Scotto's Wall Scrawls

• Green Orvis Mosquito-repellant shirt for Larry
• Green lounge pants for Chris
• Pink Bucket hat for herself
• Green striped shirt for me
• a few books, including Stephen Fry's The Liar for me, and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook
• a couple of puzzles, still sealed in the box. (corvette 1000 pc, spacewalk, homer simpson and an irish hutch)

The first 2 parts of the “lost” film Italian Spiderman has been up for a week or two now and it looks to be just as ridiculous — and awesome — as the trailer had indicated. Give me Franco Franchetti (R.I.P) with his porn-star moustache and pump-action shotgun over Toby McGuire any day.

Italian Spiderman Movie - Episode 1 and Episode 2 [YouTube]

"SurLaLune Fairy Tales features 47 annotated fairy tales, including their histories, similar tales across cultures, modern interpretations and over 1,500 illustrations."

A lychgate is an entrance to a churchyard where a body rests before burial–”lych” means person or dead body (From German “Leiche”, meaning “dead body, cadaver, corpse”). The D&D lich is very similar to a character from Taran Wanderer, by Lloyd Alexander, a magician with an unnaturally-extended life who can only die if the item he has stored his soul in is broken (in this case, a bone from his little finger); however, the term “lich” is never used in the book. The origin of both the D&D lich and Alexander’s character is probably the Russian folkloric character “Kotshchey the Deathless”, also an unnaturally long-lived magician (or demon) who was almost impossible to kill.

Ides of may. I miss my pop today – This is the anniversary of his death, but I’m not feeling as melancholy as I have in the past. It has been many years now since he passed away – 18 years, I think – just about half a lifetime ago.

Mom got a call from bro last night – he went before the judge and has 6 months at a work camp. He doesn’t know when he’ll be transferred, but he won’t have probation after that. I’m not sure if he’s getting off easy or hard.

Most of my challenges these days are physical or financial – those can bleed over into the mental, emotional and spiritual sides, but for the most part I’m doing quite well. I really like my new life here – I can understand why so many Florida expatriates have such little desire to return. There are some things that I miss, like the water taxi and a few of my more well-beaten paths around Broward & Dade, but they don’t hold a candle to the new stuff that I’ve been enjoying and looking forward to. Crime concerns are greatly diminished, not counting Baltimore or DC – and the people here have a small-town sort of feel. A lot of very polite and kind folks that are good about making me feel welcome can do wonders for any atmosphere, though the bay is beautiful in and of itself.

BHK and I are watching the dust slowly settle around the house – the blue house is pretty much empty save for a trunk and some light misc. I still have a few things in Florida storage, but aside from my bike, I don’t miss much of anything there. Most of what I miss about Florida is no longer in Florida . I miss gaming with Ray and Kat, but they’re in Texas , now. I miss goofing with Kev, but he’s in Gitmo. I miss hanging with Steve and Brent, but Brent died, and Steve is in Seattle . Doug is in Seattle , too. My Bro is pretty much lost to me.

Danny’s still in Florida , and I miss doing stuff with him. He should be heading out to us this summer during vacation.

BHK got me a Blueberry Vanilla Ice for after work - it was a welcome closure to the work day. Got a haircut in prep for tomorrow's thing.

Well, go figure! I post about Steve J, and he goes and finds my LJ. That makes 4 folks from high school reconnected! ( Clayton Griffin, Jim Goodmon, Steve Mancour and Steve Jacoby.)

It seems that SJ has been quite busy these last two decades or so. (I guess that’d follow!) He is now married, has a beautiful family, and has had broad assortment of careers. He still looks just the same – actually, probably a bit healthier than I remember. I imagine that chasing the little ones around helps a lot as a form of working out (in addition to martial arts training.) I was apparently way off on the Broward county search; He’s now on the opposite side of the continental USA in Seattle . When I got the reply to my last entry, I first thought it was from one of my LJ buddies having a prank on me. I was suspecting that perhaps Robert or some other Seattleite (Is that a word? Must be … spell-check seems to like it.) was pulling my leg. Not so – even though Steve Jacoby is a pretty common name on Google & Yahoo (The name of one of the victims from 9/11, not to mention countless others.) Beau Brumfield is less so – which led to his finding my LJ. Not sure how long he’d been reading it before yesterday when I mentioned that I’d like to hear from him – it’s been quite a while since he came up in online conversation.

Steve and I sort of lost touch after high school… he was focusing primarily on the Arts crowd and I’d slid into a more Technological Track. The last I’d heard, he had headed North to Tennessee (or perhaps Kentucky , as third hand information tends to degrade rapidly) when I was in college, and we never really kept up. He and I both gave up on Brent about the same time – Once BA started hanging out with Jaques and the LWC post-grad crowd, things degraded pretty rapidly. I sort of slid over to the James Dawsey / Robin Tunkel gaming crowd.

Random notes about Steve – both he and Brent were in my first car on the first day I was driving.

He had a VW that seemed to have one headlight perpetually out. My first experience with hearing an air-cooled engine. I can’t even guess at how many rides he gave me to places. I rode to school with Randy Leipzig (who later killed himself over a depression / girlfriend issue) and [whatshisname Justin, maybe? – curly haired guy w/ glasses.]

Horsing around the swimming pool at Lisa Gordon’s house (one of our first meetings with Lisa and Pam M), I went to push him into the water. And missed by about three feet. He got scraped up a bit, and I felt amazingly bad about it. Most likely I was especially guilty due to my being a show-off in front of Pam. Steve was a bit po’ed, but was a pretty dang good sport about it.

Pre-high school, when I went to Congress middle, he frequently helped me with my stuff onto the bus – a heavy book bag (1/3 school stuff, 2/3 reading materials not part of the curriculum D&D, generally) and a Tuba (or Baritone, depending on the day I was bringing stuff home)

Steve and I were both thugs in the LWC movie “The Arthurian Project”, and we made an assortment of goofy movies like “Raiders of the Lost Sock”. We both picked up on some very rudimentary stop motion techniques. I wonder if I still have that video tape in storage at the Deerfield Condo? Might be fun to digital transfer and post those.

All you can eat Po’ folks country fried steak night… Steve passed out and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. I thought he was goofing at first.

Steve’s dad always had tastycakes on top of the fridge, and smoked.

Ken Krupowies lived not too far from Steve’s place.

Steve, Scott Clark and I playing impossible mission and eating pizza at Clark ’s place. Clark ’s mom had a gentleman caller, and we could hear them enjoying each other’s company through the wall. I made a little comment about it and Clark turned up the TV volume, and I was never invited back. Steve said it was because I left pizza under Clark ’s bed, but I really think it was my comment. When have I *ever* left pizza behind?

Of the old gang, Steve was the nice guy of the group, and I think probably the most physically durable.

We went on a few road trips here and there – Complete Strategist, other gaming stores, the Xanadu KFC, Kevin Cummin’s Father’s cabin

Steve's silly recreation of Clayton Griffin’s Print shop obsession

“HE’S SO MAGIC!” – a la Flaming Carrot

Playing D&D with SJ, BA, LG, PM – pre-canned sessions of silly polyhedral stupidity, Arduin grimore dungeon crawl, with day-glo orange covers.

I need to flesh each of these out some more... so BHK knows what I'm talking about, at least.