Ask Carter Hall Anything, Part 5

[mrissa]

Last in the series for now. I may do another of these later. It was fun. But I feel the need to draw the line somewhere.

Have you ever watched "Strange Brew"? It's got hockey, right?

I have, but mrissa hasn't. Let's not make her, okay? She's still on about Darby O'Gill and the Little People, even though that was totally not my fault.

What's your comfort food/drink, and why?

I have to confess to being a lasagna man. There's a place here in Bemidji called Tutto Bene, and I've been eating their lasagna for years, but I'll also take Aunt Nancy's, or Janet's gran's, or Janet's, or whoever's, really. Beef, sausage, I'll even eat the broccoli or spinach stuff, although if someone invites you over for lasagna and then there's no meat in it, you wonder whether the phone rang while they were cooking it or something and they forgot. It's a pretty key step if you ask me. That thing Janet did that had carrots in, that was okay but where was the rest of our dinner? That's what I wanted to know. (So I asked her. Maybe not my wisest move.)

As for drinks, I like a cold beer, but on a winter morning there's nothing like hot coffee with cream and sugar, or hot chocolate, and yes, Tam says it's like living with a little kid to have the bag of marshmallows in the house, but whatever, I like 'em.

And finally, aedifica asks: So, Carter. If you'd been born on some tropical island or some other place with no hockey rinks, what do you think you'd have done instead of hockey?

I don't know, people are always asking who you'd be if you were someone else completely, and I'm like, but who else is this other guy? What do they do on this tropical island? Because it matters a lot, really. If this hypothetical me is still me and not some tropical island guy with a tropical island family--I mean, are my folks still gone? Do I still have an aunt and uncle? Am I on my own there in the tropics as a little kid? I don't get it. I don't know.

Like, a lot of the places they don't have hockey, if I was still me, I don't know what. I'm big enough for football, but you can't play football all the time like you can play hockey. Just look at the game schedules. One a week, give me a break. It's all start and stop and standing around. That's no way for a kid to do. And basketball, I'm not built for basketball. Maybe in high school up here, sure, I'm tall enough, but seriously? No way. But basketball's one of those games you can play all the time if you're just some kid without much money.

Oh, you know what? Some of those tropical islands they have baseball. And baseball is like hockey where they have guys built like anything, they have the little fast skinny guys and the big guys like me and the guys with legs a million miles long and all that. I bet if I'd been born Dominican, I'd totally play baseball. I don't know what Janet would do, though.

Here's the thing about tropical islands: a lot of guys act like they're moving there when they're done playing, or at least Florida. Not me. I know the fishing is supposed to be great, but I've been helping Uncle Larry with the landscaping business since I was a little kid, and down there in the tropics I can't tell you what's a flower and what's a weed, and that'd really bug me. I know some people just want to go and relax with an umbrella drink and go, "Oooh, pretty flowers," but I like to know what I'm looking at. I like to know whether it'll be helpful to yank that green thing out and leave it set by the planter. I mean, I'm not always helpful. Tam can tell you that. But with plants I kind of am. A lot of people don't know that about me. And down there in the tropics, I'd be just some guy, I wouldn't know any hockey and I wouldn't know any trees and stuff. I'd just blunder around on big feet and step on their little lizards and be useless. Not if I'd been born there, obviously. But it's hard for me to imagine now.

Comments

[redbird]

Carter is pretty smart, you know that? It's well-known where I live that a lot of New Yorkers retire to Florida. It's not as well known that half of them come back, even if they dislike northern winters: they're out of place, and it's not just missing their grandchildren.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We have lots of snowbirds who only intend to be there part-time. Is that not the case for NYers?

[redbird]

I'm thinking of people who sold their houses up here (or gave up leases and moved all their stuff out of rental spaces), not the ones who say "see you in March."

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

S is like that with plants. She spent a lot of our time in Italy asking people what the trees were called, and being frustrated because she didn't know how the whole ecology fit together.

[moiread]

Where did Part 4 go?

[moiread]

Woop, nevermind. Found it! I just clicked on the tag the first time. I r doof.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Because of the plant thing, I now have a teeny crush on Carter Hall. I don't know hockey and Tam Lin isn't one of my core folktales, but plants, that's me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Carter's later career will be in landscaping. Where by "landscaping," we mean the moving of earth and plants and rocks and such for useful effect not just in this world but also Underhill.

[aedifica]

I didn't know what Carter would do with that question, but I really enjoyed his answer!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I know the Q&A is over, but I'm just popping up to note that I spent a somewhat unreasonable part of yesterday's flight wondering whether Carter is familiar with Stan Rogers'song "Flying". My brain does silly things when sleep deprived, and also it's the only song I know about hockey. (I'm sure there are many more I'm ignorant of. In expiation, I offer the Battlefield Band's "The Riccarton Tollman's Only Daughter", which includes curling.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Carter doesn't mostly listen to that kind of music, no. And I don't know either myself, and neither, apparently, does YouTube.