Tag: Shaft

Cheaper Than Free

Friday and my last day as a sixty year old.

I am working at home today, which is kind of nice. I do have an errand to run this morning–or rather, on my lunch break–but have lots of data to enter and so forth, so I will be ensconced in the home workspace for most of the day. I am also laundering the bed linens–an every Friday chore–and have some odds and ends to clean up around here. I am going to try to get the chores done today so I don’t have to do a damned thing tomorrow; I think I’m allowed on my birthday to take an entire day off–not wash a dish or do any laundry or run any errands or do anything I don’t want to do. I want to spend all day tomorrow reading and relaxing and just chilling out; that’s my favorite kind of birthday. Paul is going to get us Chinese food for a birthday dinner treat, which we haven’t had in an extremely long time..one of my favorite things to do whenever I go to New York is to get good Chinese food. (I know it’s Americanized, don’t @ me.)

I was tired yesterday, the usual Thursday “I’ve gotten up at six a.m. four mornings in a row” thing more than anything else. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have hoped, but as I said, I felt tired all day–both body and brain fatigue–so when I got home from work yesterday I just kind of allowed myself the evening off. I finished rereading the first two Sandman graphic novels–Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House–which the first season of the show covered, and they were just as marvelous and well-done as I remembered. Hopefully, this weekend I will be able to get back into reading–which is my entire plan for my birthday; I want to finish reading the book I started two weeks (!!!) ago, and move on to the next book on my list. Sunday I will write and edit; and then of course Monday is another work-at-home day as August slowly but surely slides back into September. Whew. At some point–Sunday, most likely–I will need to run some errands, but I’m not going to worry about that today…although I do need to update ye Olde To-Do List.

Last night we couldn’t decide what to watch. I started watching a documentary series about British cinema while I was waiting for Paul to finish working, and when he came downstairs we just started chatting while the documentary continued streaming–and when it got to the part about James Bond, Paul remembered seeing something about the young woman who played Rosie Carver, the first Black Bond girl (who also turned out to be a double agent) and as we chatted, we both confessed that we had a special soft spot for that Bond film (Live and Let Die), which led to me remembering that watching that movie (the first Bond I saw in the theater, and why Roger Moore was always my favorite Bond–although I’ve really come to appreciate Connery’s a lot more and of course, DANIEL CRAIG) and I said, “I bet that movie doesn’t hold up anymore–I watched it a couple of years ago while making condom packs and I was a little surprised at how racist it actually was; why don’t we watch it again and see what we think?” I had also read the book when I was a teenager–very very little in common with the film, I might add–and had reread it sometime in the last decade and, like rewatching the film, more than a little taken aback about how racist it was. (Live and Let Die will probably be an essay I’ll write at some point, both book and movie.) There are some funny moments in the movie–Moore had a much lighter take on Bond than Connery, and the switch in actors resulted in a dramatic switch in tone for the films–and it’s highly entertaining…but yes, it definitely traffics in the worst 70’s stereotypes of Black people and the voodoo aspects of the story on the fictional island of San Monique are pretty bad, as well. Live and Let Die was also filmed and released during the “blaxploitation” period of film, which saw movies like Superfly, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Cleopatra Jones, Shaft, and Coffy being made and released–the time when the incredibly marvelous Pam Grier’s career took off. Was it an attempt to be relevant and possibly try to reach the audience for blaxploitation movies? Probably, but one of the few things that carried over from the book to the movie was that the villains were Black.

And yes, when we finished watching we agreed that the depiction of Black characters were, at the very least, problematic. The movie does have one of the best theme songs of the entire series of films, though (probably the best song Paul McCartney and Wings ever recorded, for that matter).

I had always kind of envisioned Colin from the Scotty books as a kind of cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones–one of the reasons I originally decided to never really talk about what Colin was doing when he wasn’t in New Orleans is yes, even back then I was thinking about spinning Colin off into his own action/adventure series before realizing can you write an action/adventure novel, Greg? I still would like to try–part of the reason my career is so strange and all-over-the-place is me trying new things to see if I could actually, you know, do it–but action has always been difficult for me to write (and now that little voice in my head is saying which is precisely why you should try to write one, jackass) and of course, an international intrigue plot would require a lot more planning than what I am used to doing. I might still do it, you never know–I have a plot in mind that involves the 4th Crusade and the sack of Constantinople; one that’s been in my mind now for several decades–but there are so many things I want to write, and time is running out…

Which, of course, is why I think I’m lazy and am taken aback when people say I’m prolific. My novels and short stories published are maybe about a fifth (if that much) of all the ideas I’ve had or things that are in some sort of progress; that’s what I think about when someone calls me prolific–the files and files of incomplete stories and ideas and characters and scenes languishing on the back burner and collecting dust.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Greg’s Birthday Eve, everyone!

Floy Joy

Thursday and my last office day of the week. Man, I was tired yesterday. I’d planned on doing some editing and things when I got home from the office but by the end of my workday I was fried, deep fried, battered and put in a basket and dropped into a vat of grease heated to about 350 degrees. (I haven’t worked in fast food for almost forty years, but I still remember the temperature for French fries.) I was exhausted, and went to be an hour early and slept very well (I did wake up a few times, but both times fell back to sleep almost immediately. Example: the first time I woke up it was because Scooter had curled up next to me and his purring woke me up. I put my arm around him and went back to sleep. The next time I woke up–several hours later–Paul was next to me instead of Scooter, and I slept through it.) I know my sleep troubles/fascination are probably not as interesting to you as they are to me, Constant Reader, but there you have it. I feel very well rested this morning, if a trifle groggy, but hopefully the coffee will do the trick to free my mind from the cobwebs.

One can hope, at any rate.

Well, the first cup seems to be kicking into gear, so that’s a good thing. I was bummed that I was so tired last night–I really wanted to get more things done than I did, but I did get a load of laundry finished (still in the dryer, though, will need to fold and put away tonight) and another load of dishes done as well. So, when I get home from work tonight I’ll do those things and some other chores before sitting down in my easy chair with the manuscript and working my way through the next third. The goal is to get it back to the author by Saturday so I can spend the weekend working on some other things, odds and ends: I want to really get the plot for Chlorine worked out; I want to get some better idea of what Mississippi River Mischief will be about; and of course there are short stories I need to get edited/revised/written. The house is of course a mess as always–not as bad as usual when I reach the end of my in-the-office days, as I’ve been trying somewhat to keep up as I go, but still not where I want it to be, for sure, so hopefully I can stay motivated long enough to get all these things done, clean, AND start reading the new Alex Segura (with the new Chris Holm on deck). I also hope we can watch the latest Scream movie this weekend, now that it’s streaming. I might even be willing to pay to rent Spiderman: No Way Home before it’s streaming for free somewhere. (Never mind, you can’t rent it yet, you can only buy it, and much as I love Tom Holland–there’s too many new movies/shows coming out all the time as well as old ones to catch up on that there’s really no need to ever buy a film to keep again…and soon enough they’ll be streaming for free anyway.)

So, so far those are MY big plans for the weekend. What about you? I guess with the Festivals being next weekend I probably won’t be seeing much of Paul for the next week or so, but afterwards hopefully things will get back to normal (or what passes for it around here anyway). I also want to get back to reading short stories. I’ve really allowed the Short Story Project AND the Cynical 70’s Film Festival to languish. I think when I get back to the film festival I may do some Blaxploitation films. I did watch Shaft, and its sequels are also streaming on HBO MAX, as are some classic Pam Grier movies.

And on that note, I am off to the spice mines. May your Thursday be happy and full–and remember it’s FRIDAY EVE.

One for One

FRIDAY!!!!

Yesterday was a good day. I slept extremely well, got up, answered some emails and printed some things out that I needed to sign and scan and send back, data entered, and then made condom packs. Once I was finished with my work-at-home duties for the day, I went to the gym. Yes, that’s right–one more time for those in the back: I went to the gym again. It was a lovely late afternoon–early December is so lovely here, Constant Reader, you have no idea–and so the walk was nice. People out walking their dogs, dogs running around having a good time in Coliseum Square, a nice coolness…it’s so lovely here once the blast furnace of the summer is over.

I also wrote for a bit–not one of my better writing days, alas–and so took a break and read Donna Andrews’ Murder Most Fowl for a while until it was time for us to watch last night’s batch of episodes of Gossip Girl. The last three episodes of the reboot–although I suppose it’s really more of a sequel series than a reboot–have dropped, but last night’s was rather lame; the season is sputtering its way to the finish line, which is a shame, since it started so well with guns blazing–and we’ve come to the conclusion that we much prefer the OG. We saw the first two episodes of Season 2, and are all in once again; despite the fact that the season one finale was such a disappointment. New characters, new romances for the characters, and lots of new drama, which is wonderful. I still can’t believe we didn’t ever tune in when it was originally airing.

Today is another work-at-home day, mostly data entry but with some condom-packing perhaps later. Yesterday’s condom-packing movie was another entry in the Cynical 70’s Film Festival, and I decided to check out Shaft, the original from 1971 starring Richard Roundtree–who was sexy as fuck. I’ve never seen the original Shaft movies; there were three of them in total (Shaft’s Big Score, Shaft in Africa) released in the 1970’s, and while it’s terribly dated now, it still holds up as entertainment. And one cannot really dismiss its importance as a film, given the time in which it was produced. Here we have, in 1971, six years after the Voting Rights Act and other important civil rights legislation, a complex Black private eye as the hero of a crime film; it is a mere four years after the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night, with Sidney Poitier as a Philadelphia police detective solving a strange murder in rural Mississippi and having to deal with the horrific racism of the region. The film was a huge hit at the time, and it’s famous “Theme from Shaft” by Isaac Hayes won the Oscar and was a huge hit record; I believe the entire soundtrack also sold extremely well. The character of John Shaft was created by a white writer named Ernest Tidyman–no #ownvoices there–who also co-wrote the screenplay (he also wrote the screenplay for that same year’s The French Connection–he was definitely having a good year); and published a number of novels featuring the character. Just as Virgil Tibbs and In the Heat of the Night were created by a white writer named John Ball–the novel the film was based on in that particular case was problematic–so was John Shaft; but in looking up Tidyman, I also saw that he received an Image Award from the NAACP. The plot of the movie is pretty straightforward; the Mafia is trying to muscle in on a Black mobster in Harlem, so they kidnap his daughter, so he hires Shaft to find and rescue her. The NYPD is concerned about a possible mob war between to the two rival syndicates, and also is pressuring Shaft to give up what he knows and get involved. It was very much a film of its time; I always love seeing movies film on location in New York during that time, when the city was much grimier than it is now, and its success may have been integral in the development of what came to be known as the “Blaxploitation” film in the 1970’s–when studios realized there was a big audience for films about the Black experience in America, with strong Black lead characters, giving rise to the careers of Black stars like Pam Grier, for one–and some of Chester Himes’ novels were given the Hollywood treatment. Are there any books, I wonder, about this period? Why did they stop making these movies? (They must have stopped making money, which is usually the reason Hollywood stops making any kind of film) I must make a note to do some research.

I also worked on cleaning and organizing last night, so there’s some finishing up to do here in the kitchen/office. I also had to answer some questions regarding the proofs of my story “The Snow Globe” (which will be in the upcoming anthology Murder is Magic, co-edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley), which was nice; I was very glad that story finally found a home somewhere. It was originally, of all things, a Halloween story that morphed into a Christmas story–I’ll write more about it when the book comes out–but the opening line came to me one Halloween night as I stood on the balcony of the Parade watching all the costumes down below on Bourbon Street, when someone dressed as Satan came out of Oz. The costume was totally slutty-gay; a guy with a phenomenal body wearing red boots, a red bikini covered in sequins, horns, and red body paint. Wow, I thought, Satan has a great six-pack, and laughed, because I realized it was a terrific opening line for something–short story or a book or something–and pulled out my phone and texted it to myself so I wouldn’t forget. It sat in a folder called Satan costume for many years…until I realized I could turn it into “Santa” and turn it into a Christmas horror story. And the rest, as they say, is history.

All right, it’s time for me to get back to data entry. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and will check in with you again tomorrow.