Today is two things–the start of hurricane season and the start of Pride Month. I have a Pride post that I definitely want to finish and post at some point, and I’ve not really decided what kind of entries I want to do–social media and here–to mark the month. I still think the thirty-four convictions of Greg Stillson was the best gift for Pride American queers have ever been given, to be honest, and I still am a little in shock that it happened–trial and verdict. And of course the traitors have all lost their treasonous little minds, too–my personal favorite is “if they can do this to him they can do it to anyone!”
Um yes, that’s precisely how laws and the judicial system work–no one is above the law in the United States.
Period.
I way overslept this morning, but we stayed up super late last night watching Bodkin (we only have two episodes left to go, and it’s really interesting; much more complex and clever than I’d originally given it credit for) but I wound up not getting into bed until midnight, and I didn’t get up until about nine thirty this morning. While I wanted to sleep in, I didn’t want to sleep in that late; I feel discombobulated and like I won’t be able to get the things done this morning I wanted to get done–but that’s just loser talk, methinks, and a way to give myself excuses for not taking the books to the library sale or washing the car or picking up the mail and dry cleaning or go to the gym. But now that my coffee is kicking in, I’m feeling more alive and awake and like fuck yeah I can get that shit done, get out of my way.
Always nice.
Yesterday was a good day. I worked at home, got all that done while laundering the bed linens, and ran my errands, did some cleaning around the house and later in the day we had a massive and marvelous thunderstorm. I grabbed The Rival Queens (my current nonfiction read) and spent some marvelous time with it in my easy chair. I do love that period of time, and I’ve always wanted to write about an adventurous fictional woman who was a member of Catherine de Medici’s Flying Squadron; an accomplished seductress spy, navigating the complicated politics of France during the Wars of Religion and the decline of the Valois dynasty. It was truly a fascinating period, not only in France, but throughout Europe. My next non-fiction read will probably be The King’s Assassin, the book on which Mary & George was based, and that’s another fun period I would like to write about. Someday. There really was nothing like the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for upheaval and Game of Thrones-like cutthroat politics.
I also watched LSU’s thrilling baseball win over Wofford in the regionals yesterday, and they play again today at 4. GEAUX TIGERS!
I also looked at the submissions call for the story I am working on–thinking the deadline was May 31 only to discover it was actually June 1, which means I can let the story sit a while longer before revising it one more time to see if I can make it stronger. I am very pleased with how it’s going so far, and looking forward to getting some more writing done today. I am a little behind on my schedule thus far (the one I made earlier this week, remember?), but the deadline being later certainly has made that a bit simpler and easier to navigate without feeling pressure.
And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines. I’ll most likely be back later–that pride entry I want to write–and I also need to think about what kind of entries to do for Pride Month. Anyway, have a lovely Saturday, and I’ll check in with you again later, okay?
I read Dune for the first time when I was in high school. At the time, it was merely a trilogy, and the original was just starting to move from cult classic to widely read accepted classic. In the 1970s, the book was noted primarily for its commentary on ecology and the environment. I had never read anything like that. I’d not been into reading science fiction up until that time, and I didn’t really much care for science fiction movies, either; with their incredibly low budgets and amateurish special effects that always took you out of the story no matter how much you were enjoying it. I used to watch Flash Gordon serials, when some of those afternoon kids’ shows that Chicago’s television stations would run them–and while badly produced on a shoestring, the stories themselves were compelling enough to hold my interest, and Buster Crabbe was certainly good-looking enough to keep me interested.
I digress.
But reading Dune turned me into more of a science fiction fan than I had been already. Like I said, I’d never read anything like it, and while my teenaged self primarily was interested in the space opera elements of the story–prince loses everything to mortal enemies, but gets revenge on everyone, defeats the enemies of his family, and rises to become not only the new emperor but messiah of a new religion that takes over the vast reaches of the empire, and the holy war (jihad) of conversion that followed. One of the things I loved about the way Frank Herbert wrote the book was how it bounced around the galaxy, uncovering the mindsets and other conspiracies going on throughout the empire (politics) in what seemed like disconnected stories that all converged in the end and were resolved…while showing the connections that were there all along. I read the other two books in the original trilogy that year–Dune Messiah and Children of Dune–and I always thought the second was perhaps the weakest of the series. I’ve never reread any of the books–I think the series grew to six or seven before Herbert died and his heirs took over; I’ve not read any not-Frank generated Dune novels–other than the first, and I know the last time I reread Dune, I was really taken aback by the writing, which seemed poor. I would like to revisit Dune Messiah at some point because it’s more political than anything else; and also set up the rest of the series while the original remains as the only book of the series that can be read as a stand-alone.
Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the reluctant messiah
Star Wars was released the summer before my senior year in high school, and it changed special effects, and science fiction films, forever. So when the David Lynch film was released in the early 1980;s, I went into it expecting it to be more than it turned out to be. I had wondered how all the internal monologues would be handled, as well as the entire backstory that was necessary for the film to make sense to people who’ve not read the book. It was a big film, to be sure, but the effects weren’t great–and the choice to hear the internal thoughts as whispers, which meant almost fifty percent of the picture was whispered–weakened it. And really, most of the real action of the story takes place in the second half–and basically the Lynch film condensed the second half of the book to a quick transitional jump, and it wrapped up very quickly. (Having Paul bring rain to Arrakis in the final scene was also a bad choice, which negated everything about Dune’s ecology and the secret of the worms.) But I did like it, if parts (mostly Harkonnens) were over the top. But I was kind of excited to hear Denis Villeneuve was shooting it in two parts. I enjoyed the first part, but the second? Exceptional, and proved that Villeneuve’s vision for the property was the right one.
Dune Part 2 follows the book far more closely than any other adaptation has, which usually seems to run out of steam and time by the time Paul and his mother flee into the desert to seek safety with the Fremen. I also really liked how reluctant Paul was to assume leadership, or to launch his “religion”–because he IS the fulfillment of the Bene Gesserit “prophecy,” which was really just propaganda spread by Sisterhood missionaries centuries, if not millennia, before. He can see the possible futures as well as the entire past, and he knows his holy war will kill millions, if not billions, and he doesn’t want to be responsible for that. Dune Part 2 plays like a galactic Game of Thrones, and I appreciated all the politics on top of the action. I feel like this Villeneuve version of the story is the closest to what Herbert wrote and created. It’s an epic film, shot on an epic scale, with stunning visuals and strong performances–Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha makes you forget all about Sting’s bizarre performance in the Lynch version–and I do look forward to the next chapter in this sprawling saga.
Yesterday was quite pleasant, actually. I ran my errand quickly and worked on the apartment some more before watching the SEC Baseball tournament final and watching Dune Part 2 (more on that later) and this week’s Interview With the Vampire. I fell into bed shortly thereafter, and slept like the dead. As predicted, it’s Memorial Day and the final day of a long weekend, and I find myself wondering why I didn’t get more done. I know I still have stamina issues, but the. fact that my default is again berating myself rather than understanding why and letting myself off the hook tells me that mentally I am getting closer to myself after a long break–and that’s a good thing. I do have some things to do around here yet this morning that shouldn’t be too hard to deal with, and I want to get some writing done. I am going to the gym to start my rehab up again, and that will undoubtedly exhaust me, as will walking to the gym and back in the heat…and perhaps I should start thinking about driving, even if that means trying to find a place to park, which is never an easy thing to do and can very frustrating. I know, I know, the walking should be part of the workout, but walking that far in our excessive heat and humidity is debilitating…and maybe driving is just the thing to get me going regularly again.
One never knows, does one?
I also need to figure out why my vacuum cleaner isn’t working. I’d really prefer not to buy another one, as it seems like we just bought this one. Then again, COVID memory fog makes everything from the past seem like it was a very long time ago. But I do know it’s been at least two years since it last worked properly. Today I’ll sweep the rugs and shake them out, which is what I’ve been doing. Not great, but it does work and that’s really the most important thing. Maybe with my tax refund I can buy a new one.
LSU didn’t play great in the title game, falling to Tennessee 4-3, but they made it interesting in the bottom of the ninth, scoring two runs and stranding the tying run on second base. I’d say that’s a pretty good outcome, considering Tennessee is the top ranked team in the country (as they were last year) and LSU isn’t even ranked this season, and was the 11 seed in the tournament. They knocked out three top ten teams on their way to the finals, and remember–they won it all last year despite not winning the SEC, regular season or tournament. They’re pretty hot now, and are playing extremely well, so the postseason looks even more exciting than it did last week, to be honest. What great times to be an LSU fan, seriously–even if they don’t repeat, the baseball team is always fun to watch.
So, this morning I plan to get the kitchen rugs taken care of, then maybe take care of the living room floor as well, while trying to do some writing and reading. I need to make some to-do lists, update the bills log, and get ready for the work week which starts tomorrow, alas. I also don’t have an Admin Day to ease into the week, since I’ll having be to see clients tomorrow.
But I am feeling rested and relaxed, which is probably the most important thing for any weekend, really. We’ll probably finish watching Euphoria tonight, and I’m not really sure what to do about dinner. I have some fresh ground beef in the fridge, and I was thinking about sautéing it with mushrooms, onion and bell peppers, but I don’t know now if that’s a good use of the meat or not, but I don’t want to make meatballs and I already cooked out yesterday. I guess I can think about it later. It’s too early to make a decision about dinner anyway.
And on that incredibly dull note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be around the rest of the day.
I’ve always been interested in wrestling. I wanted to go out for the wrestling team in high school, but enough people were already bullying me and calling me a fag, and as painful as those words were, they were made worse by the knowledge they were true–and absolutely godawful knowing I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant….but I knew by their faces and the tone of voice it was spoken in that it wasn’t a good thing. The last thing in the world I wanted was to wear one of those skintight singlets and get aroused for the world to see (although I learned, much later, that it was so common no one ever said anything about it; but even now I am not certain I would have been given that same grace as a sexual suspect); that would be the end of the world as I knew it…so going out for the team wasn’t an option for me, and I kind of regret that fear kept me from something I’d enjoy.
But as I was figuring out my sexuality and trying to figure out what all was entailed by being an object of scorn and disgust by everyone, I started being drawn to professional wrestling. The heyday of pro wrestling was long in the past in the late 1960’s and 1970s, and the WWE boom was yet to make it mainstream once again. But the body contact and domination/submission aspects were the closest thing I could actually find on television that was sort of like a male/male sexual experience–which made my liking for pro wrestling even more suspect and something I couldn’t really talk about with anyone because of course he likes pro wrestling, the fag.
So, I was closeted in that way, too.
But one day when I was a teenager I was in a store–a Walgreens or something–and I saw a professional wrestling magazine with a cover story on Kevin Von Erich, and he was like nothing I’d ever seen before–a tall, long, lean and muscular body in white trunks and barefoot, and handsome in a rugged kind of way. I bought the magazine, and became a fan of the entire Von Erich family…and also was aware of how tragedy haunted the family. When I first heard about this movie, I had to see it…although I wasn’t sure how telling this story would have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
But…I did enjoy it. A lot.
It’s actually very well done, but it’s also kind of sad to watch almost from the very beginning. The movie also cut out one of the brothers, but seriously, another death in this grim film might have been too much for any viewer to handle or take.
The film is very well done, and the story is sad–one about toxic masculinity, distant and emotionally unavailable parents, and how the dream, the drive, of being at the top of the wrestling game caused so much damage. Afraid to admit weakness, not really able to ask anyone else for help when struggling emotionally, the suicides make complete sense. The Von Erich brothers were so tightly bonded they didn’t have room for much else in their lives–friendship, love, etc.–other than the grind of training and wrestling and tightening the bond with each other. The cast is brilliant–great casting, but ultimately flawed in the physical side of things; the Von Erichs were taller than the actors playing them, and of course Kevin was never as jacked as Zac Efron; those kinds of bodies were extremely rare during those decades. Kerry was big and muscular and defined, but he’d also been an Olympic wannabe in discus and javelin.
There’s a particularly moving scene towards the end of the film where Kevin finally breaks down from how overwhelming all the tragedies have been and the toll on his soul and psyche, and his young sons come to comfort him…and he tells them how much he misses his brothers and misses being a brother; the boys tell him they’ll be his brothers, and he apologizes to them because “men aren’t supposed to cry.”
Maybe if the Von Erich brothers had been raised to not believe in toxic masculinity and the narrow definition of what a man is, and allowed themselves to be vulnerable and get help for their demons, the story may not have been as tragic.
Kevin’s sons now wrestle professionally, and Kevin himself doesn’t believe in a curse on the family–though he did for a number of years, but he’s made peace with the past and focuses on his family.
I really enjoyed the movie, but it’s depressing. Four out of five stars.
Three of the actual Von Erichs, with Kevin in the center
I slept well again last night, which was lovely. I did get some things done yesterday, which was great–but making groceries yesterday wore me out. But I did get the dry cleaning dropped off, and made some terrific progress on the apartment. And of course, the LSU-South Carolina semi-final of the SEC baseball tournament…in which LSU fell behind 8-0 in the early innings, only to come back and win 12-11 in the tenth inning and earn a spot in the championship to play Tennessee. The game is on at one, and I’ll be there in my easy chair promptly at two to watch the game. Yesterday’s game was wild–one of the wilder LSU games I’ve seen–but served as yet another reminder of how exciting (and hard on the heart) being an LSU fan can be. I have to run an errand this morning, but I also want to do some writing before the game as well as some more cleaning.
Hilariously, yesterday as I left to run my errands I thought oh it’s pleasant outside today before getting into the car and seeing that “pleasant” in this instance meant 88 degrees! Utter madness, and another example of how we adjust to the heat here. I had some more thoughts about the writing yesterday, so even as I didn’t get any writing done yesterday, a lot was incubating in my head and goddamn it that counts! We also watched this week’s servings of Hacks, and the season finale of Abbott Elementary, and two episodes of Euphoria, and man those kids are seriously fucked up. I want to watch Dune today–Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet, woo hoo!–which is three hours long (and a challenge to not seem that long, for sure) after the baseball game, but we’ll see. I think Paul is planning on not doing much of anything today, so he’ll be napping occasionally on the couch all day once the game starts, and we’ll see how that all goes. I also have some cooking to do today–well, food prep anyway; I want to make watermelon soup and chicken salad for Paul to snack on–and later on today I think I’ll probably cook out, maybe even during the baseball game as “tailgate adjacent”–or I could order pizza and cook out tomorrow, as is traditional for Memorial Day. That’s a definite thought, and I do need to order some things from Office Depot; maybe I could do that and order the pizza, take the car and get both at the same time? That could be a bit fun, and a definite possibility. But pizza for a baseball game rather than burgers and hot dogs on the grill? Not entirely sure there…but tomorrow IS Memorial Day, and maybe U Pizza won’t be open tomorrow? Or–I could order it from Midway on Freret and go pick it up in the car? I just don’t know; decisions, decisions.
But I also think today is going to be my first day on the way back to physical strength and stamina and so forth. I am going to use my back massage roller thing today, and the massage gun I got for Christmas with the money Dad gave me; I may even stretch out and shave my head and everything before I get cleaned up this morning. It doesn’t, in fact, hurt anything to stretch every day, or do some crunches to get the blood pumping in the morning. I am going to the gym tomorrow with Paul–another reason for getting the pizza today–for the first time in weeks, and this will be the start of a new workout regimen for me, that I hope I can stick to despite the misery of a New Orleans summer–and this is really the perfect time to start writing another Scotty book that takes place over the summer, too; I can absolutely relate to the misery the boys will be experiencing in the book from the heat. I am also a bit excited, to tell you the truth, about writing another Scotty; I do love the characters a lot. I also think today is the day to sit down and make a writing plan for the rest of the year, so I can stay on track.
Excellent plan, Gregalicious. May this ambition I am feeling carry me through the rest of the day and the rest of the weekend. I also have some emails to answer, and some correspondence to take care of, which is peculiar to be sure; who writes letters anymore? But I am disputing charges and things with my insurance and some other nightmarish nonsense, and I have to write those things out. (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana is garbage, and with Janky Jeff Landry running Louisiana, they’ll probably get a lot worse now that all branches of state government are controlled by Christofascists, trying to take the state back to 1860.) On the other hand, being a writer comes in handy for these letters, as does have a mostly logical brain that isn’t swayed by emotion–when I can control it, and usually, in writing things like this I can be very coldly analytical and brutal at the same time. (I have yet to ever write a complaint letter that did not bear fruit; they usually surrender than trying to use corporate-speak to tell me I am wrong, because they can’t answer all of my questions.)
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Memorial Day Eve, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.
Saturday and the weekend blooms this morning, huzzah huzzah! Well, I slept super-late for me this morning, not arising until a bit before ten, and I do have to run to the store to pick-up something I forgot yesterday (Sparky’s treats, and he is NOT happy to have had a treat-less 24 hours, believe you me), but other than that, I’ve pretty much decided to spend the day reading and not stressing about anything. I feel like I need a low-energy day, and since today is feeling that way, may as well make it today. I did spend some time yesterday reading my book, which I am really enjoying, and when Paul got home last night we watched the finale of Mary and George, which was kind of a letdown in some ways, and then the next two episodes of Bridgerton, which we are enjoying precisely because it’s just meant to be frothy fun–and that’s not a bad thing, and it’s not easy to do while making it all look easy. I don’t have much desire to read the books, to be honest, and the Regency period has never really interested me much; which is kind of interesting and perhaps something I should explore; but the wretched sons of George III and Queen Charlotte are sublimely uninteresting.
A wonderful thunderstorm woke me around six this morning–that, and a treat-less cat–which was marvelous, and I went right back to sleep. I also didn’t stay up super-late last night (eleven rather than ten), so that doesn’t explain it.
I also read some research for another book I am considering writing (separate from the Noah Presgrove death in Oklahoma one I’ve been talking about) and I think I am beginning to understand how I need to write that book, and how to write myself into it. I’ve also been thinking a lot about some other projects that I would like to get done, and now I need to make a plan and figure out how I am going to get everything done that needs to be done. I’ve already come up with a financial plan for the rest of the year (very little travel, very little spending, and trying to clear some debts), and now I need to just get it together for writing.
I think we will probably finish Bridgerton this weekend, and we also want to watch The Iron Claw. There are some other shows we are thinking about watching, and some that we need to catch up on…I’m still trying to figure out why only the first two episodes of After the Flood are available. We watched the first, but are holding off on the second until the rest are available to watch–and will probably have to go back and watch the first again.
Very exciting, aren’t I?
Louisiana’s “bathroom bill” is currently making its way through our demonic legislature, which is beginning to resist our Christofascist governor. They passed a law this week to display the Ten Commandments in every public school in the state (there will be lawsuits), and are working on legitimizing a voucher system so Louisiana taxpayers can pay to send rich kids to private school while defunding public education here, already deplorably underfunded…which makes me wonder; Louisiana Lottery proceeds were supposedly earmarked for public education–but we never hear that anymore, so where is that money going? For the record, this piece of shit makes Bobby Jindal look like a moderate, and look at the damage Jindal did in eight years….this guy is on track to drive Louisiana right into a drainage sewer canal much faster than Piyush ever dared to dream. Environmental protections stripped to benefit oil and petrochemical corporations? Done. Tax breaks for the wealthy? Done. Attempts to turn Louisiana into a theocracy? Well on its way! Thanks again, Louisiana bigots, for foisting this piece of shit and this sewage legislature on us all.
Jindal went out of office with his career and ambitions basically gone. Here’s hoping Landry’s fall from grace is swifter and even more brutal.
The other night I picked up an old favorite book I read originally when I was a teenager and realized, as I paged through it, that The Other by Thomas Tryon was probably one of the most influential books I’ve read, as far as my own writing style is concerned. Obviously the series books are different, but the stand-alones owe a lot to The Other, and probably one of the books I will write later this year will owe even more to it. I always forget it when someone tags me on social media to list books that made me who I am or influenced me or something like that, and I never remember The Other.
But looking through those pages, I remembered another book I read around the same time that also had a lot of influence on me as a writer, Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show.
Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the the only human creature in the town. It was a bad feeling, and it usually came on him in the mornings early, when the streets were completely empty, the way they were one Saturday morning in late November. The night before Sonny had played his last game of football for Thalia High School, but it wasn’t thet that made him feel so strange and alone. It was the look of the town.
There was only one car parked on the courthouse square–the night watchman’s old white Nash. A cold norther was singing in off the plains, swirling long ribbons of dust down Main Street, the only street in Thalia with businesses on it. Sonny’s pickup was a ’41 Chevrolet, not at its best on cold mornings. In front of the picture show it coughed out an had to be choked for a while, but then it started again and jerked its way to the red light, blowing out spumes of white exhaust that the wind whipped away.
At the red light he starts to turn south toward the all-night café, but when he looked north to see if anyone was coming he turned that way instead. No one at all was coming but he saw his young friend Billy, headed out. He had his broom and was sweeping right down the idle of the highway into the gusting wind. Billy lived at the poolhall with Sam the Lion, and sweeping was all he really knew how to do. The only trouble was he overdid it. He swept the poolhall in the mornings, the café in the afternoons, and the picture show at night, and always, unless someone specifically told him to stop, he just kept sweeping, down the sidewalk, on through the town sometimes one way nd sometimes another, sweeping happily until someone noticed him and brought him back to the pool hall.
Sonny drove up beside him and honked. Billy quit sweeping at once and got in the pickup. He was a stocky boy, not very smart, but perfectly friendly; picking him up made Sonny feel less lonesome. If Billy was out the poolhall must be open, and when the poolhall was open he was never lonesome. One of the nice things about living in Thalia was that the poolhall often opened by 6:30 or 7 a.m., the reason being that Sam the Lion, who owned it, was a very bad sleeper.
I think it was seventh or eighth grade when I first read The Last Picture Show. I had a battered copy that I got at a flea market (my grandmother’s second husband loved a flea market, and I always went with him whenever possible to look for books), and I hadn’t known the Oscar winning film (which I wouldn’t see uncut for over a decade until VCR’s became a thing and video rentals) was based on a book. There were some differences between the book and the movie–I never understood why they changed the name of the town from Thalia to Anarene–but for the most part, the movie was pretty faithful to the book.
I had meant to reread the book a few years ago–it had been years–but quit when I got to the part where the town’s older teenage boys decided to fuck a calf; I didn’t remember that from early reads and…it yucked me out. Interestingly enough, it never used to bother me, and I am not sure how I feel about that…or if I just went yuck and kept reading, or skimmed and moved on, but as an adult, I appreciate the book all the more, especially since I wound up living in a small rural town and going to a small rural high school several years after that first read. I never asked any of the kids I went to school with if they ever fucked animals–definitely didn’t want to know for sure–but I always did wonder, and there were definitely some kids I thought oh yeah.
But the book, about these kids learning about love and life and sex and growing up in a dying dusty small town whose best days are already past, has always resonated with me. My parents grew up in that same kind of environment in Alabama during the same time period, and there was so much…I don’t know, boredom and poverty in those small rural towns? The book and movie both were billed as the story of the explosive boredom in a small town. And that’s the part that people generally forget when thinking about the past and rural living–how boring it was. You had to find things to entertain yourself as a teenager, and that can lead to all kinds of trouble. McMurtry gave all of his characters humanity, and they were completely believable. There was the preacher’s kid, so uptight with his Christianity and strict life that he eventually takes a little girl with what is generally assumed as molestation in mind, and yet you can’t feel a little bit of sympathy for this poor kid with his horrific cruel parents (spare the rod and all that nonsense) who finally snaps. Everyone thinks he’s a “homo” anyway–which is really funny, because the person who really torments poor Joe Bob Blanton is the football coach, Coach Popper–who, despite being the embodiment of the town’s thoughts on masculinity (toxic, of course) is the town’s real homosexual–and he also accuses the English teacher of it, because he’s kind and gentle, and ruins him.
Very 1950s there, actually, and only emphasized to me how dangerous letting anyone know I was gay could be, and why I was so scared of my true self.
Great book, great movie–but please don’t mention Texasville to me. I hated that book.
I don’t remember how I initially stumbled across a movie from 1970 (or 1971, could have been 1969 for that matter) called Something for Everyone; all I know was it was during the pandemic. It’s a very dark comedy, and it’s so queer you’ll be amazed that it was from that time period. It was directed by Harold Prince (yes, that Harold Prince), and starred beautiful young Michael York and a glamorous post-Mame-on-Broadway Angela Lansbury. I loved the film, and really, if anything, it has a lot more in common with Saltburn than The Talented Mr. Ripley does. So when I watched it, I was delighted to see that it, like so many films, was based on a book, and I decided I wanted to read said book, The Cook by Harry Kressing.
“Based on” as it turned out, was a bit of a stretch.
One hill stood out. It was steeper than the others, and higher. Also, it had no peak. While the rounded, wooded tops of the surrounding hills undulated, one into the other, this one broke the rhythm with an abrupt, flat surface.
For a few minutes Conrad just stared, shielding his eyes from the sun. Then he dismounted and dragged his bicycle off the road. When he was out of sight he chained it to a tree and concealed his rucksack under some brush. Then he started up the hill.
It was an easy climb until near the top. There he discovered a sheer cliff. It was at least twenty feet high. But if it ran all the way around no one would be able to reach the plateau.
Nevertheless, he circumambulated rather more than half the hill without finding a break in the cliff face. He began to have doubts. Possibly ladders were required. They could be brought, or lowered down.
Disappointed, he increased his pace.
In his haste he nearly missed the stairway cut in the cliff face. The steps were very narrow and high, and at a nasty angle.
When he gained the plateau he encountered another barrier: a deep moat, with water in the bottom and smooth, sheer sides, encircled the fantastic castle-like structure. There was a single drawbridge, up and locked. There was absolutely no way across.
For the record, if you are ever asked for an example of a movie that’s better than the book, feel free to use The Cook filmed as Something for Everyone, because the movie is much better.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from the cook, but the underlying story, the theme, has to do with Conrad’s obsession with a castle that has been abandoned because the family that owns it no longer can afford to maintain it and have moved out to a smaller mansion. Both the book and the movie follow this central premise, the difference being the queerness. The Cook’s queerness comes from it’s upset of the status quo; someone coming along who takes charge of all the folks in this small area of Germany who are all just drifting along in their lives lazily. In the book, this is because he is such a master of cooking that no one can resist giving him what he wants once he feeds them. His mastery of cooking is so complete that he can make a delicious diet for someone and they can eat everything they want and lose weight; if they need to gain weight he can feed them to that end. Feeling ill? His meal will cure you, and on and on.
The book is more of a fairy tale with a primary moral to it–don’t be seduced by pleasure. In the book, the pleasure all comes from food and Conrad’s mastery is gained by his skills, and his strength of will. His dream is to have banquets of incredible food and great conversation in the castle, so he starts training his employers to be good hosts, spending money on serving wear of which they could be proud, and so on. The villagers and the family, which he marries into, eventually become such gluttons that no one ever leaves the palace and everything goes to waste. It’s a dark little story, very moralistic and very Kafka-esque in writing style.
I enjoyed the book, but I enjoyed the film much more. I watched it on Youtube, and I wish it could be restored digitally and released to streaming. I liked that the film had the same moral–only in the movie it was Michael York’s beauty and sexuality that provided the convincing pleasure to everyone involved. This would be an excellent film to remake with one of our amazingly sexy, beautiful and talented crop of young actors.
Well, good morning, Constant Reader, and I do hope everything is going well for you on this lovely Saturday. I slept deeply and well (and a little late), and feel pretty good this sunny morning. My primary priority for this weekend is to get my taxes finished and to my accountant (we’ve already filed an extension because I couldn’t get my shit together last weekend), do some writing and cleaning and run some errands, and relax as much as I can. Last night after getting everything done that needed doing, I ordered us a pizza for U Pizza (formerly Slice) on St. Charles Avenue, and we watched some more documentaries about child abuse reform schools for “troubled” teens, The Program. It’s very chilling to see how these kids were treated both in these schools and in those camps (Hell Camp), and I imagine we are also going to have to, at some point, watch the documentary about conversion therapy camps, too. Watching these has given me an idea for another Kansas book (I already had the idea, but this was excellent research for it), which made me think about some other things about my writing: what inspires it, and what issues do I take on in my work? I think part of the issues I am having with really getting back into the writing (where I’m writing three thousand words or more every day) is because I am not addressing issues I am passionate about, things I write about and learn more about and should be more concerned about.
And now that uneducated white supremacists are now in power in Louisiana, I’m going to have a lot of issues here to take up. So far, Governor Landry is unchecked in his attempts to turn Louisiana into an authoritarian state, and I doubt very seriously any Louisiana politician is going to oppose his horrific agenda for Louisiana–he’s actually worse than Jindal ever dared to be, and he was a monster who left the state in shambles. It’s kind of scary knowing our governor is someone who wouldn’t agree to be Klanmaster because the position wasn’t racist and homophobic enough for him. As much as I love New Orleans, retiring out of state is beginning to look like the best option.
Sigh. But there won’t be anywhere safe for us if we don’t win the November elections.
I did manage to finish two pending blog entries yesterday on top of the daily entry, and so that made me feel a bit better. I’ll probably spend some time this weekend cleaning out the drafts–getting rid of the duplicate ones, or trying to combine them all into one and getting rid of the others. I’d love to finish my Saltburn essay, too, but that may not be in the cards this weekend, either. I’m going to go run errands later this morning, and I also have some more cleaning and filing and organizing to do around here as well. Like always. But I really do feel like I made some great progress on all of this lately, but the floors need to be done, and the rugs need to be reorganized. I also want to spend some time with Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House, which I should be able to finish reading this morning…which will lead to me having to pick out something else to read next. I do have some good choices–piles and piles of great potential reads–and I did go through them a bit last night while making some choices. I should also read some more short stories while I am at it; the Short Story Project has definitely dropped off, and I’d also like to revise one of my in-progress stories this weekend, too, but we’ll see how that goes.
I’ve also been doing some casual research for The Summer of Lost Boys, which I am hoping to start and finish by the end of the year. All I am doing is listening to the Top 100 hits of the year for (so far) 1973 and 1974, and that in and of itself is bringing back memories. I do think this is going to be a really good book and I’m getting kind of amped to write it. I know immersing myself into the history of current events as well as popular culture in those years will trigger my memories, not all of them good, of course, but definitely its helping me to remember what it was like to be a tween in those years, going through puberty and truly realizing how different I was from everyone else I knew as well as getting ghosted, bullied and mocked for being different, which I didn’t really understand other than knowing the truth–that the horrible things they were saying was right, and that made it even more shameful and awful. The only thing that kept me going sometimes was dreaming of being a writer and reading books, escaping from an existence I neither asked for nor wanted.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll be back later without a doubt, and so hang in there until I wind up posting again. May your Saturday be marvelous, and thanks for stopping by yet again this morning!
Summers used to be different when I was a kid, or that’s how it seems now when I look back over the decades to those fuzzy and foggy and out of focus memories of my childhood. Of course, my memories are also my impressions, and I am not sure how those were formed. But back when I was a kid, I have this memory of people going away for summer vacations, and sometimes the really lucky ones went away for the entire summer. All that was required for this was a stay-at-home Mom and Dad who had enough money to rent a summer home to send them off to, joining them on his own vacation. Or maybe I am just remembering it from what I read in books during those years, and our own summer excursions to Alabama (I still would be willing to swear my sister and I spent the entire summer down there, even though I know we didn’t). But beach houses and books about teenagers coming of age while spending the summer at a vacation house on an island or near the beach was a popular subject for writers to explore. I can only think of three of them off the top of my head: Summer of ’42, Last Summer, and A Summer Place. I think I read them all over the course of a single summer, and maybe that’s why my brain defaults to thinking that way about summer breaks and vacations.
I don’t remember why I remembered Last Summer recently. It was written by Evan Hunter, and I also read its sequel, Come Winter, and I remembered both books as being rather dark, with a vague memory of their endings. But I wanted to read it again–I also remembered that John-Boy Walton himself, Richard Thomas, played the male lead in the film of Last Summer when he was a young actor, years before being cast on The Waltons. I’d be curious to see the film again, too.
We spent last summer, when I was just sixteen, on an island mistakenly called Greensward, its shores only thinly vegetated with beach grass and plum, its single forest destroyed by fire more than twenty years before. There were perhaps fifty summer homes on the island, most of them gray and clustered safely on the bay side, the remainder strung out along the island’s flanks and on the point jutting insanely into the Atlantic.
It was there the sea was wildest. It was there that we first met Sandy.
She was standing close by the shoreline as David and I came up the beach behind her, spume exploding on her left, pebbles rolling and tossing in a muddy backwash, a tall girl wearing a white bikini, her hair the color of the dunes, a pale gold that fell loose and long about her face. Her head was studiously bent. Hands on hips, lefs wide-spread, she stood tense and silent, studying something in the sand at her feet. It was a very hot day. The sky over the ocean seemed stretched too tight. An invisible sun seared the naked beach, turning everything intensely white, the bursting waves dissolving into foam, the glaring sky, the endless stretch of sand, the girl standing motionless, her pale hair only faintly stirring. We approached on her left, walking between her and the ocean, turning for a look at her face, her small breasts in the scanty bra top, the gentle curve of her hips above the white bikini pants, the long line of her legs.
The thing lying at her feet in the sand was a sea gull.
Last Summer is what would probably be considered y/a fiction today, despite being written by a highly respected author of both crime fiction (as Ed McBain) and literary fiction, as Evan Hunter. It’s also from that strange period of time that followed the end of the second World War, as the American economy boomed and both the working and middle class were better off than they had ever been before. Matt Baume, a delightful queer culture historian (his book about queer representation in film and television, Hi Honey I’m Homo, is currently a Lambda finalist, deservingly), made an excellent point on his video essay on Rebel Without a Cause, which pointed out the rise of teenage consumers–kids with lots of time on their hands due to the shift in the economy because they didn’t have to have jobs like they did before the war (only upper middle class and rich kids didn’t have to before the war) and the rise of home-ownership in addition to educational opportunities and suburban culture. Adults became quite alarmed at what this new breed of teenagers were up to, even more so than the usual tired worrying about the kids that has never gone away. Many of them were disaffected, and what they were allowed to watch and/or read became even more restricted. Many of them discovered the joys of alcohol and marijuana in greater degrees than ever before, which led to even more rebellion and concern. Parents went after comic books and magazines as corrupting influences–rather than recognizing their own failures as parents, which also gave rise to the modern mentality of uncontrollable children who needed to be protected from pernicious influences. There was, for example, a significant difference from “youth” movies like Rebel Without a Cause and Frankie/Annette in Beach Blanket Bingo. Check out his video here!
Last Summer reads very much as being about its time. “Serious” books about teenagers, many with dark themes, were in demand around this time–and they read very differently to modern readers. This book is about three friends spending the summer on an island somewhere off the Eastern seaboard, but few clues are given to its actual location, or the seaside town where the ferry operates from. The two boys, David and Peter (Peter is the first person voice of the story, remembering back to last summer) meet a girl named Sandy at the beach, and the first part of the book, about them nursing the gull back to health and trying to teach it tricks, bonds them more closely together. We don’t get very in depth about either David or Peter, Peter’s voice is calm and nonchalant, which lulls the reader into a sense of complacency. You begin to wonder where it’s going, but the boys are also becoming more and more aware of Sandy–and her body. Their closeness dances very close to crossing lines several times–she takes off her bikini top more than you’d think a teenaged girl in that time period would–but Sandy eventually bores of the gull and grows more and more annoyed by it until she kills it, and once the boys know, they destroy the gull’s body, which is very odd but telling.
And then they meet Rhoda, a shy girl with some issues of her own, and they kind of adopt her into their group the same way they adopted the seagull, and that’s when the creepy tension turns the book from being about bored teens into a horror. What they do to Rhoda is even more horrific now than it was when the book was originally published in the late 1960’s, and that blasé mentality about their assault on Rhoda–in which Sandy participates, making the horror even worse somehow–reveals them to be sociopaths, which makes the rest of the book make so much more sense, and even more chilling than it was originally.
There’s also some casual homophobia in the book–a gay couple on the island are mostly referred to as “the fags”, a horrible reminder of how prevalent that casual use of such slurs were in this country at the time.
I did enjoy the revisit, and it gave me some things to ponder and think about–and it’s still sticks in my head a week or so after finishing, so that’s a testament to Mr. Hunter.
Queer and Loathing in America 