NorsePlay: I invented the warhammer clamp.

In the Norse Lore, Thor has the convenience of a warhammer which, thanks to dwarven craftsmanship, reduces in size to fit in his pocket or be worn as a pendant (yes, anyone wearing a Mjölnir necklace could be that Odinson among us, so watch yourself). Yet, short of some atomic-chain matter folding nano-technology, bearing a warhammer for the rest of us tends to be rather cumbersome.

Many have stated that necessity is the mother of invention, or argued that war is the father of innovation. The medieval warhammer was invented as an anti-armor weapon, something that crushes & claws into plate steel. Aside from keeping this weapon in hand, or tucking it into your belt, there historically was no other easier method of carry. But why hadn't those knights & soldiers who'd worn a scabbard or quiver on their backs thought of something similar for their warhammer?



Five-hundred years later, Guillermo the IVth finally invents the warhammer clamp, adding his name to the Valhalla-worthy warriors of melee weaponry's historical innovations.

[The warhammer in clamp! And me in my wedding tunic!]

[Grabbing the haft for draw.]

[Drawing the warhammer.]

[Swinging over-the-shoulder for the strike!]

Mark that game changer on your calendars.



It started as a going-to-sleep exercise. I'd lie there and think of how exactly one could wear a warhammer on their back for a quick over-the-shoulder draw, and also be able to snap it back in place once done pounding your attacker into submission. Sometimes I'd slip into a dream thinking about it. Other nights, the mental exercise would cause my eyes to snap open, and instead I'd run for my desk to draft something out. As a writer, you learn that if you don't put an idea down when it comes, you will lose it, and I applied that preserving sensibility to this process.

[Warhammer dimensions.]

My awesome high finish warhammer from +Sabersmith Inc has a hammered/scalloped haft, which is advantageous for grip, but presented a challenge for a clamp. The first two PVC pipes I dremeled into what would've been working shapes for a standard smooth handle finally worked on my third attempt, which had higher ends for holding an irregular surface, a scoop in the middle for flexibility to allow for a draw, and curved outsides to prevent scratches & not get caught when the hammer was drawn/replaced.

I then drilled & mounted the clamp onto a T-shaped plastic sheet reclaimed from two pieces of old computer keyboard that I Gorilla Glue'd together.

The next problem was the width of the head versus the smaller diameter of the handle while mounted. I'd thought the plastic backing would just flex and curve down for the wider head when clamped, but no, it required immersion in boiling water to soften and reshape into a specifically angled spatula to allow for the warhammer's head. (Thanks to my prop-making friend +Tory Middlebrooks for this helpful tip.)

[Note the finished spatula shape, and the judicious use of Gorilla Glue between the layers, which requires some restraint & predictive skills as it expands to four times its volume when dry.]

With the hardware of it crafted, I then had to learn some basic sewing (since I took Spanish in both junior high & high school and not Home Ec.). Making a pattern, acquiring a yard of nice faux leather upholstery, and some high gauge waxed thread, I cut a front, back, and baldric loop. The front pleather required some careful assessing of how wide to make the slot to slip over the clamp portion. Before the first part of the stitching, I used Gorilla Glue to seal the edges of the loop. Using a ruler & a white gel pen, I then measured & marked the holes, punched them with a bookmaking awl I had, and did a double running stitch for the baldric loop on the back piece, then whipstitched around the outside halves after first Gorilla Glue-ing them down & together to the plastic hardware.

[The finished back with a loop for the baldric to run through. The loop had to be long for a solid mount of the "T" on one's back, otherwise it might twist and the clamp wouldn't release when one needed it to.]

[The front side with warhammer in place.]

Making a pattern of the finished tube clamp, I cut a sheet of adhesive backed black felt to cover it (see above and the third photo in this post for detail) and protect the hammer from scratches, then added one thin strip of adhesive backed foam rubber for extra grip on the four top insides of the clamp to prevent slippage while in states of excessive motion (i.e. jogging, running, rappelling, or horseback).

[With baldric belt running through the back.]

Sometimes in older issues of Marvel's Thor, we see him with the hammer's handle peeking out over his shoulder, but we never get to see the scabbard-like hardware as the head's always under the red cape, so the artist never actually had to present a working solution like this one.

[View from the front with accessible handle over the shoulder.]

[The last thing you might see before getting sent to Hel.]

I'm no engineer, so this project was challenging for me. I'd get super angry when things didn't come together the first time, as I'd spent alot of time thinking and re-thinking possibilities, trolling hardware store aisles, considering so many materials, looking at textiles, weighing the idea of maybe using rivets or grommets, and playing with the options over & over in my head, yet still buying things that didn't work or I didn't need. It wasn't like writing where the tools & words are superfamiliar and it feels like play at times -- this was strange & rather like work.

I felt maybe this was a small taste of what Sindri & Brokkr felt when making Mjölnir, the vision of knowing what you want to make but putting in all the effort into figuring out exactly how to make it as the horsefly of doubt & setbacks tries to break your concentration. It turned out to be three times what I thought it would be in costs & time, but it was worth persevering on until the victory of invention. I'm glad the plastic dust is out of my lungs and kitchen, and I can now carry my warhammer hands free and always at the ready.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Dark Entries meets Ruminations From The Red Room.

A few weeks ago we had the honour of being a guest on Ruminations From The Red Room, a newly launched podcast of my longtime friend Mitch Proctor.



Listen to us here.



While the title implies that Mitch's online project is Twin Peaks-centric, that's merely a context and starting point for a leaping-off into dialogues about what underlies existence, the vagaries of values, and an interpersonal think-tank of ideas, which is broadly ambitious & admirable.



Remember that conversation you had with someone late one night where everything you said made sense and was possibly the most profound thing that ever came out of your mouth? This podcast is an attempt to capture that magic, that essence of conversational synchronicity where speaker and listener learn & build upon each other, and a palace of reason is constructed. Mitch has a slightly more humble explanation of purpose, but we believe he's after something more transcendent in the end.

[A CG update of The Red Room. (from imgur)]

And like Coop & Windom Earle in the room above, we dugpas crossed the threshold into his ritual space studio and a twenty-year-old friendship spellwove a Q & A web about individual inequality, the creative process & impulse, fandom, this blog, garmonbozia, and the endurance of our long connection. Or as Mitch's blurb text puts it:

Mutual respect, youthful idealism, Mr. Lynch, and Mr. Smith ignite a friendship that has two decades under its belt. Here, we touch on some of that origin, and drink deeply of love of art, and expression. Twin Peaks, will modern audiences get it? How does Thor carry his hammer on his back? Will we ever get the follow up to 4:13 Dream?

On a side note, Mitch courteously brewed us a cup of Valhalla Java: Odinforce Blend to fuel the conversation. Not only did it do that, but drinking a single cup at 8pm catapulted me into a wakeful night,

purged & wrung my insides out, and violently penetrated every cell of my body. Would I drink it again? Hel yes! Willingly, and Odin would approve of pursuing such an ecstatic experience.



Elixirs aside, Mitch managed to keep me mostly positive and on the trackless track, like a good host and interviewer. We both had alot of nice & sincere things to say about each other, culture, being genii locorum of Tucson, the feels, and wild shots in the dark at the upcoming mystery that'll be Twin Peaks.



So if you readers have always wondered what I really sound like, and exactly what that blog on the laugh's truly about, give the podcast a listen, and if you like it, do subscribe as there's more Dark Entries meets Ruminations From The Red Room to come.

[It's all about Shelly the Waitress' cherry pie.]

#   #   #

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

it was a Chupacabra.

With a 13-megapixel camera on my BlackBerry, one might think I'd've gotten a crisper capture than this one that looks like the thousands of questionable blurry paranormal sightings photos where if you squint right you kinda, sorta see it.

And just like those hazy photos of sasquatches, ghosts, and unidentified flying objects, I just barely got this:

I'm not a photographer, I'm a writer. You can definitely tell from this and from most of the other self-provided photos I've posted. So here's the writing to back this up:

On Sunday, March 19th, 2017 at 2:24p, my mother-in-law Joyce and my wife Michelle, beckon me over to the kitchen window at my parents' house. Outside my mother has a rock island xeriscaped garden which includes a very small fountain and pool that the local wildlife comes to nibble and drink at. The house is located on the slope of Tucson's local landmark, "A" Mountain, which puts it near a large area of desert park, so animals wandering through are common enough.

This was not a normal animal.

When I got to the window, a medium-sized hairless quadruped with blue skin, maybe a few shades darker than a painted Hindu god, was lapping up water from the pool. It had a uniform blue skin colour, no birthmark blotches like on most hairless dogs, or random remaining tufts of hair like on dogs with mange.

The other most likely suspect in Tucson would be a coyote, whom often scavenge edibles from suburban trashbins and random litter. I grew up in the northwestern outskirts of Tucson in the 1970s on a 3-acre desert lot, where I saw hundreds of coyotes, and it was many a night their yipping choruses and howls woke a young boy up, so I know a coyote when I spot one. This was not a coyote.

Unlike the photo, my first glimpse was plain as day, through a clear glass window, a mere 35 feet away. Neither Michelle or Joyce had a cameraphone on them, so I turned and went to the other side of the kitchen to get mine. In the short time that took, the chupacabra began to walk away north, our line of sight passing to the screened part of the window, which is the moire/grainy texture you're seeing in the image above. I tried moving to another window to get another shot, but I barely saw it leaving the driveway, so that's the only picture.

The above is fact. What follows from here forward are my thoughts, cryptid comparisons, and my associative speculations.

You may ask if it was a goatsucker, why wasn't it instead busy drinking blood? While my parents might live near a big swatch of desert, they're still in the city not so far from downtown, and rural farm animals aren't common in their neighborhood. Also, it was a rather warm day, and the chupacabra was probably very thirsty from all the sun. They're not undead, despite the hemophagic similarities, so like any living thing, it needs water to live. Other animals do come there to drink, so it may have been stalking before deciding to go for the water.

My sighting & photo capture matches the ones seen by Dr. Phylis Canion, a rancher in Cuero, TX, who had the xenomorphic body in her freezer, and after some inexact DNA testing (semi-concluded as a wolf-coyote hybrid), had the remains taxidermied, which exhibits some distinct anatomical variants upon closer examination.

A long time ago, my sixth-grade teacher, Mr Ramon Martinez, a very wise man, took a moment in class to bring up the 1972 B-film "Gargoyles". The premise included the idea that a winged humanoid species underwent a long-term hibernation under a mountain, emerging long after the accounts of their appearances had been dismissed (which is probably where the "Jeepers Creepers" films got their premise, and possibly inspired "The Descent" films partly as well). Then Ramon said that his mother once witnessed a group of winged humanoids launch themselves from "A" Mountain.

[Sentinel Peak, more commonly known as "A" Mountain.]

This account begs the questions: Why did the University of Arizona stop quarrying rock on conveniently located "A" Mountain? And aren't there tunnels going from the U of A, to Tucson High, to Roskruge Bilingual School, to possibly elsewhere? My wife once went through a tunnel system extending from behind Park Place to the McDonald's east of the mall and across the street, which has many, many branches leading to gods know where.

If there's a little-known subterranean network under the Tucson valley, why couldn't there be a population of chupacabras somewhere under the mountains concealed in a vaulted den? And if what's called the "Texas Blue Dog" variety of chupacabra could live there, why couldn't the related Puerto Riqueno & South American humanoid chupacabra spotted by my teacher's mother in the 1960s share the same Svartalfheimian space?

People have carved out shrines on the hard to reach upper southern face of "A" Mountain, risking life & limb to make small alcoves with statues of the Virgen de Guadalupe. It seems more than a little trouble to show religious dedication on a steep mountainside as opposed to a more easily constructed yard/bathtub shrine, unless there are perhaps other protective/warding reasons to pick this particular mountain.

In 2014, this oddity was captured in Texas. While it doesn't match dimensions or posture of the creature I saw, this curious variation only expands the types of chupacabra.

Many are the accounts of Huldrefolk, the hidden people, living within the hollow hills. Trolls, kobolds, alfar, dwarves, landvættir. There's a persistence to the idea.

If you allow the possibility of species of things yet to be discovered in the rainforest canopies, or in a darker corner of the Mariana Trench, or surviving from prehistoric times on a South American tepui, then anything could be down there underground. Anything. Realize that our credulous perception of the world is a fragile thing, mutable, and subject to change & expansion. 

There's room enough in the world for some, or even many, monsters. You don't have to believe my very real picture. It's grainy, far from definitive, only backed up by three witnesses, but I offer its evident truth to you with these words.

I know what I saw.

#      #      #

While
a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo
Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals
for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan,
airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a
craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally
interesting endeavours, do contact him.

NorsePlay: Neil Gaiman's "Norse Mythology".

Neil Gaiman faced the daunting task to adapt the narrative holy of the holies, the ur-book stories, the most ancient tales known to man from which all other tales have since flowed from: Norse Mythology.



As we told a childhood friend of Neil's last month, Neil is a fearless writer, that before Neil there wasn't a great movement in the fantasy genre to use the Gods as actual intimate first & close third-person protagonists.

[Neil Gaiman being fearless!]

We look back at his record for this daring talent with reading pleasure: The Sandman (his breakout World Fantasy Award-winning graphic novel series expanding the being of Greek deity Morpheus), American Gods (heavily featuring Gods from various pantheons), and Odd & the Frost Giants (a NorsePlay story for children of all ages). And now, in a tribute to pay back what originally inspired him, Gaiman offers us his version of Norse Mythology.



In his introduction, Neil points out and mourns the loss of many stories in the Norse Lore, with only hints of more left behind in epithets and kennings:

I wish I could retell the tales of Eir, because she was the doctor of the gods, of Lofn, the comforter, who was a Norse goddess of marriages, or of Sjofn, a goddess of love. Not to mention Vor, goddess of wisdom. I can imagine stories, but I cannot tell their tales. (p.14)

You big tease, Mr. Gaiman, as we're pretty sure you could draft some. (And go check out "The Almighty Johnsons" for an interesting take on these goddesses.)



One can't help but hear Gaiman's comfortable English accent while reading. (If you're unfamiliar, listen to this.) Some authors make a total hash of reading their own work (talking to you, departed Douglas Adams), but the words here just rise off the page as though you're listening by a campfire. 



The bar for comparison will always be D'Aulaires' Norse Gods & Giants, but Gaiman instead grew up with Roger Lancelyn Green's Myths of the Norsemen. This early inspiration aside, he sources Snorri Sturluson, the Poetic Edda, and Rudolf Simek's Dictionary of Norse Mythology for his current retelling.

[Fenrir-fraught German edition cover.]

There's an open-endedness to the Norse Lore which allows the teller to detail in the blanks as they see fit. Everyone takes the opportunity to do so, and in this Gaiman is no different. Just when you thought you'd heard all the names for the Gods, he comes up with some original epithets, which is a skaldic achievement.



Charming anachronisms, born of Gaiman's penchant for contemporary urban fantasy (i.e. Neverwhere), make their way into his version of the Eddaic material. For instance, the giant that survives Ymir's flood of lifeblood does so by "clamoring onto a wooden box" (p.32), and smithy dwarf Brokk threatens Loki with converting his head into "A thinking machine (...) Or an inkwell." (p.55) The fact that these modern day items can flow backward and find a place inside these stories only reinforces the Norse Lore's timeless essence.



Other interesting additions and modifications in Gaiman's version include: the cosmic giant Ymir being made neither sex yet hermaphrodite, the detail of runes inscribed on the sides of Utgardaloki's bottomless challenge horn, the rationalization of Odin, Vili, & Ve wanting to create better worlds to live in & thus sanctioning the necessary sacrifice of Ymir to provide realm-building materials to do so, the prick of "Baldur's bell-like laughter...", a new character of Thyrm's conniving sister at Thor's marriage, and Mjölnir winning the the dwarven crafting contest because of its ability to protect, as Gaiman emphasizes that value far above the other entries.



Gaiman also specifically assigns the Vanir's Frey & Freya with the creation of Kvasir, which dovetails nicely into their role as both generative/creative gods and as the members of the post-war tribal exchange.



As the book continues, one can't help but notice Gaiman's enjoyment of writing Loki as a foil for events, especially seen in his extended embellishment of Loki's seduction of the giant's draft horse into something rather sensual.

"The Mead of Poets" is a brilliant standout. The dwarves who kill Kvasir are recast from spiteful miscreants into alchemists, which makes more sense for the murder's resultant beverage. And Bolverkr's underhanded wooing of Gunnlod's done as well as any modern lothario running game on a girl on any given club night.



"Hymir and Thor's Fishing Expedition" partly gets retold as a bad stepfather story, as Tyr's giantess mother marries the abusive & inhospitable Hymir, and we get a taste of Tyr's oppressive early home life.



Hel's half-dead side is descibed as looking into the "pale eye of a corpse" (the exact phrase Gaiman re-uses later for midwinter's brief and distant sun). Gaiman's previous empathetic personification of Death in Sandman may have been partly influenced by her Gothic-forbearer Hel:

"I am only myself, Hel, daughter of Angerboda and of Loki," she said. "And I like the dead best of all. They are simple things, and they talk to me with respect. The living look at me with revulsion."

One can't help but admire Hel's forthright manner, and despite the horror of her condition, she wins us with her self-acceptance, and also wins Odin when he gives her a fitting place in his cosmic scheme of things.



Gaiman reorders events to make more narrative sense. Odin raises the long dead wise woman völva only once, far later in the stories after Balder experiences his plague of nightmares. Gaiman also takes the liberty of making the völva Loki's lover & monster mother jötunness Angrboda, which makes her belligerent & doom-filled revelations to Odin more motivated. This shuffling of prophecy toward the end of things gives the reader a feeling that Ragnarök's too late to stop by the time Odin hears of it, which eliminates the usual planning versus destiny questions of why can't it be avoided if the Gods know about it from so early on in the stories' throughline.

[Hungarian edition.]

Like in Sandman, and in his introduction, Gaiman falls prey to the common slanderous reduction of Thor to a box of hammers ... which ignores Thor's verbally deft outwitting of dwaven Alvíss (actually meaning "All-Wise") to save his daughter Thrud from his amorous attentions, and Gaiman omits this story in his collection. 

A huge deviation in "The Story of Gerd and Frey" is that Gerd's refusal of Frey's proposal is completely skipped. One wonders if the coercion aspect was found to be distasteful by the author, but that's negated anyhow for most modern audiences by her finding mutual happiness with Frey at the end. He is a God of love after all, and being selected by love itself for marriage would be the ultimate compliment.

A serious missed-opportunity occurs in "The Last Days of Loki" when the "Lokasenna" usually takes place. During this episode Loki calls out all the Gods on their transgressions and shortcomings in an attempt to show them they're as mischievous as he is and hypocritical to boot (which is false since Loki's brand of mischief also harms everyone and is born of a darker motivation). Unlike Gaiman's previous writerly use of Loki, he skips the potential of this famous verbal tennis match entirely, which we found disappointing.

[Domestic cover with nordic landscaping.]

During "Ragnarok: The Final Destiny of the Gods", there's a dying exchange between Heimdall & Loki, and a gorgeous post-Ragnarok ending that movingly capstones the book.



Bottom-line: Does Gaiman significantly improve the telling? No, but his telling is respectful, adorned with thoughtful things only he would do, crafted with the fuzzy edges of myth gathered & woven into smoother narratives, poetic yet accessible, and, in many passages, beautiful & wondrous. In that meritorious achievement, Gaiman fulfills the role of that Green version he grew up with, and this new version will be the lens through which the current generation first encounters the All-Father, the Trickster, and the Thunderer. Snorri would be proud.

#      #      #

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him viaLinkedIn or G+.

and then we went to Monster Camp.

Some would insist that marriage is about compromise, but in that subtractive equation one of two people always get chafed under the yoke of the other. No, if you've married correctly, the operating principle is compliment, like two pieces of a puzzle that make something greater that itself, or liquid to a bottle, things that fulfill each other's purpose.

So when my wife wanted to camp, something I'd not ever really had on my to do list, we decided it had to be something more engaging than the chore of roughing it, more than man versus nature, greater than just the great outdoors: We went to Monster Camp!

[Mini-totem in front of Camp Spirit's ramada.]

Monster Camp's the brainchild of Daniel & Dawna Davis of Steam Crow, a husband & wife graphic design team (see the compliment there?) out of Phoenix, AZ. Their outfit's been making monster-based books, stickers, postcards (my favourite), posters, t-shirts, and other sundries since 2005. The Monster Camp is attended by Monster Rangers, Steam Crow's fan-based scouting group, who participate in pursuit of good times, the eco-paranormal motto of "Believe, Study, Protect"-ion of Monsters, and the pursuit of superneat knowledge & achievement badges.

[The Marrow Totem at campground center. Put together with aluminum pipes and toggles made of elastic and wooden dowels, it's a sterling example of Monster Ranger ingenuity.]

Having been a huge admirer of Steam Crow's work since the first Tucson Comic-Con, we went not only for the camping, but to see how such a sociological construct would even come together. Having noticed that the focus at conventions seems to be acquisition, self-adornment, and photographic aggrandizement, how do a group of strangers taken out of that context and placed into the wild form community?

[Trophy heads posted outside of a gothic Skull Ranger's tent as an offering to the undead monsters they especially care for.]

Imagination is the key. Given the alt-scouting context, there's a mutual feeling generated that one belongs to something special with its own cult-like mores, a subversion of the protestant-based 1950s American youth groups with individual creativity replacing communal conformity as an ideal, a shared aesthetic that celebrates a steampunkesque inventiveness coupled with an attraction to the outré with the monster as its totem.

[Our fearless leader, Master Ranger Daniel Davis. Note the Goblin Post delivery man at bottom left, busy handing out missions and coded messages to members.]

There's a mythology complete with origin story, specialty scouting subdivisions if you feel like pursuing a niche, non-required uniforms with accessories, and an online forum with a patch-for-points registry if one wanted to get competitive about it, all which provide the glue that binds the Monster Rangers together.

[Hand sewn stitch witchery taught by hexcasting seamstress Dawna, who has a grimoire full of patterns of magickal intent for the Conjure Guard ranger branch.]

The annual Shindig (2017 being the second of these, with five happening up and down the western US) is the ultimate real world manifestation of the Monster Rangers. An exclusive patch for coming aside, it's three days of camping, with crafting workshops, monster-related lectures & presentations, secret missions, optional hikes, gaming, a musical performance, potluck dinners, and shared geekery with campfires, marshmallows and heavy social drinking. Like a cult, it takes you outside of your comfort zone where a tribal group dynamic then takes over. There's a special greeting in place of a handshake, and an even more special otherworldly artifact each scout is entrusted with that allows for a connection with any other Ranger at the camp.

[At our Camp Cucuy, my wife turned a chair into a working solar defroster after the dry ice solidified our fancy cheeses for the potluck charcuterie into impossible tooth-breaking bricks.]

Yet, unlike a cult, there's no peer pressure to do anything besides have a good time. Usually featuring two activities each hour outside of mealtimes, one at each ramada (either Camp Spooky or Camp Spirit) at each end of the camp, everything was optional, so if you needed tent time, you just took it, no questions.

[My smartly dressed wife sports her newly constructed Medic Scout themed nametag.]

Everyone we met in and outside of activity was congenial. People gave us bacon (!), lent us an extra portable gas stove to finish cooking our first night's potluck dish of red potato chili cheese fries, offered us middle shelf booze at the campfire, and everyone listened nicely to everyone else. We brought Jenga, and totally owned people, for which I know I deserve a patch. And as we talked to others, we found out many Rangers drove in from as far away as the West Coast to come, so it definitely wasn't just us 'Zonies making up the subculture.

[Late into the second night, Marrow showed up for a revealing Q & A with a monster.]

[At the stroke of midnight, a real Krampus sauntered out of the darkness, into the campfire's light to have his entourage hand out really, really good gingerbread cookies.]

Then there was a point where fantasy crossed into reality. One of the imperative skills of the Monster Rangers is to "Imaginate!", which allows one to see monsters. Reality's a consensual construct. When we frame what we see a certain way, it then excludes being able to see it in different ways, and we blind ourselves to the possibilities. The ancients saw monsters, gods, and creatures of all stripes & shades, recording them in legendary histories we learn about and enjoy today, whether we choose to investigate their truths or not. But nothing really separates the ancient mind from the modern one except how we construct our perception of reality. If we can reframe how we think about the world around us, we can see things as well as or even grander than the ancients did, and enrich ourselves in the process. This is probably the most subtle lesson the Monster Rangers has to teach us. While the manifestation of monsters in the pictures above may be a bit of low theatre, it also challenges what you see everyday by providing a solid sensory representation of the extraordinary right in front of us, and by forcing a broadening of our reality, that initiation ritual effectively allows us to witness them around us everyday.

[Rival Monsterologists showed up in top hats to present their counterpoint that monsters are dangerous and must be hunted to protect mankind. What short-sighted cretins!]

[My supercool aggregate of Monster Ranger badges. The hammers are wicked.]

While maybe it might be all about the sweet badges, there's alot more at play among the Monster Ranger Shindig experience than you might see at first. We're glad we went because it was all of the above and more. Thanks, Steam Crow!

#    #    #

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

NorsePlay: Lester Del Rey's "Day Of The Giants".

Long out-of-print and originally published in a shorter version titled When The World Tottered in 1950, Lester Del Rey ambitiously tackles the Twilight of the Gods in his 128-page novella.



Most authors take the easy way out by instead writing a story about nearly avoiding doomsday, but Del Rey rises to the challenge and gives the audience the lead-up and final battle ... but perhaps not just as prophesied. A predecessor to Greg van Eekhout's Norse Code, Del Rey delivered Ragnarök fifty years earlier in the genre.



An inexplicably long winter strikes, vexing weathermen, and causing worldwide privation, the results of which start communal breakdown & vigilantism in Leif Svensen's small rural town. Only because of their ancestors' stories do Leif & his recently returned prodigal brother Lee even think to reference Fimbulwinter, and when a mysterious hitchhiker also happens to mention the prophesied world-ending final winter, do the pieces begin to fall into place. 

[Airmont Books takes a very misleading artistic licence with the cover art.]

Mismarketed as sci-fi given the completely errant War of the Worlds-style flying saucer attack cover, Day of the Giants is more contemporary fantasy fare, which takes a protagonist of the current day & inserts them into the warp & weft of a magical & ancient hidden under-verse. Leif & Lee are the wildcards that get shuffled into the deck that changes the game of Ragnarök.


The text has a fair share of awkward sentences and typos. But Del Rey was amazingly prolific & possibly didn't have or make time for copy editing in the rush-to-print days of quick 'n' dirty sci-fi pulp, so compared to his contemporaries, it's good on a storytelling level.

[Earlier Armchair Fiction two-fer edition, Valkyrie on Bifrost art by Robert Gibson Jones. Note the odd choice of pairing with Richard Shaver (go look up The Shaver Mystery ... which could have something to do with the Svartalfar, trolls, or huldrafolk, if one applies the lens of Norse Lore to Shaver's cthonic encounters).]

While Del Rey gives protagonist Leif a lot of then-modern American common sense & know-how, we find fault with the idea that any 20th century man would be technologically more savvy than the Gods, especially given they're cited to be 50,000 years old in the story. That they would not advance, even with a very restrictive cultural adherence, stretches credulity.



On the other hand, there are some really creative additions to the mythology that add to & fill in some blanks:


• That the Valkyries used an Alfheim magic to breathe an "elf seed", or regenerative flesh, into their chosen fallen, which is then drawn out to regenerate the hero whole back in Asgard. The new "elf flesh" then allows them to fight, die, and be reassembled at battle practice day's end.


• Freya's falcon cloak is in origin elf-made (perhaps given her brother's rulership of Alfheim?).


• Thor's hammer Mjölnir has magnetic properties which allows it to disarm others if it passes by an enemy's metal weapon. (*Yoink*!)


• Decades before the Marvel Film's "Thor" & "Thor: The Dark World" adaptations, Bifrost is not only a dimensional connector to earth/Midgard, but to all the Nine Worlds.



These extrapolations show Del Rey did a fair amount of thinking and his Edda homework. While there are some mistakes, reassignments of lore roles, and willful omissions to skip lengthy background explanations for the novella format, Del Rey garnishes his text with some lesser-used epithetical Gods' names, place references, and details that would make Snorri Sturluson proud.

[Avalon 1959 hardback cover art by Emsh. Note the misspelling of Del Rey's surname.]

In Del Rey's 1950s Atom Age, technology & the modernist future were ideals to be pursued, the new secular science replacing the old religious beliefs, and here he uses the Gods as a foil for that moral: Some traditions need to be re-examined if they stop a more useful progress. Yes, that's totally unfair to retroactively impose that ideal on the Norse Gods, especially since they inspired cultures that invented seafaring & navigational innovations to travel the world over, themselves bore the first smart weapons (i.e Gungnir, Mjölnir, & Sumarbrander) into battle, and created fish nets. But again Del Rey presents the Gods as nearly frozen in their personas & ways, so only in the context of his book can he get away with it.



Despite this then-contemporary misapplication, Del Rey's Day of the Giants is a fun read, his imaginative addenda to the lore is inspired, and seeing the details of the story NorsePlay'd out in the fateful tale of Ragnarök is rather worth it.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

our return to The Lost World.

During a recent binge marathon of "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World", one is again amazed that such a late-night gem of a series didn't garner more of the cult-like worship it so richly deserved. Dinosaurs, lizard men, supernatural beings, and ancient cultures all fill the narrative roster, along with just excellent writing, sewing it up into one grand package of adventure-filled goodness.

[The Untamed Beauty, The Journalist, The Visionary, The Botanist, The Hunter, and The Femme Fatale.]

Based on an unapologetic Victorian novella of Empire, the series extrapolates on the original's basic setting & characters, adding a mysterious femme fatale and pushing the time forward to just after World War I. Doyle intended Professor George Edward Challenger to be a popular replacement for a Sherlock he'd become sick of writing, but no such luck. This other intellectual hero only featured in five stories of varied quality, but The Lost World stands as a genre-making classic.

[The original serial published in 1912 issues of The Strand.] 

The program ran from 1999-2002, first broadcast on Pay-Per-View with minor nudity & longer scenes, shot in Australia, later airing edited versions in the United States, then syndicated, and put out in three fatty boom batty box sets. The rub is that season 3 ends on a sixfold cliffhanger with all the characters in mortal danger, with the only resolution being a fourth & fifth season treatment of what might've been, and even followed up by some enthusiastic fan conventions.



With all the spirit of science & exploration tropes in the show, the steampunk label fits nicely, and one would think that in the retrofitting & subcultural appropriation of anything with a balloon, pith helmet, and a travelling tea set, that the series would experience a fervor of renewed interest. We are in part writing this to draw deserved attention to one of our favourite, and most ambitious, series.



Our praise aside, there's no proof like actually watching the show, so we present what we feel in our heart is a brief & spoiler-free linked list of the five best episodes of this standout show in ascending order -- a hard task with 66 awesome episodes of dino-laden goodness, it's nearly impossible to go wrong with any of it, but here are the winners:


#5: Amazons

It's all the stuff you imagined Paradise Island might be. Queen Selene! One so wishes Season 4 had happened with an Amazons II sequel episode.

[Lost in a giant beehive!]

#4: London Calling

Given how much Malone was conked out as the helpless would-be boyfriend to Veronica's jungle-grrl alpha during the run, it was cool to see Ned as the would-be hero.


#3: Tapestry

The writers simply out-do themselves by prequelling the show, adding a noir aspect to all the characters' past and roles in the Great War, and examines the serendipities behind how they came together.

[A dino stole my clothes?!? No way!]

#2: The Secret

Oh Marguerite Crux, who are you? Here we find out the whys behind our favourite mystery lady.


#1: Stone Cold

The gothest episode produced! Watch as mysterious circumstances force your heroes into villainous tendencies and "Dangerous Liaison"-style costumes! Soooo juicy!






After watching the show, we've been left with the following burning questions (established fans or new compleatists, please answer in the comments should you know):



1. Has anyone's ever done a bullet count for the Challenger expedition? While the Laytons may have had ammo leftover at the Treehouse, and GEC has gunpowder in his lab, we never see any shell retrieval for reloading, and we fancy they couldn't have brought so much lead on that balloon.



2. Are the unedited/uncensored Pay-Per-View versions of the episodes and bonus features finally available together in a retail set or online anywhere?



3. Was there ever an original/reproduction Ouroboros made available?



4. What exactly is the device Shanghai Xan's agent receives from Mordren? Fusion chamber? Nuclear grenade? Alien technology?


5. We feel there should be a soundtrack released with such incidental themes as "Challenger Invents Trouble. Again.", "Roxton Shoots His Load", "Marguerite Lies!", "Plateau Blues", and "Don't Be a Trog". Does anyone have complete versions of the incidental music to play in our own adventurous lives?

[Stuck in a lizard-man's harem!]

Provocative, saurian-fraught, unexpected turns of fate, and a smart over-arcing megaplot show that "The Lost World" is worth spending your time getting lost in. You might just find yourself a priceless T-Rex egg to bring back from that magic plateau of wonder. 

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.