El Orfanato plus Being John Malkovich Equals?

If you're looking for a horror novel with serious puppetry, Being John Malkovich level marionette skills, then check out the new Grady Hendrix novel How to Sell a Haunted House . . . some of the scenes get a little long winded, but the book is very scary, very funny, and very Southern gothic (and once again, set in Charleston) AND there is an amazing bonus flashback set piece chapter set in Boston back when one of the main characters dropped out of college and joined a radical puppet collective with demonic and anarchic tendencies-- brilliant stuff . . . and Pupkin is a worthy villain and the book has a satisfying (and fairly logical, considering the subject matter) resolution . . . Grady Hendrix is a national treasure.

Southern Change Gonna Come at Last?

 

The past couple weeks I have immersed myself in the South, with a capital "S": my wife and I traveled to Charleston; I read a bunch of Battle Cry of Freedom-- the epic James M. McPherson Civil War history-- and I whipped through two S.A. Cosby crime novels that are set in rural Virginia . . . Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears . . . the result of all this Southern immersion is a new episode of We Defy Augury called "Southbound with S.A. Cosby" . . . there are cameo appearances from Zman and my son Alex (but they are pretty deep into the show-- you've got to have patience in the South . . . check it out and I hope you enjoy it.

A Bit 'mo Charleston

Some last thoughts about Charleston--

-- our tiny VRBO rental on Line Street (in the young and trendy Upper King Street neighborhood) was not for the faint of heart (or the elderly) because the bed was a floating loft at the top of a skinny spiral staircase . . . when you got out of bed, your only option was to get ONTO the staircase . . . 

--Brown's Court Bakery was a block away from our place-- some of the best baked goods I've ever eaten: the pepperoni/jalapeno danish, raspberry danish, bacon and cheddar scone, and the lavender sugar donut are all worth trying;

--Brown Dog Deli in downtown Charleston is a cheap, delicious joint to grab sandwiches and a beer;

-- the Two Sisters walking tour was excellent . . . we had Mary Helen (as the two sisters split the group) and she gave us an entertaining history of the city-- it's a weird place, after the Civil War and the earthquake of 1886, Charleston was somewhat in ruins . . . and because it wasn't wealthy, the city never rebuilt all it's historic homes and buildings-- and then some motivated Southern Ladies started preserving things until the money came into town and now the place is astounding, the homes are all remodeled historically by rich part-timers, there are lush gardens and window boxes and narrow cobblestone streets and brick alleys and iconic porches and patios-- it's like a beautiful version of New Orleans (without the urine and the vomit) and I'm not sure if we've ever put in more miles walking in a city--

--despite the windy weather, everyone told us you have to go to a rooftop bar when you're in Charleston so we went to the Pour Taproom, atop the Hyatt . . . an interesting concept: they have 80 computerized taps and you serve yourself beer and pay by the ounce . . . great views from up there, you can really see the layout of the city;

-- our last meal we went to Leon's again-- great affordable Southern food and local beers and a really great vibe;

--the Led Zeppelin poster in our VRBO rental was of the same nature as all those Nirvana t-shirts that the youngsters are wearing . . . I doubt very much the rental barons of StayDuvet are huge Zep fans but the band logo has become an aesthetic signifier of something young and fun;

--Charleston is a lot fo fun but I've heard it's swampy and mosquito-ridden in the summer and if we stayed there another week, Catherine and I would both be obese . . . it's a great place to visit and it's being rapidly gentrified as we speak . . . it's a Southern version of what happened in Asbury Park-- a prim location stunted by poverty and left in ruins until the money came to gentrify, and now both towns are adult playgrounds, great for a fun weekend, but maybe not somewhere to live full time.

More Charleston

We have really covered a lot of ground over the past two days, according to my Fitbit we've walked over fifty thousand steps, and we've managed to avoid getting soaked; Wednesday night w took a very very long stroll north to Edmund's Oast brewery-- but we thought we we headed to the restaurant but Google maps sent us to the brewery and while the beer was delicious, they didn't have an extensive menu so we ordered some boiled peanuts, which I loved at Cat hated-- very very messy food-- and then walked all the way back to Leon's-- an oyster and fried chicken place in a refurbished garage . . . the food was amazing; the nest day we walked down to the water, through the colorfully painted home in the French Quarter, which has a New Orleans feel, and took the tour of the Old Exchange and Dungeon, a venerable and extremely solid old building with symmetric brick foundational arches, a hidden cache of revolutionary gunpowder and an impressive history as a slave market, a battery, a port building, and a historical society, the building was on the river but now there is four hundred feet of reclaimed land; we got soaked on our walk home, but the vociferous and loquacious black lady working the register at the convenience store told us it was all God's plan and the rain removed the bacteria; we went back to our tiny house, watched a show called Magic For Humans which is oddly addictive and we only discovered it because we are on Sissy's Netflix account, so all kinds of weird suggestions, and then we walked back downtown for a rich Southern dinner at Magnolia's and then back uptown to see a band at the Commodore, a weird dive bar with music-- quite the crowd in there, it seemed everyone actually knew how to dance, like really dance, but the band canceled and some white guy started energetically rapping, doing hip hop covers, so we watched a bit of that and then went home (it also should be noted that I yanked my belt off a closet door, it was under my jeans, and the buckle whipped over the door and clocked me in the head, giving me a nice knot on my noggin).

Charleston day one

After a slightly stressful departure, as our son Ian-- who was locking up the house and heading to my brother's place with the dog while Catherine and I celebrate thirty years since our first date with a trip to Charleston-- dropped and broke his phone while listening to music in the shower and then totally lost his phone either at school or in the house so we had no Sim card and so we had to make like Avon Barksdale in The Wire and buy a burner phone, which was way harder to set up than we thought, but we did it and so we could communicate with our air brained son who ended up getting everything done he had to get done, enabling us to leave very very early, fly to Charleston, tour Magnolia Plantation, see some slave quarters, learn about rice farming, stalk some gators, take scenic pictures of Spanish moss and ancient live oaks, pet a pig, and walk a lot of miles through reclaimed swamp and beautiful wild gardens along the Ashley River, and then we ubered to town and gave our Uber driver some advice on his other job, where he cleans pools and got to drive a really nice pool truck until the new supervisor took it from him and gave him the shitty truck, a real kick to the balls, and it still wasn't check in at our tiny house near King Street so we grabbed a beer and a catfish sandwich and some fried green tomatoes at the Rarebit and then, finally, got into our little cottage with spiral stairs and a loft bedroom; soon enough we'll head back out to check out the night life and then hunker down for the rain.