Thursday, July 11, 2002

Truth or Dare at the CN Tower


I loved my visit to Canada, I mean, the one where I was actually a tourist and did allegedly touristy things, including visiting the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto [ohmigod!] and the CN Tower.

Of course, this was a few years and a quasi-spouse ago, that is, all of oh, 6 years now, or thereabouts.

I will never forget the CN Tower, because my "significant other" [the aforementioned quasi-spouse] didn't want to walk on the glass. His dad and brother [my hemi-demi-semi-in-laws as I used to refer to them, though non-musicians never seem to get that joke] may have done a little wincing, but walked out onto the glass with aplomb.

Well, here I am years later doing the geeky fan thing and reading some stuff at Sean Biggerstaff's website [a charming fellow by all accounts], including a recent Q&A with SB where one question was:

Did you stand on the glass floor at the CN Tower?


Sean's answer was:

I danced on the glass floor at the CN tower.


Well, I gotcha beat, Sean, hands down. Quite literally. No photographic evidence [that I'm aware of, though I do seem to appear in total stranger's vacation snapshots with some regularity], but when I say hands down, I'm not kidding.

I did handstands on the glass, and walked on my hands.

Kid. You. Not.

So, if you were in the tower sometime in the mid 90's, and remember a short woman with ash brown hair, kinda wavy, doing a handstand on the glass, things flying every which way out of her pockets, with a somewhat horrified blond man in red flannel holding her foot up to help balance -- well, that was me.


Tuesday, July 09, 2002

Making Beautiful Music


I just read the hands-down best short story I've come across this year. There I was, minding my own business, thinking about double knitting [which I believe I've also seen as "thermal knitting", somewhere, somewhen] as I trotted out to the mailbox to see what might be lying in wait for me.

And what did I spy with my little blue eye? The most recent edition of Weird Tales, Issue 328. (The website's not up to date yet over at DNA Publications, if you go there and follow the current issue link for WT, you'll find an older issue than that upon which I expound.)

And (cue dramatic music), just the best little gem of a story, "The Little Nightmusic That Could", by Stephen Woodworth. I had to stop reading the mag after I finished that story. A sheer delight, though I felt it should have ended 2 paragraphs earlier than it did. [Upon re-reading this morning, I might be talked into taking that back. Might.]

What if...Eine Kleine Nachtmusik [y'know, Mozart, dead composer, famous divertissement music] came to life?

What if?

Go subscribe to Weird Tales right now. Any safe harbor for stories that delicious deserves your attention.