Joan of Arc: Her Story
by Régine Pernoud
King Felix makes “The Leap”?
Mariners blog Lookout Landing thinks that King Felix might have made “The Leap” from a very good starter to a great one. The difference? An excellent changeup against left-handed hitters:
For much of 2006 and 2007, Felix was dogged by an inability to consistently retire lefties, a function of (not exclusively, but primarily) an inconsistent change. Today he really had it working. He threw it 22 times – 17 times for strikes – and of the 15 swings, seven missed and only one put it in play. Felix was doing a great job of either burying the change low or putting it off the plate away from the batter, with terrific results. If this keeps up, then that’s it, he’s made the leap. End of story. He’s already murder on righties. If he’s truly discovered the secret to throwing an effective change, then that gives him four pitches he can throw in any count to any hitter, and that’s…that’s game over is what that is.
Snowing in April
I know it’s lame to complain about the weather, but I just need to say that it is April 18th and I can see snow falling outside my window. I have fond memories from years past of pulling out spring and summer wear in March and storing the winter wear away. They seem distant memories now. All this global warming is not all it’s cracked up to be.
The Oxford History of Byzantium
Buy The Oxford History of Byzantium!
Cyril Mango
Abby and Wilson at the Aquarium
Abby and Wilson at the Aquarium. Spring 2007?
Abby at the Mariners
Abby and Mamma enjoy a Mariners game. This is from 2006 I think.
Grandmama sends an Easter crocodile?
Wilson is so enamored with crocodiles that he sees them in everything. He can find crocodiles in the clouds, in his Cheetos and Pirate Booty. He can nibble them out of his toast and his crackers. The bottom line is that we are surrounded by crocodiles.
Earlier this week, a package arrived for Wilson and Abby from their grandparents. It was filled with Easter goodies, including Cadbury cream eggs, Beanie Baby Easter bears, M&M dispensers disguised as Easter bunnies, and 2 large caramel-corn Easter bunnies with candy eyes and candy carrots for noses.
Wilson is convinced that his caramel-corn Easter bunny is a crocodile. I tried to convince him otherwise, but he insisted, turning it on its back and repositioning it. And I’ve got to admit that if I use just a bit of imagination, I can see it, too. The long ears of the bunny could double as the long snout of the crocodile. We can’t really explain the carrot on top of the croc’s head, but otherwise, it’s believable.
You be the judge.
Abby is daring
Abby has a copy of The Daring Book for Girls by Miriam Peskowitz (in addition to her copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys). On page 82 she finds “The Daring Girls Guide to Danger” which gives a list of things that any daring girl should do to face her fears and push herself to new heights to inspire her to face challenges throughout her life. Here is the abbreviated list:
- Ride a roller coaster.
- Ride a zip line across the canopy of a rain forest.
- Go white-water rafting.
- Have a scary movie festival in your living room.
- Wear high heels.
- Stand up for yourself-or someone else.
- Try sushi or another exotic food.
- Dye your hair purple.
Abby has always had a strong sense of justice and readily stands up for herself and others. Number 6? Check.
Abby has a pair of high heel brown boots that were handed down to her from Chelsea. She readily wears these to everywhere but school. Maybe they don’t fit her school image, or more likely they aren’t practical for what I understand are very active recesses. Number 5? In progress.
Tonight Abby dyed her hair cherry red, her favorite color. She asked for this as soon as she read it in this book. Aside from it being a little costly, I honestly didn’t have any good reason to not do it. We went to my stylist and she used a food-grade dye for safety. It is absolutely darling. Number 8? Check.
Everyone should have such a list. Abby is lucky to have found it, and I think it is only a matter of time before she starts adding her own things to the list to personalize it to her own needs and goals.
The quest for ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’
When I was in high school Judas Priest was at the peak of their musical and commercial power and between my friends and I we had copies of almost all of their albums. But there was a legendary long out-of-print album called ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’ that was told to be more rocking, more mighty than any other work (except possibly ‘Screaming For Vengeance’ of course).
There was no Internet and our little town did not have a thriving used record market, so when a title was out of print, you were out of luck. Whereas everyone had heard about the legendary awesomeness of ‘Sad Wings’, no one we knew had heard even one note of it. The studio release was like a metal grail. And the terrible power in the album’s name: ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’. How could you not spend all your time and energy trying to track that sucker down? Answer: you can not. You must find that lost metal codex. And the album rocked indeed. It lived up to every ounce of anticipation.
I invited my good friend from back then and today, Andy Welker, to talk about the day he and his brother finally completed the quest to recover a copy of ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’.
The quest as recalled by Andy
Doug asked me to describe what I could of the day I bought a used cassette copy of Judas Priest’s Sad Wings of Destiny–their second full-length album. This was over twenty years ago, so I am grateful that I can remember any of it.
I think I bought that cassette in the spring of 1986. I sort of remember using my little brother’s money. If it wasn’t that cassette, I know that I wheedled him into spending his money on some cassette or another in those years. Neither of us had much cash then, so it took no small amount of pressure from my friends and me to make deals like that happen. Make no mistake, my brother was a Judas Priest fan, but I’m certain he would rather have spent his cash on treats. And I can’t now ascribe ersatz nobility to conning my brother, as if we’d taught him tough lessons. It was only conning.
In those years, some combination of the following people would have been party to any cassette-buying trip: Me, Doug Manis, Sean Florance (who surely was there, because he was always driving everybody for every reason), Bryan Fuller, Lem Gaswint, and David Welker (my aforementioned little brother). My brother and I only bought cassettes then and we only had a few, a great percentage of which–probably 4 out of 15–were Judas Priest cassettes. Like Screaming for Vengeance. Like Sin After Sin. Defenders of the Faith, I think. We knew about Sad Wings of Destiny, but hadn’t heard any of the songs from it. But we were eager to know.
We ultimately found the Sad Wings of Destiny cassette at the now-defunct Roadrunner Tapes and Records. Roadrunner didn’t stay in business long. I think they suffered from the same problem many used stores have–suck-ass inventory.
I’m sure we tried Kelly’s Comics before Roadrunner. Kelly’s Comics was in the converted living room of a house just a few doors from the Florance family home. Was the inventory at Kelly’s suck ass? Check. I remember wondering, before my first trip to Kelly’s Comics, if the store was operated by Kelly Slaybaugh. Anyone who grew up in Clarkston during that time knows what a stupid, adolescent fantasy that was. Kelly Slaybaugh was my age and a cheerleader from 7th grade through 12th. Probably not a fan of either comics or used music. The real Kelly of Kelly’s Comics looked a bit like a shorter, fatter, and homelier version of Peter Jackson. He was also always grumpy. I wish him good luck.
Anyway, we got the cassette from Roadrunner. What I remember best about that trip was that a kid my age farted near where I was browsing. He walked away and someone I was there with came up to see if Id found anything good. He smelled what he thought I dealt.
That fart was unforgettable. So was the cassette. Sad Wings is a Priest fan favorite and certainly my first or second fave of the Priest oeuvre. I remember, however, thinking my copy was inferior because it was used and released not on Columbia but on Gull Records. It looked like a bootleg, with a yellow sticker for a label vs. the superior direct-to-case printing found on most cassettes.
And the cassette was inferior. Gull or whoever hadn’t punched the safety tabs on that tape, rendering it recordable. And some previous owner taped over a portion of the song Island of Domination–a rocking romp of a song that is best heard without interruption. The interruption on my cassette was the voices of two dudes, one of whom said I’m tired. The other responded by saying, Man, I was tired when I woke up. These dudes sounded like typical dudes from the 1970s-1980s. Possibly both were stoned a little. I picture them looking like Refugee-era Tom Petty.
That’s it. I remember more than someone my age has a right to remember. I can’t recommend Sad Wings enough. Some of it (Epitaph) is laughably somber; some of it rocks quite hard. The themes are familiar to any early metal listeners–quasi-occult references, sadism, and love. Good listening.
Coda
Somehow the two sleep-deprived stoners on Andy’s cassette just added to the charm.
I subscribe to emusic.com where I pay them $15/month and they give me 90 MP3 downloads each month. Indie rock dominates the catalog, but there is also lots of blues, jazz, classical, bluegrass, and other non-mainstream music that the big labels don’t provide much of. They also have a lot of oddball stuff like film soundtracks, spoken word, and just one-off out-of-print recordings from tiny labels that I think are trying to squeeze a little more revenue out of back catalog.
One day I log in and see ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’ listed on the ‘Newly Added’ column. I click one button, wait 10 minutes, and just like that I have ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’ on my iPod. I hadn’t heard that record in at least 10 years, probably closer to 15, and it just rocked so much I let it loop all afternoon. I can’t get over that 20 years later, after all the work Andy and Dave did to research and excavate that metal relic, I’m must bopping around one day and boom I’m enjoying ‘Island of Domination’ on my iPod, sans sleepy stoners. God bless the Internet, man.
Abby’s bus
Last night when Doug got home, Abby was chattering away about her karate class and showing him the moves that she needs to master. She told him that in karate, it is really important to concentrate, and only think of karate.
Abby: So I imagine my brain is like a bus, and all my thoughts are riding the bus. I make all my other thoughts go to the back of the bus, and I let Karate stay up at the front. That’s how I concentrate.
Me: Is that a technique that your sensai taught you?
Abby: No. I’ve been working on my bus for while.
Me: Do you use your bus at any other times?
Abby: Yeah, it helps me at school sometimes, too.
We’d read that karate could hone a person’s self discipline and concentration skills, we just hadn’t imagined that it would come in the form of an imaginary bus. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if Abby ever needed a magic bus, this is the time. In a school classroom with 28 other 6-year-olds, this seems like a great coping device. Maybe we should all have a magic bus.