Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
My #1 post this year, about the end of Ted Lasso, got 401 notes.
This was my #2 post.
The answer is, Jonathan Crane did earn his degrees at a young age, but he wasn't an M.D. He didn't go to pre-med, medical school, and a psychiatric residency. He was a Ph.D. That's still a lot of years of school, but fewer than the psychiatry track.
...a comparison between this M*A*S*H text post meme and Audra McDonald, Anne Hathaway, and Raul Esparza starring in a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Nightthat ran from June-July 2009 in Central Park, part of New York City’s annual Shakespeare in the Park tradition.
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Luster by Raven Leilani, which I finally got around to reading after owning a paperback copy for, oh, two years or so, was definitely one of the best books I read this year.
Gabriel Byrne's memoir Walking With Ghosts was my other favorite book I read this year. I could hardly put that thing down. If he hadn't stumbled upon acting (beginning with an Irish soap opera), he might have had a wonderful career as a novelist. And he's still my sweet, sweet baby.
That Neil Gaiman short story anthology was really good, too. My paperback came signed by Neil Gaiman. Tit Elingtin bought it on the day we heard Neil Gaiman in person.
I don't know what this is. Maybe it was inspired by my Spotify Wrapped? I'm still not sure I'm using the word "pastiche" correctly. I pulled at a few different threads and I wove this, whatever it is.
I.
Robert Sheehan is outside my window again. Lucky for me, I'm on the 2nd floor, in my writer's studio above the corner bodega and he's standing on the sidewalk.
The window is open.
"Eileen!" he shouts up. "Come on, Eileen."
I leave my chair, push aside the pink-and-gray buffalo check curtain and peer down at him.
Putting his Irish accent on thick, he sings, "Believe me, if all those enduring young charms..."
"I'm dreaming," I say, interrupting his croon. "This is because I said you should play Kevin Rowland in a movie about Dexys Midnight Runners."
"Not a dream," he half-says, half-sings. "Don't you want to come down and go for a walk with me, just around the neighborhood?"
"No." The smell of hot tortilla chips warming in the bodega below makes my nostrils flare. I imagine the salt crystals on their flat surfaces. Craving the warmth and salt, I feel a hunger pang.
"Why not?"
"I've got things to do."
"Like what?"
I gesture at my laptop. "I have to write things. Legitimate things, fresh things, not just this Joyce Carol Oates pastiche."
"Eileen, you ain't telling the truth."
"Not my name," I remind him.
"Eileen, Erin, whatever. This is your day set aside for going for a walk with me and you know it."
I feel threatened. I close the window and go back to my laptop.
II.
I walk into the little Historic Downtown Irvington shop on Washington Street that used to be the ice cream shop that sold bubble tea. I see the new owner has rebranded it as a 1950s-themed nostalgia diner. The bubble tea options and anime keepsakes are gone, but the ice cream counter remains, as do about a dozen shiny, chrome milkshake blenders.
The brightly lit Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner plays “Drugstore Rock'N'Roll” by Janis Martin. The cheerful song paints the perfect picture of midcentury innocence.*
At one high table sits Edgar Allan Poe. His dark brown suit fits him well, although the foot that dangles from the long-legged chair has an untied shoelace. Catching me in his blue-eyed gaze, he says, “This was her favorite place.”
I’m confused. He died in the 1840s, over a century before the trope of the ‘50s malt shop emerged.
“I’m sorry?” I say. “ 'She’ is –?”
“Was,” he corrects me. “She was my Annabel Lee.”
I shake my head as I take the seat across from him. He offers me a sip of his milkshake, turning the straw toward me. I know I shouldn’t, but I indulge myself in a sweet sip of Poe’s chocolate malt.
I then continue, “This couldn’t have been her favorite place; that’s a line from that MC Lars song, 'Annabel Lee R.I.P.’”
He shrugs. Poe looks sad and beautiful but not morose. Despite his Gothic reputation, there’s nothing gloomy or goth about him. He’s every bit the Southern gentleman, gracious and effortlessly charming. I want to touch his dark hair where it starts to curl, just behind his ear.
I excuse myself to use the restroom. In the mirror, my eyes are less green and much more hazel than usual. Am I Christian Bale? No, I’m Augustus Landor. My clothes are careworn and I want to go back to my cottage.
Well, perhaps one more sip of Poe’s chocolate malt first.
*The song is about a drugstore. The former drugstore with the soda fountain, the one robbed by John Dillinger, is up the block a bit and on the other side of the street, across from the present-day library.
III.
John Legend, wearing a fashionable off-white suit, sits at his white piano, playing me a Christmas song in front of a roaring fire. Actually, he’s singing me “The Christmas Song.”
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”
“Happy birthday,” I blurt out.
“My birthday isn’t until the 28th. I’m an after-Christmas baby.”
He laughs, and I can’t tell whether he’s more surprised or amused.
Presently the fireplace-warmed air grew hotter. This was no winter wonderland. Were we in Jerusalem? Beyond John I spot a man with copious sandy-blond hair wearing black eyeliner and a keffiyeh.
“Judas,” I say upon the appearance of Tim Minchin.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, approaching John, seemingly moving in to kiss him. They lock eyes and I feel I’m witnessing something I’m not meant to see.
“…Superstar,” I mutter to myself as I turn away to give them their privacy. I muse aloud, “I can appreciate casting Alice Cooper as King Herod; I appreciate his showmanship. You know else might have made an interesting casting choice? Murray Head, the original album-Judas Superstar, coming back to play King Herod.”
We stand before his throne now: King Murray Head.
Blame W. Somerset Maugham. He had a birthday (January 25), I remembered that his Oriental Hotel suite is name-checked in “One Night in Bangkok,” and soon I’m detecting something wistful in Murray Head ballads that speaks to me as something other than merely an ‘80s kid.
“Now see what you’ve done?” Jesus Christ Superstar admonishes me. “You chose to lean fully into your 1980s nostalgia and now I’m going to be crucified.”
Is Tim Minchin Judas wearing lip gloss? And is it a bit smudged now?
“I’m not interested in matters of Jewish law tonight,” King Murray Head says in the crispest English accent you’ve heard since Ralph Fiennes. Offering me a doubtful smile, he adds, “My dear, would you care to join me in the Somerset Maugham Suite?”
“I thought you got your kicks above the waistline, sunshine,” the saucy Aussie chimes in.
King Murray Head shrugs. “I’m only human. We can’t all be Jesus Christ Superstar.”
I’m sexualizing that old man. I desire him carnally. But will he love me tomorrow? I'm guessing no, but that's ok. Nothing lasts forever.
IV.
I’m tucked snugly, quite comfortably into my 4-post bed, the curtains drawn around me, blissfully asleep in the warm and the dark. The sound of my name awakens me.
“Who’s there?” I ask. It had better not be Robert Sheehan.
“Charles Dickens,” comes the reply. This is what I get for reading Greg Jenner’s Dead Famous before bed.
But I know that distinctive voice. I part the bed curtains. “Dan Stevens?!” I ask incredulously, laying eyes on the extremely handsome English actor in the early morning light.
“It’s Charles Dickens,” Dan Stevens insists. He’s brought a friend.
“And John Forster,” adds Justin Edwards-in-Victorian-costume.
Accepting that these British thespians are in character as their The Man Who Invented Christmas counterparts, I ask, “Are you the Ghosts of Christmas Past? Am I dreaming?
“Neither,” says John/Justin, pulling a pie sprinkled with sugar seemingly out of nowhere.
That explained nothing. I thought back to Robert Sheehan telling me his creepy Oatesian visit wasn’t a dream. I then grew distracted by the state of my bedroom, suddenly filled with evergreen trees and boughs decorated with silver baubles, iridescent glass bubbles, and magical flickering candles. I smelled cinnamon and cloves; was someone mulling red wine in my bedroom?
It was beginning to look a lot like Victorian Christmas and smell like it too. My chamber suddenly possessed a long dining table on which there lay a roasted turkey, an enormous figgy pudding, and a rapidly-multiplying host of 19th-century holiday delicacies that would have made Ichabod Crane’s head explode.
“And you’re saying you two are not the Ghosts of Christmas Past?” I asked my guests for clarification.
Seating themselves at the table, they denied being ghosts a second time as they helped themselves to a portion of the mouth-watering feast.
“Tuck in,” said Charles/Dan.
I serve myself, but soon notice how the actors favor each other’s company, eat from each other’s plates, and feed one another. They’d constructed an elaborate ritual that allowed them to touch one another without social judgment.
“What is this?” I wonder out loud.
“You could think of it as recursion,” Charles/Dan says. “Each Christmas harks back to every other Christmas. This Christmas reminds you of childhood Christmases, which in turn retains elements of Victorian Christmas past, which in turn bears marks of earlier traditions, and so on.
“One might say,” remarks John/Justin, “that, in a sense, there has only ever been one Christmas and we return to it every year. We practice the myth of eternal return when we practice Christmas.” His thumb traces a line of cream that Charles/ Dan has smeared on his cheek, then eats the errant cream.
“I still don’t understand why I’m here,” I say. “Why was it necessary for me to be the Scrooge in this drama?”
“It isn’t,” Charles/Dan says flatly. “We merely need your bed.”
With that they abandon their feast and retire to my comfy bed, drawing the curtains behind them. I politely ignore their pleasured sighs as I slice into a steaming plum pie, but internally I wish they’d gotten a different room. I knew the Somerset Maugham Suite at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok had recently been vacated.
* * *
Author’s Note: Oliver Sacks wrote that Charles Dickens had a haunted mind, but didn’t explain that statement and then very sadly passed away. I began to understand it when I read about the railway accident he was involved in. I now believe that perhaps Dr. Sacks also meant that Dickens was haunted by his childhood poverty. This is depicted in The Man Who Invented Christmas and discussed in Dead Famous.
But then in this podcast, Helena Kelly spilled the absolute tea on Dickens and found out that he might have been lying about working in a boot blacking factory?! And he probably had syphilis, which he gave to Kate and the children - some of them may have died from it! - and maybe her sister too?! I don’t want to slut shame Charles Dickens, but I do think I understand what Dr. Sacks meant a lot more deeply now.
March 14, 1998: Therese and I went to Scotsdale Mall [in South Bend, Indiana]...went to the Hacienda restaurant, ate fried ice cream, then went to the movie theater, where we saw The Man in the Iron Mask. Set in the 1660s and based on Alexandre Dumas’s 1850 novel, this is a good, old-fashioned story. Great ending, beautifully filmed, good score. My one complaint was that I had to see Gerard Depardieu’s bare ass.
One of the movie trailers I saw was for a movie with Nicholas Cage and Andre Braugher. It looked like an American version of Faraway, So Close. [Wikipedia calls City of Angels a “loose remake” of Wim Wenders’s film Wings of Desire, of which Faraway, So Close is the sequel.]
From this point on, beware of spoilers for Homicide: Life on the Street.
April 26, 1998: I was looking at the listings from the Sunday paper and I saw this on the Friday listing for NBC:
"Homicide: 'Fallen Heroes:' A suspect in a judge's death sprays the squad-room with gunfire (part 1 of 2)"
I heard that Andre Braugher is leaving the show, and I wonder if [Frank] Pembleton is going to be killed of. I seriously hope not. What would Bayliss be without Pembleton? Just a tall, sad queer guy.
May 1, 1998: "The Day We Prayed Would Never Come." I'll get right to the point. Ballard and Gherety got shot; they're off the show. Gang war with Georgia Rae Mahoney. Next week, part two: [Tim] Bayliss gets shot! That's not a guess; there were previews. Bayliss will get shot next week. He'll probably die too; they said something about "the final farewell." I hate season finales, I swear to God. When Kyle Secor gets written off Homicide, I'll cry as if someone I know died. No matter what happens next week, I'll cry. I'll especially cry if I have to wait until August to find out if he's dead.
I tell you, Homicide can hardly go on without the Pembleton-Bayliss partnership.
May 2, 1998: I went to my [parents'] house for awhile. I ate dinner and read next week's TV Guide. I've surmised this: next Friday [on the Homicide season finale], Kellerman will be fired, Pembleton will resign (thus removing Andre Braugher from the show, as I mentioned on the 26th) and Bayliss, though shot, will survive. It'll probably be like when Pembleton had a stroke--after three or four episodes, he'll be like new again. Now I just hope Ballard won't have to quit. She could be Bayliss's partner. They would have good conversations.
May 8, 1998: The event I've been waiting a week for: The 100th episode/season 6 finale of Homicide. As predicted, in the search for Georgia Rae Mahoney (high-ranking gang member), a Georgia Rae associate takes a shot at Frank, but Tim takes the bullet for him. G wants Frank to find someone to blame, so he chooses Kellerman (who shot Georgia Rae's brother/fellow gang member Luther Mahoney, but Lewis and other detective witnessed this and have said nothing). Kellerman gets fired but takes all the blame.
Kellerman asks Pembleton, "If it were Bayliss, wouldn't you do that same?" Which leads Pembleton to wonder if he did the right thing by Kellerman, and then to resign.
Meanwhile, Bayliss will live, and Ballard will be all right too. The last shot of the episode tracked from Tim's mom to the faces of all the detectives to Mary Pembleton*, who put her arms around Frank, who leaned forward and picked up Tim's hand [while Tim Bayliss was unconscious in the hospital]. The final frame of Pembleton's hand on Bayliss's looked like the ads from Jungle Fever.
Friday, November 27, 1998, South Bend: ...I watched the PBS show Anatomy of a Homicide, about the filming of an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street with Vincent D’Onofrio as the guest star. D’Onofrio plays a man who’s been pushed off a subway platform and suffered the kind of horrible compression injury that means he’ll die as soon as paramedics try to move him. Andre Braugher, as Detective Frank Pembleton, stays with the dying man while his colleagues attempt (unsuccessfully) to find the man’s girlfriend so she can say goodbye while he’s still conscious. I hadn’t seen the episode, which aired in December 1997, but it looked intense.
*Mary Pembleton was played by Amy Brabson, who married Andre Braugher in real life. They have three sons.
The Zeiss Model II Star Projector nicknamed "Jake" by staff on display at the Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. It was employed in 1939-1991 at the Buhl Planetarium. Was built in Germany by Zeiss Optical Works. Among the features: a 1000-watt incandescent bulb; an ability to project the stars at any point in time, from any place on the Earth; more than 1000 planetarium shows were created and distributed worldwide, some of them were narrated by Arthur C. Clarke and Leonard Nimoy.
Public domain. This photo depicts the handprints of Leonard Nimoy in front of The Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.
The Zeiss Model II Star Projector nicknamed "Jake" by staff on display at the Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. It was employed in 1939-1991 at the Buhl Planetarium. Was built in Germany by Zeiss Optical Works. Among the features: a 1000-watt incandescent bulb; an ability to project the stars at any point in time, from any place on the Earth; more than 1000 planetarium shows were created and distributed worldwide, some of them were narrated by Arthur C. Clarke and Leonard Nimoy. Public domain.
The Shuttle Enterprise rolls out of the Palmdale manufacturing facilities with Star Trek television cast members in attendance. Public domain.
I unironically love Leonard's '70s outfit, with the wide, white bell bottoms and the open collar. Ms. Nichelle Nichols looks lovely. George Takei was, and is, very handsome. These are some of my favorite humans.
Samantha Cristoforetti flashes the Vulcan Salute in the cupola of the International Space Station in honor of the Leonard Nimoy. The actor, famed for his role as Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series, passed away on February 27, 2015 - the day prior to this photo. Public domain.
Public domain. This photo depicts the handprints of Leonard Nimoy in front of The Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.
Do you like bad things? Want to bum yourself out? You can now read the complete set of unfortunate, mostly literary happenings that happened in past months:
I hope your winter holiday season, or summer if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, is going better than the days any of these people had. One day I'll put these, and many, many other weird and unfortunate events, out in ebook and printed almanac form. I'll shoot for 2024 as a goal.
December 2, 1984: Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, is so poorly maintained it causes the largest industrial disaster in history. The accidental release of methyl isocyanate causes the immediate suffocation deaths of more than 2,000 people, injuries in more than 50,000 people, and an additional gas-related death toll of perhaps another 8,000 people. Although the Indian government charged Union Carbide executives with homicide, the company claimed it was not under Indian jurisdiction and these officials did not appear in court to face these charges.
December 4, 1987: Children’s book author and illustrator Arnold Lobel dies of AIDS-related cardiac arrest. He is 54 years old.
December 5, 1931: Poet Vachel Lindsay dies by suicide after intentionally drinking a bottle of lye. His last words are reportedly, “They tried to get me; I got them first!”
December 6, 1949: Folk and blues musician Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, dies at age 61 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
December 7, 1941: A surprise attack on U.S. territory by the Japanese military at 8 a.m. on this Sunday morning kills 2,403 Americans (2,335 military personnel and 68 civilians) and wounds 1,143. The attack on the U.S. naval base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu was intended to incapacitate the Pacific Fleet of the American Navy, even though the U.S. was officially neutral in World War II at this time.
Among the wounded was my paternal grandfather Bill, 17 years old at the time. He was blown off his ship and knocked, unconscious, into the water, awakening in the base hospital with a shoulder injury. He recovered and was reassigned from pharmacist’s assistant to EMT so he could help care for the more seriously wounded sailors.
December 7, 2010: Kim Tinkham, age 36, dies of what was most likely metastatic breast cancer. Tinkham had appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2008 to talk about the then-popular book The Secret. Tinkham claimed her Stage 3 breast cancer had been successfully treated with alternative medicine. The doctor who appeared with Tinkham on that show and backed up her claim, Robert Oldham Young, was arrested in 2014 and convicted in 2016 for theft and practicing medicine without a license.
Young’s claim was that cancers are caused by an imbalance of the body’s pH and that an “alkaline diet” can treat and prevent cancer. Little to no scientific research supports this claim.
December 8, 1980: John Lennon is murdered by handgun outside his apartment building in New York City.
December 9, 1977: In the NBA, the L.A. Lakers play the Houston Rockets. At the beginning of the second half of the game, Laker Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Rocket Kevin Kunnert scuffle over a rebound. In the scuffle, Kunnert elbows Abdul-Jabbar’s teammate Kermit Washington. Washington punches Kunnert in the head.
Kunnert’s teammate Rudy Tomjanovich runs over, intending to help break up the fight. Washington takes a swing at Tomjanovich, striking him in just such a way that fractures his skull. Tomjanovich falls to the court, unconscious and bleeding, although he quickly recovers and, apparently due to a rush of adrenaline, walks around the court in a seemingly aggressive manner. Tomjanovich doesn’t know it yet, but in addition to a broken jaw and nose, he has a fracture near the base of his skull leaking cerebrospinal fluid. He has to be rushed to the emergency room and given emergency surgery, since this is a life-threatening skull fracture. Tomjanovich requires five months of physical recovery before he can play again.
December 9, 1995: American author Toni Cade Bambara dies of colorectal cancer at the age of 56.
December 10, 1816: The body of Harriet Westbrook Shelley, the estranged wife of Percy Shelley and the mother of his son and daughter, is discovered in the Serpentine River. She is pregnant and has apparently died by suicide. She is only 21 years old.
December 10, 1929: Poet, publisher, and World War I veteran Harry Crosby kills his mistress, Josephine Noyes Rotch, and himself inside a friend’s apartment. Crosby’s wife Caresse becomes worried about her husband’s whereabouts when he fails to show up for a dinner party with the poet Hart Crane. Crane will also die by suicide two years later.
December 11, 2021: Anne Rice dies at the age of 80 of complications from a stroke.
December 12, 1999: Satirical novelist Joseph Heller dies of a heart attack at the age of 76.
December 13, 2011: Gianluca Casseri, a far-right author, Germanic neo-Pagan, devotee of American fascist Ezra Pound, and historian of J.R.R. Tolkien goes on an anti-immigrant shooting spree in Piazza Dalmazia, Florence, Italy. He shoots five street vendors who are all immigrants from Senegal, wounding three and killing two. Casseri then kills himself.
December 14, 1920: George “The Gipper” Gipp, legendary Notre Dame football player, dies of strep throat and pneumonia in St. Joseph Hospital (then in South Bend, now located in Mishawaka). He is 25 years old.
George Gipp is buried in his native Michigan, but an often-told legend around the Notre Dame campus is that Gipp's ghost haunts the old theater building, Washington Hall. According to the legend, when Gipp missed curfew and got locked out of his dorm building, he would sleep outside Washington Hall.
December 14, 1995: 28-year-old professional skydiver Rob Harris dies while filming a Mountain Dew commercial. The commercial, a James Bond spoof in which a Bond-like figure snowboards out of an exploding plane, is aired featuring previous takes, but none of the footage from Harris’s final jump, contrary to urban legend. Harris’s fatal fall is triggered by tangled lines and a backup chute that fails to deploy in time.
December 16, 1913: Ambrose Bierce writes to his literary secretary, “I am going to Mexico with a pretty definite purpose which is not at present discloseable. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think that’s a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico–ah, that is euthanasia!” Neither Bierce’s literary secretary nor any of his other acquaintances ever hear from him again after this letter. He’s presumed to have died in Mexico, perhaps in an early example of “suicide by cop,” or in this case, suicide by revolutionary.
December 18, 1966: Tara Browne, the heir to the Guinness stout fortune, dies in the hospital one day after crashing his Lotus Elan sports car into a parked truck. Browne had been driving at over 100 miles per hour through London and sped through a red traffic light before crashing. Browne’s passenger, model Suki Potier, was not injured in the accident.
In popular cultural, Browne is remembered as the man who “blew his mind out in a car” in the Beatles song “A Day in the Life.” Browne and Paul McCartney and John Lennon were acquaintances.
December 18, 2015: A fire at Mzuzu University Library in Mzuzu, Malawi, destroys an estimated 45,000 pieces of media.
December 19, 1848: 30-year-old Emily Brontë dies of tuberculosis.
December 19, 1991: Musician Henry Rollins and roadie Dennis Cole return home from a Hole concert at the Whiskey a Go Go nightclub when they are held up by a pair of men with guns. The men demand money, and when they discover that Rollins and Cole only have $50 of cash between them, the men order Rollins to go inside the home (which Rollins and Cole share) to get more. Rollins escapes and calls the police. Cole is shot in the face by the robbers and dies. The assailants have never been identified or arrested.
December 21, 1940: Heavy-drinking author F. Scott Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack, leaving his novel The Last Tycoon unfinished.
December 22, 1940: The day after F. Scott Fitzgerald dies, author Nathanael West runs a stop sign while driving home to Los Angeles from a trip to Mexico. He and his wife Eileen McKenney are both killed.
December 23, 1888: Vincent Van Gogh, suffering from a severe bout of depression, cuts off a piece of his own left ear with a razor.
Vincent van Gogh, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
December 24, 1851: A fire at the U.S. Library of Congress destroys 55,000 books, or approximately two-thirds of its collection at the time, including most of the books donated by Thomas Jefferson that made up the library’s original collection.
December 27, 1974: Ned Maddrell dies at the age of 97. He was the last fluent speaker of Manx, a Celtic language of the Isle of Man.
December 27, 2016: Actress and author Carrie Fisher dies during her fourth day in the intensive care unit of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She has suffered from respiratory failure while aboard a flight on December 23rd. Her exact cause of death could not be determined, but artery disease, sleep apnea, and use of cocaine and opiates are all thought to be contributing factors. Fisher is 60 years old.
December 29, 2003: Maria Sergina, the last fluent native speaker of the Akkala Sámi language, dies and the language goes extinct. Akkala Sámi was spoken by the indigenous Sámi people of the Kola Peninsula in Russia.
December 30, 1903: The Iroquois Theatre in Chicago hosts a performance of Mr. Blue Beard before an audience filled with women and children out making a day of after-Christmas shopping. A faulty arc light causes the background scenery to catch fire. A number of inadequate fire safety precautions, including too few exits, lead to a disastrous fire that kills more than 600 people.
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