I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BOOKER T. JONES-Tiny Desk Concert #125 (May 2, 2011).

Booker T. Jones is the Booker T from Booker T. & the M.G.’s whose classic “Green Onions” is one of my favorite instrumentals ever (and probably why I enjoy the Hammond sound so much).

And he plays it here.  He says he wrote it when he was 17 years old (in 1962)–a senior in high school.  And he still enjoys playing it.

They did some furniture moving to get the desk-sized Hammond B3 organ and its sturdy wooden Leslie speaker cabinet to where Bob’s desk normally goes, and it is worth it.  Booker T. even gives a brief lesson about “crawling” on the organ and what drew him to it in the first place when he was ten years old.

After playing “Green Onions,” he switches sounds on the organ to play a wonderfully menacing version of “Born Under a Bad Sign” (a song he also wrote).  It’s so very different on the organ–and I much prefer this version to the familiar one.

The final song is called “Down in Memphis.”  It was a new song in 2011 but it is the song I like the least.  There’s nothing bad about it–it’s just kind of plain and simple.  It’s more of him singing (about Memphis, which doesn’t mean much to me) and less of his organ playing.  But that’s okay.  His voice is still amazing.

I’m all about that Hammond.

[READ: January 21, 2016] Mermin: Book Three

After waiting nearly three years between books one and two, I waited one day between books two and three.  I actually assumed that this series was a trilogy, but I have learned that there is a part four already out.

Book three opens up in the Kingdom of Mer.  Mermin is a little boy (uh, fish, uh, whatever) and he is having a really hard time learning to control the sea.  He should be able to use his thoughts to make the water move.  But he stomps out in frustration.

Then we jump back to the present where our gang (Pete, Toby and his sister Claire and Penny) along with Mermin and Benni are being driven in a ship to Mer.  And Mak is driving the ship (I don’t think I knew that my favorite walking whale had a name).

Their back home “plan” for heading to the sea involved having Randy tell everyone that they were away camping.  Of course, Randy is a bad kid and can’t be trusted, so it should come as no surprise to see that he stowed away on the ship (we never actually find out what happened back home).

En route to Mer, they encounter a patrol from Atlantis (yes, that Atlantis).  Mak was looking to take a shortcut through Atlantis waters, but the Atlanteans are not happy about that.  Especially when they look in the ship and see human children.  They naturally assume the children are Atlantean and accuse Mak of kidnapping them.  So Mak flees and they get to Mer safely.

Down under the down of Mer, we meet Mermin’s sister, Merma, who is delighted to meet humans.  We also meet Benni’s father who also is very happy to meet them.  Unlike Mermin’s father who is quite crabby (not literally) from the get go.  Mermin’s father assumes that Mermin has returned to take his rightful place on the throne.  But Mermin wants nothing to do with that.

And it’s Pete who brings up the ugly topic of Mermin’s brother.  In Book Two Mermin said that his brother was the rightful heir to the throne.  But then we learn that Mermin’s brother was killed by the Atlanteans.  It’s a dark moment in this story.

Chapter Three returns from that dark moment to a much lighter one.  The gang is outfitted in Mer-suits.  And here’s where Randy’s comic relief is great.  He looks at Pete and says, “You look like a big nerd to me!” to which Pete says “You’re wearing one too!”  Later, when Pete puts on a breathing mask, Randy looks at him and laughs “Pffff!! Ba Ha Ha!” To which, again, Pete replies, “Seriously, Randy!?! You’re wearing the EXACT SAME THING.”

And then the kids (along with Mak and Benni, but not Mermin who is with his parents) go on a tour of Mer.  Weiser must have had a lot of fun imagining this whole city, as well as the many wordless panels of sights around Mer that come later.  Their tour includes a stop in the black market in order to buy breathing apparatuses for the humans so they can go outside of the Mer dome.

And that’s when we meet some other characters–not so nice characters like: Kuda and Gargus, and the other bad guys who plan to capture the humans and return them to Atlantis–for a reward of course.   The Atlanteans don’t even believe that the kids were kidnapped, but Kuda convinces them that the kids were brainwashed. and believe they are from the surface.  The Atlanteans are very advanced people who make surprisingly sophisticated weapons, but they may not be all that bright.

Even though I found this section pretty exciting, I don’t really enjoy lengthy fight scenes in comics.  And there were about a dozen pages of fights in this book.  Weiser draws them well (I hate when fight scenes are simply confusing), but it wasn’t my favorite section in the books.

However, the cliffhanger at the end is fantastic and I am certainly looking forward to Book 4.