Arthur Everywhere

I like how Margaret Finnegan has been including her blog readers in the creation and promotion of her wonderful novel, The Goddess Lounge. We'll do some fun stuff like that here, too, when the time comes.

In my novel Camelot & Vine, a Hollywood actress with a penchant for dishonesty loses her job, her married boyfriend and perhaps a modicum of sanity at the approach of her 40th birthday--though she's never told anyone her real age, not even the IRS. She has a romantic fantasy about King Arthur, so in a fit of pique (or panic) she flies to England to take a vacation and visit Arthurian sites. When a car accident sends her flying into the night, she lands in the sixth century and accidentally saves King Arthur's life.

It's not exactly what she'd planned for her vacation. Arthur is not the handsome romancer she'd imagined. The Dark Ages are dangerous. And dark.

The king's helmet, by the way, looks nothing like this one. And this blog is not about my novel, it's about Pasadena. So what does all this have to do with Mr. Teeth here?

Maybe it's because I've got knights on the brain, but I find stuff like this everywhere. There's a suit of armor in a barber shop in Altadena. Another one stands outside Pink Plum Antiques in Pasadena, and a half suit perches at an auto mechanic shop at Orange Grove and Lincoln. Over in Studio City, the Psychic Eye Book Shop has long been guarded by armored sentries. Knights--not to mention castles, swords, shields and all things medieval--advertise all kinds of businesses. We love these things because they appeal to our romantic side.

What that has to do with Mr. Teeth (and Margaret Finnegan) is this: I'm collecting pictures for my website and blog. Please let me know what you see in and around Pasadena and I'll head out to photograph it for the blog. Or if you'd like to send in a photo, please do. I'll post it on the website and give you credit.

There was no historical person named King Arthur, though he's probably based on a real person or persons (historians debate this). Whoever he was (or whoever they were) predates the medieval period by a few hundred years. That means my king is a Dark Ages guy, post-Roman and before the British kings (the first being the eighth century king Offa). When so few people in Britain knew how to write, little is left to us but the archaeological record.

Although he probably would have dressed more like a Roman soldier, it's fun to imagine Arthur stomping through the forests of ancient Britain wearing a scary-looking helmet, wielding Excalibur and making the world right.