Tag Archives: Dungeons & Dragons

General, Laura Grimes, Music

Schlepping high culture in the Large Smelly Boymobile

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Haiqiong Deng, zheng (but not Dungeons & Dragons) virtuoso

Haiqiong Deng, zheng (but not Dungeons & Dragons) virtuoso.

While my brain has been on sizzle in other realms of the arts world, apparently a blog has been going on in my own house. The entire world can check in on what my current first husband has been up to, but I’m afraid to say I’ve been rather ignorant about it.

I feel a little sheepish about writing, actually. Recently, Mr. Scatter wisely and broadly covered America’s current fascination with Chinese culture, Martha Ullman West (otherwise known as Art Scatter’s highest paid correspondent) boldly encompassed the week’s vast dance scene and … me? Well, let me tell you about Cheez-Its.

***

A week ago Monday, Haiqiong Deng took a break from her concert tour to fly in from Boston and perform in Third Angle‘s China Music Now concerts.

United Airlines Boieng 767-300/Wikimedia CommonsHaiqiong (hiCHONG) is a virtuoso on the zheng (chung), an ancient Chinese instrument similar to a zither. Hers has 21 strings, each with a bridge that can be moved. For weeks it had been the big mystery instrument to me. I knew it was big, but I didn’t know how big. I couldn’t wait to hear what it sounded like.

When the Third Angle staff (I’m the managing director) were figuring who could pick her up from the airport, we had two questions to consider: Who wasn’t playing in the symphony that night, and who has a vehicle long enough to fit a zheng in it.

Guess what? I won.

A prime example of low cultureI was thrilled. And then panic set in. Did I have enough time to clean up the Cheez-Its?

Once a week, Mr. Scatter picks up six Large Smelly Sixth-Graders and schleps them to Dungeons and Dragons. You’ve heard of Soccer Moms? He’s a D&D Dad.

The boys pile in and then immediately grab for snacks and juice boxes. They’re usually pretty good about stuffing the trash into the garbage sack, but it’s six boisterous boys and crumbs fly.

A few hours before I was to meet Haiqiong at the airport, I realized I wouldn’t have time to get the van cleaned, but I had a few minutes to give it a once-over and open up the cargo hold. It was dusk and getting hard to see, but as soon as I plunked the back seat down one brilliant-orange square Cheez-It practically glowed.

I picked it up, noticed the van’s bulging trash sack and then threw it all in a garbage can. I took note that I didn’t have a replacement bag, but I told myself I’d worry about it later.

***

The baggage claim area at Portland International Airport has a sign: “Many bags look alike, please check tags.”

Haiqiong and I were chatty nonstop. People were everywhere, lots of luggage was going around the conveyer belt and we were chatty chatty chatty. She stopped at one point and grabbed a big suitcase off the belt and then we went on chatting. I occasionally eyed the conveyer belt for what I knew must be a hard-to-miss large something. I was curious. This was an important piece of Third Angle’s program. We flew her in specially to play it. What did it look like?

The crowd got thinner and thinner. The luggage disappeared bit by bit. And we continued to chat.

Dungeons & Dragons miniatures: NOT high culture/Wikimedia CommonsAnd then after a while, I got this eerie feeling. I looked around. Nobody was there and not a single piece of luggage was going around the belt. Where was it?

As I tried to quell this horribly unsettled feeling, I looked everywhere and then looked some more. I finally noticed a corral of luggage in a restricted area in a far corner. I got closer. No weird overlarge bag. I got closer. Nothing but rising panic. I got closer. And finally … it came into view: Behind a mound of luggage one really long green bag sat by itself. Relief washed over me.

When I told a uniformed worker the green bag was ours, she pointed to a green suitcase and said, “You mean that one?”

“No,” I said, pointing, “THAT one.” She took one look at the bag — about one foot by two feet by six feet plus — and waved me around the barrier to get it myself.

The zheng was surprisingly light.

***

On Thursday morning I fired up the van, started to pull out of the driveway and then hit the brakes. I pulled back into the driveway, walked into the house and stood in front of Mr. Scatter. He looked up.

The Large Smelly Boymobile (or reasonable facsimile)“You need the van. It’s D&D day. And by the way, it doesn’t have any gas. Sorry. Gotta go.”

But early in the afternoon in the office it hit me. The van had a bunch of boxes in it that I needed, including one very important sign for the concert that night. Mr. Scatter probably wouldn’t be back from D&D in time for me to get it. And I had left the back seat folded down so that there weren’t enough seats for the Large Smelly D&D Boys.

I made a phone call. How to get the boxes? Mr. Scatter had just filled the van with gas, he had put the back seat up and would drop by the office. Gawd, I love this man.

***

This is not Haiqiong Deng's zheng. It's the one on Wikimedia Commons.“Can you schlep the zheng?” the Not-So-Mysterious Jane said after the concert late Friday night. “It needs to get back to the hotel.”

“Schlep the zheng? Sure.”

I walked to get the van, my heels clicking on the sidewalk. When I opened it and looked around I suddenly remembered I had never replaced the garbage sack and the whole D&D gang had been in the van the day before. The back seat was littered with empty Cheez-It bags and juice cartons. I quickly stuffed it all in the snack bag and stashed it under a console.

It would have to do. It was time to schlep the zheng and one world-class virtuoso.

— Laura Grimes

Bob Hicks, Books, General, Music, Television, Theater

Apologies from Mr. Scatter, who’s able to lunch today

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Cole Porter/Wikimedia CommonsArt Scatter feels a bit like Cole Porter’s Miss Otis, who regrets she’s unable to lunch today. Not that Mr. Scatter drew his gun and shot his lover down, or got strung by a mob from the old willow across the way. Far from it.

But Mr. Scatter realizes he’s been incommunicado for a full week now, and considering the unspoken compact between writer and reader, that’s … well, impolite. Mr. Scatter apologizes.

Truth is, I’ve been busy. For one thing, my mother-in-law just concluded a week-long visit from the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula. Contrary to ten thousand Borscht Belt jokes, this was a good thing. I enjoy my mother-in-law tremendously; she has a wicked sense of humor (as does her daughter), and she folds laundry. She was in high spirits, too, celebrating this week’s landslide vote in Port Angeles in favor of saving the town’s community swimming pool from the budget ax. The city councilman who dismissed the drive as the plaything of “a little special interest group,” she said darkly, will be returning to civilian life soon.

Then, I’ve continued my duties as a Dungeons & Dragons dad. No, I don’t play the game. I’m just the chauffeur, carting six fifth-graders to their after-school D&D session and back home again. Two things I’ve learned about fifth-grade boys: They crack a lot of flatulence jokes, and they really know the subject. I crank the windows wide. My reward is a stop at a wired-up coffee shop — Albina Press, usually — while I’m waiting for the lads to slay their orcs. Gory halleluja.

Chez Scatter also hosted a drop-in bash for a few dozen friends and neighbors, and the house survived quite nicely (our friends are older than they used to be), although I think the dishwasher might have come close to a nervous breakdown. Somehow we also ended up with more wine than we started with, which is a pretty sneaky way to stock the cellar. Potlatch!

I spent a share of my time quietly approving the labors of our friend Mat, who hung a swing and a climbing rope from the magnolia in the front yard, and our friend Amy, who briskly applied scraper and paint brush to the side of the house. Their rewards shall be great.

I made a pot of beans, and discovered they’re pretty good if you throw in a container of mango salsa. I grilled some asparagus. I had a bloody Mary. I ate my fair share of a fresh apple pie. I played parcheesi. I bought an urn to hold my walking sticks.

I missed both of Ichiro’s home runs on the tube in a rare Mariners win. I saw, for the first time, parts of Dancing With the Stars. Somebody who looks like Tonya Harding is the new champ; can’t understand how she beat out the short-haired Fabio. Cheesy choreography, Ice Capades costumes. Apparently the show’s been on for eight years. It’s a hit.

I saw a show about a trombone-playing clown and the end of the world. I took in a smashing concert by Portland Taiko. I hit a few galleries. I talked to a couple of editors and wrote a couple of stories.

I finished Half a Crown, the final book in Jo Walton‘s fascinating alternate-history trilogy about England after it makes a separate peace with Hitler and sinks into fascism. I read Hood River writer Craig Joseph Danner‘s new novel The Fires of Edgarville (to be reviewed soon in a Publication of Modestly Large Circulation) and half of Dean Kuipers‘ new book about the radical eco- and animal-rights movements, Operation Bite Back (ditto). I read with deep pleasure my sister‘s droll new (and still unsold) kids’ story about a cake to beat the blues, a book I hope will join her Jitterbug Jam as an NYT best-of-year. I read a few chapters of Tolkein‘s The Two Towers aloud with my son. I listened to a recitation from my other son of great comic-strip punchlines from Zits. I dipped briefly into Samuel Pepys (who is best approached a dip at a time). I watched Ms. Scatter rush to finish Chaim Potok’s Davita’s Harp before book club time. I wondered why the New York Times story about how credit-card companies want to start socking it to “deadbeat” customers who actually pay off their bills every month never mentioned that the card companies already make a good chunk of money off those “unprofitable” sales from the merchants’ fees. And that made me wonder whether F.D.I.C. stands for “freeloaders dunning innocent customers.”

Oh. And today I was able to lunch, with Ms. Scatter, just up the street at the sunny Cafe Destino. I had a multigrain bagel with cream cheese and tomatoes, and a big mug of French roast. Miss Otis was nowhere to be seen.