August 2020 – Queer and Loathing in America

Should’ve Said No

Well, we made it to another Monday, did we not? The end of August is nigh upon us as well; soon the Earth’s continuous shifting will have the northern hemisphere turning away from the sun and our days will continue to shorten and at some point, cooler weather will arrive in New Orleans, and the humidity will dissipate for a season. Fall is quite spectacular here, and when it isn’t gloomy so are our winters; the six or so months from mid-September through early May is when we remember how lucky we actually are to live in these climes.

As I said yesterday, I am making an effort to see positivity in life rather than negativity; to focus on what I finished rather than what I haven’t completed yet. Yesterday I overslept again, which seems to be more of a thing these days; but it was fine. I got up, did some organizing, worked on my electronic files a bit more, and worked on Chapter Six of the book, while also preparing Chapter Seven to be worked on, which I am hoping I’ll be able to do this evening after work. I also spent some time with Little Fires Everywhere, which is actually quite marvelous; Celeste Ng is a terrific writer, and I am glad I have this gateway into her work; so much truth and honesty and reality and insight in this book–I may even have to go back and rewatch the television show (like I have the time for that) once I finish reading the book.

I also realized, over the course of the weekend, that I only have one more short story still out there in the submission ether–this is another rather long shot, and one I suspect I’ll never hear from if they don’t choose my story, which is frankly quite a long shot as I’ve already mentioned–but that’s okay and I don’t mind. It’s kind of nice to take a long shot every once in a great while, just to see what happens and keep your dreams alive. I want to get some more short stories out there into the submission ether, and so I suspect I am going to have to either finish rewriting some or get something unfinished finished; I kind of am missing working on my short stories, if truth be told, and why not get something out there again? I’ve not tried either Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock in a while; while also recognizing that I don’t really write mystery short stories in the traditional sense; I write crime stories that are also quite morbid. There are a couple of submission calls I’d like to write something for–or, rather, submit something for–which is also a matter of seeing if there’s anything on hand that might work if finished or revised; I really want to get “The Flagellants” finished and in some kind of shape to get out there, but am not really sure, to be honest, if it’s right for either market that currently has a call out; I am relatively certain it wouldn’t be right for either of the mystery magazines mentioned before. But, between those magazines and the two other mystery magazines I submit to–that’s four potential stories to get out there, and then there’s the other two submission calls, so that’s a total of six stories I can get out there if I’d like to, and if I can get anything ready, or have something that’s close to being ready.

In other words, I kind of need to get my shit together and get back to putting nose to grindstone, or nothing will happen. As it is, I already am going to go a second year now without a new book coming out; it’s unlikely even if I finish Bury Me in Shadows that it will be released in 2021 now.

I woke up earlier than I normally do on a Monday, primarily so I won’t have to be rushed this morning on my way out of the house to get to work, and in theory, will be more awake by the time I get to the office. That’s the theory, at any rate; I am already sort of groggy awake, and I am drinking cappuccinos this morning–that should also help, rather than the usual coffee–to help jolt my mind and body into wakefulness. It certainly can’t hurt anything to try something new, and while I abhor getting up at six the way I did this morning usually, so far it’s not been so bad.

We binged Cheer over the course of the weekend, and what a terrific documentary series it was. I remember when it was a thing and everyone was talking about it; it seemed so long ago that I was shocked to realize the show went viral in January of this year. But it was also that lost, pre-pandemic world, so of course it seemed like I was years behind the curve on watching it. Paul and I both got very into it–to the point that we were tense about how they’d do once they made it to nationals–and there were a few times during the series I was surprised to find myself moved to tears. I also don’t remember the last time I ever saw a docuseries of any kind that centered young gay Black men, and did so in such a moving, sympathetic way. We both fell kind of in love with both Jerry and La’Darius, as well as with Lexi and Morgan and Gabi as well. I kind of a had a love/hate thing going with their coach, Monica; and the routines they did were just kind of insane. The production team, who was already responsible for the junior college football series Last Chance U (which I am now thinking about watching), did an excellent job with it, and like everyone else who binged it back when it first aired, not only fell in love with the kids featured, but were bereft when it was over.

We also watched the new episode of Lovecraft Country, which was, as its two previous episodes, equally superb. Like the book, the central focus on this new section of the series centered Letitia; and the actress playing her, Jurnee Smollett, is absolutely killing it in the part. Again, there are monsters in the show, but again, the racists are the more palpable, and more horrifying, threat. It’s also lovely to see the horrible racist white people through the eyes of the Black people for a change, and there’s really no question about where the real threat primarily comes from for the characters. The show is also diverging from the book a bit, but it’s not harming the show in the least; if anything, the show is developing into its own thing, and that is actually a very good thing.

Ah, the cappuccino is starting to kick in, and yes, getting up earlier and drinking them instead of my regular morning coffee is certainly the smart way to go. I don’t know why I’ve been avoiding the idea of getting up at six since we reopened the STI clinic for Mondays and Tuesdays; but I have been, and it’s not been working–I wind up groggy all morning and I don’t get near as much done during my mornings at the office as I should. Here’s hoping that changes this morning, shall we?

I’m trying to shake off the lingering malaise of the pandemic–really, if I put my mind to it and think back through the fog, my productivity has been way down since my world basically shut down, and I also just realized, hey, this is a three day weekend because a week from today is Labor Day; this weekend would be my weekend to spend the evening Friday passing out condoms and taking pictures of hot boys with my phone. There’s no Southern Decadence this year, of course, despite my making thousands of condom packs thus far this summer; it’s another casualty of COVID-19, just as Halloween is likely to be as well. I’m not overwhelmingly confident that things will even been righted next year, and that 2021 won’t be second verse, same as the first.

And on that lovely note, perhaps it is time for me to head back into the spice mines and finish getting ready for work. I need to make my second cappuccino of the morning, pack my lunch, and get my backpack ready for imminent departure as well.

Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.

You’re Not Sorry

There are few things I despise more than the non-apology.

These tumultuous times in which we find ourselves inhabiting now has, amongst its innumerable other crimes, introduced the world to the apology that really isn’t an apology; in which someone refuses to admit fault and isn’t sorry for what they said; they’re merely sorry you misinterpreted what they said. It generally runs along the lines of something like I’m sorry if my words offended anyone–which, to me, kind of places the blame on the people who were offended by the shitty thing said in the first place–and usually, for the record? What was originally said was pretty fucking offensive; insensitive to the point where I have to seriously question the empathy and humanity of the speaker, and generally leaves me feeling sorry for anyone related to said speaker, or who is forced to have to interact with them in any way, shape or form, because of work.

This happens constantly these days; it’s become sadly predictable: someone says something incredibly shitty, people are justifiably shocked, horrified and outraged, which inevitably leads to the person apologizing for their words, but at the same, they are also very careful not to take on any blame themselves. I don’t understand this mentality, but it’s a linguistic knot people are always very careful to tie with precision: I’m sorry what I said offended you, not I’m sorry I offended you by saying that. The difference is pretty clear; the first relieves the original speaker of any fault and places all blame on the people taking offense (really, it’s just gaslighting); while the second accepts blame and begs pardon and is actually a sincere attempt by a decent person to take responsibility and implies a promise to do better in the future.

And personally, I don’t accept these non-apologies. I find them, frankly, to be worse than the original offense. My response? “Seriously, go fuck yourself. And yes, I fully intended to offend you and I am not sorry at all; in fact, you might to fuck off now before I really focus on hurting your feelings–because I can, and am quite good at it.”

I’m not sure when we as a people, society and culture ceased being able to admit we were wrong, admit fault, and promise to do better. What is so terrible about being wrong? We are all human, and we all make mistakes, don’t we? It’s inevitable; it’s embarrassing somewhat, but seriously–the world will not end if you ever admit you’re wrong. I’ve admitted I’m wrong and apologized even when I didn’t think I was wrong in the first place–because it isn’t about MY feelings.

I guess thinking about other people’s feelings isn’t something we do anymore? When, precisely, did that change? Or was the whole “care about others” thing just another part of the massive gaslighting of me about everything else this life has turned out to be, from politics to history to religion?

I will admit it here, I will admit it there, I will admit it everywhere. I’ve been wrong many times in my life, and will probably be wrong quite a few more times before my ashes are sprinkled into the Mississippi (although I am beginning to think I may have some of them sprinkled there and some sprinkled into the Rigolets; I must remember to make provision for that in my will–and yes, now that I am in my sixtieth year, I need to start thinking about those things and taking them a lot more seriously than I have in the past). I see this bizarre “refusal to ever admit error” every day on social media–not as much as I used to, as I tend to unfriend and/or hide narcissistic sociopaths who have nothing better to do with their lives and their time than to troll people on the web as a way of making themselves feel superior to other people. To paraphrase Sixteen Candles, “why do you want to be King of the Dipshits? Well, you can hold court without me, O Wise and All-Knowing One.”

I know I should be more tolerant, but I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with this kind of trash any longer, nor do I want to see it on my feeds. And as I grow more and more conscious of how little time I may have left in this world–I certainly don’t want to spend what there actually is left listening to this kind of nonsense anymore.

Enough! Life exposes me to enough toxicity that I cannot control; but I can control what I chose to see on my social media. And if you want to smugly assert that I am fooling and deluding myself by putting myself into an echo chamber–feel free to assume your moral and intellectual superiority. I, for one, am tired of being exposed to homophobia and racism and misogyny and bigotry and prejudice and ignorance; I’ve been around it my entire life and I’d really prefer not to be around it anymore.

Ugh.

I am also, in an effort to control this narrative that my life has become, trying to be more positive about things. Yes, I recognize the irony in that this entry began as a rant about awful people and their gaslighting ways; but cutting as much negativity as I can out of my life like the cancer it is will be the first step in looking at the world in a more positive light. It would be very easy to look at yesterday and think, ah, yes, started out the day terribly behind and after an enormously frustrating day where everything that could go wrong did, I am choosing to look at what I managed to get done, despite the endless frustrations, as a triumph. I did manage to get some organizing done. I got some research notes recorded for a future project. I got some chores around the Lost Apartment done, and tried to organize my computer files around a computer update that came out of nowhere and really annoyed the hell out of me at the time. It took a while–it always does after these things–for my computer to go back to functioning properly, but this morning it’s running better than it has in a while. So, I guess there’s that. I’m trying not to feel like I lost the day yesterday, and being frustrated and annoyed with the circumstances beyond my control isn’t going to help me get anything done today.

I started reading Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and as I got through the first two chapters I began remembering the show more. The book is so well-written, and I love how Ng puts these little touches of truth in to deftly set the narrative up very quickly; after a mere two chapters I know what Shaker Heights is like to live in, the kind of relationship Mia and Pearl have, and the entire family dynamic of the other family–parents with their children, the children with each other. I can’t stop wishing Id read the book along with the show, but that cannot be helped now, and I’m really enjoying the book.

I slept later than I wanted to this morning, but then again I stayed up later than I’d intended to last night as well. We watched another HBO MAX documentary show, in two parts, Who Killed Garrett Phillips? Coming hard on the heels of The Case Against Adnan Syed, Paul and I have been having good conversations about just how broken our criminal justice system is. I’ve also been seeing some great conversations on social media between crime writers about this very thing as well, and about how we, as crime writers, are also sort of complicit in the perpetuation of the mythology of the infallible police department. The enormously popular Law and Order franchises have done an excellent job of depicting criminals as scumbags and our Constitutional rights as essentially “get out of jail free” cards that keep the good, hardworking cops from putting away the dangerous criminals that prey on every day citizens. Obviously, it isn’t that black and white, and there are many more shades of gray involved; people also tend to forget the entire point of our Constitutional rights are to protect everyone against abusive conduct from the state. Is it incredibly frustrating when someone isn’t convicted of a crime? Sure, but how do we–how does anyone–ever know that someone actually is guilty if theres little to no evidence one way or the other? I am stunned, frankly, that Adnan Syed was convicted based on how little evidence there actually was against him, other than someone who was pretty much an unreliable witness who testified against him. The multiple years of the Potsdam police and district attorney’s office trying to hang the murder of Garrett Phillips on a black man when the only evidence of anything they had against him was that they were in the school parking lot at the same time was completely racist and insane; they didn’t even look at anyone else or at any other option. Within 24 hours, based on NOTHING, they became convinced that one of the few black men in the area, an ex of the child’s mother, was guilty and only looked for evidence that would put him behind bars. It was infuriating to watch, frankly.

And it does make you wonder how many people who didn’t do anything wrong are sitting in jail right now.

I’ve briefly touched on this from time to time in my books; I know for a fact that I said once–probably in a Chanse book, but I don’t remember which one–that the cops decide early on who’s guilty and stop looking for facts and information that don’t bolster the case they are building. The question I’ve seen a lot on social media lately is whether we, as crime writers, are complicit in building up a mythology of police work as opposed to the reality. It’s a difficult question, one that is very nuanced, and brings up many philosophical questions as well. J. M. Redmann always says that we as writers write about the search for justice in a world where justice is rarely found; I think about that a lot when I write. I know that I also prefer to end my books with a criminal caught and behind bars; even if the justice is Pyrrhic, at least for a time, at the end of my books, the bad guys are in jail and order of a sort has been restored to the worlds of my characters. I never talk about the trials; I’ve thought about using Chanse testifying at a trial as a framing device for one of his investigations, but it was something I never got around to doing; Chanse novels inevitably always follow the A leads to B leads to C structure Ive used since the beginning; Scotty books inevitably do that as well, even if the story skitters about a lot more in a more confused pattern than the Chanse one do.

As citizens, we don’t like to think that our justice system has become corrupted or broken, or that it operates in a way that isn’t fair to everyone; in order to maintain our semblance on sanity (or what passes for it) far too many of us are willing to look the other way or just believe what we are told. In Who Killed Garrett Phillips? so many of the people of that small town simply found it so easy to believe that the black guy must be a killer (and did so very quickly) and when the cops told the family he was the guy, they simply believed it and never questioned it–likewise, the Korean family of the victim in The Case Against Adnan Syed never questioned the police and district attorney’s viewpoint that Hae Min Lee’s ex-boyfriend was so jealous of her new relationship that he would, with no previous indication before or since that he was that kind of person, plan to kill her and then execute the plan; a grieving family will always believe what they are told by the police, and nobody ever wants to question why they are so quick and easy to believe what the police say mainly because we want to believe they are right, because if we ever stop believing that the police aren’t impartial, that their investigations aren’t carried out in a professional, unbiased, and impartial way, then what happens when we need them?

The abuses in the Garrett Phillips case carried out by the now-sanctioned former district attorney, Mary Rain, and her obvious racism and bias was appalling to see, and disheartening. We may never know who killed that boy now, and it’s partially her fault; her determination to convict an accused black man and absolute refusal to even consider for a moment that he might not have done it, to follow any of the myriad of other leads that were possible, is a horrifying abuse of justice and power. And never fool yourself that prosecutors don’t have a lot of power, or that they can abuse that power for any number of reasons, not the least of which is political power and furthering their own political careers.

I had an idea recently–time has no meaning any more, so it may have been any time during the past three years–about writing a book about Venus Casanova’s last case as a New Orleans police detective. Having put in for retirement already, in her last month she’s been assigned desk duty to ease her out of the workforce–obviously you don’t want to assign an active case to someone who might not be able to see it through–and she’s essentially catching up on all of her paperwork and interviewing suspects for other detectives’ cases in her remaining time. Her ritual has always been to go out to the neighborhood coffee shop before going to work and reading the paper over her coffee. With less than a month to go she reads about a shooting of a young Black man in a sketchy neighborhood–but soon realizes that the young man’s grandmother, who was raising him, was someone she went to high school with many years ago and lost touch with when she went away to college. She decides to check with the investigating officer, and he tells her “it’s just another random shooting.” (The book would be called that, Just Another Random Shooting.) He’s not going to look into it anymore, dismissing it as another drug related crime with no witnesses and no evidence, and so she asks if he minds if she talks to the grandmother–and it turns out to be something else entirely; and that lackadaisical response from the police–‘just another random shooting’– was something the killers planned on. It’s an interesting idea, and it worries at my brain from time to time, particularly when I see another local news report about another young Black man being killed for no apparent reason in a sketchy neighborhood. And then I wonder, am I the right person to tell this story? Who am I, as a gay white man, to write from the perspective of a straight Black woman in a city with a violent history of oppressing people of color?

I can think of any number of reasons to justify writing from Venus’ perspective; I’ve always loved the character, I’ve always wanted to write from her perspective; I’ve thought many times over the years of centering her in a book about her; I feel like I know her inside and out already. But…on the other hand, sure, writers write and have a right to write about whatever they choose, but….

It is a good idea, though, and I also don’t see the story working from any other point of view. Sigh.

And now back to the spice mines.

All Too Well

Saturday morning, and there’s sunlight streaming through my windows–a lovely change from the majority of mornings this past week. I overslept this morning, something that has been happening with greater frequency over the last few weekends, but I also have been staying up later than normal and having trouble falling asleep when i finally do go to bed; I may have to change my pre-bed routine and go back to reading a bit before tumbling into bed. There was some study I read several years ago that indicated the light from screens made it harder for one’s mind to relax and turn off before bed, making sleep even more elusive than it already is for me.

The last thing I need in this world is to make it harder for myself to fall asleep.

I also realized yesterday afternoon when I finished work that I’ve been depressed for well over a week; going back to the week of my birthday. Depression is rather sneaky that way; I always forgot just how sneaky and malicious it actually is. You don’t have to feel sorry for yourself or have that ‘woe is me’ consciousness; it can manifest in being tired, having little or no energy, no desire to do your work, and thinking okay if I can just make it through this day. I literally felt myself come out of it, physically and emotionally, last evening after I finished my day’s work; the swing back to I can conquer the world was so palpable I actually can tell you what time it happened: 5:27, as I was loading blankets into the washing machine. These swings used to be much more obvious and apparent, and maybe…maybe I need something stronger than what I am taking to control all the chemical imbalances in my head. I don’t know. I worry so much about addiction that I am not even certain I should be taking the medication every day, and I also sometimes think I should take a week to wean myself off of it, to be certain, but then I remember that one of the symptoms of not taking the medication is an inability to sleep and like I need anymore assistance in THAT area.

It also never helps to have hurricane season amp up during the Katrina anniversary week. Sigh.

So, in this week’s film festival:

I watched Midway, the 2019 film about the climactic battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, which was the first American victory over the Japanese in the war and a major turning point; military historians consider it one of the most important naval battles in history, along with Salamis, Lepanto, and Trafalgar. I generally don’t watch war movies–I’ve never really cared for them much, and while I was watching Midway I realized why: I despise, and have always despised, toxic masculinity, and war movies are all about that amped up, testosterone driven macho bullshit. The main character of the film was someone who made me extremely uncomfortable with his posturing and, for want of a better term, dick-swinging; it wasn’t until he finally realized his posturing had resulted in the death of one of his airmen that he started to get it, and softened a bit, and became more likable (I also realize that this macho attitude is undeniably necessary for soldiers and the military; these are people who are putting their lives on the line and it really is a matter of kill or be killed; the problem is that it is incredibly difficult to shed that kind of training when you’re not on duty anymore or a civilian again, not to mention the PTSD). It also wasn’t until the end of the film, when the characters were shown as played by the actor with the story of what happened to them in their lives later, and the actor morphed into the real person on screen, that I realized that almost everyone in the movie was based on a real life person, not just the big admirals and so forth; that did make the movie a lot more powerful as I realized that not only was what I had just watched a fairly accurate depiction of the historical battle, but the individual experiences of the actual men who fought it. It’s a gorgeous film with stunning visuals, and the Pacific Theatre of the war never gets enough credit or recognition from us–we tend to remember the war primarily as being against the Nazis and the battle to free Europe from the Germans; bit the Pacific Theatre of the war is just as compelling, and the opening sequence–the horrific bombing and slaughter at Pearl Harbor–was just horrible to watch (one of the most moving experiences of my life was my first visit to the Arizona cemetery and memorial out in Pearl Harbor, where the water is so clear you can see the ship resting on the bottom, and oil bubbles are still escaping from the wreckage).

Yesterday I watched Blade Runner Final Cut as part of my Cynical 70’s Film Festival (and yes I know it was released in 1982, but I consider it to be one of the last films that count as a Cynical 70’s film), and was most impressed. Rutger Hauer, of course, stole the film completely, and it was also a bit funny to me that the movie supposedly was set in 2019 (what an enormous disappointment 2019 turned out to be, given how Ridley Scott originally saw it forty years ago); visually it’s an amazing film, and I can also see how the visuals and art design of the film has influenced filmmakers ever since–the constant darkness and rain in Los Angeles (I kept thinking it’s rained more in this movie than it has in Los Angeles in the last year) reminded me of the Alien film franchise and Altered Carbon and any number of other films. It was also interesting to see Sean Young and Daryl Hannah in the roles that first really brought them to audience attention–Sean Young was on the brink of major stardom for a while until she got labeled “troublesome and crazy; makes you wonder if she refused to fuck Harvey, doesn’t it?–and of course, a still young Harrison Ford just owns the screen. The concept behind the movie was interesting as well; it made me want to go back and read the source material (I’ve not really read much of Philip K. Dick, and given how influential his work was…yeah), and I still might. I bought a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?–great title–a few years back, but I can’t seem to put my hands on it now.

We also watched two documentaries last night: Class Action Park, about the exceptionally dangerous water park in New Jersey and the Showtime documentary about the Go-Go’s, The Go-Go’s. Both are excellent and I do recommend both; I’ve always wanted to write about an amusement park–I have a short story somewhere set in one based on the old Miracle Strip in Panama City Beach–and still might; I’d hoped to do a Scotty book back before Katrina set in Jazzland, which is now, of course, a derelict ruin. The Go-Go’s, of course, were and remain one of my all-time favorite bands; I still listen to their music today and of course, contributed my story “This Town” (one of my favorites) to Holly West’s anthology Murder-a-Go-Go’s.

So, I am now awake after two cappuccinos (Gosh, why do I have trouble sleeping? A mystery for the ages), and looking ahead, there’s a lot to get done for me this weekend. I am way behind on both emails and the book, and of course I want to start reading Little Fires Everywhere, and the filing! Good lord, the filing. I also need to make notes from All That Heaven Allows, the biography of Rock Hudson I recently read as research for Chlorine, so I can return the book to the library this week; and it wouldn’t hurt to go through Tab Hunter Confidential and at least mark the pages that would be of use to me later.

We also finished watching The Case Against Adnan Syed, and I definitely have some thoughts and opinions about that case and show.

Watching Magic the other day, and a young Jerry Houser’s appearance in a bit role as the cab driver reminded me of another movie from the 1970’s, which I wanted to rewatch to see how it holds up: Summer of ’42, which also has one of the most beautiful scores every recorded (it won an Oscar for Michel Legrand, who composed it). I read the novel by Herman Raucher, and the book and movie are both considered seminal works and examples of the “coming-of-age” novel–and thinking about it now, how exactly would that work out nowadays? The main character was a teenager–15 or 16, I don’t remember which–and he becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman in her early twenties whose husband is off to war; when the husband is killed in her insane grief she sleeps with the young boy, who returns, even more deeply in love with her, the next day to find a goodbye note and her gone. The book and movie are told in retrospect; many years later, as an adult, he returns to Nantucket, still remembering her, and then the story is told in flashback, and then at the end he sadly looks at her old beach house and drives away. This remembrance also reminded me that I had written, as a short story, my own version of the same story–which never really worked–called “The Island”, which I still have here somewhere and could possibly at some point revise and rewrite; the primary problem for me with the story I wrote was the main character was only thirteen–RED FLAG–and just now I figured out how I could revise it and make it work (definitely not with a thirteen year old main character).

I might to actually spring for the $1.99 to rent Summer of ’42 on Prime, and see how, and if, it fits into my Cynical 70’s Film Festival.

And now it is time for the spice mines. Enjoy your Saturday, Constant Reader!

Breathe

One of the things I love most about books being turned into television series–or mini-series–is reading the book while I am watching the show. I discovered how amazingly fulfilling and fun and joyous this could be with Big Little Lies, and I’ve tried–sometimes failing–to do this every time Paul and I start binge-watching and loving another adaptation. (Little Fires Everywhere remains my biggest disappointment; I cannot believe I did not have a copy of the book on-hand, or waited to watch until I had one in my clutches)

When I saw the first preview for HBO’s Lovecraft Country, it literally blew me away. I literally thought to myself, wow, I cannot WAIT to watch that, and was even more delighted to discover that it was, in fact, a novel. I got a copy, placed it on the mantle, and the week the first episode aired, I started reading. (Obviously, I do not read as fast as I used to.) I love love LOVE the show, and the book is actually pretty marvelous, as well. I finished it last night as I waited for the way-outer bands of Hurricane Laura to reach us here in New Orleans–all we got was a tropical storm effect, I am terrified frankly to look up what actually happened where the eye came ashore, and will have to gird myself with more coffee before I do look–and I am pleased to report the book finishes just as strongly as it starts–and that the entire book is fucking fantastic.

lovecraft country

Atticus was almost home when the state trooper pulled him over.

He’d left Jacksonville two days before in the secondhand ’48 Cadillac Coupe that he’d bought with the last of his Army pay. The first day he drove 450 miles, eating and drinking from a basket he’d packed in advance, stopping the car only to get gas. At one of the gas stops the colored restroom was out of order, and when the attendant refused him the key to the whites’ room, Atticus was forced to urinate in the bushes behind the station.

He spent the night in Chattanooga. The Safe Negro Travel Guide had listings for four hotels and a motel, all in the same part of the city. Atticus chose the motel, which had an attached 24-hour diner. The price of the room, as promised by the Guide, was three dollars.

I’m going to be honest right up front: I’ve never read H. P. Lovecraft. Oh, the horror, literally, right? When I was a kid I bought a copy of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and other Stories, and it just…well, it just didn’t do it for me. I lost interest several pages in, and gave up; and have never since returned to try the Lovecraftian waters. As I grew older and became more and more aware of the horror genre, I also became aware of how much of an impact and influence Lovecraft had, not just on horror, but on the sisters that genre is usually lumped in with, fantasy and science fiction. Lovecraft is honored and saluted and studied and written about, over and over again; new anthologies explore his worlds and “cosmic horror”; so many horror writers and fans claim, on their social media pages, to have attended “Miskatonic University” (which, to be fair, is far less annoying than those who claim “the School of Hard Knocks,” har har); and of course, over the past decade (perhaps longer; who knows? I don’t, and don’t care to find out) you cannot be involved in publishing, or a fan, as I am, of the horror genre and not been aware of what I have come to call “the Lovecraft Wars.” (The Lovecraft Wars, in short, debate the legacy of Lovecraft and his vile, racist beliefs; the standard defense is a shrugged ‘he was a man of his time’–to which the only proper response, frankly, is so was Hitler–and whether or not he should continue to be honored as an influential author; I don’t know the answer to those questions, frankly, and it’s not my writing community so I have no skin in the game. But you cannot help but be aware of this ongoing conflict.)

Anyway, I was pleased when I saw the trailers for HBO MAX’s Lovecraft Country, which clearly centered Black people, and when I found out it was also a book, I decided to get it and read along while watching the series. I was also a little disappointed to see, based on the author photo on the back cover, that author Matt Ruff appeared to be white–which also seemed to be a whole other field of land mines; the #ownvoice debate.

And then I started reading, and watching.

The book is set in a post-Korean War pre-Brown v. Topeka Board of Education United States; when racism was not only permissable and acceptable to the majority of white people but was often enshrined into law; separate bathrooms, denial of service, mob violence and burning crosses were, horrifyingly enough, just a part of everyday life for Black people. The police weren’t there to help protect them; they were there to force them to continue to live their lives on their knees–and kill them if they tried to rise. Lovecraft Country doesn’t flinch away from this or try to downplay it in any way (either book or television show), and there were times I found it hard to keep reading and would put the book down–only to think to myself, that’s some serious privilege there, bud–this is what Black people experience to this very fucking day and they can’t just ‘put down the book’ and walk away from it; refusing to read it because it makes you uncomfortable and makes you squirm makes you even more complicit than you already are. So, yes, there are some parts to the book that will make white people uncomfortable–but you need to get over it, for any number of reasons but at least one is because the book itself is a revelation.

As I’ve said, I’ve not read Lovecraft, but I got the sense from reading the book that the interconnected stories that make up the book are all inspired by, or retellings of, some of Lovecraft’s; only now centering Black people and their struggle against not only supernatural forces but against the casual, every day racism of the society in which they live. Atticus is returning to Chicago from Jacksonville because he received a letter from his estranged father about a family legacy; Atticus’ mother, it turns out, was descended from a slave who was raped and impregnated by a master who was also a very powerful warlock and part of an ancient society with peculiar beliefs centered in the book of Genesis. His uncle George is the publisher/editor of the travel guide mentioned in the opening of the book; eventually Atticus and George go on a road trip to Massachusetts–to Lovecraft Country–along with a childhood friend named Letitia (Tish)–to find Atticus’ father and they wind up in a very chilling and scary place called Ardham (Lovecraft wrote about Arkham–and I will always wonder if Arkham Asylum from the Batman universe was an homage to Lovecraft as well). They deal with racism every step of the way, “sundown towns” (towns where people of color were required to be outside the city limits by sundown or else suffer the consequences), and corrupt racist cops.

Each section of the book focuses on another person who is a part of their immediate family/friends group, dealing with some kind of different, supernatural experience: the next part of the book centers Tish buying a big empty old mansion in a whites-only part of Chicago that also happens to be haunted, and so on–Tish’s sister has her own story; Atticus and his father go looking for journals of another warlock and encounter a haunting; George’s wife and son have their own stories as well–but all these stories are connected by a thread that goes back to Atticus’ family legacy and a war between different covens of warlocks for not only supremacy, but knowledge and power.

The book is exceptionally well-written, and as I said earlier, unflinching in its depiction of a racist society from the point of view of those consistently victimized by it, and it’s a toss-up between who is scarier–the warlocks and the forces they unleash, or the horrible racists, so entrenched in their horrific beliefs and values that they can’t see Black people as human beings. The fact Ruff chose to call his primary character Atticus didn’t escape me, either; Atticus being also the name of the noble white hero of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is, while a beautifully written novel, one which has become increasingly problematic to me over the years for any number of reasons. I greatly enjoyed reading the book–and in all honesty, it made me curious to read Lovecraft at some point after all these years; although it’s certainly not going to be a priority for me.

I will read more of Ruff’s work, though; the descriptions of his other books sound incredibly subversive, which appeals to me.

I recommend this book highly.

Clean

Hello, Friday, how are you doing?

In spite of all that’s going on in the rest of the state, yesterday was a lovely day for me personally because I got my electronic copy of Mystery Tribune which contains my story, “The Carriage House” (which you can order here). This is my second time in Mystery Tribune; the first was with my story “Neighborhood Alert”. Mystery Tribune is a gorgeously done magazine, and whenever I have some spare cash (HA!) I am going to subscribe; I really should subscribe to the magazines that support crime short stories. Bad Greg, bad Greg!

A while back, Constant Reader might remember me talking about the illusion of privacy and safety we all have when we are in our homes, even when you live in very close proximity to your neighbors, as we do here in New Orleans. From my desk I can see the right apartment of the carriage house on our property, the carriage house next door, and the apartment on the left side of the house next door. Our apartment shares a wall with our neighbors to the front and our neighbor to the side, and the upstairs shares walls with the neighbors to the front and our landlady, with whom we also share the patio deck (which we never use), and yet…we feel safe and secure and private in our apartment, and it always kind of throws me when someone walks past my “office” windows. Anyway, “The Carriage House” is a story about precisely that; living in close proximity to other people and how it also, occasionally, means knowing more about each other than perhaps you might want to or should.

It was a little after three when my cat woke me up by sitting on my chest and howling.

I wanted to ignore him–I could tell without opening my eyes it was still dark out–but when he started kneading my chest with his claws out, I gave up. “Seriously, Skittle?” I asked, reaching for my glasses, noticing my alarm’s glowing red numbers read 3:12.

He yowled again. There were four different sounds, each with its own meaning, in his repertoire. This was the water noise. Cursing myself for not making sure his water bowl was full before going to bed, I slipped on my slippers and pulled my robe on as I walked out of the bedroom. Skittle galloped down the stairs ahead of me. I was reaching for the kitchen light-switch when I saw movement outside the windows.

I caught my breath but relaxed when I recognized Peyton.

He’d been renting my carriage house for a few months, but having a tenant was still such a novelty for me that I still forgot I had one. I’d used the carriage house as a kind of combination guest house/office for years, but I’d decided to turn into a rental property to relieve some financial distress. I wasn’t happy having someone else on the property, but the extra money was lovely. And I couldn’t have found a better tenant than Peyton. He was quiet, paid the rent on time, and if he maybe had a few more overnight guests than I would have preferred–well, he was still only in his late twenties. He worked as an EMT, savibg lives, and who was I to judge if he liked to bring the occasional man home?

He also had a habit of sunbathing in the back yard in a skimpy yellow bikini that left little to the imagination.

It also didn’t hurt that he was handsome. He was just over six feet tall and jogged every morning on the neutral ground on St. Charles. Several nights a week he’d walk past my windows drenched in sweat and carrying a gym bag.

Not a bad beginning, no?

Several months ago I sent five stories out on submission, and within twenty-four hours two of them sold. A few more weeks passed and another one sold; I did get a rejection from a rather high-end market on my birthday, but I knew they were going to turn me down (I don’t write lit-RAH-choor, you know–but it never hurts to try every once in a while. I haven’t heard back on the fifth yet, but I am also assuming that if I do hear from them (I’m not entirely confident I will, frankly, even rate a rejection from them) it will be a thanks-but-no-thanks. But it’s fine, I don’t care, and sometimes my stories get rejected because, well, it may have needed another pass or two, or I had something wrong, or something was frankly missing from it–that I’ll find the next time I take a good look at it. But there’s no mistaking that I’ve had a good couple of years of short story sales and publications, and that has everything to do with the Short Story Project and taking the time to write them, edit them, clean them up and work them out, you know?

I am trying to decide if I should write and submit something for the New Orleans Bouchercon anthology; I’ve also come across two other calls that look interesting and I may try to get something submitted to both. I do have eighty-six or so stories in some sort of progress now; perhaps there’s something in the files that could be finished and could work for either or both of them. Or…I could write something entirely new for them. Who knows?

Anyway, yay for short stories!

Don’t Blame Me

The morning after, and Orleans Parish is in a tornado warning/flash flood watch until 4 pm this afternoon. It’s still creepily gray outside this morning, and it’s still too early for damage assessments to where Laura came ashore last night as the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in Louisiana since 1856.

18 fucking 56.

Today is usually my day to go into the office and make works supply bags for the syringe access program, but I am not sure what the weather holds–I haven’t checked yet (other than the alerts on my phone), not have I checked to see any news reports as of yet for southwest Louisiana. I have four boxes of condom packs to take in–yes, I’ve been a productive motherfucker this week; I already took in two boxes the other day–and I do need more supplies for tomorrow. I am dreading to see what this storm did, frankly; hurricane season always brings a little PTSD for me in its wake–probably always will–and viewing storm damage photos and videos and hearing survivors’ stories inevitably makes me weepy. While writing Murder in the Rue Chartres (and years later, “Survivor’s Guilt”) was cathartic, the psychological scars may never heal completely.

While making my condom packs yesterday, I watched another 1970’s movie in my on-going 1970’s film festival, Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins and Ann-Margret. I’ve watched this movie before, but a long time ago, and I had also read the novel on which it was based, by William Goldman. Goldman also wrote The Princess Bride and Marathon Man; I went through a Goldman phase after reading The Princess Bride–and his career was pretty amazing, actually; he rarely wrote the same kind of book and was never really pigeon-holed as a novelist. He was also an Oscar winning screenwriter–he won Oscars for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men (which is on my list for my 1970’s film festival; it also contains the line “follow the money” which he wrote for the movie and is now a part of the vernacular)–and he was a terrific novelist. I don’t really remember much of the novel of Magic, nor did I remember much of the film, other than remembering that there was one scene in particular that was absolutely terrifying; guess what? It still is.

I’ve also found ventriloquist dummies to be terrifying ever since.

Magic begins with a young magician, Corky, (a very young Anthony Hopkins) appearing at an amateur night and bombing badly; after he comes back to an apartment where his mentor, Merlin Jr., is very ill, he tries to pretend he did well but Merlin sees through him. Flash forward another year, and David Ogden Stiers is arriving at the same club–which has a massive line outside–to meet Burgess Meredith, who is an agent and wants him to see the act of his client, Hopkins. Hopkins starts doing some card tricks but starts getting heckled; turns out the heckler is his ventriloquist dummy, Fats–who makes up a huge part of the act and the audience loves him. The network guy–Stiers–loves the act, and soon he’s offered an enormous contract for his own network special, but it requires a physical, which Hopkins flatly refuses to do, and flees New York to the Catskills, where he grew up, and goes to stay at a closed resort, run by Ann-Margret, whom he had a crush on a kid. Ann-Margret’s marriage to her high school sweetheart has failed, and become abusive, and they slowly start to begin a relationship, the relationship Corky wishes they’d had in high school. However, Corky and Fats have an even stranger relationship; is Corky insane, with DID, thinking Fats is real and can speak to him, or is Fats real? The movie never really lets us know one way or the other, and it eventually devolves into murder–and of course, a really sad, tragic, cynical ending which was very typical of the 1970’s. Both Hopkins and Ann-Margret–and Burgess Meredith, too, for that matter, are absolutely terrific; Hopkins should have become a star based on this film alone, and I’ve never understood why Ann-Margret–who was incredibly beautiful–never had a bigger career. Jerry Houser, best known for Summer of ’42 and playing Marcia Brady’s husbands in later reboots of The Brady Bunch, also has a bit role as the cabdriver who brings Corky up to the Catskills…and I couldn’t think of his name as I watched; I had to look it up later. He was kind of sexy, too, in that 1970’s kind of way.

Paul and I also started watching the documentary series The Case Against Adnan Syed on HBO MAX last night, and got two episodes into it. I never listened to the podcast that made this case so famous (I am behind the curve on podcasts, and can admit that), but the documentary is very well done and very interesting–look forward to seeing the rest. Only two episodes in, I am not certain how they managed to get a conviction, to be honest, unless it was racially motivated on the part of the jury; we’ll see how the rest of the series goes.

And now to check the weather before heading into the spice mines.

I Forgot That You Existed

Good evening, Constant Reader! Look at this–two blogs in one day! More bang for your buck, as it were. A twofer, as Laura roils the Gulf and dances ever closer to our shores here on the Gulf Coast–although all we’re going to get here is a tropical storm effect; the state line is going to get a direct hit and I worry about Calcasieu Parish and the other Gulf parishes that are going to get hammered. I hope everyone is able to get out safely; I know they were bussing people without the means to evacuate to shelters in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

The storm surge–predicted to be at least twenty feet–may come as far inland as thirty miles. Lake Charles could be completely destroyed by morning.

Please, Constant Reader, keep that area in your thoughts tonight.

Hurricane season is always so traumatizing on the Gulf Coast, seriously.

It’s actually weird that New Orleans is a part of the Gulf Coast, since we really aren’t on the coast, technically; we are actually about 100 miles up the river from the Gulf of Mexico. Wow, right? But you also have to remember that’s in river miles; the river doesn’t run in a straight line to the Gulf from the port of New Orleans.

On the other hand, technically we are on the Gulf coast, because Lake Pontchartrain isn’t really a lake, and neither is Lake Borgne. Lake Borgne is actually a very wide-mouthed bay–its opening to the Gulf is actually wider than the mouths of both Pensacola and Choctawhatchee Bays in the panhandle of Florida, and Lake Borgne opens into Lake Pontchartain through the Rigolets–a very narrow passage connecting the two “lakes” and therefore making Pontchartrain actually an extension of Borgne “bay” (Chef Menteur pass also connects the two ‘lakes’; I always forget about that one because I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve crossed the bridge at the Rigolets, and of course, the twin spans are close to it where Pontchartrain begins to narrow towards the mouth). So, technically (Pontchartrain is shallow), a low draught boat could sail from the Gulf to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The British attack on New Orleans during the War of 1812 actually sailed into Lake Borgne, because it was faster and easier to get to the city that way than sailing up the river against the strong current. (In fairness, Lake Borgne also used to be more enclosed; those wetlands are sadly long gone.)

New Orleans geography is interesting, isn’t it?

The notorious MR-GO channel (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet), was cut from the river into Lake Borgne as a shipping channel to make it faster for ships to get from the gulf to port in New Orleans. Naturally, no one really used it, and it gained notoriety when it was a channel for Katrina storm surge to devastate St. Bernard Parish and the lower 9th ward–being nicknamed the Hurricane Highway for the devastation it was responsible for, and the fact that it was barely used didn’t help matters. Environmentalists estimate Mr. Go was responsible for the loss of over 27000 acres of wetlands; it’s now closed for good and attempts to repair the damage it caused are still underway. The wetlands always served as a barrier to hurricane storm surges–those wetlands were not only critical for the environment and for fish, birds, etc.; but they slowed storm surge as it came rushing for the dry lands.

But you know, OIL.

I generally don’t waste time on regrets; what I always call the woulda-shoulda-coulda’s. But one thing I do regret is not focusing more in my work on the environmental costs Louisiana has paid over the years; and I also regret not getting to know the rest of the state better. New Orleans is first and foremost in my heart, of course, and always will be, but falling in love with Louisiana took a longer time for me, and I do regret that. I regret the free time I used to have not being used to explore the state more, getting to know it more, understanding the incredible culture and history of this bizarre state built by river silt drained from 2/3rds of the country. I never really had a dependable car before–one that I didn’t take on a long drive without some degree of depridation and fear and crossing of fingers. Now, of course, I have a highly dependable car–but my weekends are always taken up by getting things done and the recharging of my batteries. Maybe the next time I have a three day weekend I’ll take a day and explore; there’s lots of interesting places that aren’t that far away–the old River Road, Jackson Barracks, the Battle of New Orleans battleground, and Houma…there’s so much of interest, and that’s not even crossing the lake!

Heavy thoughts as I await the storm’s outer bands to come to New Orleans–definitely a tourist who isn’t welcome here.

And on that note, I think I’m going to finish reading Lovecraft Country.

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Good morning, Wednesday, how is everyone holding up so far this week?

So Laura apparently isn’t going to be too much of a thing in New Orleans, but things aren’t looking good for eastern Texas/western Louisiana. Keep safe, my friends, and everyone else, do keep them in your thoughts and send them positive energy, as I certainly shall be doing until this too has passed. It’s similar to 2005’s Rita; following the same path and intensifying pattern. We’ll still get about 2 to 4 feet of storm surge into Lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain, and a lot of sudden, intense rain (street flooding), but for the most part, New Orleans has yet again dodged a bullet.

And compared to a direct hit, yes, that’s not too much of a thing in New Orleans.

It was very strange to not have to go into the office this week (I did have to go by yesterday–and will again today–to get more supplies) to do any work; especially when you take into consideration the vacation days I took last week. I’ve not been into the office to actually work now since last Wednesday–a full seven days–and it’s made me feel very disconnected from my job this morning; I really don’t know how all of you who’ve been having to work at home all this time without ever going into your offices have managed to do that without feeling untethered at best, disconnected at worst. At this point, it feels as though the pandemic has been going on forever, and the last days of what was previously our normal existence–late February, early March–seem like ancient history to me now, and I’ve already accepted the fact that life, that world, that way of existing, is gone forever. Whatever it is we will see when this ends–should it ever end–will be completely different. This is one of those “sea change” experiences, where life and society and culture change irrevocably forever. The world before the first World War ceased to exist after it ended; the interregnum between the two wars was a kind of stasis world, where all the problems unresolved by the Treaty of Versailles coupled with the crash of the American–and by extension, world–economy created a bizarre vacuum which fascism swept in to fill, with the inevitable war that followed–one that took a look at what had been, up to that time, called “the Great War” and basically said, “Hold my beer, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” The world in the spring of 1914 was almost completely different in almost every way in the fall of 1945–a span of only thirty one years.

So what will our world, culture and society look like in a post-pandemic environment? Will we ever get to said post-pandemic environment? Or will those of us who survive this look back at this time and say, “ah, yes, the beginning of the dystopia?”

How depressing. Which is one of many reasons why I never look forward or back, and try to live in the now. The now is depressing enough as is, if you let it be.

While I didn’t work on the book yesterday or read anything, I did educate myself somewhat by watching the Kings and Generals channel on Youtube, something I discovered recently. I watched the episodes on the Battle of Lepanto and The 1565 Siege of Malta, which were extremely informative and educational. I had previously watched the Fall of Constantinople in 1453; the Sack of Constantinople in 1204; the Battle of Mojacs; and the Siege of Vienna. Most of my study of European history has always been western-centric, primarily focusing on Great Britain, Spain, and France, with a smattering of Germany/Holy Roman Empire thrown in for good measure (and primarily the Hapsburgs); it is only recently that I’ve realized how much I’ve not looked at eastern Europe, other than some post Peter the Great Russian history–which also is primarily because it impacted western Europe. My knowledge of Asian history is non-existent; and if you ignore the scanty knowledge of ancient Egypt, I really don’t know much about African history either, other than the colonial period and not much of that. I also don’t know much about Latin America, either. Several years ago–after the Italy trip of beloved memory–I started looking into Venetian history, which is entangled heavily with that of the Byzantine Empire and its successor, the Ottoman Empire–both of which I know very little about, and as I started reading more about these eastern European empires (the Venetian included), I began to get a better concept and grasp on how little of world history I actually knew.

I would love to have the time to study more of the history of Constantinople/Istanbul, as the capital of two major historical empires that covered 1500 years of human history.

We also watched a two part documentary on HBO about the Michelle Carter/Conrad Roy case, I Love You Now Die. If the names mean nothing to you, it’s the case where the boyfriend committed suicide while his girlfriend was texting him supposedly ordering him to do it. The facts of the case–which I hadn’t really looked much into before–aren’t what they seem and it was an interesting case; her conviction, held up under appeal, set a legal precedent that can be seen as either scary or good. Was she a sociopath? Or were they both emotionally damaged teenagers locked into a strange co-dependent relationship that was actually toxic, made it even more dangerous because no one else knew how toxic it had actually become? As I watched, I wondered–as I am wont to do–how I would tell the story were I to fictionalize it, and finally decided that the best way to do it would be from multiple points of view: both mothers, the sister of the suicide, and one of the Michelle’s “friends” from high school–all of whom claimed to not be really friends of hers in the first place–and the real story is loneliness, on the parts of both kis, really. A truly sad story, without any real answers.

While I was making condom packs yesterday I also continued with my 1970’s film festival by watching the 1972 Robert Redford film The Candidate, which is one of the most cynical political films I’ve ever seen–and almost every political film made since that time has been highly cynical. The 1970’s was an interesting decade for film; a transitional period where the old Hollywood was done away with once and for all and cynical, brutal realism took its place. Watching these films has also reminded me, sometimes painfully, how questionable style and design choices were in that decade–clothing, cars, buildings, etc. It was an ugly decade–remember the hair styles, with the carefully blown dry “feathered bangs” hair-sprayed into place? Sideburns and porn-staches? The bell bottoms and earth tones? The enormous steel cars that were essentially tanks? How dirty everything seemed, and how trash littered the sides of the roads and waterways? It’s all there in these films, as well as that dark, bitter cynicism.

The Candidate is about an idealistic young lawyer who works for social justice causes named Bill McKay, whose father was a powerful two-term governor of California. Recruited by a political operative played to sleazy perfection by Peter Boyle, McKay–who has always disdained politics–agrees to run for senator against a long-term, popular Republican incumbent. No one expects him to win, and McKay agrees to it so he can talk about issues that are important to him–and he immediately makes it clear he wants his campaign to have nothing to do with his father. The movie follows him from his own first faltering public appearances and watches as he slowly develops into an actual politician. He’s perfectly fine with everything, and he wins the primary–but the numbers extrapolate to a humiliating defeat in the general…so he starts watering down his message, speaking in generalities and never addressing issues directly–and his campaign begins to take off, and winning becomes more important to him than the issues, to the point he even allows his father, played with sleazy perfection by two-time Oscar winner Melvyn Douglas, to get involved in the campaign. He pulls off the upset and wins, and as the celebrations begin, he asks his campaign manager, “So, what happens now?” as no thought has ever been put into the future should he actually win; and that’s how the movie ends, with that question unanswered. It’s a very strong indictment of modern politics, and still relevant today; essentially, he wins because he is handsome and never says anything that means anything. We never really are sure, as the viewer, what he wants and what he stands for; which is a very deliberate choice by the filmmakers–we’re basically shown a little bit behind the curtain, but mostly we see what the voters would see. This movie doesn’t have a Frank Capra ending, but the typical cynical view of the 1970’s. The screenplay, incidentally, won an Oscar.

Aliens was the second movie on yesterday’s condom packing double feature. I had originally intended to watch Alien and Aliens back to back; don’t remember why I didn’t rewatch Aliens back then, but I didn’t, but I also figured it was equally appropriate to rewatch the day after rewatching Jaws, because it too is a monster movie, and one of the best of all time. Sigourney Weaver is even better in this one than she was in the first; and while I love Marlee Matlin and think she’s a terrific talent, I still think Weaver should have got the Oscar for this (if not for Alien). Once again, a primary theme for the movie is “no one listens to the woman who is always proven to be right”–amazing how timeless that theme has proven to be–and again, as in the first film, the Ripley character is given a relationship to soften her and make her more “womanly”; in the first film it’s the cat–which really, I felt, weakened her character, while at least in this one it’s the little girl, Newt, that she risks her life to go back for when everyone else, including me, is screaming get the fuck out of there are you fucking crazy? There are also some other terrific performances in this movie, which is a non-stop adrenaline ride, including Bill Paxton’s first performance of note as Hudson; Michael Biehn (why was he not a bigger star?) in a great follow-up to The Terminator as Hicks; and Paul Reiser, who was so sleazily perfect as the company rep (and should have been nominated for an Oscar himself) that I have never been able to stand watching him in anything else since I saw this movie for the first time because I hated him so much as Burke that I cannot see him as anything else. Everyone in the cast is terrific; but there are some small things that date the film–Hudson makes an illegal alien joke about Vasquez (would this still be a thing that far into the future?); the analog transmissions rather than digital; and of course–the cigarette smoking; would cigarettes never evolve over time?

If all goes well, I expect to be here tomorrow morning. Have a great day, Constant Reader.

Eyes Open

Well, it’s Tuesday and so far, we’re still here.

This time of year is always enervating, to say the least; one always wants to keep a close and careful eye on any and every storm that comes into the Gulf of Mexico, but at the same time it’s very easy to fall prey to panic and fear. It’s never easy, particularly around the anniversary of Katrina (fifteen years ago) and all those memories that entails, and while Marco fortunately fizzled somewhat, making landfall as a mere tropical depression (nothing to be sneezed at, in and of itself), one always has to remember Laura is still out there, and there’s yet another making its way across the Atlantic in our general direction–or at least there was; I’ve not heard a word about the system that will become the N storm, should it become organized.(I just looked for it on-line and can find nothing, so I am assuming it just fizzled out and died, which is, of course, good news for now). We’re going to be on the wet side of Laura, should she not continue tacking to the west, so we need to be braced for that, too.

I rewatched Jaws yesterday for the first time since the summer of 1975, when we went to see it in the theater after church (we often went to see matinees after church on Sundays; kind of like a treat of sorts. Now that I think about it, I wonder if it was a bribe to get us not to complain about going to church in the first place? Ironically, I didn’t mind going to church once I’d met some of the other kids and got active in the Youth Group–how things have changed, eh?). The theater was so crowded the usher actually had to find us seats, and the only three together (Dad didn’t go to church with us) were in the center front row. IMAGINE watching Jaws on the big screen in the front row! It’s actually a very well-made movie, and it still holds up after all these years; it didn’t scare me at all the way it did that first time because, of course, I still remembered all the jump scares and all the shark attacks–which clearly means the movie had made an impression on me. I had already read the book before we went to see the film; and the changes made to the movie from the story of the book–Mrs. Brody didn’t have an affair with the oceanographer in the movie and the ending was different–actually improved the story; the ending of the book wouldn’t have played in the movie (the shark finally dies as its coming in for a final attack on Sheriff Brody–just stops moving and disappears into the depths, and he swims for shore) and I also liked that the oceanographer didn’t die in the movie (the shark kills him when he’s in the cage; Brody is conflicted about this because he knew his wife was fucking the kid), but the end of the movie is kind of anticlimactic. But Jaws was the movie that changed everything: it was the first summer blockbuster, which changed Hollywood and how movies are released; it started out national obsession with sharks–there would be no “Shark Week” without Jaws; it turned Stephen Spielberg from a nobody into an A-list director; and–this is just a theory–set the stage for the revival of horror films that was to come in a few years, with Halloween and Friday the 13th, because above all else that Jaws was, it was a monster movie that scared people. I bought a copy of the book a few years ago–I think the fortieth anniversary edition of it–and have always meant to get around to rereading it; I still haven’t.

Jaws was also a bestseller, and it also set the stage for the huge hit the movie was, and the success of the movie also brought the book back to the bestseller lists. Peter Benchley, who’d written a non-fiction book about the sea already, became a bankable author–his next novel, The Deep, which I would argue is a better book than Jaws, was an instant bestseller and of course became a huge hit film–but the movie wasn’t as good as the movie of Jaws, and the success of the film was largely driven by the images of Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt, her nipples clearly visible (I could be wrong, but those images might have started the wet T-shirt craze as well; who knows?), and I’d always meant to reread The Deep as well. When I was acquiring Benchley novels, triggered by the anniversary of Jaws, I also got some of his other, later books–also successful, not to the level of the earlier books, which include The Island (which I liked) and The Girl of the Sea of Cortez, which is probably his best, and definitely the most literary, of his books.

Today all of our appointments were canceled, just in case, so it’s another work-at-home day for me; I do have to run over to the office to restock my condom packing supplies as well as drop off the boxes I made yesterday, and I am not really sure what movies I want to watch today. After I finished working yesterday I managed to get another chapter done in Bury Me in Shadows, which was pleasing, Ironically, I found myself doing precisely the thing I described yesterday–revising and editing without looking at the hard copy pages, only to remember and discover that I had input the changes exactly as detailed in the notes–but am also getting a little worried that I am not remembering things and am making continuity errors; so to ease that worry I’m probably going to sit down and reread the first five chapters again before I started on Chapter Six tonight–which means I probably won’t have time to read Lovecraft Country tonight, alas. I’m also planning on making dinner tonight–it’s been a hot minute, believe me–and so my time this evening will be very limited, sadly.

We also started watching the documentary series The Vow, currently airing on HBO MAX last night, and it’s absolutely fascinating. This first episode was all about the people who are telling the story of the documentary getting involved in NXIVM, and I have to say, listening to the leaders and their conversations about working on yourself and being honest with yourself and realizing your own potential and that you often set up your own roadblocks–I was frankly thinking there’s something to this and was thinking about the ways I often roadblock and self-defeat myself. Of course, it’s really just another “power of positive thinking/reaffirmations” thing, and there really is something to that methodology; of believing in yourself and having the confidence to really chase your dreams, and how so often the self-destruct mechanisms we all seem to have inevitably have something to do with negativity introduced into our psyches by someone else (example: I may not remember his name, but I will never forget that writing professor who told me I had no talent and would never be published, as long as I live), and why do we let those things fester in our minds and allow them to continue to affect us–in this case–some forty years later?

I’m really looking forward to the next episode.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, everyone, and see you tomorrow.

If This Was a Movie

I strongly suspect no one would buy into the concept of two hurricanes coming ashore in relatively the same area in such a short period of time. One of Tim Dorsey’s novels had this as a plot point, and I found it so damned far-fetched I actually decided to never read another one of his novels.

My bad, Mr. Dorsey, and my apologies.

Management decided to close the office for today yesterday, due to the state of emergency with Marco heading for us; so I’ll spend most of my day making condom packs and watching HBO MAX films while waiting for his untimely and unwanted arrival, all the while muttering prayers to every deity I can think of (agnostic, but it never hurts) so we don’t lose power. This morning, though, Marco has weakened to a tropical storm and has slowed down; I’m not exactly sure when he is forecast to come ashore; it looks like much later tonight than forecast and it’s going to skim along the coast rather than turning and coming inland–yesterday it looked like we were getting a direct hit. Laura has also drifted west so we are no longer in her Cone of Uncertainty, and has also slowed–it looks like her eye will be making landfall on Thursday rather than Wednesday as originally forecast. I suppose we can now sigh with relief here in New Orleans in dodging two bullets rapidly fired at us; but there’s still potential for wind damage and flooding. Not to mention one of the worst things that could happen in New Orleans in August: a loss of power.

I spent some time on the book yesterday; I didn’t make as much progress as I should have (do I ever?) but I am pleased with the work I am doing. There are good bones to this book; but the muscle tissue and sinew needs exercise and it also needs to lose some body fat. That’s why it’s taking me longer than I anticipated–I often get to a part where I think, ugh, I don’t want to fix this and make it better, it’s good enough and just as I am about to scroll on–I grab the print out with the post-its and scribbled notes on the pages (surprisingly enough, I remember most of it subconsciously, apparently–more on that oddity later) and force myself to fix it. Having the worked-on manuscript pages and post-its and notes in my journal and my notebook is a tremendous help; this is how I learned how to write a novel in the first place and it’s surprisingly helpful in accountability and in correcting laziness. I haven’t done this in years–certainly not this thoroughly–and often only work on electronic files. My working habit of writing books chapter by chapter and dividing up the electronic files that way–Chapter 1-3, for example, is the third draft of chapter one–and I rarely pull it all together into one document before turning it in. Having the actual physical document, and reading several chapters in a row as I correct and edit them rather than doing an electronic chapter file has helped me catch a lot of repetition, contradiction, and holes in the story. The way I’ve been doing this for the last ten years or so, which is undoubtedly faster but far less careful, probably isn’t the best way for me to be doing this. I didn’t reinvent the wheel and make it better after all. I can still write quickly, the way I always have–spewing out anywhere from three thousand to seven thousand words in one sitting–but I shouldn’t, mustn’t, won’t edit and revise that way anymore.

Something peculiar did happen yesterday–this is the more on this oddity later segment of the blog–in which I worked on Chapter Four and got pretty far into it without referring to the manuscript hard copy pages and notes. In fact, I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I got to a part I didn’t want to rewrite (even though it was necessary) and was going to pass through, thinking you can fix this in a later draft and stopped myself, thinking, what if you DON’T catch this next time? And why be lazy and ensure that the next time will take longer when you can just fix it NOW? I reached for the pages and realized that I had been revising/editing/rewriting without referring to them…and then discovered that most of the corrections I had already made were the same as the ones on the pages. Some of the changes were different–and better than the ones in my scribbled notes–and I had made changes to things I hadn’t caught in the hard copy. So, I interpreted this to be mean that I now have the voice and tone and mood of the story so deeply embedded into the creative corners of my mind that I know how it’s supposed to sound–and I also know the story so I can put the pieces in that are missing to make it come together properly.

It was actually quite marvelous.

I also spent some time with Lovecraft Country, which just gets better and better the further into the book I get. There were, as there have been every time I’ve sat down with the book, moments when the racism was so horrific I wanted to put the book down, but I reminded myself other people can’t walk away from racism by putting a book down and kept reading. It’s truly a terrific novel, and I am greatly enjoying it. We also watched the second episode last night, which is also fantastic. The show is pretty faithful to the book, with some minor tweaks and changes here and there, and it actually enriches the story in the book by expanding on it and the changes aren’t jarring; the fit in the context of the story the show is telling. I’m very glad the show was made, glad I am reading the source material–similarly to how I felt with Watchmen and its source material last year. It’s wonderful that so many books are being made into great television series; it’s enormously satisfying to read the book while watching the show. I did this first with Big Little Lies; and of course intended to do it with Little Fires Everywhere but failed; I’ve yet to read that book and am now thinking I should move it up in the TBR pile (I was planning on reading Babylon Berlin next; I may still go ahead and read that but keep Little Fires Everywhere on deck). I also want to start dipping into reading short stories again–I’ve got the Paretsky collection, and the new Lawrence Block anthology, an so many other anthologies and single-author collections I’ve not finished–but it seems like there’s never enough time in the day, you know?

And it’s almost September already; how scary is that? Time is so weird anymore; it seems like we’ve been living in this pandemic forever, and this year has lasted a century, and yet still I looked at today’s date and freaked out a little bit because it’s like, did I waste this entire year already? There’s always something, I guess, I can berate myself about. It really never ends around here.

I found myself thinking about short stories I have written, or are in progress–there’s a ridiculous amount of them, seriously–and wondering about when I’m going to be able to get back to writing more of them, or finishing some of the ones that are currently in progress. This lengthy birthday weekend, followed up with an extra unexpected work at home day, has me feeling extremely well rested and my batteries recharged; I always forget how necessary that is, and with this weird new world we find ourselves living in these days–I forget that I used to take a three day weekend every six weeks or so in order to do just that: recharge my batteries. It’s just odd because I guess with the work-at-home days every week where I don’t actually have to go into the office, I had the mentality that I didn’t necessarily need to take time off periodically for mental health purposes; that insidious sense that working at home isn’t really working.

Sigh.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely, storm-free Monday, Constant Reader.

Month: August 2020

Should’ve Said No

You’re Not Sorry

All Too Well

Breathe

Clean

Don’t Blame Me

I Forgot That You Existed

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Eyes Open

If This Was a Movie

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