Work-at-home Friday! Huzzah! I was a bit on the tired side yesterday, which was to be expected. I had to go to work in person every day last week, and I always am a little tired come Thursdays. It was surprisingly pleasant outside when I went to work yesterday morning–in the low eighties–and everything was glistening and wet from the previous night’s rains. The city was also low-key and kind of mellow, too. It was a slow day at the office, and I decided not to head uptown after work to run my few errands, I was a bit tired and I forgot my list, too. I want to get a lot of cleaning and organizing done this weekend, and I also have a lot of quality assurance to get caught up on today. We’re going to go to Costco later , which is also going to be incredibly expensive, especially since it’s been so long since we’ve gone. Over a month, I’d say–or at least since Paul’s surgery, and that was definitely a while back. (I have ordered some things to be delivered from them–not much of anything, really–but supplies are low.) But…the tired wasn’t too bad, I did some chores when I got home, we watched an episode of Cross, and I caught up on the news, which was either not horribly depressing or I’m becoming deadened and desensitized; I’m not sure which. And I came down to a picked-up apartment, and a clean kitchen, so am already off to a good start this morning. The first load of blankets are in the washer, and I need to unload the dishwasher.
I also have chores to do today around the work and the errands, and I would also like to get some writing time in, too. It will, of course, entirely depend on how long everything takes and how tired I het doing everything. It was cool when I left the office yesterday–for this time of year, mind you–and there was a lovely breeze. The car was an oven, though. I did sleep in a bit this morning before Sparky became insistent on being fed. I feel pretty good so far this morning and my coffee is excellent, so no complaints here.
I am missing the World Cup, honestly; what a delightful few weeks that was. I’m very glad that Spain beat Argentina; what a pathetic group of sore losers and dirty players. That great player of theirs (I won’t mention his poor sport ass name) is also a piece of shit, apparently; decades of being ‘the greatest’ etc, only to throw it all away as a poor sport. Always remember the Nazi to Argentina pipeline, and I will always wonder why they made a musical glorifying that fascist grifter Eva Peron. I’ve never gotten a good answer to the question. Some gays don’t like having their theater standards questioned, but why not do one on Imelda Marcos? She actually fancied herself a singer, at least. I am missing the world cup, though. There’s any number of monstrous fascist women in history; did Eva stand out because she started out as a prostitute and actress?
Oh, well, college football will be here before we know it, and then my weekends will be built around college football and the Saints–errands on Fridays and Sundays only, etc. I’m cautiously optimistic about both LSU and the Saints this year, but LSU’s schedule is brutal. Auburn, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Texas A&M, Florida and Tennessee, and the opener is Clemson. That’s eight games they could lose, right there. Oh, well. Fingers crossed! Hope always springs eternal down here on the bayou.
I am also hoping that having a “normal” weekend will set me back to normality. I feel good and rested already this morning, which is delightful, and of course my coffee is starting to hit me with its best shot…I should get out the espresso machine this weekend and make myself some cappuccinos, because it’s been a hot hot minute. We’re apparently in a heat advisory all weekend, too, and into next week again. And yes, it would be nice to stay inside all weekend, but I will run those other errands tomorrow, because I don’t think we’ll be out of this heat any time soon.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and wherever you are, stay hydrated! I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning, so until then, be safe!
Heracles battling the Hydra. It’s always bugged me that people use his Roman name when talking about Greek mythology; in Greek, his name was HERACLES. In other words, if you’re talking about Zeus and Hera, his nam is Heracles. If you say Hercules, you need to use Jupiter and Juno. (I blame Disney for a lot of this, but it happened before their movie, too.) I’ve also kind of always wanted to write about him, too.
And here I am, on Monday morning again, yawning and swilling coffee before I get ready for work. We’re busy this week, so I am going to be drained and tired when I come home from work every day this week. That’s fine, really. I had a most lovely weekend to begin with. I spent a lot of time just resting and relaxing, but I did get some things done. I’m not used to having so little hanging over my head that I have this much free time, and I have to say that I kind of love having time to just decompress and chill while still being able to get some things done.
We’re in a heat advisory again, and there’s a storm forming in the gulf–Bertha–projected to most likely come this way and pass over New Orleans, but it’s potential for strengthening beyond tropical storm (still not something to sneeze at, just means we don’t have to evacuate) is not very strong and we should start feeling effects of this on Tuesday, supposedly. This means we’ll probably get heavy rains this week, possible flooding, and the potentiality of losing power. I also need to check out what’s going on with the fecal infected vegetable products as I need to stop at the store and make some groceries on the way home; although I did see the FDA was coerced into walking back blaming Taylor Farms for this round of cyclospora. Thanks again, RFK and DOGE. Are we healthy again yet?
Sherlock Holmes, of all people, was on my mind this weekend for some reason I am not certain of; I think I was offered a ridiculously low ebook price for The Hound of the Baskervilles. I know I want to write an essay about not being a Sherlockian; I’ve always felt my lack of appreciation for Holmes was something shameful for someone who identifies primarily as a crime writer. When I wrote that historical story about a New Orleans-based Sherlock in 1916, I did read some of the short stories I hadn’t read before and enjoyed them, and Sherlock dances back into my head every once in a while, primarily because I’d like to revisit that time and write about it more. But does it have to be a Sherlock story? Why can’t I have a New Orleans-based world’s greatest detective? It’s an interesting time period, as Storyville still existed as did anti-Italian prejudice aka they’re all Mafia, where they lived in the lower Quarter. There are also all kinds of interesting cases in New Orleans history that could also go back to that time, too. I don’t feel like I know enough about Holmes to write more about him as a 1916 New Orleanian with a desire for male flesh….I also like the idea of writing about New Orleans when it was primarily accessible only by water. The 1915 hurricane after-effects would also be interesting to write about, especially since both St. Malo and Freniere were wiped off the map. I already have a Sherlock short story idea having to do with Freniere–but I’ve held off on writing it because I need to decide whether to base my character on Sherlock, and continue with him as I have already adapted him.
I also wonder if I should be writing about Sherlock.
Since Lisa Morton will occasionally urge me to write more horror (which is incredibly sweet, encouraging and supportive all at the same time) so I have been thinking about horror more these last few weeks or so. I have an idea for a horror novel that I am toying with currently, which could be a lot of fun to write–horror always is–but like the Sherlock thing, I’m not sure I have the background knowledge or the necessary steeping in the genre that I should have…then again, I always am very quick to point out my lack of formative knowledge in the crime genre (see: Sherlock Holmes), too, but I write it anyway. Horror always, surprisingly enough, turns my mind towards Alabama and the Florida panhandle and the Sierra Nevada mountains. I also came up with the opening for a new series I am interested in tackling this weekend, too…
I did work some on the book as well as a couple of short stories…and I also thought a lot about the next Scotty and what to make it about. I was going to go with January before parades start, with it opening as the boys watch the Krewe de Vieux parade pass beneath their balcony, but then I remembered the S&WB project that has the streets in the Quarter all torn up and thought, well, I’d need to look into the construction work and then started thinking about October/November; something to do with Halloween as the title anchor, and Hijinks as the third word, but I need something to go in between; I can’t use season because I just used that…maybe Halloween Pumpkin Hijinks? Maybe candy? Sigh.
I also hate that the World Cup is over and everyone is going home…but at least Spain beat Argentina (ETTD).
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back again tomorrow.
Saturday in the Lost Apartment and all is well. It’s hot and humid, with chance of rain (the New Orleans weather forecast for almost every day between May and October). We did have a thunderstorm yesterday, which was lovely. I got chores done, my work at home duties completed, and while I didn’t write much, I made lots of notes on what I am working on so that I can actually get to writing today. LSU baseball plays Arkansas tonight (and Tiger fans are winning the Jello Shot competition yet again in Omaha), so I should be able to get things done today while I wait for the game. We started watching Harlan Coben’s Caught on Netflix last night, which I think is an Argentinian production, but we are really enjoying it. I slept really well last night, too, and Sparky the alarm cat allowed me another hour’s sleep this morning, which was lovely.
I also did some reading yesterday, which was nice, too. I hope to do more reading today, as well, which should be pretty awesome. I need to do some more chores this morning, too–the dishwasher needs to be emptied, for one, and the floors, like always, need to be done as well. I also need to get the mail and stop to make groceries, and perhaps to have some others delivered, too. I am feeling better these days, which is nice, and it’s even nicer to sleep through the night every night, which I suspect is part of the feeling better thing. I get to drive out to Metairie Monday morning for my first infusion, and yes, the pharmacy bill hit my insurance for the hospital stay and it’s over twenty thousand dollars. I mean, yikes–but yes, the pesky deductible is paid off, so everything health-related for me for the rest of the year should be free, which is lovely–especially since I think my primary care doctor is going to order blood-work again when I see him again a week from Monday. And the Monday after that I am seeing an ophthalmologist to check to see if I have Stargartz, a macular degeneration disease that is apparently genetic as well and which my sister has already been diagnosed with.
I also realized, while making notes and free-associating in my journal about this story I am working on–“The Lake Must Be Fed”–that the last thousand words or so that I’ve written on it have to go, because I bogged it down, by deciding to have my characters go inside one of their houses and talk about what’s happening rather than have some action–which turned it into a snooze. Glad I realized it before I continued writing it as it is, which would have been an utter waste of time, and I am also glad I realized it rather than taking it to its logical conclusion from what I had done, only to have it rejected and for me to spend the next three years wondering what is wrong with the story, which happens a lot, and in some cases it’s decades. I have forty year old first drafts I don’t know what to do with, but since they’re written I always feel they can be fixed at some point, you know–and yes, it is kind of embarrassing to review old work and see how much my writing has improved since back then, you know? And the real problem is actually that I was writing queer stories about straight people, so they were inauthentic at their base level. But yes, the conversation in this story needs to be deleted, and I need to write a terrifying action scene in a boat on a lake in the major thunderstorm1, so might as well do that today, right? I also have some research to do today or tomorrow; one for an essay/newsletter, and the other is for Chlorine, so I can return the library books.
I also have a four day holiday from going into the office this week; Juneteenth on Thursday is a holiday, and of course Friday is my remote day, so that will be kind of nice, methinks, and very restful. And then that next week I am off to meet Dad in Alabama, and that will be nice. I’ve not seen Dad since February, so it’ll be nice to spend some time with him as well as reaffirm my deeply rooted connection to Alabama, which I continue to reexamine all the time. I’m also writing a short story set in Alabama, so the visit will help a lot.
I also need to make a to-do list, and get some other things figured out this weekend.
I imagine this blog is very often the very same thing almost every day, only worded differently (or so I hope): writing, reading, cleaning, errands. I did publish a new newsletter yesterday, about how I didn’t get the gay fashion gene, to go along with this one from earlier this week, about body image issues, including my own. Click on the links to read them, if you are so inclined. I am working on a few more for Pride Month that I want to get posted before July, after which it will most likely go back to reviewing art that interests me, and/or talking about writing and publishing, or things that influenced me. I also have some already finished, that are going to be posted in July. July is also going to be my “get back to work on your book” month, so hopefully this lengthy break in which I got healthy and rested, as well as strengthening my writing muscles, will pay dividends when I get back to it.
And on that note, I’m going to get cleaned up and make that to-do list, as well as start doing chores and working on that short story. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow. Have a lovely day, and if you’re out protesting, stay safe.
And now it’s Friday. It’s hard to imagine that it’s almost Thanksgiving already, but the initial pandemic shutdown also seems like it was more than a million years ago–when dinosaurs roamed the earth–rather than a mere eight months or so ago. Eight months we’ve been dealing with this; even though it seems more like eight fucking decades. But I’ve noticed that time has sped up lately–for the longest time it felt like time was dragging and was taking forever to pass, but now…now time is flying.
I suspect it’s the looming deadlines and being behind on everything, quite frankly.
The sun is bright this morning in my eyes and I cannot find my baseball cap–it’s probably stashed somewhere I thought I’d remember where it was–so I’ve had to move my chair and I am writing this while sitting at a weird angle to my desk. I’m working at home again today, and will be walking to the gym for today’s workout when I am finished with this afternoon’s work. Yesterday for the Cynical 70’s Film Festival I watched The Boys from Brazil and The Towering Inferno–more on those later–and I think that for today I might just dip back into some more Halloween horror. We also started streaming Mr. Mercedes, which is now available on Peacock for free–I am actually impressed with everything they are offering; it’s very similar to HBO MAX, but am still not willing to pay for another premium service yet–and I have to say, I am enjoying this adaptation. It’s fairly true to the books–at least as I remember, although I don’t remember the neighbor Ida, played by the amazing Holland Taylor–and I have to say, the three Bill Hodges novels (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) have been my favorite Kings of this century thus far; Mr. Mercedes very deservedly won the Edgar for Best Novel some years back, and as much as I loved the books, I was very sad when I reached the end. King himself was an executive producer, and the television series adaptation was written by David E. Kelley, who has also been responsible for a lot of good television over the years, including Big Little Lies and The Undoing, which we are greatly enjoying as well. There are three seasons of this adaptation, and I assume each season covers one of the books.
The Boys from Brazil is an interesting film, and very much of its time. Based on the novel by Ira Levin, both book and film were very much of the 1970’s, and also encapsulated that cynicism and paranoia of the decade perfectly. It was also one of those stories that permeated the zeitgeist; everyone knew what”the boys from Brazil” were without reading the book or seeing the movie. The movie is a very close adaptation of the book–Ira Levin was known for his brevity as a writer, so rarely did things need to be cut out of the books for the screenplay. The Boys from Brazil was actually Levin’s longest novel–I could be wrong, but I don’t think so–and the film has some impressive star power, with Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, and James Mason in leading roles, and an incredibly impressive supporting cast, including Rosemary Harris, Anne Meara, and Uta Hagen. The film also opens with a focus on a young character played by an extremely beautiful young Steve Guttenberg (whatever happened to him? He was a big deal in the 1980’s and then just kind of faded away) as a young Jewish-American man who goes Nazi hunting in Paraguay, and is actually the one whose investigation tips off the big Nazi hunter played by Laurence Olivier about what’s going on and kicks the film into gear before he is, of course, caught and murdered by the Nazis.
It’s hard to imagine now that the 1970’s were forty years or so ago now; the world has changed so much…but the 1970’s were also only a few decades removed from the second world war and Nazi war criminals were still being hunted down worldwide by the Israeli secret police. (The Germans were also hunting them down for trials; the Israelis were killing them.) The Lieberman character played by Olivier (he got an Oscar nomination; ironically, he also got one for playing an escaped Nazi war criminal in Marathon. Man a few years earlier) was based on Simon Weisenthal; does anyone even remember Weisenthal today? (Weisenthal was one of the people who helped track down Eichmann.) It’s no secret that many Nazis escaped to South America after Berlin fell, and Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay in particular; so much so that it was so much a part of the zeitgeist that everyone knew and a casual reference was easily picked up on. Levin took that, decided to make Josef Mengele, the escaped Nazi “angel of death”, and put him at the center of the story. And the scene where Leibermann finally realizes what Mengele’s plans are–that is the scene that earned Olivier the Oscar nomination. The film doesn’t pack the same emotional wallop that the book does–probably because by the time the film was released, most people knew what the title referenced and what it was about (Levin was a master of the huge surprise twist), which killed some of the suspense. Gregory Peck isn’t very good as Mengele, either; paired with his listless performance in The Omen, Peck was clearly phoning it in for the most part in the 70’s and cashing the checks.
And as I always say, you can never go wrong with Nazis as your villains. The two best Indiana Jones movies have him fighting Nazis; you just can’t come up with better villains–having the opposition be Nazis alone immediately makes your hero pure of heart and decent and makes you root for him. (The Vatican, however, is an excellent fallback choice.)
There’s also an excellent essay to be written about The Boys from Brazil, comparing and contrasting it to Robert Ludlum’s The Holcroft Covenant, which is also about an attempt to resurrect the Third Reich, with the the seeds planted in the waning days of the war.
The Towering Inferno was part of the big wave of disaster movies that was a thing in the 1970’s, spawned by the huge success of Airport and The Poseidon Adventure. Like all disaster films, it boasted an all-star cast chock full of award winners and household names–Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Jennifer Jones, Fred Astaire, Robert Wagner, Susan Blakely, and Richard Chamberlain, to name a few–and a terrible script that was focused more on the adventure than the actual characters. (It’s also jarring to see O J. Simpson in a supporting role; and to remember he had a fledgling acting career before he murdered two people) Disaster movies inevitably fit into the Cynical 70’s Film Festival because they are always about preventable disasters that wind up happening because of greed and people in positions of power that invariably shouldn’t be; there’s always one scene where the person in charge of cleaning up the mess and solving the problem sanctimoniously lectures the person they feel is responsible for it: in this case, fire chief Steve McQueen lectures architect Paul Newman about the irresponsibility of building skyscrapers from a firefighter’s point of view (and having witnessed 9/11….yeah, watching the scene made me squirm more than a little bit)–but Newman, you see, is the hero; the fire and the building’s failure to be properly prepared isn’t his fault; construction manager Richard Chamberlain cut corners on the electrical wiring and so forth to stay on schedule and under budget to please building owner (also his father-in-law) William Holden. I watched the movie for the first time several years ago–and couldn’t make it all the way through on a rewatch. The acting is too bad, the writing too awful, and the story not compelling enough. It was nominated for like seven Oscars, including Best Picture–which should give you an idea of what a bad year that was for film. It was based on two novels, published around the same time, that covered the same ground–a fire in a new skyscrape–so the rights to both had to be secured to prevent lawsuits: The Tower by Richard Martin Stern, and The Glass Inferno, by by Thomas Scotia and Frank Robinson, with their titles blended into The Towering Inferno.
Around the time I originally watched The Towering Inferno I rewatched three other big disaster movies of the time–Airport, The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake–and none of them really hold up. There were scores of other disaster movies of the time too–several Airport sequels, a movie about killer bees, etc.–but if the BEST of the time don’t hold up, the ones that weren’t considered good at the time must be really horrific.
And on that note, it is back into the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.
Queer and Loathing in America 