Category: movies

Why Don’t We Live Together?

Saturday, I think, right?

God, it was miserably hot yesterday. I know, it’s New Orleans in July; the dog days of summer (I’ve never really quite understood what that meant, honestly; probably something about how a dog pants or something–so hot I was panting like a dog, or something along those lines anyway–it always makes my think about my grandmother’s mutt dog, Shag, lying down in the shade and panting) as it were, but it still does bear comment periodically about how motherfucking hot it is here sometimes in the summer.

I slept deeply last night, and didn’t really want to get out of bed this morning. I’ve been feeling tired again lately–not that horrible exhaustion I had for those months earlier this year, thank the heavens–and yesterday was one of those days again. It may be the heat, which is the most likely explanation, but I am not wanting to go back out into it today either–I am debating the wisdom of waiting to go to the grocery store until tomorrow or even seeing if it can be put off until next week sometime–which is probably self-defeating in some ways; but I also need to write this weekend (since I didn’t do much of that this past week) and I worry that going out into the heat and lugging bags of food into the house will defeat me for the rest of the day (which is always a possibility).

Decisions, decisions.

During our The Faking of the President on-line promotional appearance the other night we were talking about the 1970’s–if I considered myself a child of the that decade, and I actually do; I do remember bits and pieces of the 1960’s, but I turned nine in 1970 and that decade more shaped who I am rather than the 1960′–and as I mentioned yesterday, I’ve kind of started looking into the films of that decade a bit more. I kind of wanted to watch more Hitchcock movies yesterday–I was going to go for some of his 1970’s work, Frenzy and Family Plot, to be exact–but they are no longer on Amazon Prime for free (they were for quite a while) and that interface has also changed again and become even more user unfriendly; I cannot understand why Amazon cannot get its shit together on their streaming service, but came across the original film version of The Stepford Wives, either on Prime or the TCM app on HBO MAX, and settled in to watch that again. It’s a film (and novel) that is firmly anchored in the paranoid zeitgeist of the 1970’s, and fits very well into a reexamination of what was going on in that decade.

As I mentioned on the live stream the other night, the 1970’s were still a decade where wives were still defined as people in terms of their husbands; it was still very difficult for women to get credit on their own (this was actually how the subject came up–student loans and student credit cards), and I mentioned that my mom’s first credit wasn’t actually in her name, but as Mrs. (Dad) Herren. She had been working as long as I can remember, but her financial identity was still as the spouse of my father. The Women’s Liberation Movement began in the late 1960’s–espousing the radical concept that women were actual human beings in their own right and didn’t solely exist in terms of the man in their lives–and the 1970’s was when the stigma of divorce began to lessen; women no longer stayed in bad marriages or with abusive husbands. Rape was still basically a misdemeanor; spousal abuse was accepted and almost expected, and women were very much second class citizens, primarily defined as wives and mothers (this has changed somewhat, but really, not enough). Ira Levin wrote The Stepford Wives as a sort of social satire, but it was no less terrifying as a result; the revenge of men against women’s liberation. (You never hear the terms Women’s Lib or ‘libbers’ anymore) The Stepford Wives basically took the concept of how dehumanized women were to the nth degree; men really only want beautiful women who don’t think for themselves, think they’re wonderful lovers, live for their men and children, and should primarily focus on making sure their homes are spotless and perfect so their men don’t have to worry about anything but their jobs. The film leaned into this fully; I think the best part of the book was the fact that it never really explained what was going on in Stepford; it was alluded to, of course, but the truth was so terrible that the women–main character Joanna and her friend Bobbie–couldn’t possibly imagine what it was.

But seeing the actual Stepford wives, played by actresses, up on screen, truly epitomized not only how horrible what was happening in Stepford was, but how strange it was for Joanna and Bobbie to deal with, strangers who had only recently moved into town. Paula Prentiss played Bobbie–and why she was never a bigger star was something I never fully understood–and of course, stunningly beautiful Katherine Ross played Joanna–which made it all the more terrifying; she was so perfectly stunning and beautiful, how could you possibly improve on Joanna? The film of course couldn’t leave the truth ambiguous and merely hinted at; which was part of the power of the book…you never were completely sure if Joanna was simply going crazy because the truth of Stepford was presented so casually and normally. (Don’t bother with the remake; despite a stellar cast, it’s truly a terrible movie.)

The Stepford Wives, book and movie, both also fit perfectly into the paranoia of the decade; the 1970’s was a time where conspiracy theories abounded; there was a lot of interest in UFO’s and the Bermuda Triangle and Revelations/the end of the world, not to mention after Vietnam and Watergate mistrust of the government and elected officials were higher than ever before. But I also see The Stepford Wives as part of another literary trend/trope of the decade; the 1970’s was also a time when, as I mentioned on-air the other night, that white flight from the cities to the suburbs and rural eras began in earnest (although it was never, in the books, attributed to its real root cause: integrated public school systems and neighborhoods). There are at least three novels I know of that take the white flight to the rural areas (better schools! clean air! zero crime!) and turn them into horror novels–Burnt Offerings, The Stepford Wives, Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home– where the urbanites discover far greater horrors out in the country than they ever encountered in the city; there are probably more (I am not certain The Amityville Horror fits into this category), but those three would make a great starting point for a thesis/essay. (Interesting enough, both book and movie of The Stepford Wives ends with a throwaway bit about the first black family moving into Stepford; I would absolutely LOVE to see a reimagining of the film by Jordan Peele from the perspective of the black family moving in, because the paranoia of the wife beginning to suspect that all is not right with all these white women who are devoted to housework and their families could also be played with from a racial as well as gender perspective.)

And as I watched the film again yesterday, I realized that my mother, with her obsessions with cleanliness and order, kind of was/is a Stepford wife.

I plan on spending the rest of this morning getting my kitchen/office–horribly out of control yet again–into some semblance of order before diving back into Bury Me in Shadows. I’d like to get the changes necessary done to the next three to four chapters today, and perhaps another four to five tomorrow, which would get me almost to the halfway point. I also need to compile a comprehensive to-do list for the coming week. I also want to spend some time with Blacktop Wasteland today as well.

We started watching a new series last night–Curon, which is an Italian show set in the Tyrol, in a region that changed hands between the Austrians and the Italians numerous times. The town is built on the shores of a lake, where the original town was submerged when the river was dammed; all that remains of the old town is the church’s bell tower, jutting up out of the water. There’s a story that if you hear the bells ringing, you’re going to die–and some seriously weird shit is going on in this town. The show opens with a flashback to the past, when a seventeen year old Anna is hearing the bells ringing and her father orders her out of the massive luxury hotel they live in; she’s not sure but she thinks she sees herself shooting her mother–a nightmare that haunts her the rest of her life. Flash forward to the present, and Anna is coming back to Curon, after leaving an abusive (it’s hinted at) husband with her twin children, now seventeen–Mauro and Daria–from Milan. Her father makes it clear they aren’t welcome there–but when Anna disappears the next day the twins are there to stay. It’s filmed very well, and there are apparently tensions still in the village from the olden days of the war between Austrians and Italians; Mauro is also hard of hearing and wears a hearing aid; Daria is boisterous, outgoing, and kind of a badass; and the teenagers they encounter, both outside of school and in it, are also kind of weird. There’s all kinds of history there, slowly being revealed to the viewer, while the tension continually builds. What is the dark secret of the town of Curon?

I also, while typing that last sentence, realized Curon also fits in with the trope of the urbanites coming from the big city to the country, and discovering far greater horrors there than they left behind in the city.

Interesting.

Single

Well, Constant Reader, we’ve made it to Thursday again; how lovely is that?

I have a busy day ahead of me, so I am priming myself with as much coffee as I can hold–which I will undoubtedly regret later, when I can’t sleep tonight. I did sleep well last night–only waking up around six when Scooter decided to lie on me, purring and kneading me with his paws, but I fell back asleep relatively easily. I could have slept for another three or four hours, frankly.

While making my condom packs yesterday I watched two movies on HBO MAX: Eyewitness and Foreign Correspondent. Both were enjoyable, if flawed; the second more flawed for being a product of its time (1940) more than anything else. Eyewitness was also very much of its own time–the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, and is particularly memorable for being the first major film roles for William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver. Watching the movie put me back in mind of the 1970’s and all of its bitter cynicism. Hurt plays Darell Deaver, a Vietnam vet who now works as a janitor in an office building in the evenings; yet can afford a fairly decent apartment in Manhattan–which I suppose was still possible in the 1970’s–and his best friend is Aldo, played by a very young James Woods (also playing a racist Vietnam vet). In the building where Darell works is the office for a Vietnamese businessman (played Chao-li Chi, best known as Chao-li from Falcon Crest; obviously, back then it wasn’t an issue having a Chinese-American actor play a Vietnamese character) whom both he and Aldo remember from Saigon. Mr. Long has gotten Aldo fired from his job, and one night Mr. Long is brutally murdered while Darell is in the building. Darell, thinking Aldo killed him, pretends he didn’t find the body…but the newspaper reporter covering the case (Sigourney Weaver) he’s been watching on the news and has a big crush on, so he begins a minor flirtation with her. She thinks he knows more than he’s saying, and so plays along with the flirtation….not knowing she is more connected to the murder than he actually is. It’s a nice neo-noir film, if a bit flawed, and watching it reminded me of how much things have changed in our society and culture since then–and also reminded me of other things about the 1970’s; the rampant paranoia, for one, and how New York was in decline (or at least, seen to be in decline by the rest of the country), and was a much grittier, messier place. It also reminded me of how much public perception in the United States towards Jews and Israel have shifted–there’s a subplot about Sigourney Weaver’s parents being Russian Jews who managed to escape that is more important than is let on at first, and Christopher Plummer has a role as Weaver’s actual lover who is an activist helping Russian Jews escape from behind the Iron Curtain. Morgan Freeman and the guy who played Adam Schiff for years on Law and Order play the police detectives investigating Long’s murder–which was an interesting twist.

Foreign Correspondent was one of Hitchcock’s first American films, and since it was made in 1940 and was about the possibility of war breaking out in Europe (it already had; the movie was set in August of 1939), as one can expect it was very anti-Nazi and pro-Britain. Joel McCrea plays a reporter for the New York Globe who, as a crime reporter, is seen by the publisher as someone better equipped to handle reporting the double-dealing and backroom deals prior to the possible outbreak of war. McCrea does a good job in the role–if his character is quite a bit naive–and eventually he falls (as one does so frequently in Hitchcock films) madly in love with the daughter of the head of the Peace Party, who is supposedly working very hard to prevent the outbreak of war. There’s a typical Hitchcockian plot about a Dutch diplomat who is party to a secret treaty between Holland and Belgium and a secret clause only known to the signatories who is being pursued by the Nazis; a double stands in for him and is murdered very publicly–but the McCrea character knows he’s a phony and the search is on for the real diplomat. The suspense that Hitchcock is known for is there, and props to the studio and Hitchcock for doing a plane crash at sea in the third act–it’s totally not how a plane crash would work, of course, but no one in 1940 would know that–and, of course, as required by the Hays Code there is a rousing happy-ever-after ending with McCrea reporting from London during a bombing raid a la Edward R. Murrow, and as the credits roll a rousing rendition of a patriotic American song plays.

I had a headache for most of the day yesterday, so I didn’t read or write at all, but despite the headache, I couldn’t help but think about both movies, and how their stories couldn’t really be updated very much to a modern era–perhaps Eyewitness could be, more so, since television reporting isn’t going anywhere, but do newspapers even have foreign correspondents anymore? I don’t think so.

Paul and I are also watching a German Netflix series called We Are The Wave, which is interesting and rather well done; it’s based on the old “Wave” experiment that was actually done at a high school and then made into a movie, with a book adapted from it later; about how easy it is for fascism to take hold. It was done as an experiment, a teaching moment for an instructor for his class to show them–who wondered about how the Germans could embrace such a toxic political philosophy as Nazism–precisely how easy it was. This show is a bit different in that it shows that Nazism is again on the rise in Germany, and the “wave” in this show is actually a resistance movement towards both capitalism and Nazism. It’s interesting, only about six episodes long, and we are almost finished. We won’t be able to finish tonight because I am doing one of those Zoom on-line promotion things for The Faking of the President anthology.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader.

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

It’s Saturday, and how lovely that feeling is. I am going to try to avoid social media as well as email interactions this weekend, as I want to be productive and I really don’t need any help with getting distracted. I was a condom packing machine yesterday, and Scooter was happily cuddled up to my feet as I had my lap desk and was working. I finally came up with the working system for maximum efficiency, and ultimately I was able to double my productivity in the same amount of time, which was quite impressive. It had been bothering me that I wasn’t as fast at home as I was at the office–or rather, in my old office on Frenchmen Street–but I also didn’t have the proper set-up until yesterday. I also had taken some time on Thursday to fold inserts, which also sped up my time yesterday. I also watched this week’s Real Housewives episodes, rewatched “The Bells” episode of Game of Thrones season eight (it’s quite a spectacle; more on that later) and then Dangerous Liaisons and The Maltese Falcon on the TCM menu on HBO MAX (which I love; there’s so much excellent film on that menu–things I want to rewatch and things I’ve always wanted to see). After dinner we finished off watching Into the Night, which had a lovely cliffhanger, and then started a Mexican Netflix drama, Control Z, which is quite intense. I do have to run an errand today, and I do have to spend some time cleaning out my email inbox–it’s ridiculously out of control again (doesn’t take long!)–and then I am going to reread Bury Me in Shadows and make notes on what to keep and what has to change. I’d also like to spend some time with “A Holler Full of Kudzu,” but there’s only so much time in one day and I only have so much attention span, really.

It’s gloomy and overcast out there this morning; we’re expecting rain off and on for most of the weekend because of now-Hurricane Hannah. I slept fairly decently most of the night, but still woke up feeling a little tired this morning. As much as I would like to be lazy for the day–and really, rereading a manuscript is the epitome of lazy, since I’ll be doing it in my easy chair–but it’s quite interesting and sort of amazing how much of a difference a good night’s sleep makes in my productivity when it comes to writing. The more tired I am, the more snappish I become–so it’s always a good idea to not be on social media or answer emails, as little things really get under my skin when I’m in that condition–but hopefully that won’t be an issue this evening. We shall see, I suppose.

I’m not really sure why I got the bug in my ear to rewatch that episode of Game of Thrones–it’s really amazing, given what a cultural phenomenon the show was while it was airing, how little anyone talks about it anymore. I think this is primarily due to the enormous disappointment the majority of viewers felt with its conclusion, and I certainly can’t disagree with those disappointed feelings. I, too, wasn’t terribly pleased with how the show ended, but at the same time, I wasn’t expected this world–which mirrored actual history with all its gore and good-doesn’t-always-win and evil-sometimes-goes-unpunished reality–to come to a happy ending; although Sansa did wind up as Queen of the North, so at least there’s some sense of justice in that, after everything she went through. And with her red hair, and all the suffering she endured, an argument could be made that she was sort of based on Queen Elizabeth I–who against incredible odds and twenty-five years of living in the shadow of the executioner–finally climbed to the throne. But I want to talk more about “The Bells” and the sack of King’s Landing–which was another episode that had fans disappointed and outraged. I was one of the few fans who was all about the city being destroyed; and I was also really pleased that they showed it from the ground for the most part–with Daenarys and Drogon only seen from below as the city burns and people die. It was exactly how I imagined the sacking of cities throughout history to look–rape and murder, blood in the streets, pillaging, hysterical terrified crowds running for their lives and praying for sanctuary as their world collapses around them. Conquerers never showed mercy; the concept everyone was hoping for that to happen once the bells were rung is very modern. Cities have historically been subject to such sackings throughout history; maybe not with a dragon involved, but read accounts of the many times Rome fell, or the fall of Constantinople–this wasn’t a modern world by any means, and modern concepts of justice and mercy weren’t in play. Cersei herself said it in Season One: “when you play the game of thrones, you either win or you die.” She played, she died, and she took her capital city with her. Power politics in medieval history–the closest proximation to the world of Game of Thrones–were bloody and cruel and merciless, and the Popes and the Church were just as involved and as ruthless as any king or emperor. Arya even alluded to this when she was wearing the face of Walder Frey and wiping out his entire house: “You didn’t kill all of the Starks. You should have ripped them out, root and stem. Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe.” Ergo–if you don’t kill all of your enemies, you have no one but yourself to blame when they kill you.

Dangerous Liaisons is a great movie, and a great story as well. When the film came out, I bought a copy of the novel and was enthralled by the petty games of seduction and revenge that played out in its pages. (I didn’t see the film until years later, when I rented the video; I’ve seen both the Glenn Close version and the Annette Bening, Valmont; and of course the modern day remake with Ryan Philippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar, Cruel Intentions. There was an earlier, modern day version made in the 1960’s I’ve not seen; it’s in French and I’ve always wanted to see it.) The novel is exceptional; originally published (and banned) in France in 1782, it was quite a cause celebre at the time; depicting the immorality and debauchery of the aristocratic class, it has sometimes been described as being one of the initial steps on the road to revolution in 1789. It’s an epistolary novel; you are reading the letters the characters all write to one another, so you see how the Marquise and the Vicomte are playing with their innocent, naive friends and relatives quite well. They are only honest with each other–although, of course, in this modern age the lesson I took from it was never put anything in writing, which is just as true today as it was then–and I had always wanted to do a modern, gay version. I eventually did, with Wicked Frat Boy Ways, but while I am proud of the book I also wish I could redo it some, revise and add to it more.

The film is extraordinary, and Glenn Close was certainly robbed–as she has been many times–of the Oscar for Best Actress.

As for The Maltese Falcon, it’s still a great movie, but I didn’t finish watching–and would prefer to rewatch when I can give it my full attention. It really is marvelously written, acted, directed, and filmed. I should probably reread the novel someday.

And on that note, I am going to dive back into the spice mines. The kitchen and living room are both a mess; I have errands to run, and of course, that manuscript to read. Have a lovely, safe Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will see you tomorrow.

That’s My Impression

Wednesday morning and we’ve somehow survived to the midpoint of yet another week; another hellaciously hot week in July, for those of us here in New Orleans.

I rewatched Mildred Pierce the other night for the first time in years (how much do I love the TCM app on HBO MAX? A LOT) and as I watched–Crawford really was terrific in the part, and the movie is so well done it actually is an enjoyable experience (although I really wish, at the end, as Bert and Mildred walk out of the police station, he would have said to her,”Let’s get stinko!” the way he did in the book; it would have made for a better ending) and it could have easily lapsed into melodrama; in the hands of a lesser writer and director, it undoubtedly would have. But it also struck me, as I watched the film, how markedly different it is from its source material, James M. Cain’s masterful novel, and that most people remember the film more so than the book. Also, it’s incredibly rare for the film version of a novel to veer so drastically from the source material, while both book and film are considered classics (perhaps the other, and best, example of this is Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place, and the marvelous film version directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame; again, enormous changes but both are excellent in and of themselves.)

The most interesting thing to me, at least in recent years, about Mildred Pierce is the character of Veda. Veda is fascinating; the daughter as noir femme fatale, which is a fascinating turn on noir. Ann Blythe does a great job playing her in the film, and it’s been a hot minute since I’ve read the book (in the To Be Reread pile), so I don’t know or remember if in the book there are any explanations as to why Veda was so awful; and I worry that in my mind I’m conflating the film with the book. When I do get around to rereading the book, I am going to pay more attention to Veda. In the movie Bert comments in the beginning, that Mildred puts the children ahead of him as well as complains that Veda is spoiled…the younger daughter, Kay–soon to die tragically from pneumonia–is “worth more than Veda will ever be.” As I have pondered about Veda, I’ve wondered if in the book Mildred favored Kay and Bert favored Veda–which would of course cause resentment in Veda, towards both Mildred and Kay.

I really need to reread that book.

I went to the doctor yesterday–actually, I saw a nurse practitioner, as the new doctor I was assigned to when my old doctor moved to Utah didn’t stay with the practice when it was recently sold (it’s very complicated; I supposedly was sent a letter alerting me to these changes, but I never received it) and when I finally called them last week to try to get the mess straightened out (one of my 2020 goals was to get all my medical stuff handled and under control and to continue, moving forward, staying on top of this and my health–ha ha ha ha, as the old saying goes; man plans and God laughs)–but I was able to see a nurse practitioner yesterday and can I just say, damn? It was the most thorough examination I’ve ever had, she was asked lots of questions, and we talked about a lot of things. Usually, they’d take my vitals, “how you doing” and then boom, out the door. The nurse practitioner actually discussed things–my lengthy illness that came and went, starting at Carnival and ending recently–she had X-rays of my lungs and chest done; got the process started for both my colonoscopy and a mammogram (I have a lump in both pecs; they’ve been there for a long time and have never grown at all–the doctors always just said, “it’s a fatty cyst” and left alone; she was the first to say “well, why don’t we make sure that’s all it is”); I had an EKG done to make sure my heart is operating properly: she felt everywhere for lumps–underarms, groin, throat; checked out ears and nose–I mean, I actually felt like I got my money’s worth out of an exam for once. But my blood pressure was good for once, which was lovely, and after the lengthy discussion about my lengthy illness, she added a different test to my regular bloodwork, to check for septicemia; as some of the symptoms I experienced could have been from an infection of some sort that could still be lurking around.

Hey, I’m all for it. Like I said, my main goal for this year it to take better care of myself and take my health more seriously.

Last night we lost the wifi with eight minutes left of the season two finale of Dark, which, as you can imagine, was enormously frustrating. I cannot rave about this show enough; but the primary problem with talking about it is that it is hard to explain how intricately clever it is without giving away spoilers–and believe me, going in blind and knowing very little about the story is WAY fun. The writing is pinpoint, and as I said, I cannot imagine how much work it is keeping the relationships, the characters, and the storylines all straight because it’s very hard as a viewer. The one thing I can say–without spoiling anything–is there’s a cycle of disappearances of children; every thirty-three years–and so while the show begins primarily set in the present, like Stephen King’s It, eventually it begins to also show what happened thirty-three years before….and you have to remember, everything is always connected. It’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and smart. We’re really enjoying it.

I also took Cottonmouths with me to read while I was waiting at the doctor’s–you inevitably always have to wait, and I prefer to read rather than play on my phone–and it really is quite a wonderfully written novel. Kelly. J. Ford is an excellent writer with a very strong sense of place; and place is always important to me as a reader.

And now back to the spice mines.

This Must Be The Place I Waited Years to Leave

Ah, Sunday morning, how are you doing out there, Constant Reader?

I spent some time, as I threatened yesterday morning, with the bottom drawer of my file cabinet. I found all kinds of interesting things in there–as well as a lot of junk. I also found something interesting–something I’d completely forgotten about; an episodic soap I wrote to entertain my friends in college that I called The Young and the Pointless. There were three seasons of four page episodes containing several scenes that would last about three paragraphs each; and while I’m not sure that’s necessarily as entertaining as it was back then–my friends used to hound me for new episodes, probably because I used them as the characters by using the metric “If so-and-so was a character on an actual soap, what kind of character would they be?” and it actually worked–seeing it reminded me of something I learned as a writing lesson from actually doing it: basically, that soap characters are basically archetypes (hero, heroine, bitch, bastard, anti-hero, etc etc etc) and that Agatha Christie was also right in her Miss Marple books about being able to recognize behavior from observing human behavior in the past. (Miss Marple’s shrewd and keen-eyes observations about human behavior was almost always spot on, and when I read the books as a teenager I didn’t believe this could be true–that it was a poetic, literary license Christie took. Marple would always starts off by giving some anecdote about someone she knew in the past, “She reminds me of the Fielding girl…” and compare how the Fielding girl’s behavior was something she recognized in someone current, and was inevitably right. The older I’ve gotten, the more I find that to be true.)

It’s funny, but I always think that I never really started writing until about 1998 or so; when I started Murder in the Rue Dauphine, but the truth is I was always writing, my entire life. And I have the ancient files to prove it.

I also kind of had the ambition to be a soap writer back then. Apparently, at some point in my life I’ve wanted to write everything, it seems. You name it, at some point I wanted to write it.

Yesterday was lovely; while it is very tempting to spend today working on the top drawer of the filing cabinet, I decided that is a one-day-per-weekend chore, and so I am saving the top drawer for next week. The end goal is to get rid of duplicate files–they are legion–as well as get rid of things I no longer have any need for. The organizing of the files is, of course, key; my goal is to get rid of almost all of these files cluttered around my desk and free up my inbox by moving things into an easily accessible system. I probably also should go through my files quarterly as a reminder of things that I don’t want to forget about; plus I found all kinds of things that could prove incredibly useful for current projects…and that is, quite frankly, lovely.

We finished watching the first season of Dark last night, and I must say, this show is quite extraordinary. The cliff-hanger at the end was pretty amazing, as well. We then watched Netflix’ Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga, which we really enjoyed for a silly movie about Eurovision–and the original music was fantastic. There was also an enormous production number at a party where several songs were mashed up together–“Believe” by Cher, “Ray of Light” by Madonna, “Since You’ve Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson, and “Waterloo” by ABBA, if not more–which also featured former Eurovision winners and contestants that was quite marvelous. It’s not very deep, and sometimes it’s just silly (it is a Will Farrell movie, after all) but Rachel McAdams is quite exceptional. If she does her own singing, I am even more impressed–and there’s also a terrific cameo by Demi Lovato.

We are in a heat advisory this morning in New Orleans–hurray for July!–so I had planned on barbecuing later this afternoon, but am not sure it would be advisable for me to be outside in the heat around more heat, given the Dehydration Sickness of last month. Then again, I know how to handle that now, so there is that.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me.

The World Turned Upside Down

So, Hamilton.

Amazing.

I mean, wow.

I can’t think of many musicals that when I finished watching, I was simply awestruck. Oh, sure, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin both always make me cry (the animated film versions, natch) and I’ve enjoyed some others, but as a general rule I kind of missed out on the gay musical gene. My general lack of interest in musicals, particularly stage ones, generally catches people off-guard; the stereotype, indeed, runs that deep. Some of my friends were stunned that I wasn’t an enormous Sondheim fan, for example. (They did turn me on to Company and Sunday in the Park with George, but while I recognize the ability and talent involved…I haven’t sought out others.) In some queer genetic DNA mix-up, I got the football gene instead of the musical theater one.

Hamilton, though. I mean.

Alexander Hamilton was always one of my favorite founding fathers. He literally came from nothing and nowhere to become one of the most important US historical figures of the Revolution and the creation of the country–the American monetary and financial system was his work. (It is definitely flawed, and has become much more so with the passage of time; unchecked corruption inevitably seeped in and exploited, and continues to exploit, those flaws, but it was still an enormous achievement.) He was killed in a duel, was the first Secretary of the Treasury, aide-de-camp to Washington during the war…truly remarkable. He was flawed, of course, as all the Fathers were. The development of the need for a mythology in which our founding fathers’ flaws were erased and they were raised to God-like stature over the centuries to come has inevitably clouded the necessary truths of history and papered those cracks over with lies and myth. The history I was taught, and read, as a child, was fictional.

I remember being excited when the Chernow biography was published to great fanfare and acclaim; I had a copy, but I don’t recall if I read it or not. That was during the cloudy times, and I am not sure where my copy of it is today else I was have spent most of the rest of yesterday rereading it. When the stage show debuted, to great acclaim and quickly became a national sensation, I was again happy, but couldn’t believe all the buzz and rapture I was hearing. I listened to the cast show recording and, while some of the songs were definitely catchy and memorable, it’s really an opera–and out of the context of the show itself…you literally have to listen to the entire thing to get it and appreciate it.

But watching the film yesterday was a revelatory. In context, with the visuals and seeing it all together–the lighting, the staging, the choreography, the performance, the costumes–it is truly a rousing masterpiece. I was moved to tears several times…and at the very end the number “Who Will Tell Your Story” reveals that the true hero of the show (and his life) was Eliza Hamilton, his wife. And what an extraordinary woman she was! She outlived her husband by fifty years, preserved his legacy, founded the first orphanage in New York City, and launched the drive to raise money for the Washington Memorial (with Dolley Madison and Louisa Adams), not to mention losing her oldest son as well in a duel–and the humiliation of the public exposure of her husband’s affair. The performance by Philippa Soo was exceptional (as was the young woman playing her sister, Angelica–and that number, “Satisfied,” with the rewind? Amazing).

My friend Pat Brady, a historian who wrote a biography of Martha Washington, always says that “women were the secret weapon of the American Revolution,” and she was right. Those American women of that time were just as exceptional as their men.

Was it historically accurate? Not completely, but not as inaccurate as offerings such as The Tudors, Reign, and The White Queen.

Now, I get the mania and the fandom. From the opening notes, I knew I was watching something different than anything I’d ever seen before. An excellent, highly talented cast; terrific staging and choreography…and an appealing story. There is nothing quite as American as the rags-to-riches story; because in our heart of hearts, we always think of ourselves being that underdog who is somehow going to take the world by storm and not miss our shot.

I’ll probably watch again at some point, but I am going to bask for now in the pleasant afterglow of seeing it for the first time.

Now I regret not seeing the original cast performing it live on stage. It must have been amazing to witness.

Love Comes Quickly

And we’ve made it, yet again, to another Monday somehow; good for me, good for you, good for every single one of us. I am working in the clinic today, which is absolutely wonderful; I was really happy when we reopened last Tuesday because helping people is a large part of why I love my job and what keeps me in it. (Well, that and the health insurance.)

I was sick again yesterday; I was fine when I woke up, but after cleaning the kitchen and taking out the trash fatigue set in again and I had a touch of fever. I immediately went to my easy chair–I was able to read for a while on my Woolrich before even that became too much for me–and started watching movies. I watched Katharine Hepburn in Summertime (sigh, Venice), and then we watched a new show on Prime, Upload, which seemed kind of interesting, but after two episodes we moved on to an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse, which was nothing like the novel except for a few things, which is really annoying. Why do screenwriters and producers think they can tell a better story than AGATHA CHRISTIE? The arrogance is staggering…some Christies, of course, can’t really transition to film; Endless Night, which is one of my favorites, certainly can’t because it’s primarily internal. But I don’t remember The Pale Horse as one that was so tricky that filming the story as written by Christie–who was just one of the most successful writers of all time and certainly the biggest selling mystery writer of all time–was so damned impossible.

I am convinced that I am still not properly hydrated; for example, this morning when I woke up my mouth was completely dry and so were my lips. I drank coffee both Saturday and Sunday morning before the exhaustion/fever kicked back in, and that was a huge mistake, I think. I am going to try to go without caffeine for the next few days to see if I am able to make headway on the dehydration; I’m also calling my doctor today because something is clearly going on with me that needs checking out. In a worst case scenario, I may wind up going to the emergency room to get an IV. I think it could also be a combination of things–the dehydration makes me have no appetite, and my blood sugar might drop as a result of not eating as much. I made an effort to eat yesterday, and after eating I did feel better, but still–something is wrong with me and I need to get to the bottom of it.

I also lost yesterday as a writing day, which was the last thing in the world I needed to do, but there you have it. I am hoping to get caught up on some of the writing I am behind on this week, but we shall have to wait and see how that goes.

I’m hearing thunder out there this morning and it’s grayish and gloomy outside the windows, which isn’t promising. I haven’t checked to see if we have any weather alerts–so maybe the potential for flooding isn’t there, but who knows? I stand corrected; I just looked at my email and there’s a severe weather alert there, although I don’t understand why I didn’t get a text on my phone? The storm was located out in the East, near Lake Catherine, at the time the email was sent.

And on that note, I need to eat something and drink something and get ready for working in the clinic today. Hopefully the lack of caffeine won’t be an issue, and the lack of caffeine will result in feeling better most of the day.

Have a great day, Constant Reader.

One and One Make Five

So, after feeling human again on Friday and posting about it both then and yesterday, what do you think happened? If you guessed “Greg fucking relapsed,” you would be absolutely correct.

And this was the worst I felt since getting sick all over again. Chills and violent uncontrollable trembling? Check. Fever and headache? Check. Complete and total exhaustion? Check. It was horrible, frankly, Constant Reader. I wrapped myself up in blankets and retired to my easy chair, cued up Jonny Quest on HBO MAX, and drifted in and out of sleep for about five hours as I made it through the rest of the first season of the show–and yes, while I really wasn’t paying much attention (drifting in and out of sleep) I did see a lot of problematic stuff; and as the show progressed more, Hadji became more and more difficult to watch without groaning and thinking Dear God what were they thinking?

This morning I woke up still feeling a little dehydrated, but I wasted all of yesterday–I was too exhausted to do anything much more than use the remote, make some soup, and later make something to eat for dinner–and am hoping that I will feel well enough long enough to get some things done. I have to go back to to work in the clinic the next two days, so I really need to be up to speed for sure those two days. When I looked at our schedule it looked really filled up, so I will be seeing people pretty much all day. I also lost a day of writing yesterday, which really is upsetting. I am going to finish posting this, go through my emails, and then I am going to reread the Sherlock story, make some notes, and work on the revision some more.

My kitchen is also a complete and total disaster area, so I am going to have to do something about that as well.

We tried watching another crime show on Acorn last night but we couldn’t really follow it–there are a lot of disparate threads going on that will eventually come together into the main story, I assume, but at this point it’s hard to follow, and so we finally gave up on it and watched North by Northwest. I had never seen it, and maybe it was because I was so wonky and out of it yesterday, but I didn’t think it was that terrific. I did love the set-up; the whole mistaken identity thing and someone’s life gets terribly disrupted by getting accidentally involved in international intrigue, but it worked much better in The Man Who Knew Too Much. There are some great visuals, though–the crop duster chasing Cary Grant, the climactic scene on Mount Rushmore–but I never really bought into Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint falling in love, which also kind of spoils it. (Paul and I also enjoyed the fact that Cary Grant looked older than the woman playing his mother.)

So, as long as how I feel right now lasts, I’m going to try to get stuff done. I don’t feel nearly as good as I did on Friday–that was the best I’ve felt this year, I think–but at least this morning I am not feeling sick or exhausted, and I am counting that as a win. I need to stop thinking that once I feel better that it’s all over–same issue with that nagging back injury–and keep doing what it was that got my past feeling sick. For example, I am drinking water this morning before I have a cup of coffee, and I may only have the one cup rather than the three or four I usually do. Caffeine dehydrates, and if dehydration is the root cause of all of this, well, I need to cut it back until I am pretty certain the dehydration is no longer an issue, don’t I?

Still learning, after all these years, to deal with my impatience.

And on that note, I really need to get to work on this kitchen’s utter disaster before heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

I Want a Lover

Sunday morning and I’m sipping away at my first cappuccino (the cappuccinos went so well yesterday morning that I decided to treat myself to them again this morning) and I feel pretty good. It’s absolutely lovely outside this morning–the temperature is in the low eighties–and bright, sunshine glowing everywhere. New Orleans has the most beautiful sky when the sun is shining, and the light here is exceptionally gorgeous.

It also occurs to me that cappuccinos are probably the most cost effective way for me to get my morning caffeine as well. If I used the Keurig, I can go through as many as four K-cups each day, and even the cheaper ones from off-brands aren’t exactly cheap. But cappuccinos require me to grind beans, and bags of beans are certainly cheaper than boxes of K-cups (I also have the reusable ones, but they don’t work that great; I always wind up with grounds in my coffee, grounds in my coffee and you’re so vain…oops, sorry for the musical interlude) and they also go further. I also only need two of these every morning, and they are kind of delicious.

Yesterday was kind of a nice day, really. I slept really well on Friday night, and so was rested, and of course, the cappuccinos gave me an awesome joly of caffeine that gave me the energy to power through some work I had to do yesterday. I finished that around two, and then went to the gym. I worked out very hard, which felt amazing, and then I came home to do the dishes and laundry. I also intended to do the floors, but my muscles were worn out and tired, and instead I repaired to my easy chair, where I watched the last two episodes of The Movies, and, being kind of mentally exhausted, just curled up with Barbara Tuchman’s essay collection, Practicing History. I do love Tuchman, and I also love that she didn’t really have any background in studying history, yet became a major historian.

I went to bed relatively early last night as well, and again, had yet another lovely night’s sleep. And here I am this morning, with a cup of cappuccino, preparing to answer some emails and try to get my inbox cleared out (for now, at any rate) and then I am going to try to work on the Secret Project for a while. My goal was to get it done and out of the way today, so I can send it off into the wilds tomorrow; wish me luck. Most of this is revising and rewriting, with very little new writing needing to be done. I actually enjoy revising and rewriting, surprisingly enough; it always seems easier to me than writing the first draft, which inevitably is a disastrously written horrible mess. I love making order out of chaos; which also explains why I let messes build in the house and the filing to pile up. I simply love making order out of a mess. I’m not sure what that says about me and who I am, but it’s true.

However, I’m also kind of hoping today that I’ll be able to dive into Night Has a Thousand Eyes. I do want to reread Faggots for the Reread Project, but it can wait, and the Woolrich has been waiting far too long for me to get to. Besides, it’s also been a hot minute since I’ve read something new to me, and I really want to start reading more of the Woolrich canon. I’ve got one of his short story collections on my Kindle, and between reading one of his novels and adding him into the Short Story Collection (which reminds me, I need to read W. Somerset Maugham’s “Rain”, which I started reading a while back), I think I can start developing an appreciation for him, as well as an understanding for his work. I want to enjoy reading them for what they are, but I will also, of course, be looking for that elusive “gay sensibility” in his writing that is most likely there and has been ignored by critics for decades.

It was definitely there in “It Had to Be Murder.”

And on that note, I’m going to head back into the spice mines. The sooner I get the work finished, the sooner I can get back to my easy chair with a book, and is there any better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than with a book?

I think not!

Lies

And here we are, Friday morning at last!

And what a week it was, was it not? I made some progress on the Secret Project–not enough, of course–and got some things done around the Lost Apartment; I have some more things to get done today so I can coast into the weekend feeling good about being able to get some things done this weekend. I will, of course, need to resist the lure of HBO MAX and all its wonderful movies (I could easily go the rest of my life never watching another episode of Friends; I’m not sure why they thought that would be a selling point–I don’t even care about watching the reunion show they filmed). I do, however, recommend the CNN docuseries The Movies, which is on HBO MAX. If you’re a fan of film and film history, it’s an interesting overview of the rise and development of American cinema. If you’re an aficionado, you probably won’t enjoy it nearly as much as it doesn’t get into a lot of depth.

It’s been a draining week, one that has left me very tired in its wake and unable to get nearly as much done as I would have liked over its last few days. Obviously, the world doesn’t stop turning and things don’t stop being due; for me it’s not so much about wanting everything to return to normal (I don’t think anyone understands or grasps the fact that regardless of what happens, the world isn’t going to return to its pre-pandemic state; New York and New Orleans never returned to their pre-9/11 or pre-Katrina states, after all) as it about me wanting to get a routine established so that I can know what to expect from week to week and when I can do this and when I have time to do that and so on and so forth. I am looking forward to a highly productive weekend–there’s not much choice there, really; I either have to get it all done over the course of this weekend or I am really going to be up the creek…I perform well under pressure, but the pressure and how I react to it is so bad that I really don’t want to ever have to perform under pressure, if that makes any sense.

I doubt seriously that I’ll have time to read anything this weekend, alas, and I am really looking forward to digging back into Larry Kramer’s Faggots.

But as the coffee kicks into gear this morning, I am starting to feel a little more confident about myself and what I can do and what I can get done in the meantime, which is always a better mindset to be in, anyway.

One of the weirdest things about me–really, there are so many–is how easily I can get overwhelmed and descend into depression; the depression also makes me snappy, and I’ve learned that when I am in that kind of state the best thing to do is not interact with anyone outside of Paul, Scooter, and my co-workers at the office, and generally I try to do that as little as possible. Yesterday, after working in the garage all afternoon screening–and as our temperatures continue to rise here in New Orleans, you can imagine how lovely that is–when I came home last night I was despairing of being able to squeeze everything in that I need to for the next three days; this morning, after a good night’s rest and some coffee this morning, I feel like, well, I can do this and then I can do that and then I’ll do this in the morning and then I’ll have the rest of the day free to do this and of course you can get everything done, why do you always have to doubt yourself?

And I’m sure the despair/depression thing has come from not having the energy to write the last two days.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.