I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: GREASY KID STUFF–WFMU 91.9, New York City (1997-2006).

In my vast exploration of Greasy Kid Stuff (seriously, at least 15 minutes at work), I found the WFMU website.  It turns out that Greasy Kid Stuff, the radio show broadcast weekly from WFMU from 1997 until 2006.  Then they moved to Portland and couldn’t manage the remote connections properly, so the show ended on WFMU.

The good news is that you can hear weekly playlists of all of the shows from 2000-2006 on the playlist page.  They have playlists that date back to the beginning, but there’s only audio starting in 2000.  The bad news is that you the shows are all archived in Real Audio.  Which, I don’t know, may or may not really work anymore.

But for a historical look at a funny and weird kids show check out the archives, and if you still have Real Player, give it a listen.

[READ: June 17, 2014] Operation Trinity

The Cahill Files were a series of “books from the vault” of the Cahill family.  They were originally released as e-books and some of them have been collected as print books.  The first was Operation Trinity.  And like Vespers Rising, it chronicles the history of the Cahill Family.

The story is broken into three parts, each one chronicling the “life” of a painting.  The painting in question is Jan Van Eyck’s altarpiece (see bottom of post for picture of it). The first part is set in Ghent in 1566.  In reality, the painting was finished in the 15th century and was installed in the Saint Bavo Cathedral.

The story follows Matheus Jacobs, an ordinary, some might say even less than ordinary, boy whose family doesn’t seem to think all that much of him.  Until one day when his mother says that she wants him to become an altar boy so he can protect this altarpiece from the Vespers.  (His father doesn’t think he is worthy, but she disagrees).  He doesn’t know why his mother chose him, or what his mother has to do with anything like this, until she reveals that she can speak several languages and is well versed in the history of the Vespers.  He rides his untrusty mule to the church, where he marvels at the beautiful painting.

He soon meets Father Gerard who sends him on an errand.  While away, he hears a man inciting a mob against the church.  The mob grows incensed, as mobs do, and sets out trying to weed out the Catholics in the village.  Matheus is freaked because they are heading for his home village.  And when he arrives, he sees that the mob is trying to burn down his house.  In the fracas, one of his family members is killed, and the rest of his family insist that he head back to the protect the altarpiece because the Vespers are behind the mob and they are headed for the church.

With the help of Father Gerard, Matheus is able to save the altarpiece from attack, and the story is very exciting.

Part Two is set in Massachusetts in 1945.  This follows an adventure of Grace Cahill (who had a great adventure in Vespers Rising).  Grace is in school and has a new teacher, Miss Hubert.  Hubert is one of the worst teachers that she has ever had, disinclined to teach and seeming to have ulterior motives.  And during a (quick and uninformative) slideshow which includes pictures of the altarpiece, Hubert takes away a letter that Grace has been reading.

The letter is from one of her favorite teachers, Mr Blythe, who has joined the army.  Blythe has been asking her to help with a secret project (since she did such a good job with the last one in Vespers Rising).  But Grace wants out, it was too dangerous and she’s not ready to be a part of all of this for real.  She had been ignoring the letters he sent, although she knew it had something to do with the altarpiece.  Later, when she sneaks into Hubert’s office to get her letter back, she finds a letter from one of the Vespers saying that they had secured the altarpiece and that Hubert should get any information she could out of Grace.  And now Grace is in.

Grace’s adventure sends her to Germany where she learns that the Nazis have taken the altarpiece and are planning to blow it up.  How can Grace help, especially since she doesn’t speak German?

Part Three is set in London in 2008.  It involves Ian and Natalie Kabra (this was hard to read after the end of Cahills vs Vespers).  Isabel, their mother, asks them to go on their first mission–break into a University in Belgium and steal some files.  But when they finish (a job that seems like it was sabotaged) she is not there to pick them up.  How will the kids escape and where is their mother?

They find her down the road (with all kinds of implications there) looking at the altarpiece.  And also looking at Grace who is in a heated discussion with Isabel.

This story doesn’t impact any of the current plotlines, but it does flesh out their history and, (my favorite part of the books is the introduction of real art and artifacts) introduces to the reader a famous and beautiful piece of art.