I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Barrymore’s Ottawa, ON (January 17, 1997).

After two recordings in Barrymore’s in 1996, Rhesostatics Live has another concert from Barrymore‘s to open 1997.  And this one is fantastic.  The sound is perfect, the band sounds great and they play a wonderful selection of songs.

They open with a long version of “Record Body Count,” and a rousing “Dope Fiends and Booze Hounds.”  They are also having a lot of fun on stage with the lengthy introduction to “Sweet, Rich, Beautiful and Mine” and the fun teasing that opens “Saskatchewan.”

But the most fun comes in “Fan Letter to Michael Jackson” which sees the band joking around and sounding almost giddy. It’s not the best rendition of the song for novices to the band, but for long time fans, this must have been fun to see.  It’s also amazing that the band has played yet another 2 hours plus show.

[READ: January 8, 2014] Sweet Tomb

I don’t usually mention the book publisher when I post about books, but I’m quite taken with Madras Press.  From their website:

Madras Press publishes limited-edition short stories and novella-length booklets and distributes the proceeds to a growing list of non-profit organizations chosen by our authors.  The format of our books provides readers with the opportunity to experience stories on their own, with no advertisements or miscellaneous stuff surrounding them.

The format is a 5″ x 5″ square books that easily fit into a pocket.  At present there are four series with four books in each series.

Proceeds from Dalton’s book go to the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers & Native Plants.

I have a lot of strange synchronicites with the books I read.  As it turns out, yesterday’s comic book was about a witch and this collection of related short stories is also about a witch.  It’s especially strange because I didn’t know that either book would have a witch character at all (even Zombillenium–it seems like it would be about zombies not witches).  So it’s funny to read two different stories and to see two entirely different attitudes about witches.  In Zombiellenium, she says that being a witch is not hereditary and yet in Sweet Tomb, she says it is (and then wonders why anyone would pass that on to her children).

So yes, these are linked short stories (I assume, and not a novel with chapter titles).  They are all about Candy, a witch, and her exploits.  Typically, I summarize each short story, but it’s more interesting to talk about this narrative as a whole.

Candy is the daughter of a candy witch (the kind who lives in a candy house, you see).  She hates the fact that she is a witch.  She only wears pink and refuses to indulge in any witchy behavior.  She also decides to never have children–why would she want to curse another person with witchiness.   As the book opens, Candy has been dating Chad, a vampire.  He sucks her blood, which she likes, but sometimes he goes too far, which she does not.  But they mostly just enjoyed being different.  Sometimes they’d start fires together.  One day she set fire to the woods near her house and he convinced her to let it burn on and on.  It eventually burnt down her house.  So they broke up.  Later she gets back together with him, but decides that he’s still a jerk.  So she turns him into chocolate.

She then tells the story (they’re all in the first person) of a man she met who seems to be following her everywhere.  He claimed that she was his bride.  The origins of his delusion are quite amusing.  She also runs into Pinocchio, who has cut his nose off–hes bleeding but doesn’t seem to have any breath.  What the hell?

As the book nears the end, she meets Death.  Death has a killer pair of shoes which Candy is very interested in.  Candy hangs around with Death and gets invited to one of Death’s parties (Death lets her borrow one of those pairs of shoes).  The party is at Evil’s house.  Evil has a huge carnivorous feast. The guests strip down to nothing (except the shoes) and devour the meat.  Candy only eats sugar and is kind of grossed out at the savagery until the dessert is served, where she gorges herself.  Then a surprise ingredient is revealed–the host is Evil after all.  Although the stories were linked, this surprise wa excellent for linking the stories strongly.  I really enjoyed this collection.

After the first story, which I assumed was a once off short story, I wasn’t sure what to think.  A tiny story about a witch was kind of odd.  But after seeing how all of the stories tied together, I absolutely loved the book.  I haven’t read anything else by Dalton, but I hope to find some more works by her.