setup: My character and his older sister are standing in the town square of a fairy tale-esque town. It’s snowing (both in the game and outside my window). These characters had just been introduced a few seconds before, standing next to what appeared to be a burning trash barrel, talking about how lovely the castle in the center of town looks and wishing they could see the inside of the great hall.

A traveling salesman in a Mad Hatter top hat has just finished attempting to sell a magic mirror that makes your reflection the most beautiful in the land - but only in the dark. Among the group of villagers watching is pitch is a MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.

Paraphrased conversation:
SALESMAN: But this magical music box. It only costs five gold coins.
SISTER: Yeah, right, there’s no such thing as magic.
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER: We live in sad times indeed when poverty stricken orphans such as yourself are too world-weary to believe in magic. You should buy the music box.
SISTER: But for five gold coins? That would feed us for a week.
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER: And at the end of that week, you would be no closer to your dream of living in the castle. What have you got to lose?
SISTER: Oh, ok, that makes sense. Let’s go earn money to buy the music box!

My reaction: So that’s why people play the lottery.

My hope: When I reach the point in the game where I can buy a house, I am given the option to take out a subprime mortgage on it and then get to spend the rest of the game watching the world’s economy fall apart.

Considering how desperately we can cling, the affected cynicism of the certain young folk is much more difficult to dislodge than good, old fashioned hard-earned world-weariness it aspires to be. Pay no attention to that Bachelor’s degree on the wall – I’m from Southwestern PA! It’s the Midwest with hills – when Finn declares the message live gives his group of protagonists in the song “Constructive Summer” (the opening track off their recent offering Stay Positive”), “work at the mill and then you die”, he’s talking about a potential me – one that could have existed had a certain industry never left the Pittsburgh area.

Ultimately, that’s what all of Finn’s characters turn into – specters of potential futures and pasts grounded firmly in an all-too-real (for the character) present. Their tales may be set in Brooklyn or St. Paul/Minneapolis (current and former homes of the band), but these ghosts make excellent companions in this particular city at this particular time, given all the hubbub about the semiquincentenial.

By this point, the Springsteen comparisons may seem lazy, but they’re really appropriate. Musically, these are the children of The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle and Born to Run. When a girl in “Joke about Jamaica” (which references Led Zeppelin and Neil Young, among others) observes that “the boys are getting younger and the bands are getting louder, and the new girls are coming up like some white, unopened flowers”, it’s not hard to imagine that this is where Rosalita ended up after she was liberated and confiscated by her man.

It’s the unabashed musical referencing that makes the songs work – the lyrics reservedly celebrate the lifestyle the music recalls. They hint at the toll that it can take on a person if they stick around too long. The subject and the idiom aren’t anything new, but Finn’s words have a keenly observational quality that exists whether the perspective is completely wrapped up in itself or on the outside looking in.

Stay Positive’s closer, “Slapped Actress”, is simultaneously a homage to John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (name-dropping not just the director, but his wife Gena Rowlands and actor Ben Gazzara) and an acknowledgement of how it’s all just a show. “We are the theater/they are the people”, he sings. But it’s not a criticism – at least, not completely. How can it be, when the music underneath it is so triumphant?

Mose gets his moment in the sun (or the Speedlite, as the case may be):

The second one is hopefully the actual first in a series of portraits of various true spies (I had posted one earlier but then quickly decided I hated it).

The light makes Mose’s eye gunk look way worse than it was.

I guess I did my civic duty.

I ended up in the basement of the polling place.

I definitely never thought I would be posting pictures of my cats on the internet (just wait until I get a dog…), but when they do this for over an hour:

how can you not find it either adorable (as the filename indicates) or, at the very least, amusing?

I have to take them to the vet this week (to deal with the eye issues - URI what?).

Coming tomorrow: hot chocolate.