GRollins

Some goofy-head went and asked me questions for an interview: Grey Rollins interview (Q&A style) Grey

Jeez, no sooner than I'd punched into this thread than the sound of bickering started coming from the kitchen...I guess it's Thanksgiving, eh? Have a good one in spite of them what wants to fuss... Grey

Tell your wife thanks. If she's been reading Analog that long, she may (dimly...after all it was twenty years ago...) remember Trial By Ordeal, this story's predecessor. It's not necessary to read Trial By Ordeal first, but it might flesh things out a bit. Grey

For what it's worth it's the slowest now, for me, that it's ever been. Grey

You're not the only one mystified by this. Some of the parody attempts seem a bit mean-spirited to me, others simply derivative and piling on, so I rarely participate. Grey

If I really, really, really try to be understanding and all, I can kinda-sorta deal with the body of the piano, in a drug-trip sorta way...but those legs are hideous. No other word for it. I'm stuck between seeing them as telephone poles that have been hacked or crude, unfinished totem poles that will eventually be carved into faces. Neither option works for me. On the other hand, if Steinway's sales are down and they need to resort to bespoke or endorser instruments to survive, then go for it. The company is too important to let fail. If this sort of creative thinking will keep them afloat until things improve, then I say go for it. Grey

My appreciation for ELP material is variable. To me, their material divided into three categories: 1) Radio cuts, e.g. Lucky Man or From the Beginning 2) Songs meant to be light-hearted or humorous, e.g. The Sheriff or Are You Ready, Eddy? 3) The "prog" stuff, which covers most everything else. Note that I'm including classical interpretations such as Pictures At An Exhibition in the prog category, although I think a case could be made for splitting them into a fourth category. I have to confess that none of the funny tunes cut it for me. They try too hard and end up sounding like an insecure junior high school nerd trying to be the life of the party. And failing. The radio cuts were generally pretty good, but don't sound like the rest of their respective albums. That's not necessarily a bad thing--after all, if you look at, say, Yes's Fragile album, the tracks are all over the place. Roundabout doesn't sound a thing like We Have Heaven. It's just that ELP's radio tracks tend to stand out. I think I recall seeing that that was a conscious decision on the part of the band. If so, mission accomplished. The prog stuff strikes me as highly variable. Some of it, like say, Bitch's Crystal, I don't care for. But the tracks I do like...wow...just wow...they fit in my psyche like a key in a lock. Most of the first album works for me and there have been times when it was in heavy rotation on my turntable. Finish Lucky Man, flip the album over and start back in on The Barbarian. Over and over and over. And over. Bless my mother for being so tolerant. I'll bet she got thoroughly tired of hearing the same thing so many times in a row, but she put up with it. That said, although I've got their albums up through Works, I tend to like the first five best, and of those, I lean towards the earlier material. Their album cover art ranged from merely okay to terrible to disturbing. They would have benefited greatly from finding their own Roger Dean. Or perhaps just borrowing Dean in between all the other covers he was doing at the time. Grey

The election's over. Yea! Grey

Trust me, I live in the US and I'm sick of it, but if we must go through this process to get the presidential thing done, then I'm going to participate--if for no other reason than to try to find a better solution for the Covid mess. With that in mind, I'm having to wait--along with everyone else in the known universe--until all the ballots are counted, recounted, verified, overseen, and just generally folded, spindled, and mutilated. I'm friggin' exhausted and hope that this election cycle helps things quiet down for the next four years. This country needs a rest from all the chaos. Grey

I got logged out earlier today...or maybe it was last night...I'm low on sleep and bleary as a consequence. I used to figure that it was because KC's server had been rebooted or something, and that everyone was logged off as a consequence. If that's not it, then count me amongst the ones afflicted by the mysterious logout problem. For what it's worth, KC is slow for me right now, but then so is everything else. Grey

Actually, I was just on YouTube watching a video and getting the same problem as here. Firefox, this time. So...is the problem spreading across my system? Is it Windows that's at fault? Starting to think that the latest update there might be a candidate. Grey

I've been having problems. Started rudimentary diagnostics from this end and have discovered that Chrome is using stupid amounts of CPU when you click anything. It settles after a bit and life goes back to normal. I think their previous update caused problems. I just now got a notice that Chrome wanted to update--did so--but I don't see that it's any better. Note that I do something unorthodox in that I run Firefox and Chrome simultaneously. I'll go into my reasoning at some other time, but the point is that I've been doing this for a long time and in a case like this it allows me to compare browser behavior. Firefox is not having the problems that Chrome is having...unless I've just clicked Chrome, in which everything slows down while it has a tantrum. So, with that in mind, you might take a look at what browsers people are using. Grey

Why do people hate the poor guy doing the comparison? I don't get it. I mean, I know why I hate him...he has 3 x 2600 and I have 0 x 2600. In other words, I'm jealous. However, I am sufficiently self aware to know that my hating him is rooted in my jealousy and I'm also sufficiently enlightened to get over it (mostly--just a tinge of green here and there). Isn't the world angry enough already without people getting wigged out over a product comparison that only a handful of people in the world could pull off? There aren't that many people who have all three 2600s on hand. Two, maybe, but all three? Not a common thing at all. So I'm going to sit here and scowl at the guy, but I do so knowing that the underlying impetus is a character flaw in yours truly, not in the guy doing the comparison. He seems like an okay guy. No, really. This voodoo doll I'm sticking pins in? Er...you weren't supposed to notice that...look away... Grey

I second the motion. Grey

I used to have a Rickenbacker 4001 bass--bought it new in the early '70s. Loved it to pieces. Then the bridge started warping because it was poorly made. Worse yet the (very) limited travel for the saddles made it difficult to intonate. The neck had an odd profile that I didn't mind in the beginning, but over time I grew to hate it. The weird scale length I could overlook when playing, but I couldn't easily get medium scale length strings at the time so the silk at the ends was always wrapped completely around the posts, up to the playable part of the string. It was beautiful to look at and sounded cool, but I was not sad to see it go. Grey

I loved the slightly goofy way he played the part. I wish he had consented to play the role in the next movie, but he turned it down and as far I as recall, never acted again. Grey EDIT: Okay, he did a voice role in 2012, so there's one later entry, chronologically, after Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [2008], which he declined.

He had star power. Charisma. Mojo. That indefinable something that makes an actor or actress a magnet for your attention. When he was on screen, you watched him, no matter what else was happening. It's a rare thing. You either have it or you don't. I don't think it can be learned. It's just there. He had it. Grey

I find myself both shaken and stirred. Thanks for all the wonderful the movies, man. Cue the Bond theme... Grey

My wife sprang this one on me, cackling. I would like to note that the music store must cater to the prog rock crowd...that first measure looks to be 7/16 time! Sounds like my kind of place. Grey

Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin got a lot of mileage out of a theremin during live performances. You don't wait for opportunities to use an unusual instrument in concert, you create them. Grey

For all the fact that I've only had two or three stories in the last decade, I've had nearly fifty stories in Analog over the years...it's just been a while since I was doing this on a regular basis. Kids will do that to you...and now the Covid thing, just as the kids were growing old enough that they can wipe their own bottoms. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya'! A frippin' conspiracy! <...puts on his tinfoil hat...> Grey

I'm not annoying. Seriously. I just need to convince everyone else...and they're stubbornly refusing to go along with the program. That means it's their fault, right? Grey

Hence my sorting algorithm above beginning with "Read"...which most people don't. It's sad that the US has such a high literacy rate, but so few actually use the ability. It won't be much longer before the actual literacy rates begin falling. Also of concern: Falling rates of scientific literacy. The current trend towards an anti-science mindset is disturbing. We will pay, and pay dearly, for this if the trend isn't reversed. Grey

I have it on good authority that I qualify as a considerable annoyance, myself. I get sour looks from the kids every time I fire off a pun. Others find me bothersome in other ways. It seems to be my superpower. I tell myself that it's one of those "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" or "one man's meat is another man's poison" sort of things. Perhaps I'm an acquired taste...still waiting for my kids to realize that, but I fear that the wait may be a long one. Note that "Trial and Error" follows hard on the heels of an earlier story of mine, "Trial By Ordeal," which chanced to win an award, much to my surprise. That led to me making a pilgrimage to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the awards shindig. I think I met George R.R. Martin there (he lives in the area), but at the time, GoT had yet to take over the world and he was just another author shaking hands, just as I was doing. Had I known that he was on the verge of World Domination, I might have spent more time getting acquainted. They were handing out free copies of A Clash of Kings--I should probably have at least gotten him to autograph the silly thing. But when you're carrying around ten or twenty free hard copy books (they're trying to get you to vote for them during awards season), they're heavy and awkward, and it's tedious to track everyone down and get signatures on the off chance that person X, Y, or Z might be on the verge of becoming the next big thing. You need not fear that Spielberg will be taking an option on my Victor & Martin stories or the Darwin's Children series, I'm just a small frog in a medium-sized pond. I used to have a little more recognition, but then the kids came along and my stories got further and further apart (the one before this was four years back). If you don't write frequently, you get forgot, and all the stories I wrote back in the '90s might as well have been published in the Jurassic for all current readers know. I'd like to finish a few stories that I've got waiting in the wings, but the Covid lockdown means I've got family underfoot and I need large swaths of quiet to write--not gonna happen any time soon. Thus, it will likely be another four years before my next story comes out. Grey

As some of you know, I am an author in addition to being a musician (and a luthier and a brewer, and blah, blah, blah...). Today's mail brought contributor's copies of my upcoming story "Trial and Error." It will be in the November/December issue of Analog magazine. So, for those who: a) Read b) Read science fiction c) Have the time and interest to pursue such things and haven't succumbed to Covid 19 (yeah, I know, the Venn Diagram is getting pretty damned tight there in the middle) There's a story coming from yours truly. Grey