“The power of the urban legend is that it doesn’t claim to be the truth; but rather, it says the truth is a range of possibilities, and it’s the audience who must decide.”
Stavvy: I had another moment happen where it, like, really showed me that I had to get back in the gym a little bit, you know? Like, I was taking the steps on the subway and I fell down the steps, and none of the Black teens around me made fun of me; they were all just concerned for my well-being. (Dramatic pause, audience laughter.) Do you know how much that stings, to be too fat for the scorn of Black teens? It’s like ‘no, c'mon man, don’t call me “sir.” Take your phone out! Record me! Make me feel alive!’ They wouldn’t do it dude, they were just Good Samaritans, it broke my heart.
Evangeline Walton - Witch House (Arkham House, 1945).
“Witch House is a fantasy novel by American writer Evangeline Walton. It was published in 1945 by Arkham House in an edition of 3,000 copies. It was the first full-length novel to be published by Arkham House and was listed as the initial book in the Library of Arkham House Novels of Fantasy and Terror. An expanded version, with a newly written 20,000-word prologue, was published in England in 1950. In 2013, Centipede Press issued the first American edition of this revised version, also including previously unpublished writings by Walton and several of her short stories… . The Encyclopedia of Fantasy found it to be "an atmospheric Haunted-Dwelling tale” (Wikipedia, accessed June 19, 2003).
^ book cover art for “badass black rabbit” 1991 Collier Books paperback edition (source: Manny’s Book of Shadows via WordPress)
“An elemental is another of the creatures of the astral plane, which has many inhabitants besides the dead. It is populated by all sorts of beings, whether of human imagining or independent origin—the gods, spirits and demons of outworn creeds and primitive beliefs, the astral bodies of animals, the astral simulacra of celebrated characters of fiction and legend, like Hamlet or Robin Hood, into whom sufficinet human interest has been poured to endow them with long-lived astral existence, and innumerable nature spirits, fairies and other beings of folklore, nymphs and satyrs, trolls and gnomes, elves and goblins. All human thoughts are believed to impress themselves on the material of the astral plane—the astral light—creating corresponding astral forms which have a life of their own.”
source: Richard Cavendish’s The Powers of Evil: In Western Religion, Magic and Folk Belief (1975), “Death and the Dead,” p. 43.
Dan: I love living in the city, there’s just stuff I have to get used to. I have to get used to how people talk about aging in the city. I overheard a conversation in a coffee shop. One woman said, “Man, Daniel Craig is really aging poorly.” (Dramatic pause…) Daniel Craig is a 55-year-old with a six-pack who is James Bond. If you think he is aging poorly, you do not know how people look like. I am from Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Daniel Craig would be the hottest 18-year-old in my town today.
