In Boozo Veritas # 61: Squirrel Babies of Orlando: Part 2

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

Tags

baby squirrels, Drunken Monkey, Fallin’ Pines Critter Rescue, In Boozo Veritas, Orlando, Squirrels, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 61 by Teege Braune

Squirrel Babies of Orlando: Part 2

And now the exciting conclusion to Squirrel Babies of Orlando.

When I got back to my house, I was met with a critical situation. Jenn had quarantined the babies in a cat carrier, and while two of them were spunky and active, wrestling with each other and climbing up the carrier’s metal gate, the third had grown weaker, was obviously fading. His nose had not stopped bleeding. He sat in the corner of the case shivering slightly and clearly required the kind of medical assistance neither Jenn nor I was qualified to give. Fortunately, in my absence Jenn had formulated a plan. She had spoken to Shirley at Fallin’ Pines Critter Rescue who emphatically agreed to foster them despite the fact that she was already caring for over seventy orphaned squirrels at the same time. Jenn had met Shirley once before in a similar situation and felt confident in the woman’s nurturing abilities.

As we were pulling out of our driveway, Jenn told me that we had to swing by Drunken Monkey before we could begin the long journey to Fort Christmas in the sticks of rural Florida.

“What in the world is at Drunken Monkey that can’t wait until we get back from dropping off the squirrels?” I nearly shouted.

“You’ll find out when you get there,” she said.

It dawned on me that this must be the surprise to which she had eluded earlier, and as eager as I was to deliver the squirrels unto salvation, I could see that there would be no reasoning with Jenn who was unwavering in her insistence. As Drunken Monkey is only a block from our house, simply indulging her, and getting the chore over with seemed a safer plan than arguing the point. Nevertheless, I had become single-minded and frantic in my mission to rescue the babies, so I was barely considering the possibilities that this surprise might entail.

“Are you coming in?” I asked Jenn as I idled the van in a parking space.

“No, I’ll stay here with the babies,” she said.

“What in the hell am I supposed to do when I go inside? Ask them for my surprise at the counter?” I asked growing frustrated.

“Uh, sure. They know you,” was her cryptic answer.

I flung open the door to my favorite coffee shop and ran straight into the last person I expected to see.

Clasping my shoulders, my dear friend Adam looked me in the eye and said, “I hear there are some baby squirrels that need saving. I’m here to help.”

All this time, unbeknownst to me, Adam was some kind of super hero, and he had flown across the globe from Australia in a moment’s notice for the salvation of three baby squirrels. With this titan among men joining our ragtag expedition, I knew that we could not possibly fail.

“Thank God you’re here!” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”

Adam.

Back in the van Jenn and Adam were laughing and asking me if I was surprised to see him.

I answered that of course I was, but the truth is I thought I must be dreaming and accepted the entirety of the bizarre situation with the resignation of the lucid dreamer whose dim awareness of reality quickly subverts the delightful illusions until they are conquered by consciousness, washed out completely, and so lost forever. I waited for wakefulness to take Adam, the baby squirrels, and perhaps even Jenn from me as I opened my eyes to discover who knew what other life, but then it occurred to me that I would probably not dream Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” onto the radio, and with that acknowledgment, I returned from my brief and unsettling revelry, my delusion of a delusion, and faced the wonderful knowledge that I was rescuing baby squirrels with not only my fiancé and love of my life, but also a long lost friend who only moments ago I did not know when I would see again. As we drove and joked and reminisced about old times, it was with a shrill heart shattering shriek that the poor, injured baby squirrel reminded us of our mission and purpose lest we forget the lives for which we had taken responsibility.

Fallin’ Pines Critter Rescue lies a clearing dotted by palms and trees laden with Spanish moss. Nothing about its appearance suggest that it exists anywhere near a major metropolis. The simple house sits beside a fenced in garden carved by a winding path, adorned by ponds and flowers, home to many abandoned animals including geese, rabbits, sugar gliders, and even a wallaby. This mini Wonderland is shepherded by Shirley, sometimes affectionately referred to as Squirrely Shirley, and her canine assistant who exhibited a gentleness with the babies that is uncharacteristic of her species. Shirley gathered the tiny squirrels in her cupped palms and held them up at eye level.

“Oh they’re going to be fine,” she said beaming.

We tried to point out the injured baby, to make sure he received extra and immediate care, but as I watched the three of them crawling up and down Shirley’s sweater, nibbling on loose threads, I realized I couldn’t tell him apart from his brother. As though Shirley exhibited a mystical healing touch, the little squirrel was completely revitalized. His nose had finally stopped bleeding and no one would have guessed that only moments ago he was crying out in agony.

“He just needed somebody to love on him… Yowww!!!” She screamed when one of the babies had bitten her ear. At the sound of her yell, the squirrel scurried inside Shirley’s hair.

“That happens,” she said regaining composure. “They’ll try to nurse on anything. Sometimes they come in and their poor, little penises are pink and red because they think they’re nipples.”

We all nodded at this observation pondering its implications.

“Well, I better take these guys inside and get them something to eat.”

Declining our offer of a donation, Shirley turned and walked away. Beside her large auburn ponytail, jutting from her hairline, hung a tiny gray ponytail.

Back in the car Jenn admitted that she hand’t named the squirrels because she would have been too heartbroken if they hadn’t survived the drive to Celebration. We drove back to town as the sun began to set on Orlando, planning our next move. Although Adam was only going to be around for the weekend, and I had to work much of it, we decided to make the most of the time we had. All three of us were ravenous from our adventure, and thought it appropriate to celebrate its success with dinner and libations, so headed to Fuji Sushi, a former staple for us back when Adam still lived in Orlando. We ate green mussels and an unreasonable amount of rolls including one called Aqua Bear, which we ordered simply because it reminded us of the tardigrade, a minuscule creature that can, oddly enough, survive in the vacuum of space, an animal so bizarre its very nature is a testament to the surreality of nature, the dreamy euphoria that is life.

_______

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90, episode 102) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas # 56: The Endless Summer

25 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

In Boozo Veritas, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 56 by Teege Braune

The Endless Summer

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” –Sonnet 18

Not even the day after Christmas was as disappointing as the last day of summer vacation. It doesn’t matter on what day the Autumnal Equinox falls, all kids know that summertime is over the day the new school year begins. Never mind that much of my summer was filled with banal days playing the same video game over and over again until I was sick of it, and putting off cutting the grass until my mom threatened to ground me if it wasn’t done before sunset. As summertime was ending those moments seemed like the exception and all I remembered were the nights sitting around a campfire in the mountains, swimming in a neighbor’s pool, going to barbecues, and staying up with my friends as late as we possibly could eating pizza and candy until we simply fell over from exhaustion. It didn’t matter if the summer was often boring because boredom represented freedom, the lazy freedom to do nothing if one so chose, and when that boredom was punctuated by something more fun, it was usually so exciting one could barely stand it.

My birthday on August eighteenth was the perfect excuse for one final hurrah with my buddies before we were sucked back into the tedious grind of the school year. Then in junior high school my public school district changed the schedule so that summer ended a week earlier and the first day of school suddenly coincided with the anniversary of the day I was born. Instead of a party my family celebrated both my birthday and the last day of summer vacation by going out to dinner, getting ice cream, and then heading off to bed early so that we could wake up at the crack of dawn for school. I would spend the night of my actual birthday completing the year’s first batch of homework assignments. Usually my friends, distracted by the newness of the school year, simply forgot that it was my birthday at all.

Long before my life resembled anything that could rightly be called adulthood, graduating high school and going to college killed the summer altogether. As the semester ended I would eagerly look forward to a long break from the relentless professors and their overwhelming immensity of assignments, from sharing a cramped living space with a guy I considered a friend, but whose major from what I could gather, was smoking pot and showering as little as possible. I, in turn, showered as little as possible to battle off his body odor with my own.

As it turned out, neither one of us were having much success dating.

Summertime seemed a nice escape from all that until it actually arrived and I once again remembered that I could no longer waste those precious months bumming around doing as little as possible. I was fortunate to have a reasonably well paying summer job waiting for me back in my hometown. Unfortunately, this job was working as a maintenance assistant and painter for the public school system. In a way my worst nightmares had come true; I was a high school graduate spending the daylight hours of every week day inside the depressing walls of my high school.

I came to Florida from Indiana in early adulthood in search of some kind of endless summer. My participation in the annual school year cycle had long since ended. I had already worked a series of jobs, some more satisfying than others, none as awful as the one I had endured in college, and had no delusions that my time down south would be some kind of life of ease devoid of labor, away from the rat race. Nevertheless, Florida seemed like a place where one could decompress, where people could feel like they were on vacation on a random Saturday. I had never lived less than ten hours from a beach, and the idea of driving to the coast on any given weekend thrilled me. The truth is, I had no idea just how cold it could get here at night in the wintertime, and furthermore, I thought, what the fuck is happening the first time it was seventy-five degrees on Halloween and eighty degrees on Christmas.

___________

In Boozo Veritas # 52: La Mer

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Hamlet, In Boozo Veritas, Sanibel Island, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 52 by Teege Braune

La Mer

Caught amidst the tension of a dual nature, I have suffered. In the struggle between an unfortunate tendency towards anxiety and hesitation and an urge towards impulsivity and spontaneity, anxiety has admittedly most often won out. Like Hamlet, this has been the catalyst for my greatest tragedies. I won’t tell you that my impulsivity hasn’t been the source of trouble from time to time, usually when the vice of alcohol was stirred into the mix, but I feel that my best moments have come about when I listened to that voice crying, “Leap into the darkness and trust the hands of fate to deliver thee unto the next shore!” Nearly every week, for example, I find myself procrastinating in my duty to compose In Boozo Veritas, yet invariably I always do my best writing before dawn several hours past my deadline. This morning I am speaking to you from a hotel room in Sanibel Island. This sleepy beach community is Jenn’s and my annual summer retreat. After several nights of this Edenic return, we are calibrated for the rest of the year. I’m not encouraging you to drive out here and find out for yourself. On the contrary, stay far away from this place.

Last year I came out here escaping the stresses that came with my job in sales. Only now in retrospect can I look back at that brief jaunt and recognize that the short break from bartending was something I need in order to prioritize my life. While I had the job, I simply felt miserable. Faced with the daunting prospect of having to leave our paradise and return to the drudgery of commerce, on our final morning in Sanibel Island I awoke with a delightfully impulsive thought running repeatedly through my brain. I will propose to my girlfriend today, I thought over and over again despite having no ring nor plan to do so as I was drifting off to sleep the night before. Now is not a good time, insisted that nagging, anxiety-ridden counter-voice that I sometimes listen to despite its ugly tone and implications. Wait until you have a ring. Wait until your circumstances in your life aren’t nearly so stressful. Wait until evil is banished from the earth and the lion lies down with the lamb. Silencio! I shouted, albeit only in my own imagination. Taking the fiend by the throat I banished him into the dark recesses of my brain. Though he will no doubt return once more, I said, again only in my own head, today I shall choose romance.

Pulling off the rest of it was no small task. Taking a cue from Jenn’s obsessive love of sea shells, I decided to buy an engagement ring made out of one as a stand-in until I could buy her a nicer ring. This meant bouncing from shell store to shell store looking for the perfect ring while Jenn sat in the car wondering what in the hell was wrong with me. I have been told that cemeteries are the worst places to propose, but as Jenn has never once done what she was told, I decided to follow in her spirit and drove her to one of our favorite places in the world, the tiny cemetery adjacent to The Chapel by the Sea, the final resting place for many of Captiva Island’s initial settlers. With the ocean crashing no more than a yard away I asked the love of my life to intwine her’s with mine. Jenn was so surprised she actually thought I was joking for a brief minute (before accepting my proposal through a gushing of tears). Rather than the depressing trek back to the real world, our drive home was a joyful plunge into a refreshed reality.

Jenn loved her seashell engagement ring so much, she told me that she needed nothing fancier. Unfortunately, the inexpensive ring did not last long before breaking, and I thought that Jenn’s heart would break with it. While I may not have something as lofty as a marriage proposal to offer her this year, tomorrow for her birthday I will return to my shell store and buy her every sea shell ring that fits her beautiful finger. When each one passes on, another will be prepared to step up and take its place. We shall mourn the loss of each fallen soldier before passing the symbolic, romantic duty to the next until a year from now when we return to Sanibel once again to replenish our supplies and purchase every sea shell ring on this magical, little island.

___________

In Boozo Veritas # 51: The Ghost of an Artifact

21 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Hemingway, In Boozo Veritas, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 51 by Teege Braune

The Ghost of an Artifact

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

–Ernest Hemingway

I have a clear and distinct image of the photograph in my memory. A boy a few years older than myself who I am told is – but do not recognize as – my father sits on the lap of an elderly gentleman. I think of the man, with his white beard and sad, kindly smile, as a grandfather, despite the fact that he in no way resembles either of my actual grandfathers. He beams down at my father who in turns looks, straight faced and serious, at the camera. “Idaho – 1961” is scribbled in ink on the back of the photograph. The one time I remember seeing this old photograph I was informed that the man was a very famous writer who killed himself shortly after my father met him. I don’t know why anyone felt the need to convey that final detail to me as a child, but it stands out as the saddest thing I had heard by that point in my life.

The writer in the photograph is Ernest Hemingway who would have been 115 years old today on July 21, 2014. My father describes their chance encounter as such:

“My family was traveling through Idaho in Spring of ’61 when I was 11, and I was admitted to Sun Valley Hospital with severe joint pain. The doctor’s thought it might be some kind of iron overload. EH was in that hospital at the time, and he liked to tell me stories because I was in such pain. He wanted me to sit on his lap for the story telling – which was weird because I was 11 – but I did it and some nurse took a picture at some point. I was ok, just some odd bug bite or something, but I heard he killed himself a few months later. I remember that scene like it was yesterday.”

My dad does not have a lot more details to offer. As his parents have both passed away and his siblings are all younger, there is no one available to further elucidate the circumstances of this meeting. My dad remembers that Hemingway told him stories about soldiers, cowboys, and Indians, the kind of stuff he perhaps assumed all eleven year old boys enjoyed, though my dad was more interested in spacemen. (Maybe he would have been more entertained had he found himself in the same hospital as Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury.) He remembers Hemingway as a kind, elderly man who seemed “very old and sort of out of it,” though Hemingway was only sixty-one at the time. I asked my dad if Hemingway’s suicide affected him emotionally in any fundamental way, but he does not remember. “It was the first time I probably even thought about suicide. It wasn’t a subject people liked to discuss in the early ‘60s. I doubt I had much of a concept of what that meant,” he said. I asked my dad, who I have always known as a prodigious reader, if his youthful encounter with Hemingway allowed him to feel a connection to his work later in life, but my dad says no. “I’ve got nothing. I’m not very familiar with him. I read The Sun Also Rises in high school, but I don’t remember being able to associate that book with the man I met many years before,” he told me. If my dad made an impression on Hemingway there is no record of it. It is entirely possible that Hemingway, whose numerous physical and mental problems had already destroyed him creatively, never wrote another word between his short time with my father and his untimely death.

I became a big fan of Hemingway’s work in high school when I read The Old Man and the Sea and shortly after The Sun Also Rises, the bookends of Hemingway’s career in reverse order. My own writing, in which I attempted to copy Hemingway’s short, abbreviated style, became even worse than it was when I was copying Jack Kerouac’s sprawling sentences.

“Your dad met Ernest Hemingway once,” my mom told me as my interest began to turn into an obsession.

“Dad met Hemingway?!” I nearly shouted.

“Oh, yeah. There was a picture of them together floating around somewhere,” she said casually.

The meaning behind the photograph that I had seen as a child and had not thought about since suddenly became painfully obvious to me. I asked my mom if she knew where it was, but she did not. I asked my dad who said that his parents probably still had it. The next time I was at their house I went through several boxes of photographs but none of them featured Ernest Hemingway. My grandparents remembered the photograph, but could offer no clues as to its whereabouts. “He seemed like such a strange old man, but he loved your dad” was their only input on the entire meeting. Finding the missing photograph became a mission, but none of the family members who I called or emailed had any information. Everyone agreed to search through their old family photos or allow me to look through them myself, but nothing ever turned up. In the last few years I have begun to wonder if the picture is an example of a sort of mass family hysteria or hallucination. Perhaps we are remembering a story about another family who showed my grandparents a picture of their own son sitting on Hemingway’s lap, and at some point we internalized it, made the story about us because that seemed more interesting.

The photograph included here is not the one in question; it is a picture of Hemingway and his own son. Maybe one day I’ll be rummaging through old family albums, turn a page, and there it will be, shining forth from behind its clear envelope, the lost and coveted photograph of my dad sitting on the lap of an old and very depressed Ernest Hemingway, one of the last photographs ever taken of one of the 20th century’s most important writers, a smidgen of history, a family legend verified, one more ghost laid to rest.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #48: What to Drink in Westeros

30 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Drinking, In Boozo Veritas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Dansk Mjød Viking Blod, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, Red Light Red Light, Shade of the Evening, Teege Braune, Waiting for New Season of Game of Thrones, What to Drink in Westeros

In Boozo Veritas #48 by Teege Braune

What to Drink in Westeros

It has now been two weeks since the Game of Thrones’ season four finale aired, and if you are anything like me, the long, drawn-out, nearly endless interval before season five has you jonesing for an Ice and Fire fix. Common symptoms of withdrawal from GoT include nervousness, phobia of weddings, the fear that friends and loved ones will die violently without warning, itching, and hallucinations of Peter Dinklage.

What is one to do to assuage the agony? Binge on something like Supernatural just to get that dose of fantasy? No, of course it doesn’t hold up against Game of Thrones. Diehard fans, those with the worst yen, already know what’s going to happen in the next couple seasons as they’ve no doubt read the entirety of George R. R. Martin’s groundbreaking Song of Ice and Fire series. Furthermore, those who have followed Martin for any extended period of time, must be used to waiting by now as a period of over five years went by between the publications of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, so what’s the big deal? Why the jittery, anxious impatience?

Here’s the rub: even the most colorful imagination can’t always hold up against a cast of talented and often very attractive actors, lush sets and costumes, and a budget of millions of dollars. The TV series and the book series have a marvelous way of filling in each other’s gaps, and sometimes seeing how one’s favorite scene plays out is exciting as reading that scene in the first place.

If waiting is just that unbearable, there is one recourse left to you: have a drink, and then have another.

Anthropological evidence has recently suggested that alcohol is the oldest form of artificial patience in human history. Before folks were able to kill time with Facebook, iPhones, and HBO, they had booze. Additionally many of the characters in the technologically challenged land of Westeros combat their ennui with alcohol. In his books Martin mentions many different adult beverages enjoyed by his characters: ciders, dark beers and rich ales, and especially wines such as the highly regarded Arbor Gold and the strong, sour Dornish reds.

The Inn at the Crossroads is the official food blog for The Song of Ice and Fire, and while they do an excellent job of recreating the exotic menus that Martin describes in his novels, their input on the booze is more limited. Much of the technology and culture found in Westeros is comparable to that of Europe in the late middle-ages, so one can imagine that the booze would be similarly linked. For example, the cider Brienne enjoys at the Inn at the Crossroads (the fictional one, not the blog) wouldn’t be the overly sweet, fizzy stuff we refer to as hard cider in the United States. A cider in Westeros would probably be very dry or tart with perhaps even a mineral quality such as Hogan’s Cider out of England. It would also likely be still or contain only a slight effervescence from the natural fermentation process.

Before he was gored to death by a wild boar, King Robert Baratheon was unconventional in more ways than one. While the nobles of GoT usually only drink wine, Robert seemed equally at home indulging in beer, a beverage that was a staple among the commoners and clergy of medieval Europe as well. Truth is, Robert was apt to drink anything he got his hands on, and his love of the common folk was more amorous that it was paternal. If the ales Robert enjoys share their origins with the ales of the middle ages, they would have most likely be missing the hops, which characterize the bitter flavors of American IPAs and pale ales. Before hops became a popular ingredient, ales were more akin to what we call gruit today, an odd, malt-forward fermented beverage that utilizes herbs and spices in place of hops, not something that is particularly easy to come by these days. Pale, crisp lagers weren’t even invented until the nineteenth century, but then again, the same goes for stouts, and we’re told that these exist in Westeros, so perhaps the seven kingdoms have a more developed brewing history than did the people of medieval Europe, or perhaps the strong, dark beers that Robert enjoys are more akin to Gouden Carolus Cuvée van der Keizer, which means Grand Cru of the Emperor, a rich, Belgian ale that is brewed every year in honor of Charles V, certainly a beer fit for a king.

If you want to drink like a Lannister, the wealthiest family in Westeros, then wine will be your pleasure and your poison. Other than their surname, the one thing Cersei and Tyrion have in common is that both our seldom seen without a chalice of wine in their hand. Martin describes many kinds of wine in The Song of Ice and Fire: along with the Arbor Gold and Dornish red, he mentions iced wine; honeyed wine; warm, spiced, mulled wine; wines made from plums, apricots, persimmons, or blackberries; spicy pepper wine. One’s mouth waters imagining slurping down all these delightful, albeit fictitious, beverages. TV does a shoddy job of filling in the gaps in this context, and what’s more, examining the wines of medieval Europe isn’t much help either. Is there a historical antecedent for the Dornish sour? Sour flavors are usually avoided in fine wines, and yet this is a prized vintage in Westeros. I imagine it has more in common with Flemish reds, such as Rodenbach, which while actually beer, have a tart, decadent, semi-sweet flavor, perhaps an acquired taste, but one that is worth the initial shock.

Mead, on the other hand, a staple of hospitality in the northern regions of Westeros, is easier to get one’s mind around. That is assuming one has tried mead in the first place. Brewed from water, honey, and occasionally spiced with other ingredients like hibiscus, hops, or ginger, mead is the oldest fermented beverage in the world, and has evolved relatively little in the last few centuries. Only recently rediscovered outside of a few small circles, mead has enjoyed a surge of popularity in Orlando thanks to its availability at innovative bars such as Redlight Redlight, Li’l Indies, and Oblivion Taproom. After all, how could fantasy fans resist something with a name like Dansk Mjød Viking Blod.

There are other more illicit beverages floating around the world of Game of Thrones as well. Maesters often give a drink called milk of the poppy as an anesthetic, and we can assume this would be similar to laudanum. The warlocks of Qarth drink a mysterious beverage called Shade of the Evening that stains their lips blue and supposedly enhances their magic. Perhaps one could dissolve a grape Jolly Rancher in a tea of psilocybin mushrooms to capture this effect, though I can’t legally recommend you actually do this. Nevertheless, one can only imagine that a decent enough portion of this drink would be ample to propel the uneasy fan, dreading the upcoming Game of Thrones-less year, straight into George R. R. Martin’s universe, a place that I, for one, would much rather observe than actually live in, but I’m the voyeuristic type who’d rather gander at other people’s cosplay than actually participate in it. Maybe a tripped-out, hallucinated afternoon in Westeros would be just the thing to ease the agony of waiting.

___________

Episode 102: A Roundtable in Honor of Donald Duck, on his 80th Birthday!

07 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Disney, Episode

≈ 288 Comments

Tags

102 Ways to Save Money at Walt Disney World, Der Furher’s Face, Dianne Turgeon Richardson, Donald Duck, Donaldism, Dumbbell of the Yukon, Early to Bed, George Plimpton, Jeffrey Shuster, Lewis Hyde, Lou Mongello, Mary Blair, Mousterpiece Theater, RObert Benchley, Saludos Amigos, sean ironman, Teege Braune, The Band Concert, The Clock Watcher, The Symphony Hour, The Three Caballeros, Trickster Makes This World, Walt Disney

Episode 102 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download. On this week’s show, my friends Teege Braune of In Boozo Veritas fame, Sean Ironman of Heroes Never Rust fame, Jeff Shuster, who is the Curator of Schlock, and Dianne Turgeon Richardson join me for a roundtable discussion of Donald Duck on his 80th birthday.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

The Band Concert (1935)

Early to Bed (1941)

The Symphony Hour (1942)

Saludos Amigos Trailer (1942)

Der Furher’s Face (1943)

Commando Duck (1944)

The Clock Watcher (1945)

Dumbbell of the Yukon (1946)

Soup’s On (1948)

Donald Applecore (1952)

Mickey Mouse Club Intro (1955)

Clip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988, set in 1947)

Commercial for Mousterpiece Theater (1980-something)

NOTES

Dianne Turgeon-Richardson critiqued of the storytelling of Maleficent on her blog.

_______

Episode 102 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In Boozo Veritas #44 : The Bone Must Go, the Wish Can Stay

02 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

In Boozo Veritas, Kafka, Odradek, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #44 by Teege Braune

The Bone Must Go, the Wish Can Stay

I had long been aware of Odradek and knew that he had for some reason chosen to make our apartment his residence. As far as roommates go, he was not hard to get along with. He was quiet, neat, and mostly kept to himself, but his sudden appearances could occasionally be unnerving. Weeks might pass without me catching sight of him, when returning home late from work, distracted by other problems, I would be startled to find him sitting in the middle of my living room playing with a bit of lint. At other times, Jenn and I would be sitting casually together, faces glued to our respective smart phones when she would say something like, “The cats chased Odradek today,” without really looking up at me.

“No kidding” I’d mutter.

“Yeah, he scurried through the living room with bits of thread hanging off of him, but when I looked for him in the bedroom to make sure he was okay, I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“Well, I’m sure he’s fine,” I’d say unable to feel concern for a creature who seemed more like an object than a living thing.

I suppose I will never know where he hid during his prolonged absences. I tried to look for him once. I can’t remember if my curiosity suddenly got the best of me, if there was something I wished to tell him, or if I simply wished to be distracted by his awkward shape and demeanor for a moment. Most likely I was avoiding any number of chores that would have been time better spent. I began digging through closets, pulling out old bins, emptying them and stuffing everything back inside when Odradek was not amongst the contents. Then I started opening all the drawers allowing myself to get preoccupied sorting through photographs and reading old Christmas cards, forgetting all about Odradek in the process. There always seemed to be another layer of debris to sort through, another jam-packed corner in which Odradek may be hiding. I did this until I began to feel irritated with him for making me muddle around in the tedious contents of my life.

“Why does he persist in these foolish games?” I asked myself. “I have better things to do this afternoon than dig through all this garbage.”

I grew increasingly anxious before I realized I wasn’t really concerned with Odradek’s whereabouts at all. He obviously didn’t depend on me to make his way in the world, and I had no need of him. Frustrated with myself, I plopped down on the couch and allowed myself to get carried away with the internet and social networking.

I’ll admit that Odradek never crossed my mind as Jenn and I were finally completing the final stages of our move from the apartment in which we had lived for the last four years, the vast majority of our relationship. I could have easily scooped him up and deposited him in the dumpster as we tossed out everything we could live without and removed one garbage bag after another. As I yanked out some old blankets in the back of our bedroom closet, I was surprised to see Odradek huddled up beneath them.

“Well, how are you doing today?” I asked speaking to him as though he were a child, for one is always inclined to speak to Odradek as though he were a child.

“I’m fine I suppose,” he answered.

Something in his tone had a note of sadness to it, or so it seemed, though I suspect he always came across a bit melancholy and I had never noticed until now.

“Will you be sad when we leave?” I asked.

“Others have come before,” he said.

Until this time it had never occurred to me that Odradek had lived in our apartment before we moved in, and I felt uneasy at the revelation that it was we who were encroaching on his home. I wondered what kind of relationship he had shared with the tenets who preceded us. Maybe they had been friendlier with him, treated him as a pet or even a member of their family. Perhaps he saw Jenn and I as unkind and unwelcoming strangers. Conversely, the old tenets may have screamed whenever they saw him. Kicked him if he got in their way and abused him when they were able to lay hands on him. His remote nature might be a product of the trauma and natural distrust he had developed from years of abuse.

On our way out I asked Jenn if she thought that maintenance would attempt to rid the apartment of Odradek once and for all before they rented it out to the new tenets, whoever they may be.

“Oh, I doubt they even know he’s there,” she said as we drove away.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas #40: ‘Til Death Unite Them And They Part No More

05 Monday May 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bartending, In Boozo Veritas, Redlight Redlight, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #40 by Teege Braune

‘Til Death Unite Them And They Part No More

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a very young child. Dreaming up vivid worlds and monsters has always been a favorite past-time of mine, but I learned early on that a vivid imagination is only the first, tiny aspect of a writer’s struggle. The unending, labyrinthine process of writing and revising, ingesting, regurgitating, transposing, and finally metabolizing the work of the masters of the craft, accepting constant rejection, delicately handling the elusive fragility of inspiration, realizing that college bares little resemblance to real life and that no amount of success back then makes earning a living as a fiction writer anymore likely, continuing to write anyway, enduring the Herculean labor of something that is often thankless and usually unread by anyone, knowing that if you never wrote another word, few would be likely to notice, but doing it anyway because something you can’t name compels you to do so, this endurance test and Sisyphean task never becomes easy. It is something that I’ve worked at most of my life and will most likely never be at peace with.

I’ve never made a fraction of my income as a writer. Once my formal education had ended, figuring out how to pay the bills was a largely unsatisfying endeavor that found me bouncing around unhappily in the service industry. Bartending was not something I had ever thought much about doing. The idea of working while everyone else was hanging out seemed frankly depressing. Nevertheless, I found myself begging my friend Brent for a job at Redlight Redlight when I abruptly discovered that Ballard and Corum, the quaint bakery that I had been managing, was soon to close. He flatly turned me down explaining that as we were such good friends, he thought it would be weird to be my boss. I told him not to look at it that way, that we were simply doing each other a favor. I promised that I would walk away without resentment if, for some reason, he felt I wasn’t cutting it, but he wasn’t convinced. Then a few days later, as though our last conversation had ended quite differently, he called me to talk to me about a film night he wanted me to host at the bar. I took this as the closest thing to a formal job offer I was likely to get and accepted. Relieved to even have a job, any trepidation I had about beginning a new career, especially one I had never even wanted, melted away the moment I stepped behind the bar. Right away I felt preternaturally at ease in that position. Brent’s training was relatively straightforward. He handed me a rag and bottle opener.

“Here are your tools,” he said. “Here’s the register. It’s just like the one you used downstairs at the bakery. Here’s how you poor a beer from the tap. Make sure you open it all the way so you don’t get too much head. I think you got it.”

Talking to people has never been difficult for me, and for some reason, I find it even easier with the bar between us. The bartender is a special job in the service industry. It is the unique role in which the customer is at your mercy and not the other way around. With this reversal in mind, I, who have always been an extrovert, like people more than ever. While bartending I feel like I am in my own personal space while simultaneously on a stage, the lights tilted just so in order to reveal my best angle. With my momentum and perhaps just the tiniest bit of alcohol fueling me, you’ll often catch me dancing around and singing to myself as I take orders and pour drinks. On those nights when everything seems to fall into place, I know I have the best job in the world, one I wouldn’t trade for anything. I think no one else could possibly be having this much fun at work. There are few other situations in which I like myself as much as I do while I’m bartending. In these moments the best version of myself effortlessly rises to the top and takes over.

In love with that euphoria, I once mistakenly believed that bartending was all I needed. Fed up with the exhausting struggle that comes with being a writer, I thought I had discovered something to replace it. I threw myself into my new job, tended bar six nights a week, and to my own detriment, all but quit writing completely. Never mind that bartending has plenty of its own frustrations, in the long run it was not sustainable as my sole aspiration. I dreamed in words. I began to narrate my own life as I was living it. I became deeply unhappy as I let some fundament aspect of my very nature atrophy. Finally at the not so gentle urging of my girlfriend Jenn I sat down to write the story that would become “What Keeps Mankind Alive.” Composing the first few pages, most of which have since been discarded, was like prying up the reeking sarcophagus of some long sealed tomb. In the month it took me to complete this very dark short story I had to accept that I was not only the friendly bartender that everybody loved. There was someone less likable lurking around inside me as well, and I had to acknowledge this frightening aspect of my personality because it was not going away.

Perhaps my sanity lies delicately poised between the inward exploration of psyche that is writing and the outward projection of idealized self that I achieve through bartending. If so, it is a delicate balance that requires constant tension. If I’m a good writer, it’s because I’ve worked hard my entire life to be one. If I’m a good bartender, it’s because I was fulfilling an odd personal destiny the moment I stepped behind a bar. Some fundamental aspect of my identity lies precisely where these two activities, so diametrically opposed on many levels, converge. As a writer I will never achieve my final form. Inherently protean, I will never stop changing and growing. My goal, unachievable by its very nature, will forever be just out of reach, both a blessing and a curse, symptomatic of my willful desire to never be satisfied. As a bartender I strive to be immutable. I will never be better than I am right now.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #39: Three of My Favorite Poets in Orlando

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Amy Watkins, Danielle Kessinger, Fifteen Views of Orlando, In Boozo Veritas, Milk & Water, Satellite Beach, Susan Lilley, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #39 by Teege Braune

Three of My Favorite Poets in Orlando

In case you haven’t noticed, I have been celebrating Poetry Month by dedicating each blog I’ve written in April to the art of verse. Furthermore, as this is In Boozo Veritas, I’ve attempted to find subjects that have a particular connection to drinking. Fortunately, poetry is rife with imbibers and alcoholics. Dylan Thomas is one of the most notorious among them, and tackling this challenging author was a feat that I found rewarding in its stretch of my analytical capabilities, though I’ll freely admit that I barely scratched the surface his dense and difficult work. I wrote a paper about The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in college shortly after discovering it, and having read this poem many times since then, I’ve long since intended to go back over the material and reexamine it with a more mature perspective. Small Batch: an anthology of bourbon poetry simply fell in my lap; of course, I felt compelled to share a book full of my two favorite things: poetry and bourbon. While trying to come up with a subject for my final blog of poetry month, I realized that I’ve missed an obvious topic. After all, living in Orlando, I share my community with many incredible writers, three of my favorite poets among them.

I first met Susan Lilley during the publication of Fifteen Views of Orlando: Vol. II as the collection was appearing serially on Burrow Press Review’s website.

Susan had taken the red-bearded bartender character from my own story “April 20, 2008,” named him Jordan, and given him a wonderfully rich history and family dynamic in her own story “Equinox.” I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a character I had based on myself interpreted by someone who didn’t know me, especially a writer of Susan’s caliber. Not long after, I attended a poetry reading Susan was giving in conjunction with the release of her incredible collection Satellite Beach published by Finishing Line Press and realized just how amazing and talented this woman really is. Rarely does one hear poetry read so naturally. Susan reads like she is speaking directly to you so that’s it’s nearly impossible not to hang on every word. What’s more, you begin to feel grateful that this poet is sharing such personal and profound moments with you in her audience. I was even more honored to share a stage with Susan at the speakeasy Hanson’s Shoe Repair when we read our joint stories from Fifteen Views of Orlando back to back. Satellite Beach is a collection worth reading over and over again, but I can say from experience that it is a rare and unmatched treat hearing Susan read these poems herself. No stranger to The Drunken Odyssey, you can listen to Susan’s interview with John King right here. She was even kind enough to take over In Boozo Veritas one week while I was on vacation. Her guest blog Writers in Festival Mode is a hilarious and nearly anthropological examination of the drinking habits of the literati when they get together for festivals and conferences, and if you enjoy her essays as much as I do, you can read more of them on the website The Gloria Sirens.

By now you are no doubt on your way to Bookmark It in East End Market, Orlando’s only independent bookstore focusing on local writers, to purchase Satellite Beach.

While you are there, do yourself a favor and pick up Amy Watkins’ brand new chapbook Milk & Water, published by Yellow Flag Press.

With this collection Amy has proved herself to be both an exciting, emerging voice and a poet who’s put in the time to fine tune her craft. The poems found in Milk & Water are flawless whether they function as brief poignant images or heart-wrenching narratives. Poems such as “Playa Linda” destroy the adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This vision of a daughter collecting seashells on a beach captures a pristine snapshot in fewer words than a hundred, proving that in this poet’s competent hands words are, in fact, priceless. Amy doesn’t need to tell us why this moment in time has stayed with her, why it deserves to be captured in a poem; the beauty of its existence is justification enough. On the other hand, poems with a more obvious emotional gravity such as “The Viewing” and “The Day My Sister Died,” both dealing with the tragic loss of a sister at an early age, work because they employ the same clarity of memory that make “Playa Linda” stand out. Amy is asking the reader to do more than simply grieve with her. Where a lesser author might merely inspire our sympathy, Amy demands empathy on a visceral, painful level. These poems do not shy away from pointing out the painful truth that the actions of people we know love us, actions meant for our own protection, just as often leave deep wounds and horrible scars. There is a sense of poetic responsibility in Amy’s work, and yet there is redemption as well, an emotional release that transcends explanation, a redemption that comes from the simple fact of the poem’s existence. As in Susan’s work, the reader feels grateful to be welcomed into a space this personal, and like Susan, she is an incredible reader of her own work. Each poem is imbued with a profundity that makes them all the more devastating for her straight-forward emotional honesty.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention my good friend Danielle Kessinger. I have considered Danielle my friend for several years, but only recently discovered just what an incredible poet she is. I was lucky enough to share the stage with her a few weeks ago at Literocalypse and was blown away by the sheer sound of her poems. As both a writer and a reader Danielle captures a musicality that is uncommon and all the more delightful for its rarity. Simply hearing her poems is an absolute pleasure. While Danielle doesn’t yet have a published collection that you can rush out and buy, she is a poet you would be wise to watch out for. I, for one, look forward to seeing her give another reading very soon. She and I spent a few hours yesterday drinking cocktails and keeping each other focused as we submitted our work to various lit mags. Hopefully an editor will see the same spark in her work that I do.

The literary community of Orlando, more so than any other city in which I’ve lived, is as warm and welcoming as it is full of talent. From Functionally Literate, to There Will Be Words, and Literocalypse, there is an arena for any number of diverse voices, established and emerging alike. I am lucky to consider each of these three poets, Susan, Amy, and Danielle, my friend. I would say the same of many other fantastic writers living here. Orlando is a big city with the neighborly charm of a small town. In other communities it is easy to get lost in the crowd, but here one only needs to follow a simple plan to meet the writers living among us: go to readings and start buying drinks. You’re sure to meet more writers than you’ll know what to do with.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #38: Dylan Thomas, and Words That Leave Us Dumb

21 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

After the Funeral (In memory of Ann Jones), And Death Shall Have No Dominion, Caitlin Macnamara, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas, Teege Braune, The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, The White Horse Tavern

In Boozo Veritas #38 by Teege Braune

Dylan Thomas:

Words That Leave Us Dumb

On November ninth, 1953, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, already decrepit and ill at the age only thirty-nine years old, took a drink and had another. “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s a record!” he announced and then fell forward dead at the table of his favorite New York City pub The White Horse Tavern; a fitting, legendary end for a man who cultivated his own legend as a drunken passionate rogue, philanderer, and doomed poet, a man prone to creating his own tall tales such as his claim that he and long suffering wife Caitlin Macnamara were in bed together ten minutes after meeting each other. Macnamara’s own assessment of her relationship with Thomas was less romanticized. “But ours was a drink story, not a love story, just like millions of others. Our one and only true love was drink. The bar was our altar,” she wrote in her 1997 autobiography My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story. “Is the bloody man dead yet?” she asked as she arrived at St. Vincent’s Hospital were Thomas was lying in a coma from which he would not awaken. Perhaps a more fitting legend of the poet’s death is that, though alcohol had compromised his health in more ways than one, his autopsy revealed that his liver showed no signs of cirrhosis, the opposite of what everyone believed. In fact, Thomas’ final coup d’état came from pneumonia exacerbated by a preexisting lung condition. While alcohol may have endorsed his demise, it was not the actual assassin.

Despite his love affair with alcohol, its presence in Thomas’ work is limited and intermittent. Death, on the other hand, is the obsession to which he returns time and time again. His poetry chronicles an ambivalent relationship with the inevitable. In much of his most famous work, including “And Death Shall Have No Dominion,” “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” “After the Funeral (In memory of Ann Jones),” and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” amongst others, Thomas rails against his own demise and that of his loved ones all the while acknowledging the futility of such a lament. In “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” he says that

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.”

We see death portrayed, not only as a necessity and final conclusion of our birth, but furthermore, a moral action; it is the correct thing to do. And yet we know that in that “good night” our failings are made manifest; our deeds crumble as we are forgotten by those who survive us. In the end, our words, for all their weight and sanctity, were no more than words; they “forked no lightning.” If this was the fear of a poet of Thomas’ unfathomable caliber, then what hope do the rest of us have? Having memorized “Do No Go Gentle into That Good Night” years ago, I often recite it at bars as a litmus test of my own intoxication. If I can get through the final “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” without losing my place or forgetting a verse, I’ll order another drink. If I can’t finish the poem, I know it’s time to find a ride home. In other moments, I ignore my own advice and, overwhelmed by my own desire to “burn and rave at close of day,” I take a cue from the doomed bard and push through past the final horizon of decorum and good sense.

Poet Robert Lowell said of Dylan Thomas, “He is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding.” This was indeed my own experience when I first heard my English literature professor Jim Watt read “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” with a steady, emotional resonance that rivaled Richard Burton and gave me chills as he crawled towards that final image of the crooked worm. A mild, sunny day in early spring had inspired Jim to drag us all outside and there among blossoming flowers and budding trees he found an idyllic location in which to share this poem with a bunch of nineteen year olds, the same age Thomas was when he wrote it. I had been discovering and devouring literature faster than I could process it, but these words left an indelible mark on my imagination. When I came home for spring break I read it to my mom who responded that she didn’t understand a word of it. I admitted that I didn’t either, but loved it anyway. Over a decade later, having read it an uncountable number of times, I now think it is deceptively simple in its meaning, which is, in utterly complex language, an admission of the poet’s own lack of understanding. He sees the connection between his own youth and the fragile burgeoning flower, the never-ending cycle of death and regeneration, the force that drives and destroys everything without judgment or preference, that unites all, living and dying, into one existence, and he says in the face of this overwhelming epiphany that is no revelation, enlightening without revealing, “I am dumb to tell…”

If Caitlin was Thomas’ third love and alcohol his second, his true romance was with words. Thomas had said of discovering nursery rhymes as a child, “before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance…” This is a poet who was never writing for the purpose of being understood in the first place. “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” may simply tell us what Thomas doesn’t know, but it does so in the most breathtakingly beautiful way imaginable. The rhythm, the enigmatic images, every word in every line is immaculate. If a life has meaning, it is most likely a meaning one has wrought out of it, perhaps unnaturally. Most likely this meaning is less significant than the simple fact of the life itself. What’s for certain is that at the moment of our inevitable deaths, the meanings to which we once clung will be lost forever. In Dylan Thomas’ incredible poems we find many meanings, most of which are constantly in flux, endlessly debated; more importantly, we find words. Words collected, adored, beaten, cursed, blessed, and finally arranged in such a way that they do indeed fork lightning, defeat death, and transcend personal legend.

___________