Personal Interlude: “August Blues and Their Mitigations”

So What’s Going On Behind the Curtain?

(Remember how, in the days of standard episodic television before streaming and binging, many dramas and some comedies would give a thumbnail update starting with “Previously on…”, flashing scenes so fast that people starting midway through a season or story were more confused than before? Well, that’s what this newsletter is like. Look at these as regular updates of how the sausage is made, with what, and whether or not the staff washed their hands after they used the toilet. Or, worse, if they only washed their hands before using the toilet.)

Welcome to Dallas in August. For those outside, they look upon the blasted prairie and shudder. Those of us here make what we can of it. The first week of August is our Groundhog’s Day: if Jack Skellington comes out and sees that the local Michael’s stores aren’t packed with Halloween goodies, we get six additional weeks of summer. (You think I’m kidding. 2016’s Michael’s hoard was particularly pathetic, and the universe retaliated by giving us summer temperatures all through November. This was the last year the old carnivorous plant gallery was at its old dying mall location, so of COURSE that November was when the mall’s air conditioning went out. You think dying malls are creepy? Try being in one when there’s absolutely no air movement and the only sound is from galleries and stores frantically running box fans to make the places remotely liveable.)

(As an aside, for those of you who caught the film Backrooms, you can see the old gallery location via the Youtube series The Rolling Giant. I’ve had grand fun regaling friends throughout the world who discovered The Rolling Giant by noting that I was there on the ground floor until February 2017, and probably would still be there if given the opportunity. I really couldn’t beat that rent.)

I won’t lie: it could be worse, and it could be a lot better. My fiance Sarah, Laura Roslin to my Bill Adama, barricades the house windows and sends me out for groceries and six-packs of Coke, and I don’t blame her. Both of the cats yell at me to do something about the oppressive glare, and when Parker gets to go outside, it’s only after dark. (Even then, he just flops on the ground, purring his fool head off, until I have to pick him up and take him inside.) Kala the Kenyan sand boa bypasses it entirely by remaining buried in her sand and dreaming of October. Personally, every August, I openly advocate getting my gills back and spending the summer on the bottom of a swimming pool: it sounds like a great idea, especially with CRISPR tools, and then I realize the water will be almost the same temperature as the air and about as filthy. Fine. I’ll stay inside.

Well, not TOO much time inside, because there are things to do. Even in August, we should be looking at basic interaction with our fellow humans and human-adjacents, right? Even as our horrible daystar strips car paint and human skin with equal abandon, we should at least try to get out and say hello for five minutes, right?

Never mind me. I’m to the point of having conversations with the cats. With Parker, that’s no problem: his English keeps getting better, and I suspect he’s practicing his typing while I’m asleep. It definitely explains the Dvorak keyboard that showed up on the front porch last week. Winston, though, keeps trying cat-adjacent noises with no consistency or rhythm, and having a conversation with him is like being trapped in a broom closet with Sam Altman. It’s definitely time to get out and do things.

I understand that with an international readership, that might not be practical or sane to get everyone in one spot, and I wouldn’t try. I also know that Dallasites are the closest things to limpets and barnacles in the genus Homo, and getting them to do anything other than stare at their phones all day makes as much sense as expecting Winston to recite William Gibson’s Neuromancer from memory. Hence, if you can’t get out to any of these, don’t sweat it. If you can’t make it but you know someone else who might be interested, please spread the word. And if real-world commitments get in the way, don’t worry about it, because there will be more.

To wit, stuff going on in August:

Numero Uno: the St. Remedius Watch Parties continue on Twitch, with the standard showings running at 2:00 pm Central Time every Saturday. The August schedule gets a significant augmentation in memory of much-missed friend Rod Woodruff, who would have turned 61 on August 11, with everything either being a film we watched together over the years or ones I know he was particularly fond of watching. This means evening shows for folks in the Pacific timezone, and I promise to have a special on August 11 specifically for Rod.

Numero Two-O: if you want coolth and quiet, there’s an awful lot to be said about the various Silent Read events in Dallas in August, with the specific St. Remedius gatherings on the Campus & Off-Campus Activities schedule. In particular, the Silent Read event at the Half Price Books flagship store in Dallas is worth the effort, both for the ambient music DJ playing music that effectively drowns out outside noise without being intrusive and for the cookies and other treats available for attendees.

Numero Three-O: Now is as good a time as any to mention that if you don’t see as many St. Remedius installments as you’d like through the summer, it’s not from a lack of writing. Instead, to get into a different headspace, I’m using multiple open writing events in the Dallas area to work on a whole new, self-contained St. Remedius Medical College novel, with plans to have it finished by the end of the year. As to where it’ll be published and available, these are all good questions that I’m not worrying about until it’s done. As for where you can bug me about details, I’ll be back at Half Price Books on August 25 for the Dallas Fiction Writers Monthly Write-In at the La Casita Bakery at the flagship store, so these should give me plenty of incentive to stop doomscrolling on LinkedIn and get more work done.

Numero Four-O: Thursday, August 27 is the last Science On Tap adult event at the Perot Museum of Nature & Science for August, and it’s also the sixtieth anniversary of my deciding that I wanted more out of life besides sucking down amniotic fluid like a fish and kicking the hell out of the inside of my mother’s uterus. The birthday festivities will continue elsewhere (I already have plans to crash Panoptikon on August 28, mostly so I can bring my own Malcolm Tucker birthday cake, and I may bring another to The Church on August 30), but this is a perfect chance to join the rest of the St. Remedius Bromley Contingent amidst the dinosaurs and other pre-human critters on the Fourth Floor of the Perot. (This is also a memorial to Rod Woodruff: the Tenontosaurus skeleton on the Fourth Floor was the first Texas dinosaur ever on display in a Texas museum when it debuted at the old Dallas Museum of Natural History in 1988, and Rod and I were two of the first to see the final mount when it was unveiled in 1988.) Get tickets in advance, because it’s a pain to buy them at the museum.

Numero Five-O: Longtime St. Remedius Bromley Contingent member and all-round Good Person Jaymie Moore noted that the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff is up to its usual shenanigans when the heat gets bad. Last year, it was the fortieth anniversary showing of George Romero’s Day of the Dead, complete with live music show after the film ended. This year, it’s a special screening of the very obscure Ishiro Honda kaiju film Space Amoeba on August 12. It starts at 9:00 pm, so the yellow hurty thing in the sky is down by then, the parking meters aren’t valid, and the fact that it’s 9:00 on a Wednesday means lots of parking out in front of the Texas. Get out there as you’re able.

And if you can’t make it in August? Advance warning about the Oddities & Curiosities Expo on September 26 and 27. We might even have a break in the heat by then.

Other Reading

If you haven’t taken a look in a while, the Bookshop.org storefront for St. Remedius is freshly reloaded with even more reading options. In addition, the site’s Research page contains links to this and publishers and booksellers in need of inclusion: I don’t get a thing by recommending the publishers and booksellers, other than relief that they’re doing what they’re doing. Either way, feel free to browse, peruse, and purchase, and know that every purchase makes Andy Jassy at Amazon cry.

Final Words

August will end. I promise it will end. Eventually. Inevitably. One of these days. But not before I turn 60.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

August birthday novel Personal interlude St. Remedius events