Tag: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Wide Open Spaces

Well, here we are in the midst of the new normal–a term I’ve always hated, absolutely hated–and the adjustment has been…problematic, but not anything I can neither handle nor deal with. I am up at the break of dawn today because today, tomorrow and Friday I get to start my work-day at 7:30 am at the screening stations. As we all know, Gregalicious absolutely is not a morning person, so this is going to be…interesting, to say the least.

I cannot be held responsible, quite frankly.

I started reading Daphne du Maurier’s story “Ganymede” last night, and no, I still haven’t finished reading “Death in Venice”; I opened the Kindle app on my iPad to see if the ebook was there–it was–and then I opened it and clicked on the table of contents for “Ganymede” so it would be ready when I was and I started reading and…three pages later I tore my eyes away and stopped. I can see, yet again, this is du Maurier in top form; I can’t wait to finish reading it so I can discuss it, along with “Death in Venice” and “Don’t Look Now”, altogether; particularly as there are some thematic similarities between the three tales. As I am working on my own Venetian story (“Festival of the Redeemer”), I think it’s interesting and fun to read other classic stories set in Venice. (Don’t come for me, I know “Ganymede” is more influenced directly by “Death in Venice’:, but I can see, and would argue, that “Don’t Look Now” also shows some of the Mann influence–perhaps not as much as “Ganymede,” but it’s definitely there.)

I was also thinking last night about Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven, which is also set in Venice. It’s one of my favorite Rice novels (along with The Witching Hour and The Tale of the Body Thief) but it’s also been quite a while since I read it, and I think I only read the book the once, to be perfectly and completely honest. It’s set in the Venetian world of opera and power politics within the Venetian government; and of course John Berendt’s The City of Falling Angels is also about the burning of the primary opera house in Venice and the political fallout that followed within the city. Venice and New Orleans, at least in my mind, are very similar; both cities are dominated by their proximity to water, after all, and their relationship to that water affected the way the cities developed and also the kind of cities they are. I hope to one day be in Venice for Carnival–but that would also require me to be filthy rich, but like all Americans I still cling to that dream that someday I’ll become a one-percenter, even though it becomes more and more unlikely every passing year.

We are still watching the highly addictive and thoroughly entertaining Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and as it gets progressively darker and darker and more and more appealing, as I did the other day, I can’t help but think how much better Riverdale would have turned out under the more loose standards of Netflix, as opposed to the CW.

This version of Sabrina is ever so much more entertaining than the old Melissa Joan Hart version, that’s for fucking sure. But I also tend to prefer the dark side.

The light is coming up outside. It feels like it’s been about a million years since I got up this early; but then again–the old pre-pandemic quarantine world seems like a different time and place, as though it belonged to someone else; which is kind of how the pre-Katrina world has seemed to me since the evacuation. Some of my co-workers brought up the imminence of the upcoming hurricane season–which begs the question: how and when and where would New Orleanians evacuate to during a quarantine, when the vast majority of hotels and motels everywhere have been closed and shuttered?

Then again, in these days and times, it’s probably best not to think about that until it becomes absolutely necessary. That’s the key to surviving these times, or at least how I survived the Katrina aftermath: don’t look ahead, don’t think about tomorrow; just think about today and what you can do to get through it because every passing day is a victory, one to go into the win column, and yet another step forward to that unknowable future.

I didn’t write anything last night when I got home from the office;  I was very tired–both physically and emotionally–and so I just kind of wanted to relax and rest. I did the dishes and retired to my easy chair for the rest of the evening, knowing I’d have to go to bed fairly early, and so I did. Tomorrow and Friday both I have to get up at this ungodly hour; although I am hopeful it is only for this one particular week. And who knows what tomorrow, or next week, will hold at the day job?

Hang in there, Constant Reader–these are tough and strange times.

Chris-Campanioni-18

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Well, we made it to Monday again, Constant Reader, and I suppose that’s reason enough to be happy in these uncertain times, right?

Paul’s building officially goes on lock-down at three. He’s been going into the office, wearing gloves and maintaining social distancing, primarily to get things done that could only be done from there while preparing for the move to working from home. I’m quite relieved, frankly, that he won’t be going back into the office anymore; that’s one less thing I have to worry about. I am going to be working at the office on a hit-or-miss basis mostly; our clinic is still open for patients, but our STI clinic is closed for the duration (although there’s apparently a conference call this week between upper level department personnel and the Office of Public Health about that. Social distancing or no social distancing, in times of distress…people tend to hook up more, and the fatalism that comes with times of distress generally means condoms aren’t be used…I hope a protocol to keep both us and our clients safe can be found so we can commence with testing again); most of us from our department have been helping with screening the patients who arrive for appointments, to use the food pantry, or pick up prescriptions at the Aveeda pharmacy on the second floor.

Yesterday I reread Daphne du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now” and was once again, as I have been every time I’ve read it, by the mastery on display in that story. I will undoubtedly post a blog entry about it again–I started writing one yesterday–and when I was finished, I started reading Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”, which is a new-to-me story and one I’ve been meaning to get to for quite some time. Others have mentioned I need to read du Maurier’s “Ganymede” as well; it’s included in her collection The Breaking Point, which I have a copy of somewhere, but couldn’t put my hands on it yesterday, so this morning I downloaded the ebook. (And bravo to the du Maurier estate; it wasn’t that long ago that a lot of her work was unavailable as ebooks; they are all up now and ready to go, which is very cool and exciting for a du Maurier aficionado like myself. It means no more scouring eBay or aLibris for used copies of uncertain provenance and condition.) I hope to finish reading “Death in Venice” tonight; and get started on “Ganymede” either tonight or tomorrow.

I did manage to get some writing done; I revised a story for one of those blind-read submissions I was talking about earlier, and was very pleased to have the intellectual challenge of writing something again–even if it was simply a matter of revising. I am going to spend some time at some point today revising the other story for the other blind read; the Sherlock story’s deadline was pushed back a month so I can go ahead and focus on these other two stories–which, as I said, are merely revisions, which makes them a bit easier. I am hopeful doing these revisions will help me out in the long run and get me back into writing again, just as reading those short stories will get me back into reading.

We also started watching The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix this weekend. I had tried the first episode when the series originally dropped its first season whenever that was, and frankly, wasn’t too terribly impressed with it so stopped watching. Paul at some point over the last few months was over at a friend’s, who had it on in the background, and he suggested to me that we give it another whirl. Very glad we did; it’s extremely dark and incredibly well done; far superior to its sister show Riverdale (I can’t help but think how much better Riverdale would be if it aired on Netflix rather than the CW), and we are pretty much caught up in it now. I love that there’s a gay main character who is actually being allowed a love life (Ambrose) and a non-binary character who may or may not be a lesbian and is depicted carefully, honestly, and authentically; this is actually rather huge, and I am curious to see where the character of Susie goes.

Louisiana’s cases–in particularly, the confirmed in New Orleans–continue to rise every day, and as more testing is done I suspect will go through the stratosphere. There have been twenty deaths in Louisiana this far–fifteen of them in New Orleans–and I have yet to check the latest death/infection toll. Our rates are climbing must faster than Italy’s did; which is not a good sign, and our health care infrastructure here is going to be overwhelmed very quickly, if it’s not already happened. I suspect (and hope) that Crescent Care might become a designated COVID-testing drive thru site at some point this week; it only makes sense that we do–we have the perfect set up for it, really; the way our building was constructed, with the garage on the first floor with a different entrance and exit and the clinics on the two floors above–but I of course don’t make those calls. Ironically as this first started, I did think and hope that upper management would make that offer to OPH and CDC; I hope that we are going to be a part of the solution to this pandemic, rather than on the sidelines.

And let’s face it–for some of us who work there, this isn’t our first deadly pandemic.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines. Shelter in place if you can, Constant Reader, and have a lovely, quiet, safe and healthy day.

charlie