New Orleans 1: Curiosities.

“The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here.

You could be dead for a long time.”

Bob Dylan

I've just returned from a visit to New Orleans:  if there's a city in North America that will make you believe in voodoo and vampires, this is it.  Much of the city is just like any other city, but that doesn't matter - the heart of New Orleans is really in places like the French Quarter and Garden City, where the modern era is a thin facade over the past.

The French Quarter in particular is one of the defining aspects of the Crescent City's mythology.  Its shuttered, silent houses, legacy of its European roots, lend it an air of brooding withdrawal, and its elaborate ironwork and distinctive architecture hark to a different time.

There's a faint underlying scent of mold and rot that permeates the Vieux Carré, an odour of degeneration and decay that belies the bright lights and cheap drinks of the Quarter at night.  The main thoroughfares are crowded and well lit, but the side streets are dark and empty - it's not hard to imagine that an unwary visitor might wander away from the light and have a terminal encounter with a nosferatu.

The other defining feature of New Orleans is its evocative cemeteries, filled with crumbling crypts and tombs, worn by time and weather.  You have to visit the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 - Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, is buried here. They say she never aged, that she could see the future, that she could be in more than one place at one time.  They've restored her tomb, but the triple-X markings of worshippers are still visible under the masking white paint, and people still manage to leave behind an offering or two in hopes of a boon from the Queen.

It used to be that anyone could go into the Cemetery No. 1, but there were too many problems, too much vandalism, too much violence.  Now admission to the Cemetery is only allowed for groups with licensed guides, people who have relatives buried there, and, who knows, perhaps for people who are already buried there themselves.

You could be dead for a long time...

- Sid

Ready Player One: Life Imitates Art.

While I was working away at my desk today, I heard my office mate explaining to a disapproving IT representative that they keep their password on a Post-It™ note on their monitor just for convenience, and that really, no one could do anything with it anyway.

I cheerfully contributed that in Ready Player One, the villain keeps HIS password on a Post-It™ note in his VR module, and as such the good guys are able to hack into his system and do all kinds of things that he doesn't want them to.

Apparently this didn't help, but I felt that it had to be said.

- Sid

P.S. Given the heavily referential nature of the movie, it's a shame that after Wade Watts meets Sorrento, the aforementioned villain who is played by Ben Mendelsohn, he didn't say "And he looks just like the bad guy in that Star Wars spinoff prequel movie!"  Okay, it's really more of a Deadpool thing to break the fourth wall, but still.

Angels and Lives.

 

We are secrets to each other
Each one’s life a novel
No-one else has read

Rush, Entre Nous

As previously reported, I've fallen behind on my New Year's book-of-the-week resolution, but it's still proven to be a useful impetus for reducing my stack of unread purchases.  Having recently finished re-reading* Ready Player One, I belatedly realized while getting ready for work this morning that I needed a new book, so I  quickly pulled Clockwork Lives out of the pile before running out the door.

Clockwork Lives is a bit of an oddity.  I purchased it last year in Penticton during the annual Peachland winery tour as a curiousity more than anything else: the embossed, gilded cover caught my eye, and I was intrigued to see that Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for Rush**, was one of the authors, along with Kevin J. Anderson.  Although, to be honest, I hesitated for a moment because of that second name.  I think of Kevin J. Anderson as a professional collaborator/adapter - not quite to the point of being a ghost writer, but you do tend to see his name on a lot of book covers following some else's name and the word "and".

Regardless, my curiousity was piqued, and I added the book to my stack of purchases.

As it turns out, the book was written as companion piece for Rush's final studio album from 2012, Clockwork Angels.  (The live album from the follow-up Clockwork Angels tour was their final album before retiring as a band.) 

I started reading Clockwork Lives  on the bus this morning, and I'm cautiously pleased so far - it's an alternate reality steampunk novel with a bit of a fairy-tale feel to it, surprisingly like something that Neil Gaiman might have written, and the early chapters are quite promising in their description of a young woman who must fill the pages of a book with other people's lives as captured in a drop of their blood in order to receive her inheritance.

I was even more pleased to find the following description on page 30:

He lifted the lid and removed a leatherbound book with an oxblood red cover stamped with clockwork gears and inset with alchemical symbols...Flustered, she opened the cover of the volume, to find that the title page said Clockwork Lives.

 

Full points to all involved:  having the book that I'm reading appear in the book that I'm reading is a marvelous little touch, and, really, this is exactly the kind of trick that makes reading a real book fun - you just can't do this sort of thing on a Kindle.

- Sid

* My previous reading of Ernest Cline's tribute to geek life was a loaner book, so my reading was still technically of a newly purchased book.

**  It's an odd coincidence that I randomly chose a book by a member of Rush to follow Ready Player One, which contains a whole section where the protagonist has to play the title track from the Rush album 2112 to obtain a clue for the Third Gate in the quest to find the ultimate Easter Egg - a section which was, sadly, left out of the movie version.