A quickie movie review

There are other worlds than these.

~~ Roland Deschain

We don’t go to see that many movies in the theater, but when anything by Stephen King gets to the big screen, that’s a must-see.

So today we checked out “The Dark Tower,” which brought King’s magnum opus to life. Or at least breathed some life into a project that has been lingering in limbo for many years.

There are no spoilers here, just general impressions.

No, this did not follow the books much at all. I had already read that, so I wasn’t disappointed by that fact.

I loved the Stephen King easter eggs we caught little glimpses of! I’ll need to watch it again to catch them all, but I caught a few, including a woman walking a St. Bernard (Cujo).

Excellent casting. Tom Taylor was perfect as Jake Chambers, Matthew McConaughey played the Man in Black with a wonderful, dark glee, and Idris Elba…?

There was some discontent about a person of color playing Roland. Everyone can shut up about that now, because he brought Roland of Gilead to life in a way that made me weep. I don’t know how anyone can read the books and not fall a little bit in love with the IDEA and IDEAL of Roland. He is nothing less than a knight along the lines of King Arthur’s court, defending truth, justice, and the Mid-World way. Oh, and trying to save not just his world but every other world that is out there, including ours. The Dark Tower must survive and Roland is there to protect it.

So yes. Idris Elba delivered. Total bad-ass. Some great fight sequences! The man can rock a duster, that’s for damn sure.

I do not aim with my hand; I aim with my eye.

He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.

I do not shoot with my hand; I shoot with my mind.

He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.

I do not kill with my gun; I kill with my heart.

He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.

~~ The Gunslinger Mantra

I’m not going to lie. Hearing this spoken by Roland of Gilead sent a shiver down my spine and it made me cry. Anyone who has read and loved the books will be as moved as I was. If Repairman Jack ever makes it to the big screen, I’ll be just as moved. Both Roland and Jack are literary figures who embody our sense of justice. I think it’s fair to add James Bond into that mix. That is why we love them. (And personally, it’s why I’m currently loving the FBI so much.)

Will purist fans of the books be upset with the movie? Maybe. Probably. I found it so fun and engaging that when the movie ended, I still had a third of my beer left and I had to drink it fast! I’ll be the first to admit that it doesn’t even begin to tell the full tale of Roland Deschain. That’s why I’m so excited to hear that the TV show is currently being developed, and the showrunner will be Glen Mazzara, who was the showrunner for “The Walking Dead” for a while. With a serial, I think there is great potential to tell Roland’s story in depth and to introduce Eddie and Susannah, and Mazzara promises us billy bumblers! Oy!

But as someone who loved the books and the characters from the start, I can say that the actors in the movie delivered. They each were everything I’d hoped for in Roland, Walter, and Jake.

I look forward to traveling the Beam with the ka-tet at some point in the future. All things serve the Beam.

Long days and pleasant nights to my own ka-tet.

Beth’s Books: A Comparison

If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em!

~~ John Waters

There are many books that I love, but I have two that are my co-favorites. The one that would be considered a classic is The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) and the more modern, pop culture-ish one is The Stand (Stephen King).

I read the latter many years before the former. To be honest, if I had to pick one favorite, one that I could read over and over again, it would be The Stand. (Sorry, Steinbeck.) Why that book? It’s not traditional “literary” material, i.e., the critics weren’t enamored of it. Well, screw that.

It means a lot to me because I read it in my formative years, when I was in high school, and that was during a time when I was traveling a weird, dark road. I look back at it now and I’m really not sure where that came from, but it was this strange mix of authoritarianism and rebellion, and the authoritarianism part is so far removed from who I am now that I really don’t understand what was going on in my head. Teenagers, right?

Anyway, something in that book just clicked everything into place for me. It was rebellion against authoritarianism, and finally realizing that the two were mutually exclusive meant everything to me. It was a genuine epiphany. It was the age-old question “Will you use your powers for good...or for evil?” Reading about Stu, Glen, Larry, and Ralph making their stand for good honestly changed my life. I’m not a bad seed, by any means, and my ship would have righted itself at some point anyway, but I still remember reading the book and going, “Yeah. That’s the side I want to be on. I want to fight for what is right.”

When I was thinking about these two favorite books the other day (everyone thinks about their favorite books, right?), I initially thought, “It’s weird that these two books are my favorites. They’re so different.”

Then it hit me. They really aren’t that different at all. MIND BLOWN.

That’s right! It was another epiphany! I love having those!

It made me think of the old essay question to “compare and contrast” two very different things. I always loved those exercises because I could usually come up with some pretty good arguments for both. I won’t bother much with the contrast part here, because those are pretty obvious: different time period, different circumstances, different types of people, that kind of stuff. What interests me more are the similarities. And believe me, until just the other day, this had not occurred to me.

• They are both, at heart, apocalyptic novels. The Stand (TS) is certainly the more dystopian story, with over 99% of the world dying from a killer strain of influenza. A lot more people died in that universe. But think of the poor Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath (GoW) and every other family displaced by the Dust Bowl. Wasn’t that the end of the world—at least as they knew it—for them? When you can’t raise any crops and your family is starving, that’s pretty apocalyptic, isn’t it? So what do you do?
• Road trip! In my world, road trips are a fun adventure, but in the worlds of TS and GoW, it is a matter of survival. In GoW, the Joads travel west, as did so many other refugees of the Dust Bowl, in order to find a better life and a way to survive. A dream of a better life. In TS, the survivors of the plague traveled west because of dreams that compelled them to find the source of those dreams. Something was drawing them both west. And along the way, what did both encounter?
• Challenges. The road before you is not always easy. The Joads encountered hostility from people they met, the road was fraught with danger, and people were lost along the way. The survivors of TS had to scavenge for food, deal with hostile, unhinged people, and cope with the end of the world as they knew it. In the expanded version of the novel, they have to attempt an emergency appendectomy on one of their group. Can you imagine? Both the survivors and the Joads had similar experiences as they traveled west.
• Good versus Evil. While TS treats this more literally, with a showdown between those who have aligned with the positive force in the universe (call it God, because that is what Mother Abigail believed it was) and those who threw their support to someone who is possibly Lucifer himself, the Walkin Dude, Randall Flagg, the Joads have to deal with the banality of evil, to use Hannah Arendt’s phrase. They encounter petty men who despise them for their refugee status and exploit them for cheap labor. They live in horrible conditions and there is no easy way out.
• The triumph of Good over Evil. Although that’s a little ambiguous in both stories. The survivors of TS eventually prevail over Randall Flagg, but it’s clear that he’s not entirely gone. There is still a worrying doubt about whether anyone has learned anything from what should have been an obvious lesson. Tom Joad has his moment of righteous fury and kills a man, and he gives a stirring speech about how he’ll be there when anyone is getting screwed over. But he has to flee and leave his family, so his moment of righteousness came at great cost.

In conclusion, as in all great apocalyptic novels (or movies, or TV shows), the reader must answer the question, “What would I do in this situation? How would I handle it? Would I be on the right side or the wrong side?” Part of the appeal, at least for me, is the psychological aspect of it. How do we react when we are in dire circumstances? (It’s why “The Walking Dead” is my favorite show.)

I know that my advice would be to stick with the good. Do what you need to do in order to survive and protect your family, but you really want to be on the side of good.

Be like Tom Joad.

Beth’s Books: Double shock powah!

A lot of good books have come out already this month, and I want to write about the new publications from my two favorite authors: Stephen King and Anne Rice.

First is Anne Rice’s Prince Lestat, in which she revisits the vampire world, including the Brat Prince himself. This book was a total delight. It’s been a while since we had a vampire book from her, and seeing the vamp gang again was like seeing old friends. Very old friends. Lestat is his usual irrepressible and impulsive self, but he isn’t one to back down from his destiny.

When a mysterious Voice begins plaguing blood drinkers all over the world, exhorting them to use the Fire Gift to burn the young ones, the vampires who are fairly new to the life (so to speak) are killed horribly. The group of elder vampires come together to figure out how to deal with this threat to their existence. As it becomes clear who (or what) the Voice really is, it is obvious that it is not just the young ones who are at risk; their entire tribe could be wiped out.

It was wonderful to read of these elders coming together again, after so many years of isolation from each other. They really are a family, and they each bring their own beauty and strength to the group. Rice’s description of the reunion, with all of these exquisite creatures dancing as they become caught up in the music, is a thing of beauty. Her writing is spare and concise in this book, able to convey a moment or a scene with minimal verbiage.

There seem to be a few things that are unresolved (what is up with you, Rhoshamandes?!), and I hope this means that Ms. Rice is happily back in the world of her Children of the Savage Garden. I think there are many more tales to be told there, and I look forward to them all.

Next is Stephen King’s latest, Revival. Oh my goodness.

This book gave me the creeps more than almost all of his other books. I still recall how The Shining bothered me so much at the time, and several others have lingered with me. But this one gave me a very uneasy feeling that has stuck with me several days after finishing it, and I don’t think it is going to leave me anytime soon.

I don’t want to give anything away, because you really don’t know where he’s going with this story until late in the book, but I’ll say that it is a bleak novel without any innate sense of hope. This seems like a bit of a departure for King...I usually finish a King book feeling that somehow, some way, every little thing’s gonna be all right. I finished this one with sense of horror, thinking, “Well, I guess we’re all fucked.”

King explores two things extensively in this book: music and religion. The protagonist of the book is Jamie, a good kid who gets into music at an early age and loves what rock and roll makes him feel and where it takes him. Except for that pesky addiction, but I won’t say anything more about that. What was fun to read was the sheer joy that Jamie experiences as he begins to get into music. Although I’m not a musician myself, I’m a huge fan, and I understand how music can move a person. I think it’s fair to say that all musicians start out as fans, so in that regard, I can relate.

As for the religion aspect, if the right wing religious people get a whiff of what this book says about religion and the existence of any god, they’re going to have a thrombo. This is King’s most damning condemnation of religion that I’ve ever read. Previous books have had a bit of a religious element to them. He has always explored the conflict between good and evil. The prime example is Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg from The Stand (and other mentions in various books). As Mother Abigail tells Nick in that book, when Nick says writes that he doesn’t believe in God, “Well, He believes in YOU!” That sense of possibility and mystery is gone in this book. This is more of an attitude of “if God exists, he’s a sadistic and psychotic asshole.” It’s quite an interesting change, and I wonder about the pathway that has brought SK to this point, and if this reflects his own views or is just a part of the story.

It’s obvious that he has nothing but contempt for religious charlatans and grifters. I share his contempt, and I find it dismaying that there are still so many such people out there. None have quite the dark side of Charles Jacobs, though...at least as far as anyone knows…!

A couple of great reads, and I recommend both of them highly. If you’re into that sort of thing, of course. Not for everyone!

Beth’s Music Moment: The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County

Last night, we attended the penultimate (got to use that word...yay!) show of this musical collaboration between native Hoosier John Mellencamp (he wrote the music), Stephen King (he wrote the dialogue and storyline), and T Bone Burnett (he produced the music) at our local theater, the Morris Performing Arts Center.

We had reasonably good seats. Pffft...screw that...front row, baby! We were right in front of the character called the Zydeco Cowboy and the band was right behind him. This was cool for me for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

This is a really dark story that is based on an incident in Mississippi in the ‘60s, in which a guy killed his brother in a dispute over a girl, then committed suicide with the girl. The musical brings it into the present, with a haunted cabin and another pair of feuding brothers. It’s a fun story (well, ‘fun’ being a relative term) full of ghosts and guilt, but it was so dark that we actually joked about it afterwards, talking about how pretty much everyone dies! My sister and brother-in-law went with us, and Tom said, “They should have killed the little kid off while they were at it!” It’s not a real happy story, but what would you expect from Stephen King? There were little snippets of humor sown throughout that were very much in King’s voice. I’ve read enough of his novels—like all of them—to know that sense of dark humor!

The real star of the show for me was the music. Even before the show started, they were playing zydeco recordings, which delighted me but also made me miss New Orleans. It’s not every day you get to hear zydeco music—even just recorded—in South Bend! The songs were classic Mellencamp. I could hear his musical stamp all over them. Even better was finding out that the band was Mellencamp’s band. So we were basically hearing a Mellencamp concert without Mellencamp singing.
 
As an aside, there was some applause before the show started, coming from the back of the theater. We saw some people standing and applauding. Turns out that John himself was in the house! We found out later that this was only the second performance he had attended, so it was an honor to have him here! When I wrote on Facebook about him being there, Cousin Shane said that when he heard that, he expected to see a picture of me with John, wondered what was wrong with me, and said I must have been off my game last night! I had to laugh...somehow I’ve managed to get people to expect pictures of me with musicians. It’s not that easy! Anyway, that was funny.

Okay, back to the music. This was Mellencamp’s band. No wonder they sounded so tight and the musicianship was so incredible...these guys have been playing together for some time, and they have the reputation as one of the best bands in the business. Mellencamp is known as a hard taskmaster, and he expects his band to be pretty damn close to perfection. They really did sound great, and I was especially impressed by the guitarist, Andy York. We were right in front of him, so I got to see him step offstage and bring out cool guitar after cool guitar. I’m no guitar expert, but I knew the Gretsches! He also played banjo a couple of times, and even a washboard vest, which was another fun reminder of New Orleans.

The music had even more of a country twang than Mellencamp’s often does, with some zydeco elements and western elements thrown in there. Although I’m obviously a rockgirl, I love other styles of music, too, and I’ve always loved Mellencamp. The songs were so beautiful and the singing was so well done that by the last number, I was wiping away tears. I love it when music can move me to tears, and I’m getting a little choked up just thinking about it. Maybe one day I’ll do a Music Moment about Mellencamp, because his music has meant a lot to me over the years, and I’ve seen him in concert several times. Never a bad show! We got the soundtrack, and I’m looking forward to listening to it again.

I will admit that I felt that it lagged a bit in the beginning, and really took a bit to get into the meat of the show. But right after the intermission, it felt like things kicked into overdrive. The story really gained momentum, and the music just soared. I loved it. Ken said he thought it was one of the best shows he’s seen at the Morris, and I would definitely have to put it right up there. The music was just outstanding. The cast and band got a standing ovation at the end...I hope John was still there to see that and know that we enjoyed it!

Afterwards, we went to Madison Oyster Bar for a couple of post-show drinks, and as we were all sitting there talking, a guy walked in. It was the Zydeco Cowboy! I went over and said hi and told him how much we enjoyed it. He said, “Oh yeah, I saw you! You were in the front row, and you were really getting into the music!” I laughed...yeah, that’s me! We talked for quite a bit, and he and Ken talked even more. We bought him a beer, and he was a super nice guy. His name is Jesse Lenat, and he’s known Mellencamp for like ten years. I think that’s how long Mellencamp and King have been working on bringing this musical to fruition. I asked how it is working with Mellencamp, and he confirmed what I’ve always heard: he’s tough, and he can be prickly, but he’s a good guy. He said they’ve gotten to the point where John seems to look on him as kind of a kid brother, so that’s pretty cool. It was very enjoyable to talk to him, and I’m glad we got to tell him how much we enjoyed the show...and I’m glad that he noticed how much I was enjoying it!

The show ends in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I believe that show was tonight. I don’t know if they’ll try to do another run of it or not, but I’m thinking that this is probably it, at least for the band. I’m truly glad that I got to see it, because I thought it was a great show. I highly recommend the soundtrack album.

I noticed in the trailer that Stephen King says that if he sees someone in the audience wiping a tear away, that makes his day. Mission accomplished, Stephen...at least with this girl! I shed more than one!

Beth’s Books: Doctor Sleep

I’m severely out of whack today because Stephen King kept me up until the wee hours of the morning! I hatelove him for constantly doing that to me.

Maybe one of these days, I’ll finish one of his books in the afternoon. It usually seems to work out that I’ve got about a couple hundred pages to go around midnight, and I can’t bring myself to put it down for the night. I have to finish. This morning, I was up until 5 AM. At least we didn’t have to go anywhere today!

I’m not really going to give any spoilers here, just write a general review of the book. But if you like to be completely surprised by a book, you probably shouldn’t read this entry before you read the book. There were a couple of things that happened that made my jaw drop, and needless to say, I won’t be spoiling THAT for anyone!

If you don’t know anything about it, Doctor Sleep is the sequel to The Shining. We get to see what young Danny Torrance has been up to in the years since his Dad tried to beat him and his Mom to death with a roque mallet. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been up to much good, and is following in his father’s drunken footsteps.

After hitting rock bottom, he finds himself in a small New Hampshire town and encounters a couple of people who take a shine (so to speak) to him. He manages to claw his way back to sobriety and a job at the local hospice. With the assistance of the hospice cat, he is able to understand when the residents are ready to make the crossing to the Other Side, and he eases their journey; thus his nickname, and the title of the book.

He eventually encounters the shine of a young girl who is close by. She also attracts the attention of some very, very bad sorts who want her “steam”: her very powerful essence. This leads to a showdown between Good and Evil that King writes of so frequently.

There are a lot of great characters here that we come to genuinely care about, and chief among them is Dan Torrance, all grown up. His struggle is painful to watch, but he was a good kid and he’s a good man. You cheer for him the entire way. Abra, the young girl with the strong shine, is a fierce warrior. The bad guys are bad enough that you cheer for their complete and utter demise, although some of the acolytes are pathetic enough that you feel a tiny bit sorry for them. But not much.

King writes some great lines, and probably my favorite in the book was this:

We’re all dying. The world’s just a hospice with fresh air.

Brilliant. And so true.

Both Lisa and Ken asked me if they should read The Shining before reading this sequel. They have seen the movie but haven’t read the book. I hadn’t read it for many years, but recently revisited it in preparation for reading this book. I’m glad I did. You wouldn’t have to read it, but I think it gives a better insight into the characters and to Danny’s complicated and dysfunctional relationship with his father. I think it’s also important to understand how Danny’s experience at the Overlook followed him for the rest of his life, and to remember some of the horrible things he encountered there.

Because some things linger.

Just a heads-up!

I had intended to write a bit more tonight, but as you can see, the new Stephen King novel came in the mail today, and I am already hooked. It’s entirely possible that my next post will be a review of the book, because I have a feeling that I’m going to tear through this one!

If you don’t know the premise, this book revisits Danny (now Dan) Torrance a couple of decades after he survived The Overlook and his father died in The Shining. There are some interesting twists already, and I’m feeling bad for Dan and hope that he can get his shit together. Something nefarious is afoot, and perhaps Dan will have a chance to redeem himself in the process of helping others. We shall see.

I’ll still hang out a bit on Facebook, but I can already tell that this book is going to consume me until I finish it. My friend Lisa laughed and said that she KNEW I’d be reading it already! But of course!

Happy reading, Citizens!

The excitement builds…under the dome

What has two thumbs and is excited about the premiere of this show tomorrow? THIS GAL!

Doesn’t that picture just break your heart? Aww.

We still have good times ahead this evening with a couple of T-bones and a couple of episodes of “The Sopranos” (no sports on tonight!), but I am super psyched about this show Monday night. I loved the book, and I think there is a lot of potential there for a fun and creepy series. (So does Stephen King. He has said that he never got to cannibalism in the book, but if the show continues long enough...gahhhh!) King isn’t one of the writers, but he does have input, and that’s a good thing. I can see him steering it in a very dark direction.

We’re both so interested in watching this that we agreed that we will watch it instead of the end of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals. We’ll get to watch a couple of hours of the game, but then we’ll switch over to “Under the Dome.” (No, we don’t have a DVR, and have no plans to get one. Shut up.) This is going to be a summer series, and if it gets picked up for a second season, my concern is that it will be going up against “Bates Motel” on A&E, another of our favorites. But things can change, and “Bates Motel” usually plays the episode again immediately afterwards, so that might be a work-around. Fangirl will find a way! We did that with “The Walking Dead” for a while, but we got so hooked on the show that there was no way we were waiting till the later showing, especially once “The Talking Dead” expanded to an hour. I love it that cable shows are often willing to do a same-night repeat showing of the episode!

Anyway, I think this could be very good. Post-apocalypse stories are hot right now, because there is much depravity and creepiness to be mined there. The reason I love “The Walking Dead” so much is because it asks the question “How will YOU react in the post-apocalypse world? How will you keep it together?” Some go the dictator route (The Governor), some go the badass survivor route (Daryl Dixon), and some are a combination of the two (Rick Grimes). It is a fascinating study of the human psyche.

And you know...zombie heads goin’ all splodey! YEAH!

No zombies in “Under the Dome,” but there will be lots of shit goin’ down all the same. Power struggles, idiot politicians, jerks, liars, and ineffectual lollygaggers.

Hey! Kinda like far too many in our Congress!

So there you go. “Under the Dome” is a metaphor for our dysfunctional Congress. You heard it here first.

Beth’s Books: Classics

I have GOT to make a graphic for these book entries!

I’ve really slacked off on my reading lately as I caught up on back issues of Rolling Stone. I’ve been in music mode for a while now, and I really enjoyed diving into that as we began to get some nice weather and I was able to sit out on the deck. Now that I’m all caught up, I’m getting back into some books.

After a book about politics, I decided to get back to the Modern Library Top 100 list. I’m on #62, From Here To Eternity, and I started it today. It’s a monster, over 800 pages, so it might take me a while to get through, but I can say that it grabbed me from the beginning with its clear and accessible writing (although I don’t understand all the WWII-era slang). The novel was published in 1951, and since there is already talk of prostitution and “the clap,” I’m going to bet that it was a bit controversial at the time!

This isn’t a review...I’m just barely into it! But I love it already for a couple of reasons. First, since it is set on a military base in Hawaii in 1940, it makes me think of my Dad. Not that he was ever stationed in Hawaii, but the characters are the kind of guys he would have been stationed with. It makes me think of my Dad in that situation, and these are happy thoughts. One of the characters is even a Chief Warrant Officer, which is what my Dad was. I also love the snappy banter that is so evocative of movies from that era. The rapid-fire dialogue can be a little hard to follow, but you can imagine people saying it.

I love this exchange between a couple of soldiers.

“And remember,” Warden said, “Mon-sewer O’Hayer says you got to straighten this mess up sometime today.”
“Your face,” Leva said.
“Your mother’s box,” Milt said, “Get to work.”

See? Snappy banter! Can’t you just picture these guys talking to each other? I sure can.
But what really got to me was this descriptive line.

“...two electric bulbs like burning tears dangling from the ends of chains increased the gloom.”

*swoon*

Now that is some fine writin’ right there. Anyone who is a reader or who enjoys writing will appreciate that particular turn of phrase. I’m still in awe of that line. It jumped out at me immediately.

I’m happy to be getting back into this list, because what I’ve found with many of these Top 100 novels is that the writing is just mind-boggling. There are current writers who can do that to me; Stephen King is one of them. In Joyland, the line that jumped out at me was, “When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.” Perfection! And so true. Some more than others!

I’ve noticed that many of these literary classics have more of such amazing lines. Lines that don’t just make me say, “Hey, that’s good,” they make my jaw drop and make me say, “Holy SHIT, that’s good!”

Some of these books have been a slog, and there have been a couple where I conceded defeat. (James Joyce, anyone?) But I’ve also revisited a few that I’d read years before and enjoyed from a new perspective (A Clockwork Orange, for example), and found some new favorites that I never would have read without this list (Angle of Repose). It’s been a lot of fun branching out a bit with some of these books, and it’s fun to get back into it.

Happy reading, Citizens!

King, Mellencamp, and Letterman

Last night, Stephen King and John Mellencamp were on Letterman to promote their musical “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County.”

It was EPIC.

Ken even stayed up late to watch it, and watching it again today, I was cracking up all over again. (I texted my sister about it today, and she was like, “Why didn’t you text me?!” Agh! I’m sorry, Di! haha)

Three of my favorite entertainers in their respective fields, all gathered together and talking. And two of them Hoosiers! It was a freakin’ Bethgasm. I’ve read every Stephen King book; I’ve been to see Mellencamp numerous times over the years; I’ve watched Letterman since his daytime show when I was in college...and we are both Ball State alum!

Seeing these three interact was priceless. I was thinking about why it delighted me so much, and why I love these three guys. I told Ken that I think it’s because they are all at the point where they have this “fuck you” attitude. Like, “We are who we are, and if you don’t like it, well, fuck you!”

I kind of like that. I like it a lot.

They all seem to have a rapport that goes beyond casual friendship. I love that feeling when you really connect with someone...someone who “gets” you and has the same weird sense of humor that you have. I am fortunate to have several people like that in my life, including my hubby!

The musical is coming to our fair town, and I’m super excited to be going to it and to have front row seats! I’m going to order the CD soon so I can get familiar with the songs. Seeing that interview last night made me even more excited to go. I think it’s going to be dark and creepy and brooding...right up my alley!

The interview takes place during about the first nine minutes of this video. Watch soon, before CBS yanks it from YouTube!

Outside time and MOAs

It was a warm and very humid day today, and after an extremely sweat-inducing workout (not a bad thing!), I headed out on the deck to clean off what I call Paddy O’Furniture.

That was a workout in itself, because the pretty Kwanzan cherry tree that I love so much took a total dump on the table and chairs. All those lovely little pink petals added up to a gooey mess that got rained on and then baked on the glass table by the sun. I took my scraper out and got the worst of it off; then took a scrub brush to it and got almost all of it off; then Windex and a paper towel to finish it off. The chairs I sprayed with cleaner and scrubbed, and I left them out from under the eaves in the hopes that we’ll get a little bit of rain tonight and all the extra cleaner will be rinsed off. So Beth and Ken’s Bar & Grill is open for business! Who wants to come by to sit a spell and chat with me?

It was getting a little more overcast by then, but not completely, so I decided to take the new Stephen King book (just got it today!) out and read a bit while I caught some muted rays. It was still nice and warm, but with a breeze that felt really good. Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer, close to 90°, and I look forward to a little more time out there before the rain moves back in. It would be a great time to plant some flowers, but I’m not going to plant anything until we get back from our Route 66 trip, so our kitty caregivers don’t have to worry about watering anything.

As for the MOAs (no, that’s not Moais), I’ve been trying to work on my Michelle Obama Arms. I had to lay off for a while because of wrist and elbow issues, but I’m trying to do light weights to tone. I’ve been fairly happy with the results, although I still want to get more defined. Yes, I actually flexed and took a picture in the mirror, which I’m somewhat embarrassed about, but this is about the only time you’ll see me do this (at least until I get MORE defined!). I don’t want to bulk up, but I like a little definition, and our First Lady is an inspiration to all of us who want shapely and well-defined arms. I’m trying to keep working my arms without hurting my wrists and left elbow, and I think I’ve found a way to do that. So here are my wanna-be Michelle Obama Arms...or at least one of them!

**One little joke here. Most of you won’t get this, but a few will. Some of you know that Sheeba “talks” to us. It usually sounds like Ken, or sometimes me. Well, after Ken got back from his most recent trip, we were all snuggled up on the couch, with Sheeba in between us, and Sheeba said, “Hey Dad? When you left on your trip, Mom thought that you’d abandoned us and left us destitute. So she started selling off my cat toys and her penguins in order to put food on the table for us.” I snorted! I will explain further...soon!

A brief programming note

I still have tons (one might even say ‘loads and loads,’ right Shane?) of pictures to edit, and much to write about our recent vacation, but this past week, I got the second part of my birthday present in the mail, thanks to my sister Diana and her husband Tom. It’s the new Stephen King novel, and although I can’t pinpoint the exact time that it happened (I think it was sometime around noon today), I have reached that wonderful tipping point in a book when I am completely (and happily) ensnared. I’m having a hard time getting anything else done because I don’t want to stop reading this book. As King himself wrote in a line that I marked as one of my favorites, “That’s the curse of the reading class. We can be seduced by a good story at the least opportune moments.”

The story has seduced me, and I plan on spending lots of quality time with this book as I work my way through it. Once I’ve had my way with it and I’m spent, I’ll be back here to get some pictures posted and relive our Philadelphia and New York experiences.

Until then, carry on, citizens.

A busy and booky week

Well, cut off my legs and call me Shorty, I haven't updated for over a week! It was a busy time over the holiday. Dinner with my family on Thanksgiving day, then the in-laws over for spaghetti on Friday, then Shane and Matt over yesterday for pizza and Rock Band. (Neither of them had played before, and I think they really enjoyed it! Shane mostly did bass, and Matt was a natural on vocals. As they would say, "Fun!") Since people were coming over, I had to do plenty of tidying up and cleaning in the preceding days. Today is finally a quiet day, so it's been football and getting caught up on reading.

Thus I have a couple of book reviews for you. First is Fatal Error, the penultimate (I always love a chance to use that word!) Repairman Jack novel by F. Paul Wilson. Jack is one of the best characters in modern fiction, in my opinion; he is a Fixer. If people get into trouble, a friend might refer them to Jack, and he looks at their problem and decides if he wants to tackle it or not. Jack is no gun-for-hire; he is more of a vigilante who evens the playing field for average, decent people who are being hurt or preyed upon by bad guys. In other words, Jack is a good guy who hates injustice, blackmail, and bullying.

Unfortunately for Jack, he has also been noticed by a couple of mysterious forces in the universe: the Ally and the Otherness. These are not necessarily Good and Evil; the Otherness is simply antithetical to sentient life; the Ally often protects such sentient life, but is generally more apathetic. It's hard to distill it into a few sentences, because the series will ultimately consist of 15 novels, with connections in several more of Wilson's works. (By the way, I'm friends with Mr. Wilson on Facebook, and he's a really interesting and cool guy. Very accessible and responsive to fans!) It's amazing to me that he has kept this storyline consistent and expanding for all these years, and I'm very curious as to what sort of records he keeps in order to keep everything straight!

Anyway, these books are set very much in the natural world, but there is a significant overlap between the natural and the supernatural, with guardians and connections and mysterious orders who want to promote the Otherness and aid in its ascendancy on earth. There are no coincidences. Jack is not a supernatural being, and his tactics are definitely the ass-kicking kind. This, for me, is one of the most interesting aspects of these novels and of Jack. He is an average guy in height, weight, and looks, but also has an element of the Otherness within him. When he is confronted with those who wish to harm him or the ones he loves, that Other Jack makes an appearance...and you don't want to mess with that guy.

I think many of us have that darkness in us; a possibility in which our rage will overcome us. As decent members of society, we learn to discourage it and keep it under control. Jack does, too, but his job and his mysterious circumstances mean that sometimes that darkness is released. It frightens his girlfriend, Gia, but he protects her and her daughter fiercely from those who wish to harm them. I just think it's a really interesting psychological aspect to the story, and makes Jack a fascinating character in his complexity. I will really hate to see this series come to a close, but I hope Jack doesn't disappear completely.

Next is Stephen King's latest, Full Dark, No Stars, a collection of four novellas. It was a birthday present from my sister, Diana, so thanks, Di! I zipped through this in no time, and I believe I stayed up until 6 AM one night in order to read it. Sometimes you reach that tipping point where you just can't stop reading. I know some of you know exactly what I'm talking about!

This is a very aptly named collection, because these are incredibly dark stories. Cancer, murder, rape, more murder...King writes with a savage glee about some of the darkest of subjects, but I also feel a sense of humanity there. As if he doesn't want some of his characters to do what they do, but he can't stop them. The bleakness of these stories was almost too much to bear at times. I sometimes realized that I was sitting there with a horrified look on my face; this is not his typical horror fare, and is much more terrifying because of our knowledge that such things do happen sometimes in real life, and happen far too often.

As I've gotten older, I haven't lost my love of horror movies. However, I've found that what is more interesting and scary for me is how average people react to extreme situations, and how they interact with each other. (That is one of the reasons I love "The Walking Dead"...Episode 5 of 6 tonight! Hey...it's the penultimate episode in season one! Oh yeah...twice in one post. Awesome!) In a world where people are routinely brutalized in the name of religion, or executed for who they love, or mutilated in some sort of bizarre cultural ritual, such ordinary evil hits a little too close to home, and that makes it all the more terrifying.

I think what ties these books, and shows like TWD, together for me is that they force me to wonder how I would react in extreme situations. Would I have the courage of Jack to stand up to universal forces of chaos, or just to stand up for someone I love, even if it meant harm might come to me? In King's stories, would I have the courage of the woman in "Big Driver," or that of the woman in "A Good Marriage?" Would I do what was best for society and humanity even at the risk of my own peril? I hope I am never faced with such choices, but if I were, I want to believe that I would have the courage of my convictions.

Maybe it's silly to get so philosophical over a couple of novels, but that's just the way my mind works. I enjoy thinking about hypothetical and far-fetched situations, and think that it can help in how you might react to certain real-life situations. I think I'll just ask myself, "WWJD?"

What would Jack do?

Writing about Writing

I suppose that any of us who write a blog fancy ourselves as some sort of writer. I mean, the very act of writing makes us writers, no?

I hold no illusions, though. I occasionally get compliments, and I have been told that I'm a good writer. I appreciate it every time I hear it, it but I don't delude myself into thinking that I'm brilliant at it. (And please, please do not take this as my wanting or needing you to leave comments saying that I'm good. I always enjoy a nice compliment, but now is not one of those times. Compliments are much sweeter and more meaningful when unsolicited, spontaneous, and sincere.) I think that I'm a good "conversational" writer. I remember a friend telling me once, shortly after we got out of high school, that getting a letter from me was like talking to me. So I think that I do have a pretty decent ability when it comes to that. I also do pretty well with spelling and grammar, although I am by no means an expert.

All my tiny little feelings of accomplishment are blown out of the water when I read certain authors and essayists. You know the type...you read something so good that you're left with a mixture of awe, admiration, and envy. "Wow. That is really good. Man, I wish I could write like that, you bastard!" Of course, the epithet is meant with affection, because you truly do admire the way they can evoke emotional responses and paint such a vivid picture.

I think of Christopher Hitchens and his remarkable piece for Vanity Fair in which he learns that he has esophageal cancer. He writes with humor, pragmatism, and courage, including such lines as "In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist," and "To the dumb question 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?"

Or consider San Francisco columnist Mark Morford, as he contemplates teabagger candidates and the difficulties they face on the campaign trail:

I sip my wine and sigh. What deeply unhappy lives these people must lead, no? So small and cloistered, panicky and scripted, entirely cut off from anything resembling the hot thrum of raw, sticky, swear-worded life as you and I know it, as they shuffle like chilled meatpacks from air conditioned SUV to stuffy Holiday Inn conference room, threadbare high school auditorium to sparsely attended right-wing nutball Midwestern church, retirement home, cotton-candy fairground.

There they are, lurching around the podium, stroking that baby, trying to rally the troops, working like 10 flavors of desperate hell to mean something to someone, somewhere, knowing full well what they're selling is a show, a sham, as they dance and swagger like a doll on a string.

Man, that's good. "Shuffle like chilled meatpacks." That makes me want to clap my hands with delight!

Third Eye Blind sang that "the four right chords can make me cry." So true. So, also, can an amazingly constructed sentence, a beautiful turn of phrase, and a perfect use of an obscure word. I love it when an author makes me look up a word; I might think I know the meaning of it, but I want to make sure. But just throwing a bizarre word in there for the hell of it is annoying and makes it seem like you're trying too hard. (I'm talking to you, Dean Koontz. Stop using the word 'ziggurat.' You don't have to put it in every freakin' book, okay?) There have been times when something is worded just so, and it honestly does bring tears to my eyes, or makes me smile with how well it was said. When that happens, I make a little note on the page, and put the page number on the inside of the back cover. I don't think Stephen King is a brilliant writer (a very enjoyable one, though), but he really does have a way with words sometimes, and here are a couple of my book notations I found.

I guess it gets cold everywhere. I bet it even snows in hell, although I doubt if it sticks. (from Duma Key)

...he walked to the wall where the safe was with big soft steps of cartoon caution. (from Under the Dome)

Isn't that wonderful? Can't you just picture it, and maybe even hear the cartoon boop boop boop sounds? Ha!

A lackadaisical little breeze cat's-pawed their cheeks. (also from Under the Dome)

I've found that reading some of the classic novels in my book club has shown me some unexpected and pleasantly surprising writing of outstanding caliber.

Sounds like the splash of a duck landing on the water...came across miles with a clarity that was at first incredible—and then mysterious because, like a cry in an empty house, it seemed to make the silence, the peace, more intense. Almost as if sounds were there to distinguish the silence, and not the reverse. (from The Magus, by John Fowles)

That is very evocative for me, because that is my experience in living out in the country. The silence is often shattered by sounds of vehicles (including loud farm equipment) going by on the road, but there are times when I can hear the subtlest of sounds, including squirrels chattering from the trees, and a sudden sound of deer bounding through the woods.

Salt is added to dried rose petals with the perfume and spices, when we stored them away in covered jars, the summers of our past. (from Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner)

A wandering dog of a night wind came in off the sagebrush mesa carrying a bar of band music, and laid it on her doorstep like a bone. (also from Angle of Repose)

...her white summer handbag like a white kitten in her lap... (Angle of Repose again)

Can you tell that I enjoyed Angle of Repose?

Okay, I think that is enough quotes. You get the idea. I read things like that and I'm hit upside the head just how remarkable some writers are. THAT is something to aspire to. I don't write fiction very often (although I might have to work on that), but I can only hope that once in a while I find that turn of phrase that is just right. I think I come close on rare occasions, and I feel okay about being a tiny bit proud of that and I hope that I can improve on it. I don't know how true the "tips for writers" graphic is, but everything I've read from actual writers has included the advice to keep reading. "Writers read." I think that IS important, because it shows you different ways of constructing your writing, different styles, teaches you about flow and grammar and usage. It also makes you understand your shortcomings and feel the humility that follows. Who knows? Maybe one day, I'll manage to leave someone in awe!

To all my writer friends, those famous and those who are not—yet—I salute you. You have a remarkable ability, you have a rare talent, and you have the potential to hit those four right chords that can make me cry. Keep at it. I will, too.