Okay, daron has decided to keep his trap shut this month, poor thing. He’s pretty stressed out right now. So I’ll do the Liner Note this month. This week Daron’s Guitar Chronicles is one year old! We launched officially on November 9, 2009. Thank you for reading!
And this month, thank you for all the awesome comments! Comments on this month’s posts fell just short of the 100 comment goal, but many new comments were left on older posts, that put the total over 100! So you know what that means–another month of three posts a week!
We’ll have three posts a week through December 16th. You’re probably wondering what you’re going to have to do to earn the next month’s worth, yeah? How about this? I’ve been thinking of writing a bonus scene/story from Ziggy’s point of view. Just because Daron has NO CLUE what’s going on in Ziggy’s head doesn’t mean WE can’t have a little peek, does it?
Each person who donates between now and December 16th can put in a suggestion for what they’d like to see in the story or a prompt. I’ll choose one (or more, possibly) to work in. And if donations reach $100, instead of just sending it to the donors, I’ll post the story for all to see. AND, having hit the $100 plateau, voila, that’ll also trigger another month of bonuses. Sound good?
To make a “Ziggy story donation” choose “send money” at www.paypal.com, choose Personal Payment (so neither of us will get hit with fees), and enter the amount you want to pay to the address “ctan.writer@gmail.com” –and then in the “Message to Recipient” put your suggestion for the story! The idea can be anything from a setting (“in the back of a truck”) to a subject (“they meet Tipper Gore”) to an esoteric prompt (“tea” “aardvark” “hiding in plain sight”).
And don’t tell Daron. He doesn’t want to believe right now that there’s another side to the story.
Here’s a link you might all enjoy. A dedicated follower of DGC made a YouTube playlist of all the chapter titles in the ebook (chapter 1-39)! So you can fire this puppy up and read at the same time! http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=856801D0BF172D58
This month also had the shout-outs and references flying pretty thick in the story. For the curious, here are a few of them explained.
I’ve now mentioned several restaurants in Chinatown. The Imperial Tea House where Daron and Digger discuss taxes changed a few years later to be Imperial Seafood, and is now Imperial Hot Pot Buffet. I haven’t been there in over 10 years and I’m not sure I would recommend it now. Chau Chow, the place they eat with Jordan Travers, the place with the amazing beef brisket chow fun where you could never get a glass of water, is long gone.
It was the cheapest of the three Chau Chow restaurants, which also included the Grand Chau Chow across the street (same menu, but slightly higher prices and they took credit cards there), and Chau Chow City, the 3000-seat capacity dim sum palace they built in the early 90s. The old, cheap Chau Chow was the best, though, and they closed when the landlord didn’t renew their lease. The place that opened in their spot, Yan’s Best Place, didn’t survive because no one went there. The place is now Gourmet Dumpling House and is actually really good and packed most nights; I assume people didn’t hold a grudge against it the way they did the place that displaced a neighborhood favorite.
Amusingly enough, just a few weeks ago corwin and I went into a place we hadn’t been before, The New Golden Gate, and discovered a whole bevy of our old favorite waiters all work there. Looking at the menu, it looks like maybe the old Chau Chow cook(s) might be there, too, so after more than a decade of wandering, maybe we have a new regular place again.
So the Moondog Three tour starts in Cleveland, which may seem like an odd place to start. If the story had been taking place in 1995 or later, I would probably have set a chapter in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, it’s not yet 1990 when this tour happens, so the museum isn’t even there yet.
Honestly, I’m not sure why I picked Cleveland. There was a rationale at the time, I just don’t remember what it is.
It’s possible I may have also been thinking of Sexploitation’s cross-country tour, which took them not through Cleveland, but through Cincinnati. If I thought I could get away with it, I would have put Moondog Three in a show at Sudsy Malone’s, a kind of infamous punk club that was also a laundromat. No, I’m not kidding, and getting free laundry was one of the perks of playing there. This is important when a band is on the road. (
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I’ve said before, I love Daron’s story because, even though I wasn’t in the Boston area at the time, I grew up simultaneously. It’s so very cool to be able to think, “Oh, so this is happening during my junior year of college.” And, you know, Daron was MUCH more out than I ever was. I didn’t even get into a relationship with a woman until 1992 or so, and all that time I was still trying so hard to be straight. So even if Daron’s relationship with Ziggy is fuxx0red, at least he’s HAVING a relationship, which does make me admire him. 🙂
I think men had it easier because they were more visible, even if a lot of that visibility was negative.
Or maybe it’s just they’re hornier and can’t help themselves… LOL.
Yeah, I wouldn’t call getting sucked through a hole in a restroom stall an act of being “out.” More desperation. But at least I could see there was somewhere for “people like me” to go.
I have mixed feelings about the idea of seeing a little of Ziggy’s POV…
I usually hate this kind of thing, in a way is what we all want, but on the other side it breaks the reader’s identification with the main character, who is till then our main source of information…
We’ll see if I can even do it. I’ve never written a story from Ziggy’s point of view before. And his head is a very twisty place.
I’m loving the story so far but what I love more right this instance is the shout out to Sudsy Malone’s. I’m a Louisville girl and I’ve made the trek up to Cinci for shows there a few times in my life, so seeing it here made me grin.
Also, I thought you were pretty kickass after seeing what you wrote about OTW and why you support it (I’m a volunteer staff member), and a few fanfic you’d written, but this story and the liner notes are putting you over the top into someone I want to buy a coffee and chat with for hours.
If you’re ever passing through the Boston area, then, you’ll have to give me a shout. There’s about a million excellent cafes in Harvard Square. 🙂
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