L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

I knew this was going to be a keeper the minute I picked it up and read the description: a collection of favorite horror stories as selected by some of the finest horror writers the genre has to offer. Um. Yes, please.

Then I saw the Table of Contents and was walking to the cashier before I’d even finished:

• “Sweets to the Sweet” by Robert Bloch :: chosen by Stephen King.
• “The Father-Thing” by Philip K. Dick :: chosen by Ed Gorman.
• “The Distributor” by Richard Matheson :: chosen by F. Paul Wilson.
• “A Warning to the Curious” by M.R. James :: chosen by Ramsey Campbell.
• “Opening the Door” by Arthur Machen :: chosen by Peter Atkins.
• “The Colour Out of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft :: chosen by Richard Laymon.
• “The Inner Room” by Robert Aickman :: chosen by Peter Straub.
• “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne :: chosen by Rick Hautala.
• “The Rats in the Walls” by H.P. Lovecraft :: chosen by Michael Slade.
• “The Dog Park” by Dennis Etchison :: chosen by Richard Christian Matheson.
• “The Animal Fair” by Robert Bloch :: chosen by Joe R. Lansdale.
• “The Pattern” by Ramsey Campbell :: chosen by Poppy Z. Brite.
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe :: chosen by Joyce Carol Oates.
• “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce :: chosen by Dennis Etchison.
• “The Human Chair” by Edogawa Rampo :: chosen by Harlan Ellison.

This is such an amazing collection of short stories, bringing together some of my all-time favorite writers with several I’ve wanted to discover for quite a while. And the discovery of these authors was well worth the wait, including (finally!) my first taste of H.P. Lovecraft.

I know! How the hell I’ve gone this long without truly experiencing Lovecraft is a horror unto itself. I don’t know why, but I have a bit of a Cthulhu hurdle, which has in time metamorphosed into a Lovecraft hurdle. I think it has to do with the people whom I have encountered who were huge into the Lovecraft mythos of Cthulhu. They were hurdles to me, and I guess I now link the two so closely that I can’t think of one without shuddering at the other.

The two Lovecraft offerings in this anthology, “The Colour Out of Space” and “The Rats in the Walls,” were by far two of the strongest stories in a collection of absolute champions. Also, Harlan Ellison’s selection, “The Human Chair” by Edogawa Rampo, gave me chills, even as I sat on a scorching hot beach. Same with Dennis Etchison’s “The Dog Park” or Robert Bloch’s “The Animal Fair.” Oh wow, was that an awesome ending, even if fairly predictable. Still scores high on the creep-o-meter.

I think that’s the key for each of the stories in this collection, at least for me: They’re not in-your-face gore fests. They inch slowly under your skin, sending out tendrils that wind their way straight through your core and leave you feeling thoroughly unsettled, invaded, filleted. I love this kind of horror. I love this anthology. Plus, the stories selected to represent Poe, Hawthorne, and Bierce are three of the key discoveries that helped lead me to the altar of horror literature in the first place.

Final Verdict: Yeah, like I’d give up this collection. This is so worth the price of admission. If you love horror stories and can find a copy, I would highly recommend adding it to your own collection.

I knew when I sat down on the couch Thursday night, drink in hand and a netbook logged into FanFiction.net’s CSI section, that I wasn’t going to write a Flashback Friday. I simply didn’t have it in me. I have ideas for future posts, but I just couldn’t muster the focus to write one up for last week. Plus, I was already logging out of reality in preparation for the impending beach trip scheduled to start the following morning.

I do apologize, though, denizens, for not explaining this beforehand. That was a bit rude of me, no?

So, yes, it was a long beachy weekend of eating deliciously bad-for-you foods, drinking bad-for-you drinks, and parking our butts under an umbrella and reading for hours while the soundtrack of waves against shoreline played steadily in the background.

It was wonderful.

I’m not by nature a beach person. Anyone who has seen La Loba knows that I am known as the White Wolf for many reasons, least of which is my Casper-like pallor. Even when slathered in SPF-OHMYGODYOUAREWHITE, I can still burn. Which is what happened this weekend. Strange patches of red on my ankles. A random streak on my shoulder. My earlobes (I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had sunburn on my ears before). And a frustratingly itchy red ring around my neck.

Yes, denizens. For the moment, I am truly a “redneck.” Please don’t hold it against me.

And now I’m back with my funky burn, reinvigorated freckles, and three new books for the Book Bin. Yes, I was gone for four days and I finished three books. Book reading nerdery, FTW. So stay tuned, denizens. Stay. Tuned.

In scanning through recent posts here at the lair, I realized that my presence has been relatively weak as of late. It’s not as though I haven’t been around. I’ve had things to say about little things: books, DVDs, lost memories rekindled for a smile. But larger thoughts have gone silent in my mind. I feel as though my safety zone has become my own personal Twitter feed: limited to 140 characters, if I can even muster that many.

Truth is, I feel as though I’m skirting the perimeter of my life right now. Things continue in my mental absence, but my focus is such at the moment that I can’t be bothered to acknowledge any of it. It’s why my inbox is filled with messages from friends and ImagiFriends^TM alike…and I can’t seem to focus enough to respond to any of them. Not with the depth they deserve. I’m not going to use this as an all-purpose generic way of responding, though. I will write back. I will.

And I will find my focus again. Right now, though, it feels too ephemeral, like spun sugar melting on the tip of my tongue. So I stop trying to reach what has decided to elude me. I let the muses in my mind go silent. Silence has never bothered me. It’s the clatter that presses against that silence that worries me. So I reinforce the silence with silliness. Like ordering a Wonder Woman T-shirt because I remember spinning with abandon as a wee pup, laughing and wishing more than anything for an invisible jet of my own. Or hanging Vulcan ears in the stairwell because I know they’ll make me smile every time I pass them.

Or watching YouTube clips from EastEnders and trying to piece together the puzzle of the delightfully disturbed Slater family because…well, because even in the excessive way of most soap operas (even the ones from Jolly Old England), there’s something there. Something intrinsically beautiful, especially in the fractured, fragile bond between Kat and Zoe, a mother/daughter relationship that, if nothing else, does indeed put the “fun” in “dysfunctional.” Besides, when all is said and done, love and family trump all else and, as Kat tells Zoe, “…it don’t matter. None of it. Because there’s a line, and it goes from me to you.”

Yeah. Not really hard to understand my sudden obsession with those wacky Slaters when you look at it that way.

I miss her every day. Every breath. With a severity that ebbs and flows, but always returns to the shoreline. I don’t say that often, but in my mind it feels like it’s all that I say, all that I do.

I saw my dad for Father’s Day weekend, the first time I’d seen him since I was there for her funeral. It was like seeing a person for the first time after an amputation. There was something missing, something gone that will never be replaced. It’s not like I’d never seen him without my mom around. We’d been on our own many times before, through all the myriad hospital stays she’d undergone since I was 10.

But those were like fractures to the bone, broken but with the promise of healing. In time. This time, the bone was sliced clean through, and all that was left were phantoms of what was once there.

Phantom pains and phantom presence.

My dad told me that, not long after my mom’s death, a squirrel appeared in the little wooded space behind their house. In the 6 years that my parents have lived where they are now, none of us had ever seen a squirrel there. It was always one of my mom’s disappointments. She loved squirrels. The house is still filled with all the squirrel paraphernalia she’d acquired through the years, either on her own or as gifts.

I remember the short period of time in which we had a squirrel as a “pet.” It had survived a fall from the nest when it was still too young to even have opened its eyes. My dad found it, brought it in, and we cared for it, squeezing formula into its tiny mouth with an eyedropper and keeping it in a shoebox until my dad could build it a cage from lumber scraps and chicken wire.

When it grew a little bigger, we realized “it” was a “she.” We named her Peepers, and for a while, she became part of the family. I can still see my mom standing in the square of sunlight from the kitchen window, washing something off in the sink while Peepers sat on her shoulder.

I don’t know how to process the appearance of the squirrel in their yard now that she’s gone. It’s a bit much for my overly rational side to try to assign it to anything more than just coincidence. But that portion of my soul that cries out to believe in the fantastical and the unexplained, the part that cherishes the message of undying love in books like To Dance With the White Dog…that part of me wants to believe that it’s more.

My dad seemed content to believe. And so that will be enough for me for now. That and Wonder Woman shirts and EastEnders clips and Vulcan ears and whatever else is required to extend the silence between the silliness and the clatter.

Back in the halcyon days of Saturday Morning Cartoons, ABC ran these cutesy little PSAs during commercial breaks designed to teach children useful life lessons like how to choose healthy snacks, brush their teeth properly, or dispose of bodies without leaving evidence.

Okay, maybe not so much on that last one.

The host of these PSAs was Timer, some kind of jaundice-y looking globule who liked to sing and dance while wearing silly accessories (but no clothes).

I loved “Time for Timer” breaks. They were funny, short, and always had a catchy tune. But my favorite was the “Hanker for a Hunk o’ Cheese” song. I don’t really know why, but sometimes I’ll still catch myself humming this strange, silly tune. Thankfully, no one has caught me doing this. Yet.

I’m a nerd. There’s really no denying this truth. From the roots of my red hair to the tips of my hipster Docs, I. Am. A. Nerd.

And I’m okay with this. I’m not just “okay” with it, actually. I revel in it. There is something liberating about being apart from the masses, liking what you like for reasons other than this popular person or that trendy person approves. It’s no surprise, I’m sure, to hear that I’ve never been all that good at fitting in with others. I’m okay with that, too.

So when I saw a copy of Ben Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People sitting in a remainder bin at the local Borders a while back, I knew this was a book I needed to read. Honestly, though, I assumed from the whimsical cover that it was going to be a funny, self-deprecating memoir in which Mr. Nugent waxed poetic about his nerdy adolescence.

Instead, what I got was a a rather fascinating sociological examination of the history of…the American Nerd (der!), from etymological discourse on the actual word to the earliest appearances of the now widely accepted visual and descriptive caricatures of a “nerd” (think bespectacled with physical weaknesses and antisocial behavior disorder).

The second half of the book is a series of case studies, if you will…discussions on accepted nerd “categories”: D&D nerd, hipster nerd, debate team nerd, etc. Interspersed are vignettes either from Nugent’s own adolescence or from those childhood friends who shared his nerdy penchant. Don’t be fooled, however, into thinking that this is the part of the book that will appease those needs for whimsy and fluff.

Honestly, these glimpses into the nerdery of time past are oftentimes bleak and in some instances rather upsetting. The humorous, Falstaffian nerd ideal put forth by movies like Sixteen Candles or Revenge of the Nerds is a false one, indeed. Though one might grow to appreciate and enjoy not fitting in as they get older, truth is it’s quite awkward and unpleasant during those years of soul-scarring adolescence. This is most definitely reflected in this part of the novel.

Final Verdict: I’m hanging on to this one for now. As I mentioned already, I had originally assumed that this would be a light, fluffy read. I was hoping for light and fluffy. What I found instead was a provocative (if slightly biased by his and friends’ experiences) examination of the history of American nerdery. I don’t quite think I was completely up to the task of absorbing such a serious work at this point, but what I was able to absorb impacted me significantly. I believe there is something to be found in a second reading at some point in the future.

So big and thick, no room for a stick.

Oh, those were far more innocent times when we could sing that tune and not feel like we were offering ourselves up to some horrible fate just for the crunchy-coated goodness of a Klondike Bar.

Actually, who am I kidding? I always giggled at the Klondike Bar theme, my filthy little mind titillated beyond comprehension by the subliminal meanings behind it all.

Heh. Titillated.

See? Filthy, filthy Loba.

Honestly, though, there was a time when I would have done quite a bit for one of these tasty treats (nothing too filthy, please; I was just a kid when these commercials first aired!). Not so much anymore. Ice cream just doesn’t excite me the way it did when I was a wee pup. Now if Klondike were to come out with a rum-based concoction guaranteed to knock me off-kilter, then we might have a different story to tell right now.

For now, though, here’s a Klondike Bar commercial perfectly suited to my literary tastes…and strangely and sadly relevant in light of Gary Coleman’s recent passing. It’s quite a bizarre commercial, actually.

Oh, and don’t worry…I don’t expect any of you to tell me what you’d do for a Klondike Bar. I already suspect I know what some of you would do…naughty little denizens…

After struggling through two back-to-back book bummers, I decided to dip once more into my stash of reliable literary sorbet: Star Trek novels. Well, maybe not reliable (I’m still pissed off at Peter David for Before Dishonor), but quick and relatively brainless.

So, have I ever mentioned before how much I love the Trill? I think, after Bajorans, they’re one of my favorite Trek aliens. Maybe not in execution, which was always somewhat spotty (no pun intended), but in concept. I mean, think about it: It’s an entire race of people who at some point in their cultural evolution decided that, if they could just figure out some way of inserting giant slugs into their abdomens, they would finally be complete.

I’ve seen my share of slugs and snails before, but never once have I had an overwhelming urge to ingest one. Okay, maybe the ones sauteed in a nice butter herb sauce…but I don’t think that’s quite the Trill way of symbiotic bonding.

That’s one of the things that I always wanted answered about the Trill: How exactly did this symbiotic relationship begin? Who was that first Trill who went back to his or her peers and said, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! You know those big slugs that live in those milky pools underground? Call me crazy, but I’ve got this hunch that one of those in my gut would be AWESOME!”

Maybe I’m just thinking about this too much. But it’s a bizarre thing to contemplate, to be sure. And not something that has an obvious answer. Maybe that’s why no one ever tried to answer it on any Trek series. It’s right up there with the question about how the Trill hosts/hostesses went from have lumpy foreheads to looking like Famke Janssen’s character from “The Perfect Mate.”

[For the record, Terry Farrell actually did test variations of the original Trill headpiece, but TPTB hated every attempt to make her an "attractive Trill." Don't believe me? Go to Memory Alpha's Jadzia Dax page and scroll to the bottom. And never doubt Loba again.]

And don’t even get me started on how the Trill couldn’t use transporters in their TNG appearance while Jadzia and Ezri were beaming fools on DS9. Actually, there’s such an overwhelming amount if incongruity between the TNG Trill and the DS9 Trill that I might injure myself trying to figure it all out in the scope of this one post.

But yet again I’m derailing myself by my own insurmountable nerdiness.

Back on track: The Lives of Dax is just as the title indicates: a compilation of stories that give tiny glimpses into the lives of each host to carry within them the symbiont known as “Dax.” The book is broken down into a chapter apiece for each of Dax’s hosts: Lela, Tobin, Emony, Audrid, Torias, Joran, Curzon, and Jadzia (yes, even bad boy Joran gets his own chapter). Plus, there’s a chapter at the beginning and at the end for Ezri.

I always took slight umbrage at Ezri. Really, I took umbrage at how Paramount so royally screwed over Terry Farrell, and Nicole DeBoer’s presence was just a constant reminder of that bit of underhandedness. But that’s a rumor for another mill. Ezri never got a chance to develop properly on the show, but I’ve read books that deal much more adeptly with her character. Her portions of this novel are equally well-played, as are most of the other hosts.

Admittedly, some of the storylines were predictable. We get more about Torias’s shuttle accident, young Sisko’s first encounter with the “Old Man,” Joran’s homicidal side, etc. Standout stories were the ones for Audrid and Joran, ironically the two written/co-written by S.D. Perry, my new Trek author crush (take that, Peter David!). Biggest letdown for me was probably the Curzon Dax vignette. Happily, Jadzia’s story was unexpectedly strange but still satisfying.

Another bonus from this compilation are the appearances of others from the Trek universe: Odan, Leonard McCoy, Kathryn Janeway’s admiral father, Ben Sisko, Vic Fontaine, and a surprise appearance by a TNG alien species seen only once…but in a menacingly memorable episode.

Final Verdict: This solid offering, released as part of a DS9 10th anniversary celebration, definitely gets to stay. It was a wonderful way to wile away some time away from reality. Plus, you’re never going to hear me complain about getting to spend time with the lovely Dax. I just have to remember to keep it away from salt. So no margaritas. And no more bad slug jokes. Honest.

[Loba Note: This is another post that I started a while ago and have just now finished.]

Maybe mystery novels simply aren’t my cup of tea. I know I’ve read them before, but I also know that I can’t tell you anything about any of my previous attempts. And now, here I sit, trying to figure out a nice way to state how much I disliked yet another mystery written by Tana French. This time, as I mentioned when I reviewed her first book, In the Woods, I read her follow-up, The Likeness.

As I pointed out in my review of In the Woods, my major hurdle with that book was that I felt that French, while an admirable word nerd, didn’t create what I felt was a believable male protagonist. To me, the emotional damage from his past that so thoroughly distorted the logic of Detective Rob Ryan was unbelievable and instead came across as a veiled attempt by French to somehow exonerate herself for any failings to write convincingly from the male perspective. So what started out as an enjoyable and engaging mystery soon began to unravel into a tangled mess that left me feeling unsatisfied and disappointed.

And yet there was enough glimmer of hope in one of the secondary characters, Detective Cassie Maddox, that when I learned that French’s follow-up novel was all about her, I decided I’d give French another chance. After all, this time she’d be writing from the female perspective. Something better suited for her perhaps?

Perhaps not. Detective Maddox, just like her former partner Detective Ryan, is prone to making some of the worst decisions I imagine possible for someone who is supposed to be trained to be smarter in situations like the ones posed in this novel. I’m by no means well-versed in what makes a police detective great at his or her game, but even simple civilian me was left mouth agape at some of the things Maddox did throughout this story.

Oh, and let’s not forget the story itself. Though intriguing in concept, it was a situation that I found did not bear the weight of closer examination at all. Maddox is called back to undercover work, where she started, when the murder squad discovers the body of a woman who not only looks exactly like Maddox but has been living under the name of Maddox’s last undercover persona. Maddox is assigned to go undercover, to live with this woman’s four friends, and try to discover the truth of her murder.

Marinate on that idea for a moment. Maddox is being sent in to try to convince four people who shared an intimate friendship (and possibly more) with the person she’s now tasked with impersonating. Her only guidance regarding the personality of this dead woman and the relationships she shared with these four individuals are some videos saved on her mobile phone as well as information that police were able to gather from other friends and acquaintances.

I’m a mimic. I always have been. I love to impersonate voices and accents. One of my favorite accents to impersonate is a Cockney accent. When I was younger, I was actually bold enough to fool a few Americans into believing that I was from England. I’ve never fooled an actual English person. Why? Because they’re English and able to pick up on nuances and differences that I’m not at all privy to…because, sad though this truth makes me, I’m not really English.

Now imagine me going to London and trying to convince a group of English people that I’m really one of them after watching a few EastEnders clips on YouTube. Think I’d be successful? Think I could keep it up for several weeks? Truth is, I can listen to the Slater sisters call each other “stroppy mare” or “dozy cow” all day long, but that’s only going to get me so far in my impersonation. What about all the other details that I’m missing? How quickly will they become obvious to someone intimately familiar with the language?

See why I simply couldn’t suspend my disbelief for the duration of this novel? This very, very long novel. I could believe the coincidences of the story’s setup. I could even buy the concept at first. But the implementation of the plan in all its clumsy, drawn-out execution was just too much. Plus, to make matters worse, the four friends Maddox was sent in to fool were all English majors. I can assure you, denizens, if there’s one thing English majors excel at more than anything else, it’s in picking apart the details of any situation like wild dogs picking apart roadkill. They would have sussed Maddox out at about half past immediately.

Of course, this would have greatly decreased the length, which might not have been all that bad, actually. I think the story lost me about halfway through. I forged ahead only because I’m stubborn and secretly optimistic that even something bad has the potential to improve. Or maybe I’m just a literary masochist. I don’t know.

In the end, I was possibly even more let down by this book than I was by French’s first novel. Perhaps it was because Cassie Maddox was one of the few redeeming qualities of the first novel and the only reason that I decided to read the second novel. To then watch this character devolve in similarly frustrating and unbelievable ways as Rob Ryan did in the first novel was more than I anticipated or desired to witness. My dissolution regarding French and her abilities as a storyteller is now complete and I can say with all honesty that not only will I not be returning for a third taste of French’s offerings, but I also feel somewhat soured to the whole detective/mystery genre at the moment.

Final Verdict: Not only will I not be adding this one to my collection any time soon, but I will also definitely be releasing the first novel to that great thrift store in the sky. As for my attempt to crack into the mystery genre, if anyone has any suggestions, I’m all for them…but as of right now, I’m really not feeling the mystery vibe.

Star Trek Über-Geek Cred in 3…2…1

You have no idea, denizens, how nerd-melty this makes me. I kid you not when I say that I have wanted a pair of Dr. Selar’s ears since I first saw the good doctor on the TNG second season episode, “The Schizoid Man.” Seriously. Not just Vulcan ears. Not even Mr. Spock’s ears (and I love Mr. Spock!). They had to be Dr. Selar’s ears. Like I’ve said before, I’m persnickety.

I always thought this was just going to be another one of my sad little geek dreams, kind of like owning one of Dr. Crusher’s lab coats or somehow obtaining one of the scarves that hang from Steven Tyler’s microphone stand (okay, that’s a completely different type of geekery…but it’s still one of my obsessions).

Then Mirror Universe things occurred in my life and I found myself standing on the precipice of Ultimate Geek Attainment. And I took it. Grabbed it with both hands and ran. Didn’t look back once.

So, yes, these are actually a pair of the ears that the beautiful and talented Suzie Plakson wore as Dr. Selar. I think they might even be the only pair left. They’re at least the only pair from Ms. Plakson’s personal collection. As is the photo of her as Dr. Selar, reading an issue of Omni magazine. Cute, no? The letter on the left is a lovely vignette that Ms. Plakson wrote about the ears. No, you can’t read it. Loba must keep some things to herself, you know. Oh, and this awesome custom framing? I can has amazingly talented aunt who does things like this for her geeky niece? Yes, please.

And there you go. Ultimate Geek Attainment. F.T.W.

To be honest, I’ve been off my game for so long regarding the lair that I wasn’t even sure if I was going to do a Flashback Friday this week. Then the unfortunate news from yesterday regarding Rue McClanahan’s passing provided me with the prompting I needed.

I adored The Golden Girls. No, correction. I adore The Golden Girls. I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating: This is one of a select few sitcoms from my childhood that I can still watch without wanting to wretch from the cheese overload. True, it’s got ample slices of cheddar and Swiss spread throughout its seven seasons, but there’s something more that makes it palatable. This show, with all its overtly 80s style and fashion, is timeless in wit, in topic, in humor.

And how the stars aligned so perfectly the day they were casting these roles that we were gifted such an amazing ensemble! Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White made Dorothy, Sophia, Blanche, and Rose not just hilarious but real. You believed that this quartet could actually exist, that they were going through the same things that the rest of us were going through or were destined to go through at some point. They were just doing it with way more humor than the rest of us (and way larger shoulder pads, too).

This show was also a standing weekly ritual in our house. No matter what else was going on, every Saturday night my parents and I came together to watch the latest episode. And we always laughed (sometimes I would even get caught laughing at jokes that my parents thought would be too “grown-up” for me to understand; awkward way for my parents to keep track of how quickly their little girl was growing up, fo’ sho’).

Dorothy was my favorite. But that’s almost like saying air is my favorite of the things I need to survive. I loved them all almost equally. It’s just, I think I’m a little more like Dorothy than any of the others (Prophets know I’m nothing like Blanche). Although I have my fair share of Rose moments.

It’s strange and most definitely depressing to think that a show like this would probably never be able to exist in today’s television market. We’ve become a society that not only doesn’t respect age, but shuns it and any who dare to show its signs. How else can we explain why people willingly get a paralyzing toxin injected into their faces? Where would the Golden Girls, with their love of cheesecake and their discussions about menopause, fit in among the anorexic plasticized perfection of those Desperate Housewives or the McDreamies and McSteamies and McBoobies of modern prime-time television?

There is a shimmer of hope. Betty White, now the Last Girl Standing, has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity recently, with several appearances in movies, that wonderful Snickers commercial, and even the honor of becoming the oldest SNL host in the show’s 35-year history. She continues to prove that humor and grace are supremely more beautiful than cheek implants, tummy tucks, fake tits, butt lifts, or whatever else the Hollywood elite are doing to keep people from noticing that their talent, just like their beauty, is skin-deep and thoroughly unconvincing when examined closely.

So, there you go. Flashback to a favorite sitcom from my youth and another glimpse at the vitriol that roils just beneath the placid surface of Lake Loba. Bonus! Want another bonus? How about a few show clips and bloopers? Not only are they funny but they show a quartet of women who were able to laugh at themselves and each other and who genuinely seemed to like each other’s company. That’s not just golden…that’s priceless.